Archive for the ‘He Said’ Category

Now begins the quest for a simpler life.

My wife and I have been wanting a simpler lifestyle more and more over the past few years. We are both used to the big cities of California.

She has come to long for a simpler life for us and our children. I was born and reared in northeast Mississippi and hunted and fished and heard stories of farming and having animals.

We felt that if we could ever buy a decent-sized plot of land with running water it would be a dream come true.

I grew up spending lots of free time at “the farm”. My uncle had purchased upwards of 80 acres of land outside of town. After he died in the Air Force the land went to my grandfather, and when he passed away my dad got the land and eventually built a house there.

My father passed away on August 16th, 2010 and my brother asked if I had any desire to move onto the land when our step-mother moved away. She will stay for a while, but eventually retire to the town further north where her family lives.

I thought about the 80-plus acres with a creek running through it.

I think our dreams have just begun to come to fruition.

Our plans are to have an essentially self-sufficient life on a small homeplace. We have planned out little bits and pieces of it over the years; we have lovingly come to call this place “Contentment” after Paul’s description in the Bible.

I plan to document and pass on the things that work and the things that don’t.

The journey will begin now for me and my wife Tiffany (in our 40’s), oldest son Nick at 16, Jewel at 5, and R.T. at 2 years of age.

The following months or years will be planning and preparing the land.

On some undetermined date in the future we will move to the homeplace and start our new life … one step at a time.

So, here we go … on the road to Contentment.

This is a “Parallel Post”! Be sure to check out what She Said

If you asked me to pick out the Amish or the German Baptists or the Jews walking down the street or in a restaurant, I would probably not have a problem.

But what about the Christians?

I would have to say “probably not”.

I know there is no one thing that really makes a Christian stand out. Our clothing doesn’t need to mark us as different from any other morally centered group, but it should mark us different from the common sluts.

I am really sorry to be so harsh, but the sad truth is that we are accepting more and more each day.

Take a look around you when you are in the store or at a restaurant. We recently went to an amusement park and took time to notice the clothing on the people around us. The women of some religious groups are easy to pick out because of their modest, and obviously so, style of dress.

I know that in our Christian walk we have many things to focus on. I don’t even condemn folks to Hell for stepping out of the boundaries of God’s standards. It is by God’s loving grace that we sinners are getting to Heaven.

I’m just concerned about this sliding standard we (as Christians) have accepted. A thousand years ago women wouldn’t have dressed like they do today. And don’t tell me that times have changed. Even 60 years ago women were more modestly wrapped. For thousands of years women were covering and concealing more.

As for me and my house, we are trying to keep well within standards Biblically mandated by God.

Women should not be revealing more than is proper.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment…instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.
- 1 Peter 3:3-4

Our rule in its simplest form is this:

Clothing should not emphasize, reveal, or draw attention to the body’s form.

And guys, that goes for you too.

I’m not looking for everyone to wear a pink shawl down to their knees, but I would like to see a difference between a Christian and the girls and guys in the bars and nightclubs on the weekend. I’m talking about the “meat market” type of place.

Stating it again in plain English:

We might not be able to identify ourselves as Christians by our clothing, but we shouldn’t identify ourselves as sex crazed animals. Our Christian witness is the most important thing we can share. In the things we do and say and the way we live, all things should be for the glory of God.

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
- 1 Corinthians 10:31

And now I come to the other side of the coin.

Even if you think it is OK to dress a bit worldly, you should never intentionally cause your brother to stumble.

Something I say to my oldest son from time to time is, “is it worth it?”

So maybe you are saved and you want to dress like that because it makes you feel good about yourself. What kind of thoughts are going through other people’s heads about that low cut neckline or those tight jeans?

Is it worth being the cause of others’ sin?

Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God …
- 1 Corinthians 10:32

People might not see that you are obviously a Christian, but they should see an honorable lifestyle. Our daily witness in all things, every day is the true portrait that God gets of us.

If Jesus was your best friend and was with you and watching you all the time day to day, would He want to use you as an example to others?

Because remember, He is with you all day every day.

And you are an example to others about how a Christian lives.

You might not have noticed, but we have “Topics” for our blog posts that include the perhaps-mysterious titles He Said and She Said.

If you want to read things from a male point of view, you can click on He Said over on the left side, and you will see all the posts written by Wolf and Nick.

Clicking She Said will give you the female perspective, showing all Tiffany’s posts.

But we also have a fun plan: He Said / She Said Parallel Posting.

Wolf and Tiffany will agree on a topic, but not discuss it. Then each will write a post about the subject, from their own unique point of view…

Make sure you read both sides of the story!

I am so glad I live in a country of freedom. I know we as a nation are struggling with some issues as to whether the government should regulate and manage things, but we are free to own property and raise our children in the ways of the Lord.

Get ready to be shocked.

A 10-year-old homeschool girl described as ‘well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level’ has been told by a New Hampshire court official to attend a government school because she was too ‘vigorous’ in defense of her Christian faith.

Let me get this straight …

A young girl is being forced to go to public school instead of homeschooling because she loves God and is proud of it.

Is that what I’m hearing here?

The decision from Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that the girl’s ‘vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.’

