Judgmental Christians

1 Corinthians 5:1-5;9-13 - Paul says,
"1It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife.
2You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.
3For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.
4In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
5I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus...
9I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;
10I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.
11But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler--not even to eat with such a one.
12For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?
13But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES."

- or -
Luke 6:37 - Jesus says
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

What is the difference? Why are we instructed not to judge and then Paul gets off on the Corinthinans about not judging? And of what were they boasting? Their non-judgmentalism?

Just some questions rolling around in my brain.

"I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere..."

Not really. Actually, when it comes to the United States, I haven't been much of anywhere. I love this map where you can make of all the states you have visited. Of this pathetic 17, at least 3 were when I was only a year old! So, can I count those?



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.



Here is my world map. I like this one better!



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Annual Egg Toss at Our House

My dad loves this photo taking opportunity. He took around 200 shots of just this event. I've posted some of my favorites!

Egg Decorating

It's that time of year again... our annual Easter Egg Decorating and Hunt with Jenny. This year was no exception. I don't think our kids will ever give this up!




Jenny put Miss Emma in her Easter Dress and we took some pictures. She looked just gorgeous!!

But now it was time for the Egg Hunt. Emma started it off.

Jenny had marked eggs with "C", "R", and "D" as well as unmarked eggs. They each had to find 8 eggs with their initial. This made it especially challenging because it wasn't enough to find the eggs, you had to find YOUR eggs!

After finding all the eggs, they pulled out pieces of paper and rearranged the letters to spell their prize...

PRINCE CASPIAN! We'll be off to the El Capitan come May for this next installment in the Narnia series. It was the perfect gift for this crowd!

Google Reader Redux

I published this last November, but it bears repeating. It will change your life. I mean that.



O.K. class, today's lesson is on how to read blogs.

I know many of you view my blog by either going directly to it through a favorite bookmark or you google me and some of you jump here from other blogs, but to those of you who do this, I need to introduce you to Google Reader. It is an RSS feed, but you don't need to know that and don't let your eyes glaze over seeing that.

Believe me when I say this will change your blog reading life!

After clicking on this link, sign in with your google account. (If the link doesn't work, type in http://www.reader.google.com/) You have one if you have a blog on blogger or if you have registered so you can comment. If you don't have an acount, GET ONE!

After logging in, you will see this screen on the left side. Click "Add subscription", and you will see this box...

This is where you type in http://www.mlasch.blogspot.com/ or copy and paste it from my blog. Continue adding subscriptions until you have all your blogs added. The best way is to go to each blog in a separate window from the Google Reader window and do a lot of copying and pasting.

Here's the best part - each time a blog has a new post, it shows up bold in your list of blogs. Now when you first add the blog, they will all come up with LOTS of new posts. This is because Google reader doesn't know you've already seen it. If you click on that blog and scroll through it quickly, the box that says, "Mark as read" will check off automatically.

Here's the second best part. If you use the latest version of Internet Explorer, you can open different tabs. If you keep Google Reader open in one tab while you go into another, the TAB will show you how many new posts there are. You don't even need to go to Google Reader to see if there are any new posts!!!

Well that's it for today, class. Remember there will be a quiz on Friday, so get to work!

I hear this guy's available to be our new pastor...

No Way This is Real!

Hanford

We went up to Hanford to visit our friends - Darin and Brandi Parson and Bruce and Rhonda Kane. We spent time having fun, eating too much, trying to watch Fighting Temptations with a stuttering DVD and visiting Epic Church. I love these people and this church. It is so refreshing to see them and to see how they are doing. We need to get up there more!

Chandler and Regan connected with Britani rather easily. I'm sure she was happy to have some old friends up for a visit. It was great to see her - that's for sure.

This is amazing!

This is a very short video. Well worth the minute of your time.

I'm done

I have decided to take off the first post I did about the current situation. I think everyone has had time to process through this to some extent and has had an opportunity to vent and to begin to wrap their minds around their emotions.

But at this point, I am just giving some the publicity they crave. So I will not continue to feed the need for exposure.

The thing I like about blogs, that I have always liked, is that it gives people a forum to share and reveal parts of themselves. We can enter into virtual community as we agree and disagree with each other. In this particular case, I had a very hard time coming up with words to nail down my emotions, and I'm sure others felt the same. Blogging and commenting gave us words, and words gave us a chance to start the healing. Now it's time to start that process. Enough words.

