Hey yawl,
So the girl has been on a whole social media break for four weeks and counting. The plan was thirty days but I took a couple extra days in… I actually had to pray for a desire to come back cos I was ready to leave forever!!!
Gosh it has been so amazing. I actually stayed off Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, so while my FB and twitter kept buzzing, it really wasn’t me or anything new being posted. Shout out to TeamE’.
On why I took the break, maybe I will share in 2020 but aside a God-instruction, I also wanted to test out something from a book I read in July called DEEP WORK and in one chapter, Cal Newport my new personal best friend had told us to try this 30 day off social media challenge. It coincided with a season I was in so I jumped right in…
I mean I run a social media powered business (or so I thought), but here was God going against the norm. I don’t have the time to share how this affected my business in a way that positively shocked me (Read: We actually surprised ourselves with our July income DESPITE being offline) but I think 2020 will afford me the opportunity to share. Today, let us quickly talk about the new social media.
So my friend and sister Titi had mentioned once in the WILD WOMEN group how YouVersion was her new social media and I laughed cos I thought it was a joke. Until I realized just how BEAUTIFUL that App is and how I had been UNDER UTILISING it.
I just went there for the many versions of the Bible and ignored notifications and all, and barely looked at the Plans until recently when the Lord opened my eyes to them,
Phew!!!
Gosh, YouVersion is like da bomb dot com AND MORE!!!
If you don’t know YouVersion, it really is the number one Bible App there is out there. It hosts an extensive retinue of Bible translations, maybe a million and counting Bible studies and is just a hub for all things WORD!!!
No wonder Titi said she is just happy to be carried along people’s bible study
What devotional my friends are reading?
What bible verses X highlighted?
Who X has become friends with?
What Image verse Y is creating?
Etx
Gosh it is so cool. Thanks to all the notifications, I have enriched my Bible knowledge and then been exposed to countless devotionals I would never have known exists right on the App. I mean I love love love love LOVE it!!!
And then trust satan to come with his nonsense to taint a good God-thing.
So with YouVersion, you actually have the option of making your activities public or private. I am careful for my rhema words and notes to be private but I don’t mind every other thing being public. Then one day satan comes to say we are just showing off on this App blabla and that a spirit of pride was in and all that crap…
Haaaaa.
I was about to make everything private again as I almost believed him UNTIL the Holy Spirit just told me what lies he was peddling and how a LOT of Christians quickly fall for it and then TRY to HIDE their light in a world that is in DESPERATE need of light in every way and from every last one of us!!
Now do some people HAVE the wrong motives?
Sure.
Is pride a thing even with godly disciplines?
Yes!!!
I may wanna show off that I did XYZ and with the wrong motives BUT hey, instead of now quickly hiding all our spiritual disciplines, shouldn’t we be quick instead to fix the issues AND then shine our light?
Let me break it down for you…
The process of being LIGHT and shining it so BRIGHT has a tendency to invoke or elicit pride. Or even be wrongly perceived as Pride. Even when I have the best intentions, someone WILL STILL say you are showing off.
Actions don’t really change for some of us. It is the motive and heart behind it that we have to QUICKLY change. So for instance, I do a whole blog post and show off my Bibles (of which I got the parallel one now so my heart is FULL haha.
I literally BEG God for time to just sit down with ALL my Bibles instead of working haha), but it could be with the wrong motives so you can see me as super spiritual. Or it could be with the motive of INSPIRING many others to fall in love with and INVEST in the Word. How YOU interpret it is really your business, but my motives before Jesus are PURE!!! If I don’t share what He commanded me to share, I am being DISOBEDIENT, ma!!!
But what most of us do in a bid to not appear proud is that we now completely hide our light then sin and sinners run town, being unabashed with their darkness.
So God started to check me to QUICKLY fix my motives AND pride if it needs fixing but this light must shine ooo.
And this is really the heart of the Father for all of us.
We need to QUICKLY fix what needs to be fixed and then shine our light so bright
I saw this scripture recently and it really did me in
“Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth! Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts.”
Psalms 12:1-2 NLT
The godly are fast disappearing cos a lot of us are trying to play it safe. Better if I am hidden than to be seen as PROUD but imagine if all your mentors and teachers and fave preachers adopted this mindset?
What if they didn’t share what the Lord told them in and from their Jesus time? (God knows how much I lean when I hear someone like Joyce say ‘while I was praying’ phew!!!)
What if they didn’t share what book they read or are reading that completely changed them? (DDK has been a book game changer for me cos she shares)
What if they didn’t call for prayer meetings on social media because they interpret the Bible as falsely telling us to keep all these private?
What if we didn’t have those YouTube videos and audios of extended times of praying only in tongues because the person was dealing with pride? (Pastor Chris has been my daily go to)
What if everything you have ever seen that inspired your Christian walk online was not available cos the person decided that sharing it would mean they are proud?
That SCARES the life out of me. That also inspires me to deal with my FUNK, whether pride or the wrong motives QUICKLY so that I can take my light into a dark dark world in desperate need of light!!!
This is something I have had to quickly do in my life… check my motives and motivation.
A pure heart doesn’t come naturally to us. It is something each of us will have to navigate, first internally then externally. So no shame if you feel yourself doing stuff out of pride or impure motives. That for me locates where I am broken for Jesus to fix it as I walk with Him. No shame ooo. And no time for stupid satan.
The Bible commands us to be light. In fact let me share what scripture in Message and TPT. That is Matthew chapter 5
14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
14 “Your lives light up the world. Let others see your light from a distance, for how can you hide a city that stands on a hilltop?[b] 15 And who would light a lamp and then hide it in an obscure place?[c] Instead, it’s placed where everyone in the house can benefit from its light. 16 So don’t hide your light![d] Let it shine brightly before others, so that the commendable things you do will shine as light upon them, and then they will give their praise to your Father in heaven.”
You see, glory belongs firmly to Jesus!!! Praise looks good on HIM!!! So quickly check yourself that you are not trying to deflect the glory from Jesus to yourself!!! But if you keep hiding, that is even a level of pride that YOU need to deal with. You are considering yourself good enough to get the glory, which NEWSFLASH, we ARE NOT!!!
God gets the glory. My job is to make sure it NEVER stays on me. I had to learn that and give myself brain quickly. But I must be quick to point others to HIM!!! And quickly get my small self out of the matter.
And sometimes he is very practical in making sure I don’t let satan taint stuff, so for instance, I share quite a bit of my Christian walk on whatsapp status, and then to make sure I don’t start feeling myself, I don’t even bother to check who viewed it. I dunno AND I don’t care too. It keeps the garden of my heart PURE!!!
Give that concern to God and watch Him give you practical ways to fix it WITHOUT hiding your light.
Plus can we even talk about how you are in disobedience if you are actively sabotaging the mandate on your life to shine that light? Yes, so pride and disobedience!!! Bad combo!!!
Come on guys, let’s be light.
PROUD light. Let’s enter the darkness with our light.
And I really love what YouVersion allows me do. Then from that platform of really being enriched by the word, I can now take more light to the world.
I of course can also choose to start Bible studies with others in our real world and social media like IG and the likes that I invite to the App and then we have more light flooding our lives AND then by extension the world.
Frankly, this crazy crazy world needs it and I am frankly tired of we Believers hiding
Zivah&Chazaq (Light&Strength)
Eziaha
Pumping Passion for Purpose
Great post!!!