Silent Fast
As I write this article, the youth and young adults in our church are doing a media fast. Some of their leaders noticed how distracted teenagers are today and so they felt led to call a seven-day fast from all forms of electronic and social media. Having teenagers myself I have overheard comments that fasting from food would be easier than fasting from Facebook.
If you are still wondering, a media fast is a period of voluntary abstinence from media for the purpose of hearing God’s voice more clearly by silencing all the others. Media includes television, radio, cell phones (except emergency calls or calls from parents), texting, movies, video and computer games (Angry Birds, too!!), internet and all music except worship music.
When I was in seminary we would spend time exercising the “Spiritual Discipline of Silence.” This was back in the days of typewriters, long before texting. But even back then, at first, silence can be deafening. We are so used to so much commotion that when it is silenced, it is a bit disconcerting. However, getting quiet is a pre-requisite to getting to God know more personally and intimately.
Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
It takes a few days in quietness for my mind and heart to settle down. Few realize just how much goes on in our mind and spirit and, as a result, what that commotion and noise does to us physically and emotionally. Unprecedented numbers of people are popping pills to quell the panic and anxiety. Many more crank down the caffeine to better cope and keep up.
Ironically, all of the above merely add when what is needed is subtraction.
Quiet is the key to recharging the batteries that run and power things like our creativity and ingenuity.
Toxic Fast
One of the hats I wear, besides being a pastor, is that I’m a state legislator. Many have written me to decry the distracted driving so prevalent today as youth and young adults text while driving. When you get behind the wheel of a car your focus should be on one thing: the road before you. What is true with regard to driving is true for any who seek to navigate life successfully. The less distraction the better.
This issue of Home Cures That Work is focused on detox has other contributors addressing natural ways and the health benefits to detoxifying our bodies. Somewhere in all this, is my hope that you will come away with the understanding that so much is toxic to our bodies. Even more, so much is toxic to us physically and emotionally. Toxic means poisonous. Graphically, it is symbolized by the skull and crossbones.
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“Pornography is inherently violent, inherently unloving. It is a perversion of sexuality, not a true form of it, and one that teaches violence and degradation at the expense of mutual pleasure and intimacy. It is about conquests, about conquering. It is the very opposite of God’s intention for sex. It tears love from sex, leaving sex as the immediate gratification of one’s most base desires. It lives beyond rules and ethics and morality. It exists far beyond love.” ~ Tim Challies
Seeing the skull and crossbones on things like rat poison and drain cleaner is common and necessary. What if we put the skull and crossbones on things like pornography or internet chat rooms? No study is needed to know that far more lives have been devastated by pornography than by people eating rat poison.
Natural health experts have made great strides in recent years bringing forth data showing how the build up of a variety of toxins in food preparation and pharmaceuticals results in a slow poisoning. Those of us who deal daily with people’s emotional and spiritual lives can make a case that there is a slow poisoning of sorts that happens when people are living lives inundated by internet and media, advertisements, endless activities and entertainment addictions. We weren’t made for any of that, we were made to interact with God.
If entertainment is a diversion of the mind, then what are you being diverted from? Or rather, what are you being diverted toward? The problem with being entertained by too many things of earthly origin is...
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