Trust & Obey

If you have gotten to talk with me in person enough times, it will eventually come up that I am intense about my skin. Starting at 10 years old, I had terrible acne. We are talking thick, under the skin pimples that burn when you scratch them and bleed if you pick at them too much. It was painful and just downright annoying, not to mention that everyone can see them and no amount of makeup fixes them. They look painful, because they are painful. I struggled with acne for twelve years until I finally cracked the code. For me, it’s all about my diet not just my skincare routine. So, I am meticulous about what I eat and I have had to give up many foods I love (pizza, ice cream, sugary coffees, cake, etc.). There has been a lot of sacrifice, but living with a clear complexion and staying slim are such massive benefits, the sacrifice has been totally worth it.

The Christian life is the same. If we are filling our minds with junk and not bothering to purify our hearts, we will find ourselves in a painful state of spiritual separation without fully understanding why. We try buying a new devotional or a cross necklaces to get us to feel better. Maybe go to a Christian conference! It’s good stuff, but there’s no way it’s going to cut the problem. If we are not ready to root out the problem, then we are going to get no where.

Here’s the problems I see in myself and I am guessing are true for you, too: I spend about one hour with God (on a good day), and then spend the next 13 hours of my day looking at social media that drains me, listening music that makes me think about myself, and watching movies/shows that instill no morals at best and terrible ones at worst. How can I be obedient and love others well when I only think about/spend time with God one hour in a 14 hour day? It doesn’t make any sense. If I had a decent breakfast every day, but ate pizza for lunch, pasta with parmesan cheese for dinner, and then ice cream for dessert, my skin would be a disaster! If I told the dermatologist, “Well, I do have a good breakfast each day!” she would laugh me out of her office. Because who cares that my one meal is good when the rest of the day I am not upholding the same lifestyle. I wouldn’t be a healthy person, I would still be an unhealthy person (who eats a decent breakfast).

So, the first thing I have had to cut back on is secular music. I get a lot of grief for this one, but what finally got me is when I began to think about what I think about when I listen to popular music: me. When we sing along, it’s often about how someone did us dirty, we are so amazing, that life is meaningless so let’s just have fun, or we need to just follow our hearts and desires. Where in the Bible do we see any of that as moral? If anything, we see scripture saying that we should not “repay evil for evil” (Romans 12:17), we were sinners before Christ did the work to save us (Romans 5:8), and that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). We should not be dwelling on ourselves at all. Robert Murray M’Cheyne says: “For every look at yourself, ten looks at Christ.” Our eyes (and ears) should be consistenly focused on Christ, who He is, and what He did for us.

The second piece we all need to look at is our movies and tv shows we watch. Why are we watching them? What’s in them? How do they effect our lives? There may not be anything inheritently bad about what you are watching, but then why are you doing it? For me, it’s typically because I am exhausted and have no energy to do much else. It’s a numbing agent that allows me to slip into another world and zone out. While that may not seem bad, it’s not good either. Peter says three times in his epistle to stay “sober minded and alert.” When we are watching TV, how alert are we? When we binge TV for multiple hours a day, how sober are we? I would argue not very much at all. We often let things slide and all in the name of entertainment. We watch things that are not good for our hearts (like sex/sensuality and violence) so we can be entertained. Sounds like an idol, doesn’t it? I don’t say any of this to mean that we can never watch our favorite movie or show again, I just say it all so that we can evaluate and reevaluate what we consume spiritually. Is it bringing us closer to God and others, or is it pulling us away and isolating us?

Last, and hardest one for me, is books. There are many people who don’t read, but there are also plenty who do! One of my biggest battles has been what I read. The scary thing about reading a book is that no one is experiencing it with you. You can read an erotic scene and no one walks in on it like what can happen with a screen. A book can be your secret and something that you keep to yourself. So many women I know read erotic material and they don’t mention that part, they just tell me their favorites and I can catch a theme from what books they recommend.

Truthfully, erotica has always made me uncomfortable and I don’t have a taste for it. It’s just weird for me. My taste has unfortunately been horror and violence. I have seen so many movies and read so many horror novels, it’s pretty crazy. This may seem like an obvious problem to you, but when you are in that community there is a lot of comraderie in it and the adrenaline rush you get from this type of media is incredibly addicting. You are always waiting for the next scare that hits you with the dopamine after the fear. I was stuck in this media for a very long time, until Christ finally called me out.

When I was 20 years old, someone mentioned 1 John is the “book of truth,” and I thought to myself, well I like truth! So, I will give it a try. Well, when I cracked open that book and when I came up on verse 5, I realized there was something very wrong with me,

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

It all clicked for me in a moment: I am a sinner, pretending to be in the light, but all I do is fill my mind with darkness and nasty things. I am not a Christian at all. I am calling God a liar. It broke my heart, and I was (for the first time) filled with horror at who I was. I saw myself for the first time as I really was: A sinner still stuck in the darkness, masquerading as a child of Light. It was a gut punch, but one I needed. Seeing myself for what I was burned, but in a good way and that is when I received the Holy Spirit. I was ready to get out and devote myself to Christ, 100%. The Bible became vibrant; I understood it! I read it furiously and enthusiastically. Worship became something I was happy to do, all of the time. It’s no longer an emotional thing, but something I do because I love God. Life became truly rich for me.

I still fight the urge to engage in horror media, it’s something that becomes a slippery slope for me. So, I have begun enjoying thrillers and mysteries instead, still fast paced, but less violent. I work to read material that encourages me toward goodness and honor. Dracula by Bram Stoker is a surprisingly beautiful read with characters facing darkness to save someone they love, sacrificing everything for this young woman’s soul. (That’s for another time, though!)

So, what is our standard? It’s fairly simple. Paul breaks it down for us in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (New International Version). Does our music encourage us to think about purity, goodness, or excellence? Are our books pushing us towards what is lovely in God’s eyes? It’s worth having a gut check while looking at our Spotify wrapped in a month and a half from now, and look at what music we may need to get rid of.

Regardless of where you are in what you consume, remember that God loves you too much to let you continue on in darkness. He is calling you out and up toward Himself. Just like me with my diet, you will find that sacrificing things you “love” will leave you freer and happier than you ever were with those things. God never asks us to give up things without giving us the strength to do it. We aren’t supposed to do this life alone, but walk hand and hand with Christ, who walked this life out too! All I ask is that you spend time praying over what you fill your time with, and what might need to get cut. Trust me, anything that you are asked to remove is worth having fulfillment in Christ.