You know what this world has to offer?
- Self-help programs
- Politics
- Humanitarian aid
- Advertising
- “Your Best Life Now”
- Toys (the big, expensive, adult kind)
- Popularity
- Sexual deviancy
- Self-medication
- Subjective reality
- Victimhood
John the Disciple said:
“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” – 1 John 15-17
I don’t know about you, but I want to do the will of God. I don’t want to be in love with the Dark World, or anything it provides. I hate that my flesh likes some of those things. I don’t want to lust after popularity, or recognition, or fun toys, or whatever. But my flesh is always trying to draw me back into the world.
Why do I run a blog, or a YouTube channel? It’s because I want to be seen, to be heard, and understood. I want to share my thoughts and music with people. I want to be recognized for it! I want to be seen as someone who contributes to the benefit of those who ask hard questions, and don’t settle for easy, pat answers.
But is that really “doing the will of God?”
That depends on who gets the recognition, really. If I’m getting the recognition, then why would God bless that? But if God gets the glory and recognition- then we’re on to something.
The secular world, and increasingly in the church world, self-promotion is an idol. I refused to admit it myself for a long time. There are some who see it for what it is, and at one point, God opened my eyes to see it, too. And once you see something like that, you can’t un-see it.
I’m tired of it all.
That’s right… I’m tired of trying to get noticed. Tired of writing on the blog (I can journal in a notebook just fine), tired of making YouTube videos (it doesn’t make me money, zero ROI), tired of social media (it’s a mostly toxic attention treadmill), and tired of feeling like I need to “hustle.”
If I’m supposed to have the mind of Christ, I don’t need to “hustle.” Ever.
So if I kill my Youtube channel, I lose what, less than 200 followers? Maybe 20 that actually like what I do there. It will save me the trouble of feeling like I have to make videos on a regular basis because “the trending algorhithm likes regular uploads.” You know what? I don’t need it. God hasn’t required that of me.
Do I need a Twitter account? Again, with only a couple hundred followers, no. Nobody but my close friends would even notice.
Do I need a blog? Again, no. I might get a couple hundred unique hits a month now. It’s usually way less than that. Blogs are dead. I never made money with it, though I like to think I helped someone, somehow, with what I wrote here.
I have a Soundcloud account that I upload music too. I get a couple of plays a month. That’s it. Again, the algorithm rewards frequent uploaders, and I just can’t do it.
I have a Bandcamp page that is empty, because with all the posting I do, I haven’t actually created an album yet.
With the thousands of hours I have spent playing Minecraft or surfing Facebook, I could have written a couple more novels by now. I could have recorded an album or two. I could have built a new back porch, or fixed the Rambler, or any number of useful things. I could have gone to the movies with my kids. I could have had friends over for dinner. Anything.
You know what? I didn’t. I piddled away my time on things that don’t really matter.
But enough about the past.
This world is passing away, but he who does the will of the Father will live forever. So for me, for you, for all believers… we need to stop trying to build our business, and get busy and be about the Father’s business.