Jesus commands His followers to love God and love people. Every connection He makes serves to emphasize this point. By invitation, He forgives, redeems, and introduces His Kingdom in real-time.
When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.
~Luke 7:36, NIV
Jesus loves and leverages the power of story. With them, He resets cultural boundaries, rocks the status quo, and accentuates a love beyond the law that few comprehend. Stories with unprecedented compassion and forgiveness relocate hearts to foreign and uncomfortable places. His holy agenda permeates what He says and all He does.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. – John 15:15, NKJV
By Tami Heim
Jesus called His followers friends long before it was culturally cool for you to call your online followers the same. If you look to and learn from the Author and Finisher of your faith you’ll experience the breadth and depth of what it means to be called a friend. There is no better day than this one to fall in love again with the Giver of so great a gift.
There’s a time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth. Ecclesiastes 3:1, The Message
By Tami Heim
Almost every day @stickyJesus there’s a conversation with someone that isn’t convinced he or she can make a Kingdom impact on social media networks. When pressing in on this topic, we discover that fear is holding the perception of time hostage. If you aren’t wise to the enemy’s tactics, he’ll easily use that fear of wasted time to keep your salt and light from infiltrating the online world.
Candidly, it’s time to pin fear to the ground and the enemy with it.
If you’ve been following us for any amount of time, you know everything has to start with prayer. And of course we’re not letting you off the hook here. Pray, wait, and seek are mandatory first steps for any Christ follower intentional about God’s agenda online. You can’t effectively log on if you haven’t adequately powered up. Once you’ve established a solid connection, you’re ready to execute this 30 minute plan online.
Look around. Welcome to the Land of Shiny Things. Your citizenship was not overtly solicited but gradually you made your way here. You are an unwitting but active, dues-paying resident.
The Land of Shiny Things is a finely manicured mental, spiritual, and physical subdivision of our universal domain. It is the cookie-cutter context that wraps itself around your mind daily, and for lack of an intuitive escape route, you fall into it way to easily.
“So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.” ~Hebrews 3:19, NLT
It’s easy to get moving so fast online that we click right past a heart may be crying out: “please . . . stop . . . save me!”
Today we want to help you adjust your vision so you can recognize and reach out to the spiritually needy around you in the Land of Shiny Things (L.O.S.T.). Be warned: It’s a task that will take divine sensitivity and—as we call out in @stickyJesus, the book—an awakened heart. It’s often in the routine of daily conversation that the lack of light is thinly veiled.
Okay, now that we’ve got your attention: Here are some eye-popping stats that affirm exactly WHY Christians NEED to be speaking into the online conversation . . . and a little humor (in red) to help you stay mission-focused.
Here we go!
1. More than 500 million people are on Facebook.* More than 175 million are on Twitter and YouTube attracts more than 2 billion people a day. This patch of virtual land is prime real estate where our collective psyche now lives. It’s where the enemy finds unlimited joy multiplying lies, division, and confusion—at warp speed. So, just say no: We can’t stop this train and no one is listening anyway. Why not just let the enemy have that whole digital, cyberspace thingy? (Oh, and pass the remote, while you’re at it—The Bachelor is coming on!)
Every day I learn more about the different ways to “be there” for someone I’ve never met face to face. Social media makes that happen. When I read through my Facebook and Twitter feeds I usually find someone out there that is hurting or in need of prayer.
I feel a deep desire to respond.
Why? Because early in the morning I try to place my heart wide open before Him. I trust that He is with me and then whatever rolls before me on the daily updates of my friends and family– I accept what impresses me as His assignment for me.
