Social Media Fast

If you’re reading this, hopefully its because you too have decided to fast from social media for 21 days in order to grow closer to God.

Here are a couple tips regarding these next 21 days.

First off this is going to be really hard.

Secondly we will only get out of this, what we are willing to put in this.

There will be many temptations that the enemy will try to use to keep us from growing and following Jesus whole-heartedly. I suggest deleting all of the social media apps on your phone, tablet, and whatever you normally use to look at social media. You can also deactivate these accounts to take it a step further if you think the temptation to re-download the apps might be an issue.

The biggest question we need to be aware of and ask ourselves is

What will we do with our time?

It’s great to fast and turn away from things that may be distracting us. 

That is a huge and major essential step. 

This next step is even more crucial: we must follow Jesus.

The enemy will want us to spend and use our time with things that are simply “time fillers”.

An example of some of these time fillers for myself might be watching more television, watching more Netflix, playing video games, etc. So think of what some of those things might be for you over these next 21 days. Instead of spending time or wasting time we must choose to invest our time in things of eternal value.

Examples of  ways to spend time with eternal value.

Reading Gods word- One of the most important parts of our relationship with God is reading and listening to His word. (If you have the bible app it will read it aloud to you if you prefer to listen and follow along)

Prayer- I encourage you to write down your prayers. Get a journal. Type them out on your computer or even phone. Start to write them down so you can look back and see in the future how God is working in your life.

Spend time with God alone and Be still (Outdoors is great too)

Join or start a bible study

Find a church to attend

Listen to sermons

Listen to worship music

Read a book! Find some good books to keep with you or download some to your phone or tablet.

Find an accountability partner- Following Jesus and living a life for God is hard and we were never meant to do it alone. Find someone to help hold you accountable and to grow with.

Start a blog- God pulls us through many hard times for a specific reason; so that we can help others who struggle with the same things. (2 Corinthians 1:4)

Invest in the relationships and people around you

Write letters to your future spouse or kids

These are just some of the ways you can replace the time you were spending on social media and use it to follow Jesus. There are many more, just be open to how God speaks to you! It’s important to plan out how we will spend our time. It’s will be easy to fill our time with other things if we don’t plan it out.

I’m excited to see how God grows us all as men and women after his own heart.

Here are some great promises we have to hold onto going into this time:

But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. 

And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.

Deuteronomy 4:29

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, 

and he will give you everything you need.

Matthew 6:33

Trust in the Lord and do good. 
Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. 

Commit everything you do to the Lord. 
Trust him, and he will help you.

Psalms 37:3-5

See yall July 16^th!

Following Jesus - Social Media Challenge

Do you ever find yourself going through the motions?

Do you ever find yourself, going through daily routines, doing just enough to get by? 

If you took an honest inventory of your life and look at where you spend your time and what you spend it doing, what would it say about your life? What would it say about the Jesus you believe in?

Do you ever wish you were closer to God?

Have you ever found yourself wanting to follow Jesus with everything you have but you’re not quite sure what to do?

I’ve personally found myself stuck in a rut spiritually and have asked myself why over and over again…

Why am I not always fully satisfied in Christ?

What do I need to do in order to be all in for the gospel?

How do I get from where I am to where God calls me to be as a mature follower of Jesus Christ?

______________________________________________________

I’ve heard the quote we live in a era of smart phones and dumb people. Now I don’t agree with this but it did get me to thinking. We live in an age where social media has taken the world by storm. It seems practically everybody is using at least one form of social media. These range from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Vine, Myspace, and the list goes on.   All of these forms of social media are great and have so many wonderful capabilities for believers. They can all be used for the glory of God through spreading the gospel, growing other believers, encouraging other believers, letting your light shine as a testament, etc.  

But at the exact same time, these same social media accounts can be a platform to distract us from the very purpose of why we are here on this earth. They can be used in so many other different ways other than glorifying God. I’m not here to judge why people post what they post and I don’t think you should either because when it comes down to it only two people know the motives of our heart, God and ourselves.

The overall point is I believe it takes a mature believer and follower of Christ to be able to be disciplined enough to know how much time to spend on social media and what to spend it on.

So I find myself here, wanting to grow in Christ, wanting to be a mature believer but yet when I take an inventory of my life I find myself wasting tons of time on social media. I find myself scrolling through newsfeeds, looking at pictures, looking at funny videos, checking out recent posts, the list goes on. If you have a smart phone, tablet, ipad, or even just a computer, then you probably know how easy it is to spend hours on social media. 

Here’s a couple quick questions to ask ourselves as followers of Christ in respect to social media:

When we wake up in the morning, do we check our social media first? Or spend time with the Lord first?

Do we spend more time on social media through out the day or more time in Gods word and in prayer?

You see all of this made me start to think that maybe I could be missing out on what it means to truly follow Christ.

Am I REALLY seeking after Christ every day with all that I have?

Then Jesus said to his disciples, 

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Matthew 16:24

I think it’s so easy to miss who Jesus really is and miss what it means to actually follow Jesus because we live in a generation where we often confuse posting on social media ABOUT Jesus as quality time spent WITH Jesus.

You see Christianity is all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And it’s a LOVE relationship. My man Jesus loves you more than you can even understand and when you do start to somewhat understand, that’s when your life will change. So lets relate this scenario of our relationship with Jesus to a human relationship between a man and a woman. If a man is in a committed relationship with a woman and rarely communicates with her, (Let’s be honest we know it would be the man who failed to communicate) how long would that relationship last? Would you even call that a committed relationship?

Many of us claim to be in a committed relationship with Jesus but yet the only time we spend with him is at church with a bunch of other people. Maybe a bible study, and occasionally we read our bible every once a while. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against church or bible study, they are essential things in a believers life, but if you are in a committed, intimate relationship with someone don’t you want to spend some alone time with them???

 The truth is if our relationship with Jesus was based on our own human standards and logic he would have left us long long ago. But the great news is regardless of how much we’ve put him on the backburner, or how selfish we’ve been, or how we’ve claimed to be in an intimate relationship with him and not even made him a consistent priority in our life, He STILL loves us! He still wants that intimate relationship and he still desires to be our everything.

We have so many promises from God and as believers we say believe them, but why don’t our lives reflect that we truly do believe them?? So often I know what God says in my head but my life doesn’t reflect that I know it in my heart.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In my life I know I’ve reached a place where I need to make changes.

Therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hurts our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends on from start to finish.

Hebrews 12:1-2

In order to be a disciple of Christ we must be disciplined. We must be disciplined to His word, to prayers, to His mission all for His kingdom. Following Jesus and having a relationship with Him is something that requires absolutely everything we have.

I’m challenging you to ask yourself if giving up social media for 21 days is something God is calling you to do.

Ask God to reveal to you the things in your life that are keeping you from being wholly devoted to being a disciplined follower of Christ. I know this is a difficult decision and may seem radical but what if we truly realize what Jesus has done for us, anything less than radical devotion to Him seems unfit.

I am planning on starting this time away from social media this Wednesday June 25. I will post another blog post on Wednesday which will include different ways to spend time during this fasting period in order to maximize our growth in Christ. It will also include other tips and warnings on how to make the most of this time.