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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

is their life better than mine?

facebook, blogs, myspace, wedding websites, etc. have you noticed how many personal websites there are these days? it is quite ridiculous how easy it is to webstalk people's lives.
as i was "facestalking" (if you arent familiar w/this term, it is when you are on facebook and continue to go to page after page simply to see what that persons life is like etc) people today, i wondered to myself why this is so darn addicting?
i have come up with two answers thus far: 1) we deeply long to connect and stay close with many more people than we are able to. God created us for community, we enjoy other people. 2) we secretly want to know how their life shapes up to ours. this one saddens me to addmit. but i am compelled to look at people's facebook pages from high school b/c i want to know what their life is like. do they seem happier than me? do they have a great marriage? do they have a great house? have they gotten prettier? uglier? UGHHH!!!! the questions go on and on in my head. of course we dont automatically realize this is what we are doing. we dont do it on purpose. we do it because we have a sinful nature that desires to always be better, be in control, be the best, be our own lord basically!
taming this sinful nature is not so easy, in fact we arent even capable on our own. only Christ can defeat it forever. believers know that. but what we fail to remember is that once christ is Lord, we do have the power to fight against the flesh. We now know when we are being ridiculous... we are aware. before we really knew and submitted to Christ, we werent aware that any of these things were an issue. however now we know, and we are commanded to fight against this. jealously is not a fruit of the spirit, neither are pride or smuggness.
today, remember to check yourself in the small things. often once we have been a believer in Christ for awhile, we tend to oversee our sins. obviously we are not killing people so we are doing good. we let the devil & our own sinful nature lure us in the small ways where we have our guard down.
could this be what Christ meant when he says we are to be in the world, but not of it? so often in the Christian realm this has meant being so anticulture we cant reach the culture. but maybe He meant for us to be enjoying culture without being lead by the sinful nature. enjoy facebook- but dont allow pride, jealousy or judgement to rule how you enjoy it. enjoy a movie- but dont allow lust, judgement or idolatry to rule your thoughts during it.
leaving in a fallen world is sooo annoying. i am so over it. I second what John cried at the end of revelation: "Amen. Come Lord Jesus Come!!"

1 comment:

  1. nice to hear your thoughts! Thanks for challenging me. I think that last part about being in and not of the world is a good point! Love you and miss you! I have enjoyed reading your posts! Keep it up!

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