Freedom of religion DOES NOT mean that you can tell me and my family what to believe in. I thought that was obvious. Are they thinking it means they can force me to consider other cults and religions?

“As for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, Joshua 24:15 (in case you missed it along the way)

Once I was talking with a friend of mine about opinions and beliefs when he said, “well, you wouldn’t want to be around a bunch of people who think like yourself.”

Well … yes I would.

Just because we have differing opinions, our basic foundations should be very closely tied. I’m not saying that every friend and associate and even some family members at times won’t be from the other side of the tracks, but we do want our closest relations (family especially) to be like minded.

You know … steel sharpens steel.

Now, let’s get back to the specific issue:

If my 10-year-old daughter hasn’t been exposed to other religions, I have committed no crime, and a court of the United States of America should not have the right to tell me to introduce her to cult religions and “I’m OK, you’re OK” kinds of thinking.

That is all for when she is over the age of 18 and can LEGALLY make independent decisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Is the government going to tell me what medical treatment I need, too? I guess we’d better not go there…

Is the government going to tell me I have to try homosexuality because I haven’t been given the opportunity to seriously consider it?

What about my job, my diet, my patriotism? Am I now not allowed to be driven and focused? Is dedication to a cause going to be illegal now?

I guess this is the next step from a society that is promoting “trial marriages” as the answer to high divorce rates and abortion as the answer to promiscuous sex.

The thought of letting my kids “explore other religious options” is not even something I have ever considered. Even for non-Christians I don’t think the idea is to go out and explore the options. And especially when a young child without the complete understanding of the consequences of the choices made might be lead astray.

Marital Master Michael Garner and Judge Lucinda V. Sadler, the key instigators of this decision, need to consider a swap option:

How would they like it if I took a child from a “too liberal” household out of public school for a year to explore my Christian values and lifestyle?

(By Nick)

Let me start off my long road of Evolution vs. Creation by refuting one of the theories that I have frequently heard.

God did not have use the Big Bang to create the universe. The way Evolutionists say the Big Bang happened does not fit with the Bible’s version.

First of all, the Big Bang seems highly improbable. There was infinite energy in zero volume, which was therefore infinitely hot and dense. At some random point it randomly blew up, and one second later, the temperature had gone from infinity to 10 billion. Furthermore, it does not explain why this energy existed.

Second, the order things happened in. Evolutionists say that there was this big nebula of gas and particles which gradually condensed on itself, making stars, which where followed by planets, followed by water, followed by life. God says, first there was light, not from anything, just light, and a planet of water. Then, he made an atmosphere, grew plants, and then created the sun, moon and stars and distinguished night from day.

There is also an inherent flaw to the Evolutionist model. Physics tells us that when matter is created from energy, an equal amount of antimatter is also created. In reality, there are only trace amounts of antimatter compared to matter.

Finally, the Big Bang can only account for the lightest three elements known, leaving ninety percent of the periodic table to be explained. According to Evolutionist science, the other elements came from supernovae of stars that only had these three elements. These stars’ life spans were calculated to be much longer than has passed since the Big Bang. Yet, they can find none of these hypothetical stars. Gosh, I wonder why?

So, they are willing to put aside rationality to believe something that can be disproven, but criticize us when we put faith in something that cannot be disproven. The logic here is…?

(By Wolf)

I’m not really a green kinda’ person (although, as Tiffany recently pointed out, we’re greener than we think)…

I just saw Colin Beavan’s web information on living green and saving the world. That’s not really me, but I do have a conservative side that wishes to live a simpler lifestyle. My family and I have spent hours thinking about our little community of people who want to live a simple, self sufficient life.

Of course, we would start our simple life in simple ways. We have already started in many areas like cloth diapers for the baby and making our own bread.

Our bigger steps are to grow some fruits and vegetables and maybe even get a cow for milk and butter. We began a year or so ago (early 2008) to save a little money and it was nice to save a few trees in the process. We cut down on our toilet paper usage and paper napkins. We started using cloth towels instead of paper towels for the little clean up jobs. We try not to use the electric dryer to dry all of our clothes and we cut out commercial television a long time ago for many reasons.

We’ve even moved on to food things. That started one day when we bought an ice cream maker. With the price of stuff going up and up it made more sense to make ice cream instead of buying it. Now we also make bread and are looking for other ways to make our own food items that are normally bought prepackaged. This move to making our own foods from scratch has been spurred along by the invasion of high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in almost everything from soda to ketchup.

Then, in my dreams of the future, I have the even bigger step of starting a community of like-minded people who want to get rid of the “luxuries” of the fast paced life we have come way too close to being addicted to. I want some land with running water to build a mill and have a community that might look like it was from the turn of the century … the 20^th century. I say that it will need to be a community because I can’t do it all. We would need a blacksmith and a baker and a carpenter and a rancher and a farmer and the list goes on.

And the dream has a name.

We will live content in the community of Contentment.

My wife has covered this better than I can in her page about the reasons we chose this name. I’ll just say that it was a God thing. I look forward to getting closer and closer to this dream as time goes on. And anyone with a passion for a simpler life is welcome to join us in making this dream come true.