Fasting Social Media

I just spent a week fasting from social media.  I did it because I wanted to hear God and because I knew social media was taking over my life.  This is what I learned... 

I was right.  Social media was taking over my life.  I can’t even tell you how many times I picked up my phone the first day—only to remember I wasn’t supposed to access anything.  I can even tell you I clicked on Facebook and Instagram mindlessly and quickly turned it off.  That’s it—it had become mindless activity.  I was checking to see what was new at any given moment...all day long.  

It also took me four days (FOUR DAYS!!) to get into a flow of my relationship with God—reading His Word, praying, and listening.  I had to relearn how to “be still and know He is God.”

I learned I’d been grieving Him. I was grieved.  He desires relationship with me and I do with Him.  Social media was getting in the way.  In fact, you could even go so far as to say I was having more of a relationship with the world than with God.  Ugh.  

I learned that I have to learn how to manage social media—kind of like I had to learn how to handle money.  I don’t think it’s wrong to be on social media.  But it is wrong to give more of my time to it than to God.  He has to be my priority.  

And lastly, it only took me 30 minutes to read every comment written to me on my private page, one business page, and one ministry page.   Thirty minutes after being off social media for a week!.  I would have spent HOURS reading those same things and scrolling mindlessly through other pages, posts, memes, and comments.  

I’m convinced I have to change.  I can’t give my devotion to social media.  God alone deserves my complete devotion.