Do you feel it? The throbbing blue-light headache from your mobile devices that starts in the back of your neck that wraps all the way up to the frontal lobe of your forehead? Can you feel it? The intense urge to check something, anything, to see who is cyber hugging you? Facebook, Texts, Emails, Instagram, Periscope, Twitter, etc. I can’t escape it. It is this incessant need to check my cellphone every 2 minutes. It is now said that the urge to check your cell phone is as strong, if not stronger than that of a heroin or cocaine addict. It has such a strong pull; that of social acceptance. How many likes did I get, how many comments, how many hearts, how many friends? We are fishing for acknowledgment. We cast out the line full of bait in the form of witty remarks and quips and cute photos and selfies just to get a scant few responses. Could it be that our lack of real social involvement has lead to this insatiable need for artificial social media grubbing? In hopes of our artificial social hierarchy we climb the ever so present yet imaginary cyber ladder. And to what end? Our own destruction. Pride. Arrogance. And worst of all SLOTH.

We think of sloth as laziness but did you know that the actual understanding of the word in Biblical times also meant laziness toward God? Our destruction is great when we do not do the things God has asked of us. The ramifications are HUGE. Satan’s best attempt at gripping the hearts of humans is through distraction. Today’s distraction, I am convinced, is through the almighty, never-leave-my-side cell phone. I go to read my Bible app and before I know it my phone tells me I have to respond to an urgent text or some other pressing item. Honestly, it will only get worse. Is it realistic to tell you, or to tell myself to throw our phones out? Mark 9:47-48 ESV says figuratively, “And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'”

Yikes, those are some pretty intense words. It is like money. Money is a tool, but be super careful not to make it your idol. I fear most of us have made an idol out of our cell phone. I resolve to leave my phone in my office when I am with my family. I resolve to leave my phone in the car when I am out with friends. I resolve to leave my phone downstairs in the charger when I am in my bedroom at night and in the morning. Can you do this with me? Can you make a resolution to make a positive change for your Maker? Stop the checking cycle and give to God what is rightfully his: your time and your attention.

The Cafeteria Christian. Yep, that was me. I looked at God’s Word like a buffet of choices. Some were for me, I liked them. They made me feel good. They worked in my lifestyle. Some were not for me. I did not like them. They made me feel bad. They certainly did not work with my lifestyle. So I reasoned them off as antiquated. Surely a good God would not feel the same way he did 4,000 years ago than he does today. Surely my God does not see life the way we do today compared to when Jesus walked the Earth.

I remember a gal I was mentoring a when I was just out of college. She was only about 6 years younger than me, but to her I was old. I didn’t understand the “party scene”. I remember laughing because what she was telling me was exactly the same. EXACTLY. Aren’t we just like that girl in the face of our good good God? We know better. Our lives are way different than people from even 10 years ago let alone 2,000 or wow, even 6,000 years ago. MAJORLY DIFFERENT.

We are wrong. Dead wrong. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He has never changed and will never change. But sadly we use what we know and feel about life to package who God is, or at least who we think he is. God is not a feeling or a logical reasoning that you have come up within your own mind. God is GOD. Yahweh. Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. He has revealed things to us that he wants us to know. But, there are things he has not revealed as well. Secret things. What do we do with that information or lack thereof? We speculate. We make things up based on how we feel. We, in essence, pick pocket God. Or more realistically put, we attempt to rob him, steal from him. Good luck with that! Trying to come up with your own ideas about who God is without studying what he has revealed to us in his Word is as Jay Adams in The Grand Demonstration puts it “nothing less than attempted theft.” Don’t do it. Stop reasoning based on your feelings and reason based on God’s Word. Our faith alone comes by grace alone through Scripture alone.

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. ~ Deuteronomy 29:29 ESV

Our lifetime feels like an eternity when we are 16. Then, all of the sudden you turn 40 and BAMB you are faced with the reality that your life on this earth is pretty much half way done. Hmmm. Where did the time go? Consider how CS Lewis describes eternity in a way that seems almost too simple yet in its simplicity it is so impressively profound. Take a roll of paper that your roll out for all of eternity. The roll just keeps going and going and going. There is no end. Then take a very sharp pencil and create a minuscule dot on a part of the roll. Just one tiny dot. Now take a moment and consider that dot. That dot represents TIME. It represents all of time as we know and understand it to be. Time as we know it began with God’s word, creating the world and us. We are living within that time. Someday soon the notion of actual time will end and we will be ushered into eternity. Our time-wrapped up minds can scarcely fathom what that concept is even concepting about. We have zero reference point. Even the illustration CS Lewis gives with the pencil dot will be lacking once we understand eternity from the other side of the grave. I can tell you this, I am 100% confident in my hope for eternity. I am excited to get there and this short blip called my life, while interesting to say the least, will someday be an extremely extremely EXTREMELY long distant memory.

OK, the title needs some work, but you get what I mean. Turds don’t shine. Poop in all its glory is the antithesis of shining bright. It would be ridiculous to try to shine poo. But isn’t that exactly what we are doing when we are focused on the things of this world? We are just shining the poo. Yes, this world is beautiful, but realistically when we desire after that new car or want to remodel our kitchen, is that the best use of our time? As believers God calls us to a much higher calling. Sure, you may need to have some creature comforts, but consider checking your motives. It is said those who are too heavenly minded are no earthly good but it is the opposite that is true. Those who are most heavenly minded are the ones who do the most earthly good. CS Lewis put it well when he said, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”

So, stop shining the poo. Set your eyes on Kingdom building and you will do well on this earth with a prepared heart and soul for the riches of the diamond shining bright that is our blessed Heaven.