I love watching Fox News Channel, and Fox and Friends is my favorite morning show. I have noticed something lately that is kind of weird about Fox though. They will show something as a headline on Fox and Friends, and then it will be a headline on the next show, and the next show, and so on. If you watch more than two shows, you start to get repeat news over and over again and to tell you the truth, it’s boring. I have also noticed that they will let a story go for a fews days then recycle it again…..ON ALL THE SHOWS! Woh! Talk about something NOT being current! I like to call this Media Overlap! To me, Media Overlap is where our media sources all collide together and overkill what they are showing. What used to be the latest thing is overdone and highlighted too much. Some other culprits of this very thing are Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and many other “media outlets.” Media Overlap causes me to become a little dulled by all the info being “beat to death” and I become basically disinterested. What is the source of all this “information” that we deem so important and vital. Curiosity! Curiosity in the Dictionary is defined as a strong desire to know or learn something. Our curiosity has warped into something strange and unknown though. We take something we see one time, like a man falling off a pier into the sand, and we watch it over and over again, and then some time goes by and we watch it again. The same thing happens at the zoo when they are trying to keep the gorillas amused! Strange beast, those gorillas. Put a mirror and a repeating dvd of Wild Kingdom on and they will watch it the rest of their lives and be happy. Someone asked me a few years whether I believed in evolution and I said, Duh! NO!” At least not the evolution they were talking about. I do believe in the evolution of a Christian to become better, more, and ever growing. That evolution process begins the moment we accept Christ and it keeps on going and growing. Or does it? Like the Silverback Gorilla in the cage we can become dumbed down into just existing as a believer to the point that we just watch reruns of past life experiences with Christ and live our faith off of those. Just put a mirror in front of me and a memory of a past Spiritual Experience in my head and I will just sit there and watch it until I die. Really? That’s what we are doing every day when we don’t allow the evolution process in our spiritual life to continue to develop. Why does this happen? First of all, it’s our fault for not staying in the Bible and serving with the talents God has given us, so we get lazy and lifeless. Secondly, we start following men instead of God and our source is second hand instead of primary when it comes to our relationship with God. Thirdly, like the gorilla, we have become institutionalized. Our faith has changed sources and we no longer have a close relationship with Christ, and our main source of spiritual nurturing is a church building or pastor, or TV preacher. Just like Fox News we hear these great lessons about following Christ in a church service or Bible Study over and over from the same sources, and we amen it all the way to the bank. But where is the action? What action? We are too busy watching those reruns from “Yesterday’s News” and now we have taken a seat in the chair of conformity and that is where we will stay……Until?
Someone splashes water in our face and wakes us up. Wakes us up to the fact that we have removed ourselves from the very life that God wants to enrich.
A couple of years ago Bruce Willis starred in a movie called Surrogates. The basic premise of the movie was that all people had quit feeling, moving around, and basically living and the enablers offered a way for them to stay in a machine and live their thoughts through surrogate robots. Finally good ole Bruce broke free from his inactivity as a human and started shaking things up, (as only he can) and then they all woke up. The thing was, he was almost too late, and the “living death” was almost more powerful than he could fight, but he did win.
I believe we as Christians have become complacent to the point that we will let someone else tell us what to believe and how to believe it. We will let someone else do what God has called us to do (Surrogates) and thus we will cease to exist in the land of Abundant Living. It is spreading rapidly through our churches as I write this and the only hope for us is to resist it by getting active in our faith. Don’t let Yesterday’s News become the thing you rely on for your faith. Get current. Get active. Develop a fresh new relationship with Jesus and see what great plans He has for you. Psalm 119:156 says, “Great are Your mercies O Lord, revive me according to Your ordinances.” Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship of service.” Hebrews 10:19-25 says a lot, but mostly it says for us to keep on living in the day and do that individually and as a church. I’ll let you read that one for yourself…. if you will! If we will once again believe He is life and that His life lives in us, then we will break the mirror, turn off yesterday’s news and get on with the abundant life. Don’t let someone take away your joy by doing what God has called you to do. Break the spell of the surrogate and get back in with the living. When you do that you aren’t just watching Yesterday’s News. You are making Today’s News!!
The Pilgrimage continues…..
David Warren