Is Your Media Consumption Shipwrecking Your Faith?

As a culture, we are bombarded every day with various media outlets and opportunities to consume ideas and entertainment.

However, some of us have never considered that perhaps our media consumption is dulling our affections for Christ. We’ve never considered that we should be intentional to make a plan for our media consumption in light of God’s Word.

I wasted many years living as though I wasn’t affected by what I allowed into my heart and mind through media.

I recently took a month long sabbatical where I fasted from most all forms of media.

I set some boundaries for the month and purposely sought to break habits that I knew were getting out of control.

I put down my phone and turned off all notifications. I put it in my purse when we went places and left it there. I didn’t leave it out on the counter during the day either.

I only checked email once or twice a week, and I stayed away from Facebook entirely.

I stopped updating the blog and didn’t send my weekly newsletter.

I fasted from the media that was consuming me.

And it felt good!

Therefore, I thought I would share some thoughts on how this fast affected me, what I learned, and why I think, as Christians, we should choose to consume media as opposed to letting media consume us.

Glorifying God is an intentional pursuit.

We don’t grow in godliness by passive osmosis. When we assume that passive consumption of media doesn’t hurt us, we run the risk of shipwrecking our faith (1 Timothy 1:18-19).

My goal for this mini-series is challenge you to think about your media consumption and how it’s affecting your life. I want to inspire you to be intentional with what you choose to allow into your minds and hearts.

Remember, I’m not trying to get you to be better people. I want to exhort you to glorify God in all that you do. That is the purpose of intentional living. That is the purpose of choosing to consume media instead of letting media consume us – to glorify God!

As I share my journey, I pray that you will ask God to reveal areas of media consumption that you may need to surrender to Him. It’s not going to be a guilt-laden quest to get you to give up all media consumption or join with the silly church signs that say, “Your name’s on Facebook but is it in THE book?” Or something equally as ridiculous.

What I hope to accomplish is to spur you on to seek God in all areas of your life including how you spend your free time, “veg time,” “me time,” or “family time.” Whatever you’re filling your life with needs to come under the influence of God’s word and for me, media consumption was consuming me instead of me choosing to purposefully allow it into my life in a healthy, God-glorifying way. It’s by sharing my testimony and my areas of failure and realization that I hope to grow together with you as we surrender all of us to the One worthy of our full devotion – Jesus Christ.

Don’t miss a single post in the series by signing up for my weekly newsletter! I’ll share each Wednesday about what I’ve learned and next week is all about television!

What do you think? Are you looking forward to thinking through your  media consumption through the lens of scripture and grace?

In the meantime, you might check out my 7-Day Scripture Study on Living Intentionally.

Why do you want to live intentionally? Do you ever wonder if there is more to your Christian walk than just “getting to Heaven”? Have you ever thought about whether or not your life truly matters?

Live for Him: A 7-Day Scripture Study on Learning to Live Intentionally By Grace will help you uncover your “WHY” behind living intentionally. Click here to learn more.