The Blog

Time to wrap up this week’s blog series.  So far we’ve talked about ideas to keep yourself pure while on the computer; now how about movies.  I enjoy watching movies but I was tired of being surprised by the content.  They always seem to throw something in there at the last minute that doesn’t need to be there and didn’t add to the movie in any way, shape or form.  So it was either stop being surprised [by not watching the movies] or find a way to control what parts of the movie you see and more importantly, what parts you don’t! 

We recently bought a DVD player called clearplay to solve the problem.  This DVD player will edit out everything you don’t want to see in a movie in “real time” as the movie is playing.  You can download the “filters” for most movies and check out more info on their website www.clearplay.com.  They have a monthly subscription option to make sure you stay up to date as new movies come out or you could take my approach and just buy access for a month [you can download all of their current filters at once on the filter stick that comes with the player] and then wait until next year and do it again to get caught up.  You can purchase clearplay at local Christian bookstores.  This is an awesome way to control what you watch and avoid the surprises that often come up in movies.  Hope these ideas help!

All month long we are doing a series called “Real Men”.  Last Sunday we talked about a couple different temptations that men face.  1. The temptation to chase wealth [status, success etc.] and 2. The temptation to chase women. 

One of the easiest areas for men to stumble would be accessing things on the internet that nobody else would know about.  A great way to put a stop to the opportunity is to have an internet filter.  If you have kids, you need this!  If you want to live with integrity, it is a great tool.  There are many different filters that you can get out there.  Bsecure [formally bsafe online], Covenant Eyes and Safe Eyes are some just to name a few.  These will allow you to predetermine what you have the ability to access online by requiring a password for anything that would be inappropriate. 

If you want to do this but don’t have the extra funds right now, a great way is to go to the internet options on your browser and take advantage of the filters they have as well.  For a while, we did this.  A great way to not get into trouble is for you and your wife [or accountability partner] to each make up part of the password that gives access to content beyond your internet filter settings.  This way, one person never has a moment to get off track but you can still get access to something if you know has been filtered out for some other reason.  Hope these ideas help!  More to come.

This past Sunday I talked about “Real Men” being men of integrity.  In the message I shared about some things that I do to protect myself from temptations having an open door in my life.  One of the things I mentioned was a tool called x3watch.  This is awesome because what it does is send an email to an “accountability partner” [of your choice]anytime that a questionable [pornographic] website has been viewed on your computer. It will also send an email if anybody shuts off the program for any reason.  It runs in the background and won’t even affect your computers processing power.  This is an excellent tool that is free to use!  If you are brave enough, you could put me as your accountability partner!  You can download the free software at www.xxxchurch.com.  More to come later in the week.

Here is a video message from Mark Driscoll, a pastor in Seattle.  This message echos some of the things I talked about last Sunday.  WARNING: This is a strong message.  It is in your face.  I think at one point he even slips up and cusses in the message.  I don’t condone that but I think the message is very powerful and needs to be heard by men.  I dare you men to listen!

We had the awesome priveledge of dedicating some children to the Lord on Mothers day!  For those of you who had kids dedicated, we have more pictures if you are interested.