I am convinced social media is the devil. Or at least it’s a tool the devil uses in his mission to steal, kill, and destroy us (John 10:10). Just hear me out.
I was one of those girls. One of those that couldn’t go more than about 30 minutes or so (and that was really pushing it) without checking my social media. I would spend hours upon hours of my life looking at things that, in the end, just don’t matter. I was on a mission to never miss out on looking at a picture on instagram. Once I would scroll all the way down to the last picture I remembered seeing during a previous instagram session, I would feel satisfied. Like I was all caught up on everyone else’s lives.
When I would feel alone, I had social media there to take up my time, to consume me. When I would feel sad, I had social media there to make me forget about what I was upset about. When I was happy, I had social media there to post about it. For some reason I just wanted everyone to know how “perfect” my life was *laughs out loud*. And I guess that reason was just a way for me to really just hide all the things in my life that weren’t going well, or things in my life that I was missing.
I constantly found myself comparing my life to others. Which is terrible because God has given us each a different life, which includes different skills, different talents, different people around us, different struggles, different accomplishments. My pastor does a good job of explaining this as: “each one of us runs our own race, and when we are too focused on how the people beside us are doing, we trip and fall.” I think we can all picture that in our minds and agree.
At the end of this life, all we will have to show for it is our relationship with the Lord. How did we live the life He died for us to have? I don’t think the number of followers I had on instagram will come up in that conversation when we all go home to be with our Father. Or actually any of that other crap.
Jesus didn’t die on a cross for us to live a life trying to impress other people.
I must say, the first week after I decided to delete all of my social media wasn’t easy for me. I had created a habit, or some might even call it an addiction. I would get on my phone constantly and realize “oh wait I don’t have anything here to look at.” This happened way too much and every time it happened I would realize just how much of my life was consumed on social media. So much that I would want to get on it without even thinking about it. Unconsciously.
It’s been about a month now, and I can’t tell you how liberating and free I feel. With no desire at all to show anyone what I did today or what I bought or who I hung out with. I’m just living life for God, and no one else. I don’t have to impress anyone. I don’t want to waste my time gaining approval from other people because I have the greatest kind of approval that there’s ever been and ever will be.
I hope this speaks to a lot of you. And I hope it opens your eyes. It took me losing everything I had to realize how wrong I had been living my life, and a lot of it had to do with social media. I knew I spent too much time on it, but I didn’t want to let myself believe that. It was just comforting to have it. I can’t explain it, but I know you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Here’s a prayer I wrote up to help with this. Feel free to read it out loud and just allow God to listen to you:
God I pray that, from now on, I will just fix my eyes on you. God I pray that I just set my mind on things above, not on things of this earth. I pray that the Holy Spirit just consumes me and that I live for Your love and for Your glory. God I thank you for who you see me as, and that’s enough for me. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Living Securely in Christ 