It was President Barack Obama
who called this time we live in, “the best time in human history to be born”,
especially if you are in the United States. According to him “whether
you live in downtown New York or (in my grandmother’s village) more than two
hundred miles from Nairobi, you can hold in your hand more information than
the world’s greatest libraries.
I couldn’t agree more. The amount of information we have today and the
access to it is phenomenal! There is information for just about everything
under the sun, from how to hurt others to how to heal. And this information is
usually free! From the greatest classics to most recent literature, the
internet is teeming with treasures!
But as wonderful as this sounds, it presents us with a
problem. Seeing that we have tons of information out there, should we open
ourselves to any and everything? Shouldn’t we be more discerning/wise regarding
what we feed ourselves? What would you call a person who leaves a well
prepared meal for rotten food in a bin? Mad would be a fitting name I suppose.
But aren’t we like that many times? Don’t we feed our eyes and ears, the main
portals to our hearts and souls, with filthy and worthless information that
destroy us instead of help us. Don’t we spend time on indecent and unwholesome
entertainment just for the fun of it?
The truth of the matter is, “Garbage in, garbage out”. What
you feed on will eventually reflect itself in your life. Make no mistakes about
this, information is power. Advertisers know this, propagandists know this,
mind control/brain washing practitioners know this. This is nothing new, because
thousands of years ago, a wise King Solomon said “as a man thinks, so is he” –
Proverbs 23:7. And we all know
that our thought life/pattern is usually influenced by what we see and hear.
Unfortunately many of us do not appreciate how lucky/blessed
we are to have access to these things. There was a time when it was a crime
punishable by death, to own a Bible. And before that, many early Christians only
had few excerpts of the Holy Scriptures to encourage them, even in the face of death. Even today, the Bible is banned in
some Islamic countries and North Korea. But here we are, having access to not
only the Bible, but also other wonderful resources. We are indeed truly
blessed! So what will you do with the freedom and opportunities you have? will
you delight yourself in them and learn as much as possible or will you fritter
these opportunities away? Sodom and Gomorrah did not have our opportunities;
we have no excuse to be careless/passive.
As Christians, we are urged in 1 Peter 2:2 “like newborn babies, long for
the pure milk of the Word, so that
by it you may grow in respect to salvation”. There is power in the Word of
God, and the power transforms us by renewing our minds and changing our thought
life/pattern. Unless we desire to know God in His Word (the Bible) like newborn
babies desire milk, we will fall for and believe every lie out there.
The
greatest trick of the devil is deception and this is usually due to ignorance.
Most people who are deceived do not know they are being deceived. They believe
the lies they are told and only later do they realise the harm that has been done to
them. The Bible tells us in Hosea 4:6 that people, even God’s people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge.
What have you been listening to and watching recently? What
do you spend the bulk of your free time on? Is your entertainment wholesome or
do you just watch anything that comes on?
I am not saying we should become unnecessarily fastidious about
everything, but you want to be a bit more careful about the kind of information
you expose yourself to, knowing its power.
It’s not enough to go to church as a
routine activity, we must become passionate and active about our faith.
Passivity is an enemy, it will keep us in the dark about God. Only the Truth of
God, as revealed in the Bible can set us free from shackles of bondage.
Whether you like it or not, there is
eternity after death. Our destination will depend to a large extent on what we
did while on earth. We need to prepare for eternity daily, because none of us
know when we shall die. One way of doing that is by being careful of the
information we expose ourselves to. Instead of listening to some secular music
that glorifies casual sex, money, fame, selfishness, etc, why don’t you listen
to life-giving songs or sermons while you do chores around the house? Another
way is by listening to classic sermons from the likes of Spurgeon, Adrian
Rogers, Paul Washer, David Wilkerson, Tim Keller, etc. These pastors may not be
as popular as those in mega churches, but they preach holiness without which no
man/woman can see God.
Know this, God wants you to know Him, He longs to reveal Himself to you. He has given us these abundant resources to help us, please don't waste it. Many long for this, but do not have it. On the Last Day when we stand before God,
I pray He commends us for using these resources He gave us, to
know Him and do His will. May He not say to us, “depart from Me, you lazy and
wasteful servant”.
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Image1 courtesy:http://mainstreetmix.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Knowledge-is-Power.jpg
Image2 courtesy:http://fallibleblogma.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/chained-bible-232x300.jpg
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