Christians and Facebook


August 10, 2009 @ 1:57 PM EST | Category: Just Bloggin'

I’ve wanted to write this for a long while now, but recently a video that I saw rekindled this thought in my heart. So, I finally sat down and off-the-cuff wrote my thoughts. However scattered and jumbled, please consider the content. Know that it is from the heart. You will find the video below.

Let me preface this by saying that I am about to write about something that will probably offend some of you. Maybe this will wake some of you up to a reality that you have either forgotten or never knew in the first place.

Let me also preface this by setting your mind upon the tone and mood of my voice as I write this. It is one of low, compassionate, tear filled concern.

There is a war going on for the souls of men. Satan never takes a holiday. He never sleeps. He never tires. He never stops seeking to destroy the lives of people. Some people he simply passes by because they are so convinced that they are headed for heaven and they are so duped into believing that they are “safe” that they pose no threat to him. So he doesn’t bother. Others, he actively seeks to destroy. As Christians I think this, along with the fact that there is a literal hell and people will spend an eternity in its torments, are two of the much neglected reflections and realities of the thought life, prayer life and general lifestyle of professing Christians. What do I mean by this?

I would submit to you that most Christians are intellectually concerned about the welfare and souls of men. The problem is that most of that concern is fizzled out by a lack of heart-knowledge in the matter. They are not truly convinced in the heart (i.e. the core of who they are) that hell is real and Satan hates the souls of men. A plain evidence of this is Facebook. You say, “What! How? Facebook has nothing to do with the gospel.”

If you would allow me…can I dig around in your heart for a minute? Can I maybe shock you into thinking about something?

For those of you that have a Facebook account and profess the name of Christ, take a moment and recollect how much time in the last month you have spent worrying about telling everyone what restaurant you are eating at this afternoon, what color you are going to paint your shed, or whatever random thoughts you can come up with versus telling others about the deliverance from sin and it’s consequences through Jesus Christ. Does your time on Facebook outweigh the gospel? Remember, you will do what you believe.

Where are your priorities? Where is the reality of the concern for the souls of men in your life? How can we as Christians, who know and experience the gospel of amazing grace, who know the heart of our Lord, waste so much time with things that will not matter in eternity?

I see grown men, Christian men, with Facebook accounts who worry about their online “profiles” like a little school girl. Quit this childishness. Grow up and be a man for Christ. Jesus Christ didn’t hang on a bloody cross so you could sit around mingling with such trivial stuff. You are wasting your time and His. People are filling hell faster in your lifetime than any other! Get busy.

I would think that TV, Xbox, Playstation 3, and Wii are enough to drain away the time of a Christian to love Christ by practicing spiritual discipline, but now we have piled Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on top of that. How many feathers can you pile on your life before your light is completely smothered?

May I probe a little deeper?

Where is the evidence of the cost of following Christ in your life? Where is the dying to self and living to Christ for the advancement of the gospel in the hearts of men? Do you see the gospel as something so wonderfully precious, handed down from God to men that it burns in your heart to make it known to others? Do you consider your life of more value than another man’s salvation? Or are you just trying to get out of this thing with the least amount of scars?

How about this; every time you want to update your Facebook account, grab your bible, hop in your car and drive to the closest part of town and talk to someone about the glories of Christ. If you can’t drive, pick up the phone and call someone.

As your brother in Christ I am pleading with you. Quit the childishness. Quit it.

Here is the video:

Get off facebook, BE A MAN - Paul Washer from I'll Be Honest on Vimeo

Just Thinking
by Tony Miano

August 4, 2009 @ 3:42 PM EST | Category: Just Bloggin'

1. Friendship evangelism is neither friendship nor evangelism without the verbal proclamation of the gospel.

2. If you say that you believe Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life but you refuse to tell people, then you really don't care where people will spend eternity. Why? Because you will do what you care about.

3. Might real revival happen if instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build mausoleums to warehouse the spiritually disobedient and to entertain the lost, the Church invested in indigenous missionaries, both at home and abroad? Jesus never said, "If you build it, they will come."

4. Don't worry about Satan. If you are not actively engaged in proclaiming the Law and the Gospel to lost souls and praying for those who do, you pose no real threat to him. And if the enemy does not see you as a threat, then what kind of soldier are you, really?

5. You can't be saved by a gospel you don't know. If you can't tell me biblically how I can get to heaven, then why should I believe you are going there?

6. Depraved Indifference: Being morally culpable while acting with wanton disregard for the life of another. If you refuse to share the gospel with lost souls, then you are guilty as charged.

7. Remember the same verse that says "all liars will have their part in the lake of fire" also says that the cowardly will meet the same fate. When did you last share the gospel with the lost? Can't remember? Don't want to because your scared? Then you have a problem that may be more serious than you think.

8. The true Christian understands that he is to remain in the world while not being of the world. But a false convert will sit precariously atop the fence separating two worlds and, when he thinks he is loosing his balance and he thinks he may fall, he will look to the world instead of Christ to catch him--all the while insisting his trust is in the Lord.

9. If you feed a lost person; if you give him something cool to drink; if you put a roof over his head and give him the shirt off your back, but you fail to share the gospel with him; know this. If he dies after you've lovingly served him, having never heard the gospel from your lips, he will be warmed and filled as he faces God's judgment and eternity in hell. Serve people? Yes. But please share the gospel.

10. If you live by the extra-biblical adage, "Live your life in such a way that people ask you why," yet you dress like the world, talk like the world, act like the world, and enjoy the same things that entertain the world; then what do you expect a spiritually dead and blind person to see in you? It won't be Jesus Christ. It will just be you. They won't ask what's different about you, because you look just like them.

11. If you are doing something that is extra-biblical, meaning the Bible neither commands nor condemns the activity, you must be extra-careful. To use the fact that the Bible does not specifically speak about a certain activity as justification to engage in the activity is neither wise nor safe. For when the Word of God is not your guide, you are led by nothing more than sinful, fallible flesh. So be careful.

12. Proclaiming the Law and the Gospel is not a right given to Christians by men. It is a command given to Christians by God. If you want to earn and exercise a right, go earn and exercise the right to die for Jesus Christ at the hands of the very people who insist you do not have the right to speak to them about the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

13. People like to say, "Jesus is with me wherever I go." Yet many seem to forget or ignore what they profess to believe when they sit in a theater, or in front of the television, or at the computer--entertained by profanity, blasphemy, gratuitous violence, or sexual content. Judas claimed to follow Jesus and betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver. What is your price? Will you betray Jesus to enjoy ungodly entertainment?

14. As a Christian, do you affirm the Bible's teaching that one should not seek the praises of men and that God alone is worthy of praise while, at the same time, fully expecting God to praise you when you obey Him? Then please consider what Jesus said. "So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty'" (Lk. 17:10).

15. One woman dances in a "gentlemen's club," in a seedy part of town. Another woman is a model and participates in "beauty" pageants on the world's stages. Both disrobe for money. Yet many Christians would say the former needs Christ while, at the same time, they prop up the latter as a Christian role model. Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in that?