Conviction, Part 2 (Facebook is the Devil)

I was in the hair salon one day and the ladies were talking about men and relationships.  One lady was talking about how someone put something on her status that went out to all her friends and exposed her two timing with another guy.  There was a whole lot of commotion on her Facebook page.  One lady said, it’s too much drama… Honey, Facebook is the devil!  We all laughed at that one.   My husband refuses to let me mention his name on my Facebook page. I admit, I have not used it in a while and my sister practically forced me to get one so she could communicate with me.

But my 15 year old practically lived there.  She would jump up from the table, “I need to go check my status!”  This unfortunately did not match the same level of need to do her homework. So I had to put some restrictions there.  We would be riding in the car, having a conversation and she would blurt out,  “Mom, are you using the computer when we get home? I need to check my status.”

 I would ask my 8 year old “where is your sister?”

  “She’s probably on Facebook”, he’d reply slowly and sadly shaking his head.  The poor child was addicted!

It reminded me of the Flintstones episode where Fred was addicted to gambling and kept saying “bet, b-b-bet, b-b-bet!” and his eyes would get all wild turn into hypnotizing circles.

            This summer though, she got involved with a youth group at our church.  She loved it and I was glad to see her do something other than being bent down under the glowing light of her computer.  It was too much!

            Slowly, she began to pull away from this obsession and hang out with the young people at church.  They would play games in the church’s gym, have fun eating contests, poetry nights and go places, and she loved it.  But she began to feel convicted about things that she was addicted to.  Like most teens,  she had more serious problems than Facebook, but for her, to cut this addiction totally out took a change of heart?   God was really talking to her about how she was wasting her life in general.

  One day I noticed that she hadn't said much about her status (which she would sometimes show me ).

 Guess what.  Lo and behold, while I was away on a mission one Sunday, God saved my daughter.  Hallelujah! 

 She has really changed!  The old girl is definitely gone and Jesus put a new one in her place.  She loves being saved.  Recently, I asked her what happened to her Facebook page.

“Oh mama, I shut that thing down a couple of months ago, before I got saved”, she said,  and I didn’t even know. I had not realized this particular change was part of her commitment to the Lord.  She told me she was thinking about getting saved all summer and knew she was addicted to it, so she shut it down.  My girl!   My husband said “What? She really must be saved.”

But this was a lesson to me; anything that is going to hinder me from serving God fully or will distract me from my true purpose, God will often talk to me about letting go. Whatever those addictions are. 

Salvation is all about change from the heart. 

Whatever is hindering me, is the thing God wants me to surrender to be a better person.  All habits are not sinful, but some things just get in the way.  

----Let’s live Holy…

What is Conviction? Part 1 How do you know …..?

Those that have been in evangelistic company have heard the words “he’s under conviction”.  The word conviction means a feeling of the weight of my sinful actions. That feeling you get when the police roll up behind you, when you know you’ve been going 80 in a 65 mile zone.  When you see those blue lights flash behind you and you know you are wrong and have been caught. That arrested feeling.  You know—the guilt, like everyone can see you nursing that Tom Collins in your hand or can smell the weed in your pocket, or see the porn under your mattress, and even though you have done it a thousand times before, all of a sudden, it feels wrong.  Things that you never gave a second thought, now feel real heavy.  Paul described it this way in giving his testimony in Romans 7: 

 13 Did that which is good (God's Law) then prove fatal [bringing death] to me? Certainly not! It was sin, working death in me by using this good thing [as a weapon], in order that through the commandment sin might be shown up clearly to be sin, that the extreme malignity and immeasurable sinfulness of sin might plainly appear.  (Amplified Bible)

….oh yeah, the sinfulness of sin.  That’s a whole lotta sin.  I had a man say one time, “you’re too sin conscious, too worried about sin”.  But isn’t that the problem?  We are not concerned enough?  Sin is what separates us from God.  Why did we need deliverance from sin?  The whole purpose of Christ’s sacrifice of his life was as an offering for sin, to take sin away from us so that we could have a path to God.  Listen to this conversation Jesus had with sinful religious people,

 ³⁴Jesus answered them, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, Whoever commits and practices sin is the slave of sin.
³⁵Now a slave does not remain in a household permanently (forever); the son [of

 the house] does remain forever.
³⁶So if the Son liberates you [makes you free men], then you are really and

We hear this last part (v.36) hear a lot from the King James Version as:

 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

People use this quote all the time....but did you know that He was talking about being delivered from sin and not being a slave to sin anymore?

--Let’s live Holy….

 unquestionably free.