One of the Ultimate Sins

In today's society, I feel pressured to accept homosexuality as "okay". Not only do I feel pressured by society, but I feel slightly pressured by my family. That is because I have a cousin who has chosen that path... We also have several other family friends who have chosen that path too. I used to think that it was okay because God created each person as who they are and we are to accept them they way they are. But as I have grown older and read more of the Bible, I have learned that God did not create us to be attracted to people of the same sex. There are no instances in the Bible where God blessed a same-sex couple, rather He laid His wrath upon them! God blessed the couples who were of different sexes, look at Abraham and Sarah who after some mistakes in putting their wants before God's timing, were blessed with a child. There are many other examples throughout the Bible which support this as well.

How should we handle this sin when it is within our own family? I tyipcally try to stay out of the discussion about it because I know I am probably the only one in my family who does not accept it as "okay", but this cannot be avoided forever. My cousin has said she hopes my move to a more conservative church will not change how I view her and her living decisions. That's exactly what they are... decisions. We all have the ability to stay away from sin if we simply rely on God, but if we give in to temptation, that is when we encounter trouble. My friend once said (about this topic) "I support the person, but not their decision". I think that is the stance that I have to take on this issue, especially if the person is one whom I care about, but I cannot support their decision to live in sin, but I can support and love them as a person.

I have heard churches preach on "keeping homosexuality out of OUR church" to the extent of not allowing homosexuals to step foot in their church. Should we take it that far? I understand not allowing membership to people who choose that path, but should we not allow them to come to our churches so that they could have the chance to hear the truth and realize that their chosen lifestyle is sinful? Yes, God detests this sin, but it does not mean that He will not forgive those living this lifestyle if they truly repent and change their ways. That should be our goal...to spread the truth about this choice that is becoming more and more common rather than trying to keep it out of OUR churches.

Blessings in Christ,

Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a blessed Easter! Such a wonderful story for us to all remember, that because God gave His only son to the cross, we will be forgiven of all our sins. I pray everyone has a wonderful day with friends and family tomorrow as we remember the true reason for Easter.



Blessings in Christ,

A Desire for a Family

One thing that I have been struggling with lately is giving up my future to God. I so badly want to have a family and it is extremely difficult for me to watch youth younger than me get married and start their families. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to get married and have children. How I have children has always been up in the air :) but nonetheless, I wanted them. I know God is in charge of my life, He is the author and I am just a character in His book. Just like any character in a book, I do not know how the end will turn out only the author does. Since God holds each of our books so close to Him, not even an outsider (or reader) can cheat and read beyond the current page. We all know the last part is that we die, but we cannot read the middle to figure out what the middle of our story holds for ourselves or one another. When I share my age with the other youth at church, I get the impression that I shouldn't be sitting with them or attending the youth sunday school class. That I belong with the women. I understand that I am a bit older than most youth here, but I am not ready to give up on my dream that I will have a husband and children one day.

I know in my head that if God intends for me to meet someone that He will make sure to have our paths cross but yet, to my heart, that is not comforting. I know it should be, but yet it's not. I have been praying so much lately on this, asking God to give me a peaceful-ness and allow me to relinquish control over my future to Him but yet I seem to find a way to focus on this not soon after I have finished praying, wondering if I have missed my chance already.

Blessings in Christ,

The Tenth Commandment

This is the last of the Ten Commandments. This series has taken me a bit longer than I anticipated it would, but I also did not want to just hit each of the 10 commandments in a row. I wanted to give each of you time to meditate on the commandments individually as well. I hope you were able to take some time and meditate on each of these and try to figure out how each one could be better applied to your life. I know I sure have.

Old Testament:
Exodus 20:17 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy nieghbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. (KJV)

New Testament:
Romans 7:7 - What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. (KJV)

To covet entails wanting anything that is not yours, from what I understand. That could include anything and everything. We are instructed to not want our neighbor's house, wife (or husband), servants, maids, nor his animals or anything in his house. Who is our neighbor? Our neighbor is anyone. Jesus has instructed us on that many times, saying that a neighbor is anyone who is not family.

To say that we do not want anything another person has is probably not the truth if we are being honest with ourselves. It seems it is human nature to want what another person has, as the saying goes "the grass is greener on the otherside". This does not make it right, but this is something that I think most of us struggle with as we are all human.

As with anything we struggle with, we cannot succeed without God's help. We must rely on His help to obey His commandments. I don't see any other way.

Blessings in Christ,

The Ninth Commandment

Old Testament:
Exodus 20:16 - Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor (KJV)

New Testament:
Matthew 19:18 - He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, (KJV)
AND
Romans 13:9 - For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (KJV)

To bear false witness means to testify against someone falsely. Whether we want to say it involves speaking under wrong motives (ie. to retalliate against someone) or to speak a lie about someone, I do not think it matters. Both are wrong. To retaliate is to have hatred towards someone and to hate someone is to murder. To lie about someone is to bear false witness. Both break commandments which we as Christians are instructed to obey. I would consider even leaving "bits and pieces" out of a story to be bearing false witness since the parts left out could change the outcome of the situation.

Just as we are expected to tell the truth in the government's world, we are ordered to tell the truth in God's world.

