The Simple Life

Media   posted by   Dannah Gresh   on 04/27/10 A few weeks ago, a colleague in the Christian publishing and speaking world suddenly needed an audience with me and my team...and fast. You see, over the weekend his eight-year-old daughter had a sleepover with a nine-year-old friend. When his fourteen-year-old got on the Internet after they’d used it, she found herself seeing images no girl (or woman, for that matter) should ever see. His heart was broken by the fact that both of his little girls had been forced to look at images that rip the innocence right out of girlhood. It should not surprise you that this happened. It happens in most houses everyday. It may be that you were the eight year old, or the fourteen year old that it happened to.  The fourth most-searched word on the Internet for kids ages 7 and under in 2009 was “porn.” For all kids up to age 18, sex was No. 4, porn No. 5. (According to data collected by OnlineFamily.Norton.com.) This supports some research I saw a few yea

It seems as if we have minimized the Holy Spirit in the Evangelical community in the United States. We have replaced Him with good things, things that He could use, but things that have indeed replaced Him. Instead of counting on the Spirit of God to lead our leaders we count on the majority. Ministries have studied secular businesses and figured out how they need to operate, and they have replaced the Spirit of God with long range plans, feasibility studies, strategic plans, etc. The individual has replaced the Spirit of God with the plethora of books available on any topic. Psychology seems to be equal to if not more important than God's Spirit, and we place our hope in our doctors, insurances and retirement plans. What would happen if the Spirit of God was trying to get someone to give away their retirement money? Would that individual even be listening, or has the logic of the day replaced the Spirit of the Lord? What if God wants a successful business man or woman to leave h

What if we have this thing we call Christianity wrong? What if it is built upon what is perceived as best for us, rather than on what is best? What is the best? Is it Christianity really about Christ? Is it about dying to self? Is it about glorifying God? Is it about living and dying in the manner it was meant to be? If it is about God, then why have we made it about man? That could only lead to disaster. It seems to me that so often we do everything we can to make God, Creation, and our churches about us. Our prayer times are about us, our giving is to causes that benefit us, our “giftedness” is about us, our pastor needs to be about us, our voice needs to be heard, our friendship wanted, and our lives need to be affirmed. Not only has it become acceptable, in essence, to worship man; it has become the norm.   We now gather in our ministry meetings and talk about what we are capable of doing. We make long range and strategic plans according to what we see us being able to do. We r

A new, controversial dormitory option known as gender-neutral housing is gaining support at some colleges in California and across the nation. In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room. About 50 U.S. schools offer this housing choice, according to Jeffrey Chang, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign in 2006 to encourage gender-mixed rooms. Participating schools include UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Haverford, Wesleyan, Pitzer College and the University of Michigan. Chang estimates that at schools where the option exists, only 1 to 3 percent of students living on campus choose a roommate of the opposite sex. [Source: Los Angeles Times, March 15] Does anybody really