One more note: Please, if you are not ready to discuss adult issues with your kids, don't let them read adults' blogs. If your child has been hurt by something posted here, I am deeply sorry. Please let your child know the serious consequences of sin. It's ugly business.

Conclusions

1. Revolution Church is full of people who have their faith in one man - Jesus Christ. I am blown away and humbled by the response of so many disparate people. Those mature in their faith and those new to this whole Christ-follower thing have with one voice said their faith is in God. They are trusting Him to work all of this together for good. They are excited and anticipating a flood of His power and direction.

2. God is working in all of our lives to blast away what is not of Him. I am seeing God work in myself by gently saying now that you have vented, come see what I have to say. I am seeing God refocus and recenter people on Him and what He would say to them. I am seeing people being given an opportunity to put this faith in the lordship of Christ into action. What does it mean to follow Christ, except that we must follow His direction most especially when we want to run the other way!

3. What Satan meant for evil, God will use to further His kingdom! These words are not empty "Christianese" and platitudes. I hate that. We had the roof and walls blown off of Revolution Church, but the foundation stands. We are now standing, bruised and bloody, on that foundation. We will rebuild. We will build this church on the foundation and cornerstone of Jesus Christ. We look up and see, not a man, but a Savior who still bears the scars of His sacrifice. We see love that has no end and know he will not abandon us now. We will see God move in amazing ways now that the things that were not of Him are blown away. I have clearly seen the leadership of Revolution Church ready and excited and going straight to God to say, what would you have us do next? We stand ready to march.

4. Prayer changes things. Part of my own personal devastation is that for the last year, I have been praying almost daily for Dave - more than I have prayed for anything or anybody else. I have begged God to pour wisdom into him. I have asked God to reorient his heart towards his family. I have asked God to speak loudly and clearly to him and direct his path. I have given my personal animosity towards Dave to God and asked for a heart of love and honor towards him. I begged to be wrong in my own concerns. I did not want to be guilty of being "wise in my own estimation." (Rom. 12:10-16)

So it would seem that my prayers failed completely.

And until I wrote those words in point number 4, I believed that. But as I wrote those words of truth, knowing I personally didn't believe them, but yet still knowing they are truth, God said to me clearly, how do you think so many lives were changed at Revolution?

I know I was not the only one praying for him and for this church. God blessed and touched people despite Dave. God is not hampered by one man's sin and failure to yield to Him. Our God is a big God and even David Trotter's willful sinfulness could not hold Him back. Wow. God heard our prayers and blessed so many.

I have refrained from asking God to smite Dave, because prayer is a powerful force!

My next prayer is that God would bring me around to a point of grace. I'm not there yet. I'm not even ready to pray that yet. I'll get there.

I'm tired of thinking - this made me laugh.

Someone thought that although he agreed with my last post, perhaps I should temper it a bit. Afterall, kids read my blog. To that I replied, I know kids read my blog. That's why I didn't cuss.


But now I'm tired of thinking. My head hurts. I need to get a few days out from all of this before I can think clearly again.

In the meantime, I saw this video. It was posted on someone's blog in response to the recent homeschool court ruling. I laughed out loud. I needed that.

However, knowing kids read my blog, this one is a tiny bit racy. Kids, ask your folks first.

This has me concerned

A California court recently struck down homeschooling as a legal alternative to the public or private school system.

According to this article, the results of this decision are not immediately known and it is being appealed.

It doesn't affect me personally as my children are technically enrolled in a public charter school, but that will not be the case when we get to high school.

Here is a scary part of the court's ruling:
Specifically, the appeals court said, the trial court had found that "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."

I'm very scared when the courts and state of California start telling parents how to raise their children. Not only are they completely WRONG in their assumption that homeschoolers never see the light of day outside their own homes, but they are WRONG to make it a LEGAL requirement for parents to provide those outside influences.

Parents are the best source of determining what is right or wrong for their child. This is not my opinion. This is the system that God has put in place. He has given children to two parents and has given plenty of instruction on how to raise them. They are OUR responsibility and not the state's. Unfortunately we have been told again and again by secular authorities that we do not know how to raise our children. We must do it their way.

But just how successful is "their way"? According to this, California ranks 47th out of 50 states in the education system. 47th!!!! Whereas homeschoolers consistently score an average of 30 percentile points above the norm on standardized test. That's percentile points not just raw points! That means where an average score is 50%, a homeschoolers will score 80%!

