MEDIA: Guard Your Heart

By Zaniyyah E. Blue, Elder, Salt & Light Community Church

Devotional

Media has changed over the years from things we consume like newspapers, songs, and shows, to resembling something like a realm. Environments where we immerse ourselves, often, where we find rest or have fun, sometimes for hours at a time. It’s important for us, as children of God, to do as the scripture prescribes, to “guard [our] hearts.” To police what flows in and notice what flows out, but it gets harder when you don’t control or sometimes can’t remember what flows in.

The average American consumes 7+ hours of media during their waking hours, switching between devices. For us to apply the direction not to “conform to the pattern of this world,” we cannot assume we can accept whatever it desires to feed us. We have to be willing to reject the things that don’t bring us closer to Him or His will.

We don’t have to demonize media, but it doesn’t deserve default trust; only the Lord deserves that. Instead, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds in community, in relationships, in prayer, and in the scriptures. We are to pursue, persuade, and intercede for the lost wherever we find them, online or not, and reveal everlasting truth to them. And in the end, we ought not to be so sick from distraction that we forget that we’ve been given a serious and time-sensitive assignment.

Prayer

Lord, I come to humbly resubmit my gaze to you. I repent for taking rest in anything other than You and Your presence, Lord. Guide me, and guide my generation back to true and perfect rest in You. Help us resist the temptation to hide from our problems in comfort and entertainment; help us dethrone comfort, entertainment, and distraction from the altar of our hearts. Help us to resist passive consumption and instead be active participants in what we allow to feed us. Help us to notice when we reproduce more and more of what we allow into our hearts, minds, and spirits. Help us to notice be deceived by our pleasures or misled by our liberties, but instead to leverage these tools instead of being used by them. Help us Lord, so that we learn to wield the tool that could help us reach a generation, instead of succumbing to tools that intend to distract a generation. Add discernment to us concerning these things. Retrain our mind and redeem our desires. Mature our appetites for more of You and Holy spiritual things. Guide us Lord, so that in this day, Your will, will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.