Blessings in Christ,

The Eighth Commandment

This commandment has given me some problems trying to figure out how to elaborate on what Jesus has said. I am a fairly literal person, taking what has been said near word for word. I do look to definitions of words and try to elaborate that way, but truthfully I was not able to elaborate on this one very much.

Old Testament:
Exodus 20:15 - Thou shalt not steal (KJV)

New Testament:
Matthew 19:18 - He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, (KJV)
AND
1 Corinthians 6:10 - Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (KJV)

There are a few other places in the NT where we are instructed not to steal and that theives will not inherit the kingdom of God.

What does steal mean? Webster's defines steal as: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice.

Great treasures says steal is defined as "to steal, take by stealth (not by violence)" -- this is the definition for the greek word for steal.

Just because the greek word for steal does not include taking by use of violence, I do not think that it is allowable. We are taught by Jesus' example to do no harm to anyone. We know that stealing, by both government law and by Biblical law is wrong. Even though sometiems we may think of it as "borrowing and I'll return it later before she notices it's gone", that is still stealing, is it not?

I prefer to think of stealing as taking without permission. That is the definition I grew up knowing and I think even though it is more broad, it is a definition that I will be teaching my children if I am blessed to have any in the future.

If anyone has anything they would like to add to this, as always, your comments and thoughts are welcome :)

Blessings in Christ,

Smorgasboard of things :)

I actually tried to post this on Monday but apparantly internet explorer 9 and blogger don't work together? I removed it today and am back to IE8... Anyone else have this problem?

We have some typical spring weather here today...rain. I know it's necessary, but when it rains all day long, it just wears on you... Anyway, at least I had to work...didn't feel so bad about being stuck inside on a dreary day :) It's 66 today and tomorrow I guess it's supposed to be 43 or so :(

I have a few topics that are really brief each so I thought I would just post them all in one :)

Thought #1:
How do you search for a church? What is important to you? What do you feel you can overlook?

We're back on the hunt for a church to attend. We found one that after going twice we seem to like. We feel welcomed and the people there will speak english to us instead of only speaking dutch... but it's 35 minutes away. With gas prices being as high as they are (near $3.85 a gallon right now) we don't know how often we could make it there... But the churches really close to us, we have tried and we don't feel like they are a fit for one reason or another. Just would like to hear what some of you look for in a church :)

Thought #2:
Something I've been thinking about lately is going back to school to get a teaching degree. I really loved substitute teaching when I did it last year and miss it. I loved being in the classroom, teaching the students (when the teachers got to know me, they would leave actual lesson plans for me to go through with the students...especially for math -- my absolute favorite subject lol), and just seeing the light bulb go off in their heads when a topic finally made sense to them. That was just so rewarding. As with any job, there are down sides. But does that not make it worth it? If I could go back and change what I went to school for, would I? I think I might. I had thought about going to school for a science teacher, but at the time I was told no that it wouldn't be a good fit for me. Now I'm thinking of going for...math teacher! In a way I feel like this might be God's hand because for the past (near) 2 years, I have had this feeling of wanting to get an education degree. But on the other hand, I wonder if I should because will I be able to find a job or will I be getting married in the next couple years and then wanting to stay home to take care of my wifely duties? All these questions keep running through my head...

I know there was a reason why I went to school for mechanical engineering, but truthfully, I haven't figured out the reason yet. Do I think it was a mistake to get a degree? Absolutely not. But I wish I would have put more thought (and prayer) into what I went to school for and not just gone for what I thought would meet the approval of my parents. Hopefully with prayer and time, I will be able to sort this one out :)

Thought #3:
I have been pondering this slightly ever since reading the blog post on this. How do "superstition" and religion fit together? Over on About Amish's blog, she has been answering questions about the Amish lifestyle and one question was about supersitions that the Amish believe and how they link "luck" to God's hand. How do you think they fit together? Do you think being supersitious means not trusting God? Do you think those things are "signs" from God?

That's it for today! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on any of these :)

Blessings in Christ,

Freezer Jam

One thing that we love here is freezer jam...and strawberries :) So when the local store had strawberries $1/pound, I picked up 10 pounds! Yes, that's right, 10!!

We got the recipe from a friend here and made two batches and still had 4 pounds left over :)

As with anything that is homemade, it costs more at the beginning, but over time, you save money...and it tastes oh so much better than store bought jam!

4 cups mashed strawberries (we found it took about 3 pounds to get the 4 cups but it will depend on how good the berries are and if you have to cut much off)
1/2 cup of sugar or 3/4 cup fruit pectin
Mix these two together and let sit for 30 minutes
Add 4 1/2 cups of sugar

While your strawberries and the sugar or fruit pectin are sitting, you can start on this part.
In a sauce pot add 1 cup of Karo syrup or corn syrup and 1 cup sugar
Cook over high heat until clear (you need to let this boil and become really clear)
Add 1/4 cup lemon juice (from concentrate is fine it does not have to be fresh lemon juice -- and no I'm not joking, there is lemon juice in this recipe!)

Mix the karo syrup mix and the strawberries together. Put in containers and freeze.

This recipe is one that you do not have to pull out of the freezer and let thaw completely before using because as weird as this may sound, it never completely freezes! Let it sit out for a minute or two before spreading on bread and it will be fine :)

Hope you enjoy this one if you try it! I'm sure you could use raspberries or other berries in place of the strawberries as well just haven't tried it myself yet :)

Blessings in Christ,