So who cares about education and who cares about a "'cloistered' setting"? Homeschooling offers proven educational results. The state offers a cloistered (and very artificial) setting (where else in life will you spend the bulk of your day in one room with 20-30 people your exact same age, doing the exact same activities at the exact same level in the exact same timeframe? That's the "real world" homeschoolers miss out on.) and a one-size-fits-hardly-anyone methodology. But they know best.

Well, I'm rambling (or is it ranting) now...

I couldn't resist this.

O.K. Right after I posted that last post, I run across this. COME ON!! How can I not post this picture.

So I looked carefully at the article that accompanies it. It is a Reuters article and photo and it offers the option of distributing the photo electronically or even printing it. So I'm thinking it's O.K. to share.

Just to cover my bases, here is the article:

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) smiles during a campaign rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio February 27, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)

The best part of their story is the complete LACK of any mention of the Devil in the background. Does the author not see it? Is it only revealed to those of us with true knowledge of who she is? Was that devil image not there and only showed up in the photo? Spooky!

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Any reference, clear or implied that Hillary Rodham Clinton (henceforth to be referred as HRC) is the devil or is controlled by the devil or any way has dealings with the devil is unintentional. Any pictures or opinions which might be construed to indicate HRC is demonically influenced in no way indicate the bias or the opinions of the owners of this blog. Any references to HRC and her alleged dealings with the devil are purely coincidental. This blog is for entertainment purposes only.

I might be a thief!

I just read an article about how much theft is taking place on the internet. I think I'm guilty.

Photographers are having their images stolen and placed on blogs and myspace and even on printed marketing materials. This is being done through the very common "right-click, save picture as..." mechanism.

I know many of you go to Google images or something similar for pictures to illustrate your blog or home pages, well... now you know. Apparently using images that are not yours is theft. It's punishable by up to $150,000 per incident! And how do you know if it is not yours? Did you or someone you know take it? Did you purchase it? If the answer is no, it's theft.

I always thought that if it was on the web, it's fair game. Not true. And this is not an incidental problem either. Professional photographers estimate that 90% of the usage of their photos is unauthorized. They are being paid nothing for their art. Think about that one artists! Would you be O.K. with your song or painting being used rampantly without your permission?

So, now that I know, I'm responsible for that knowledge. I'll be going to istockphoto.com or sxc.hu for my images. For the quality needed for the web, it's only about a dollar on istock and free at sxc.hu.

By the way, the image at the top is paid for. You may NOT use it!

Consumerism - the new bogeyman

I read this blog, and a few days ago he made this post:

As Americans we make up 5% of the worlds population.
As Americans we consume 30% of the worlds resources.
That should not sit well.

Well, last night, I couldn't sleep and my mind was racing. A deadly combination. So many thoughts were going through my head, but this post came to mind. So I composed my response in my head and went over it a hundred times. (Why? Why couldn't I think, nice post, now go to sleep!) I was so frustrated with the first 15 or so responses. Everyone piled on the "Ugly Americans" bandwagon.

So here is my very long comment. I received some positive feedback, which I didn't expect from this crowd.

Comment:

I’m not exactly sure what is not supposed to sit well. We consume a lot of resources. We are a very blessed country. We would consume more than our fair share of resources even if we gave almost all of what we have away. Of course if we did that, we would have nothing to give the next time a need arose…

I’m pretty sure we all have on “off” switch on our electrical panels. No one holds a gun to our heads to force us to drive. (Even your hybrid is a ecological nightmare.) Toilet paper is a luxery to most of the world. And do we really need showers when there are perfectly good storm drains available? I hope you don’t need any medications. Those gotta go.

My point is, it’s so easy to rail against generic “consumerism”. Yet it is also a meaningless complaint.

What exactly are we supposed to stop consuming? Would using your left hand instead of tp actually help the poor and disadvantaged? Or would the increased death and disease offset any savings generated?

Perhaps we should strive to live in humble gratefulness to God for His blessing and ask His direction in how He wants us to put them to good use. We can use the resources He has given us to bring His truth and love to the world. Salvation and the death of the sin nature would do more to solve all the world’s problems than driving a (very expensive, resource guzzling) hybrid.



So what do you think? Come on people - I need some love on this one!!