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The Initiative Weapon: Look Up!
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Top Stories

The Initiative Weapon: Look Up!

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice We've spent a lot of time with nursery rhymes lately. Today, let's trade Mother Goose for a swimsuit. Have you ever done something wonderfully weird? Nearly 14 years ago, while celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Sherrie and I traveled to Cozumel, Mexico. One morning we signed up for a snorkeling excursion in the beautiful Caribbean Sea. Our guide took us by boat to a coral reef two miles offshore, and before long we were floating above one of the most breathtaking displays of God's creation I have ever seen. It felt like swimming through the world's largest saltwater aquarium. Schools of tropical fish glided effortlessly through brilliant coral formations while strange sea plants danced with the rhythm of ...
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The Hidden Trust Weapon: Olly, Olly, Oxen Free!
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Top Stories

The Hidden Trust Weapon: Olly, Olly, Oxen Free!

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice "Olly, olly, oxen free!" If you're smiling right now, you're probably remembering the same thing I am. Long before smartphones, video games, and streaming television, neighborhood kids had an amazing ability to entertain themselves. We'd ride our bikes until the streetlights came on, play baseball in empty lots, build forts out of scrap lumber, and, when the evening shadows grew just a little longer, someone would shout, "Let's play hide-and-seek!" The seeker would cover his eyes and begin counting while the rest of us scattered in every direction—behind bushes, under porches, between parked cars, anywhere we thought no one would ever find us. Of course, we weren't nearly as hidden as we imagined. Looking back, I can still ...
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Should America reserve its highest offices for natural-born citizens?
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Should America reserve its highest offices for natural-born citizens?

By Christine Coleman | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice “You shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman.” — Deuteronomy 17:15 When God brought the children of Israel into the Promised Land, He established clear laws and commandments for their governance. Among them was the explicit requirement that rulers must be chosen from among their own people — no foreigner born outside the nation was permitted to rule over God’s covenant people. This principle was repeatedly tested and its violation brought severe consequences. In 1 Kings 11, King Solomon’s heart was turned away from the Lord through his many foreign wive...
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The creativity weapon: Loving the crooked man
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, National, Top Stories

The creativity weapon: Loving the crooked man

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice When I was little, one of my favorite people ever was Grandma Ivy, still is. She wasn't famous. She never stood behind a pulpit or wrote a book. But she was a superhero. During many of my toddler and elementary years, she was my guardian, my safe place, and my greatest teacher. Like so many grandmothers, she had a way of turning ordinary moments into lasting memories. One of those memories was a simple nursery rhyme she taught me: "There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house." Back then, I thought it was just a funny rhyme. I smiled because everything in...
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The Self-Control Weapon: Don’t Pull the Plum Yet
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The Self-Control Weapon: Don’t Pull the Plum Yet

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. He put in his thumb, pulled out a plum, and said, "What a good boy am I." Most of us learned that nursery rhyme as children and never gave it another thought. But through the lens of Jesus, Little Jack Horner tells a familiar story. Jack sees something he wants, reaches for it, takes it, and congratulates himself for getting it. That sounds a lot like us. We live in a world of immediate gratification. We want answers now, comfort now, success now, relief now, and pleasure now. Yet one of the greatest lessons Jesus teaches is that strength is often found in waiting. You see, before Jesus preached a sermon, healed a disease, or called a disciple, the Spirit led hi...
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The reliability weapon: Humpty’s wall
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The reliability weapon: Humpty’s wall

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Most people think the lesson of Humpty Dumpty is about falling. It isn't. It's about trust. You don't sit on a wall unless you trust the wall. You don't climb high unless you trust what holds you up. And you don't build relationships unless you trust the people around you. The real tragedy wasn't that Humpty fell. Everyone falls. The tragedy was that when he broke apart, nobody knew how to put the pieces back together. That's where the nursery rhyme collides with the teachings of Jesus. The world says reliability is showing up, keeping your promises, being on time, and doing what you sa...
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The captivity of grievance: A challenge to modern progressive ideology
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Undercurrent, Approved, Commentary, National

The captivity of grievance: A challenge to modern progressive ideology

By Michael Hancock | Commentary, Undercurrent Substack The Psychological Chains Hidden Inside the Language of Compassion There are chains that can be seen. There are chains that must be discovered. The visible chain is the easier one to condemn. It clanks. It bruises. It announces itself in iron, law, lash, and blood. Chattel slavery was such an evil. It placed one man’s body under another man’s ownership and then constructed an entire moral fiction to justify the theft. It was not merely an economic system. It was a theological lie. It denied what Genesis declared at the beginning: “God created man in His own image.” That is where every serious conversation about human dignity must begin. Not with race. Not with class. Not with grievance. Not with politics. ...
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The generosity weapon: This little light goes to war
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The generosity weapon: This little light goes to war

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice “This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine…” The many weapons in the Kingdom of God seem weak; some include humility, meekness, joy, and now, generosity. None of these sounds like weapons capable of winning a war, yet Jesus teaches that life's battles are won differently than the world imagines. While the world fights with power, pushing, positioning, and preferences, Christ fights with goodwill and character. His weapons transform hearts, heal relationships, and illuminate the goodness within all reality. Generosity is one of the greatest weapons in Jesus’ arsenal, not the generosity the world offers, which is merely giving something away, but Jesus style, where everyone benefits.  Generosity, when properl...
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Colorado Churches Growing Again Driven By Younger Generations
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Approved, Local, The Denver Gazette

Colorado Churches Growing Again Driven By Younger Generations

By Mark Samuelson | The Denver Gazette If churchgoing ever hit a low point in American history, it would have been exactly six years ago, just as the year 2020 arrived. Late the previous year, a widely publicized Pew Research study had documented an ongoing erosion of Christianity and of general religious identity in the U.S. The tally of Americans who identified as Christian, the research said, had fallen to 65% — down 12 points over a single decade. Moreover, those identifying as atheist, agnostic or as “nones” had climbed to 26%. The unconformity widened further by age groups, older to younger. Then COVID-19 arrived, with public health orders by governments effectively closing down places of worship, along with schools, businesses and other public buildings. In Colorado, ...
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