What an Ash!

I wish my faith was a weed. 
As I look at the trees surrounding my yard, two out of five are giant 30 foot weeds. Scientists say they’re trees but native Ontarians know that Ash trees are actually weeds! Their branches are laden with a ton of seeds. Of all the trees that surround our yard theirs is the only seed that takes root and begins to grow. When you try to pull them up you’ll find the root system to be disproportionately larger than the tree, running deep and connecting with the other seedlings.
Psalm 1 says that in order to be firmly planted and to bear fruit, I need to meditate on God’s word. Jeremiah 17 says that if I put my hope and confidence in the Lord that, my roots will go deep and find water; when life gets hard I won’t have to fear or be anxious.

Growing up I was told to “read your bible pray every day and you’ll grow, grow, grow.” It was also implied that if you didn’t daily read the bible and pray that you would be left behind when the rapture came. That was enough to strike the fear of the Lord in me! I never missed a day or else I spent the next day repeatedly asking for forgiveness of my sins. Looking back on that I think I missed the point of it all. It wasn’t all about making it to heaven, it was so that, here on earth I could make an Ash of myself; living a life that is strong and deep and satisfying; that grows and multiplies, spreading like a weed that can’t be easily uprooted; that provides shade for others. That I would live the life of someone who knows their heavenly Father and does what He does. (John 5:19, Matthew 12:50) 
My hope is that more and more people will look my life and say, “What an Ash!”

Gain the WorldWideWeb but Lose Your Soul

The glorious worldwideweb is said to bring people together in ways we never thought possible. The ministry opportunities are endless. It's like having a gideon bible in every home! People just have to google a thought related to God and a website will point him in the right direction. There are prayers and prophecies and profit (profit meaning: money raised for a good cause) and then there is pornography. Tell me what does it profit a christian if he should gain the worldwideweb, but lose his soul? (based on Matt.16:26)

Here are some christians, pastors and Church pornography statistics:
A 1996 Promise Keepers survey at one of their stadium events revealed that over 50% of the men in attendance were involved with pornography within one week of attending the event.
51% of pastors say cyber-porn is a possible temptation. 37% say it is a current struggle (Christianity Today, Leadership Survey, 12/2001).
Over half of evangelical pastors admits viewing pornography last year.
Roger Charman of Focus on the Family's Pastoral Ministries reports that approximately 20 percent of the calls received on their Pastoral Care Line are for help with issues such as pornography and compulsive sexual behavior.
In a 2000 Christianity Today survey, 33% of clergy admitted to having visited a sexually explicit Web site. Of those who had visited a porn site, 53% had visited such sites “a few times” in the past year, and 18% visit sexually explicit sites between a couple of times a month and more than once a week.
29% of born again adults in the U.S. feel it is morally acceptable to view movies with explicit sexual behavior (The Barna Group).
57% of pastors say that addiction to pornography is the most sexually damaging issue to their congregation (Christians and Sex Leadership Journal Survey, March 2005).

Here's what the bible has to say about pornography:
Matthew 5:27-30+ (the "+" is where I add in a modern application) "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If the worlwideweb causes you to sin...well then sonny disconnect it! It is better for you to lose out on the internet than for your whole body to go into hell, for your family to be torn apart, for your future to be devastated.
At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases. Pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years.

Here are some stats about our world's future leaders, future husbands, future wives; our children:
9 out of 10 children aged between the ages of 8 and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, in most cases unintentionally (London School of Economics January 2002).
Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography: 11 years old (Internet Filter Review).
Largest consumer of Internet pornography: 12 - 17 year-old age group (various sources, as of 2007).
Adult industry says traffic is 20-30% children (NRC Report 2002, 3.3).
Youth with significant exposure to sexuality in the media were shown to be significantly more likely to have had intercourse at ages 14 to 16 (Report in Pediatrics, April, 2006)."Never before in the history of telecommunications media in the United States has so much indecent (and obscene) material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions." - U.S. Department of Justice, Post Hearing Memorandum of Points and Authorities.

I also read another study that stated: "The internet is not actually a neccessity of life" (internet for dummies). Shocker! So in actuality to disconnect it would be less painful than cutting off our hand or plucking out our eyes... we would survive the process... and save our souls!! "aha", as Oprah would say.

What does it profit us if we should gain the worldwideweb, but lose our souls? Just asking...