Facebook is the fastest growing social networking website, boasting over 250 million active users, with more than 120 million of them logging in at least once per day. Think of it! Over 120 million people checking up on their friends and family, sharing significant things (wedding pictures, prayer needs) and insignificant things (what they ate for lunch, comments about the weather), and remaining "connected" to an average of 120 friends each. That's an amazing amount of "connecting" going on. But then I got to thinking. What would happen in our world, and in our churches, if 120 million believers in Christ made sure to check our spiritual "facebook" every day?
As fun as it is to peek into each other's photo albums there is an infinitely more important "facebook" that we must discipline ourselves to spend time in. That, of course, is God's "facebook," the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that sanctification, becoming like Christ, is a cooperative effort involving both the Spirit of God and the believer: "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Sanctification is a process: we are being transformed. The specific transformation taking place in the heart of the believer is into the same image from glory to glory. What image is that? It is the image of the glory of the Lord. Unquestionably, this is God's goal for every Christian: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29). But how does this actually happen? It is the Lord, the Spirit who ultimately performs the work of our transformation; on the other hand, the change only takes place as we with unveiled face [behold] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. What is the mirror that reflects the glory of the Lord? It is the Word of God. It is the gospel. James writes, "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was" (James 1:23-24). As we examine our hearts and lives in the mirror of the Word of God we, with the Spirit's guidance, see the spiritual pimples that need to be removed and, by the Spirit's power, are able to correct the sinful character patterns that hinder the image of Christ from being increasingly glorified in us. However, if we approach the Bible merely to gain information, without a desire to experience Spirit-empowered change, we become mere "hearers who delude themselves" (James 1:22).
With no desire to throw a wet blanket on anyone's online fire, let me gently exhort all of us to be sure that we keep the fun tools of technology in their proper place. There is no technology that even comes close to the infinite value of checking our spiritual "facebook" every day. Man's technology doesn't hold a candle to the supernatural power of the Word of God.
So, have you checked your "facebook" today?
I mean, how is your personal time of prayer and Bible reading going? The psalmist woke up in the morning with a desire for deep communion with God: "In the morning, O Lord, Thou wilt hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to Thee and eagerly watch" (Psalm 5:3). Which "facebook" do we wake up with a desire to open? If our desire to check our online Facebook is more urgent than our desire to behold the face of Jesus Christ in the gospel, then it is time to repent of misplaced priorities and renew our commitment to daily read, meditate on, and apply Scripture to life. Perhaps we all need to consider refraining from booting up our computers until we have first spent time in communion with God through prayer and His living Word (Hebrews 4:12). As we behold the glory of the Lord in the truth of the gospel, the Spirit of God will continually transform us into the holy and gracious image of the Son of God.
According to 1 Peter 2:2, there is a direct connection between our hunger for the Word of God and our spiritual growth: like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. This personal intake...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
