As I was falling asleep last night, the Holy Spirit put this portion of my book, Life is Muddy, on my heart to share with you today.
He sees the endless distractions and the way the enemy has slipped into our social media culture…it’s causing us to be overstimulated, anxious, depressed, leading too many away from God’s best.
“We live in an always-on culture…we are so overstimulated we can’t even sit for that two-minute time span at a traffic light without picking up our phones to scroll through Facebook, e-mails, texts . . . whatever your pleasure.
Here is what happens with the overstimulated mind: when those transmitters have been ignited in our brain at that high magnitude, it releases a chemical called dopamine, known as ‘the feel-good’ hormone. Dopamine puts us in a state of euphoria. When we are not igniting those neurons in our brain at that magnitude, it feels like a big crash that leaves us feeling depressed. We then feel the intense need to ‘feel good’ again, so we overstimulate ourselves to try to stay there. If our brains are not being stimulated at that magnitude, we kinda freak out because we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We then begin to tell our mind and body that we ‘need’ more to feel okay and that is where we get caught in a cycle that is totally the enemy’s intention, taking us further away from choosing God’s will, leading us to an over-stimulated, unsatisfied life.
Truth be told, we cannot find rest for our soul or understand what it means to be still.
Do you know who loves watching us stay overstimulated and distracted, leading us to make choices that are just fillers and not the real deal from God?
The one who has a masterplan to derail us from the rich and satisfying life that Jesus came to bring us, including our God-given purpose in life. The enemy!
It doesn’t seem to take him a whole lot of effort to slither his way in and distract us. We’ve got an influx of flashing empty promises of hope and freedom as we compare our lives to the small corners of someone else’s life that they are choosing to share, right at our fingertips.
E-hem . . . social media.
Then the enemy just sits back and watches us wander aimlessly, filling ourselves with a never-ending task list and distractions that leave us so busy, but still hungry for more.
Or, so focused on others’ lives through social media that we aren’t even doing much with our own. How can we?
We are too distracted with entertainment, as our dreams and goals fade to the back of our minds, and then we struggle to connect with ‘why’ we are feeling so empty inside. We then reach for more distractions to drown that vacant pit that distractions caused in the first place.
The enemy knows our ‘more’ is with God, and God alone.
He absolutely does not want US to know this, because as soon as we receive this revelation, he knows we become a threat to his dark kingdom.
And we become free.” —Life is Muddy
