Luke 18:1 And
he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray,
and not to faint;
When Jesus said this, He was referring back to what He had
been talking about as recorded in chapter 17.
The last days. He is talking
about what Christians, His followers should do in the times before His
return. I think you and I will agree, we
are in those times. We must pray and not
faint.
The word faint means to grow weak. Weakness will keep you and me from our goal
of getting to know our Lord better.
Let’s take a look at where “life” may be causing us to grow weak.
Social media. Don’t roll your eyes, I am not going to go
off on a tirade about Facebook. But if
you are like me and have teenagers or college age children, you know social media
dominates their worlds. Vines, Younow,
Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter….not so much the facebook, that seems to be for us
older people apparently now. J The connections our kids have today compared
to the way we grew up is about as opposite as you can get. If I wanted to “hang out” with friends I went
to the fence and called my neighbor and we sat there talking or having dirt
bomb fights in the road. We didn’t “hit
each other up” or “Netflix and chill”.
One thing I am noticing in the constant communication we
have with everyone in the world today is that it can leave you feeling
unsatisfied. There is a natural desire
to be with friends and share our lives with each other, but when it is done on
the computer, it lacks that personal aspect of actually sitting there and
having a cup of coffee together. We
watch how we say something because the person can’t hear our voice intonation
and people get offended when they think you are being rude. This type of thing can cause you to feel
weak, to grow faint. You have hundreds
of “friends” and “followers” but no one that really gets you.
Remember when family reunions were something you looked
forward to? Getting together and
catching up on everyone’s lives and seeing the cousins was exciting. Now we know everything about them and the
comparison game among families is constant.
Everyone is on Pinterest trying to get the next new recipe to out do so
and so. It has come to the point of
almost being comical. This generation
made fun of our country blue and mauve or hunter green and burgundy. They saw our party decorations as all the
same and antiquated. Now every party you
see has the same little flags, two water/juice dispensers and cake pops. Pretty soon that will be the old fashion
thing. All this in front of us, all the
time, can make us weak. Why? Because we are in a whirlwind and we don’t
realize how it is sucking the life right out of us. We are consumed with so many lives that we
end up blaming God for our life not being like the next person’s. Or we are dealing with illness while someone
else seems to be always blessed. Here is
a personal example:
Over a year ago Mark and I thought we were pregnant. After about a month I went through severe
labor pains and either had a miscarriage or lost something that had never
developed. I’m 45, so the thought of
being pregnant was a shock, but the going through losing one was very sad. Do you know the very day I was suffering physically,
and many of you reading this know exactly the pain of what I am talking about,
I saw a post on Facebook of someone announcing their pregnancy. It was like getting kicked in the
stomach. This lady and I aren’t even
what you would call real friends either.
So on top of the physical anguish I experienced, I had to deal with a
mental game that the devil threw in my path.
It made me feel weak, it made me want to faint in my life. Why? Because social media can be a tool, a
crafty tool, that the enemy is using to invade our lives with anything and
everything in order to keep us from prayer.
Jesus said, men ought always to pray, and NOT to faint. So I can only draw the conclusion that the
devil will try and get us to do the exact opposite of what Jesus said for us to
do in the last days. And he is so evil
and so mean and so spiteful, that he will use something that could be a help
and turn it into a nightmare of psychological warfare.
So what do we do? I
think as with anything else, we must be wise.
And thankfully if we lack in wisdom, God says if we will ask Him for it,
He will give it to us. (see how it comes
back to prayer?) We need to be wise
about how we use this wonderful invention called technology. It shouldn’t be a device that controls our
lives more than the Holy Spirit. It
shouldn’t be where we gain our self worth and confidence. It shouldn’t be a tool we allow the devil to
use to loosen the screws on our lives causing us to be weak and to faint.
We need to pray. Mom
and I have pushed Bible reading and study in every post. Prayer goes hand in hand with your Bible
time. It should map out our days and
point us in the right direction of fulfilling the call of God in our personal
lives, not trying to measure up to so and so’s on line.
Are you feeling weak spiritually? Analyze why you are feeling that way. Look, pre-menopause already fills me with
emotions of gloom and doom, so why should I fill hours of my time reading about
every little thing going wrong on the planet?
Revelation has already given me a heads up that this world is going to
be in a severe crisis. I don’t need to
be worrying over some things that I have no control over. If I am going to spend time crying and
weeping, it needs to be over souls and keeping them from going through the
Great Tribulation. My focus must be what
Jesus’ was, prayer. Talking to God about
it all. Asking God to guide my life, my
family, my pastor, my church. Not being
selfish, but not going outside my area of influence.
Social media is a place where I can immediately go and get
prayers. It is a place I can be
encouraged in the Lord by my friends and family. But when it morphs into anything else, my
wisdom radar should alert me to close the computer screen, lay down my phone
and get busy with the day at hand that God has given me.
Until next time, Lord willing,
Sheri
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