Last week we talked about creating faith through hearing your own voice. This week we are going into our last part of the series. If you’ve missed the first two parts, you can catch up with Part 1: Faith Comes by Hearing – Who are you Listening to – Voice 1 and Part 2: Faith Comes by Hearing – Who are You Listening to – Voice 2.
The word is a two-edged sword and what you listen to creates faith. Now that faith can be toward something positive or toward something negative. The choice is yours. In the first part of this series we talked about learning the voice of God so you can hear Him correctly and obey Him when He speaks.
In the second part of this series we talked about how powerful we are when it comes to speaking into our own hearing. We have to be careful with what we speak because we are constantly feeding our inner man with either positive words, which will produce optimistic faith or with negative words, which will produce destructive faith.
Today, we are going to talk about the third voice we are constantly listening to. This third voice is society.
How is Society Speaking to You?
A better question is what are you listening to when society speaks? There are plenty of ways to listen to society these days. You have television, portable phones, internet and print advertising. All of these things are on 24-hours a day. They never shut off. They never give you a break. They are constantly bombarding you with their messages.
I still remember when we first got a colored television. It was large and took two men to bring it in the house. You had to make sure you knew exactly where it was going because once they set it down it was living there until it died. You also had to get up and change the channel by hand. Children were the remote controls back then.
With over 10 people in the house we usually had to agree on what we all wanted to watch and it better be age appropriate according to my mother, not television. This was also during the age when the networks didn’t stay on the air all night. If you were old enough to stay up pass 11 pm, you could eventually catch the national anthem being played. This marked the ending of the broadcasting time.
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! — Matthew 6:22-23
Also, sexual stuff (or the hint of it I should say) didn’t come on until after 9 pm or 10 pm. Society had a little decency back then. Now TV stays on all day long. You can catch any kind of activity on TV at any time of day. Just like the internet. And if you’re not at home, it’s okay because you can catch up on anything with your mobile phone, tablet, and laptop.
What’s more interesting is that even small children have these items and a lot of times, they are smarter at working them than their parents. This may cause problems because they can access parts of the internet they shouldn’t.
What is Society Saying to You?
There are many wonderful and destructive things going on in our society. However, the message media normally pushes is full of death, sex, lies, betrayal, fear, disloyalty and a host of other destructive things, unless it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then you get the feel good, let’s help one another movies.
Think about it. If you watch two hours of television, what are you actually looking at? Some comedy movies are full of derogatory statements or putting down someone else. Some love stories involve leaving the one you’re engaged to, to fall in love with someone else.
I’m a SyFy buff and the one thing I can’t stand is when I’m watching a good alien movie and people stop to have sex. I’m thinking, “Really! Aliens are chasing you and you have time to stop and have sex. Just die already.” See, how my solution is violence. Because I’m constantly watching violent movies. Wait. I think they call them action movies.
You might say that’s me, not you. You don’t act like that. Well, good for you. But how are you in other areas. Studies have shown that the more violent shows you watch growing up, the more aggressive you become.1 How do you handle bad situations? Are you defensive? Do you think what you could do to them if you weren’t saved? I know sometimes I do.
Society went from showing married couples who slept in separate beds on TV to a man who has a couple of girlfriends living with him and they all sleep in the same bed. It’s okay to show teenagers falling in love and having sex. Children telling parents what to do because they’re the hero of their own stories. Or children playing demonic roles or sexual roles. Some of these roles are supposed to be adults’ spirits inside of children. REALLY!!!
Society has been teaching us in a massive way how to think, what to speak, and how to feel. We have listened to society so long that we act like the Bible is outdated or its teaching doesn’t apply to us in this day and age. Or God doesn’t understand because the past ages weren’t like today.
Society tells us if we are for Biblical standards then we are against certain groups of people instead of the sin itself. It tells us we are brainwashed and need to leave religion alone. It tells us parents have no right to disciple their children, that children have more rights than parents. It tells us good is bad and bad is good.
We Believe Society
And what do we do? We believe them because we kept seeing and hearing them tell us in the media, on television, on the radio, on the internet, on our phones, in our schools, on our jobs, and in our everyday lives.
We believe we should show conditional love and help others as long as it doesn’t get our hands dirty or make us uncomfortable in any way.
We believe we have to be perfect in our outer being – our bodies, our jobs, our statuses and with our families. We believe we have to pursue money like our lives depend on it. We believe we will die if we don’t take this medicine or if we don’t do things their way, instead of trying something different. We believe all the bad reports about our economy, our nation, our people, other people, and other nations.
We believe all of this so much that Christians are dying of diseases, having sex before marriage, committing adultery, worshipping money, lying on God to get the money, sex, and power, fighting each other, gossiping about each other, causing strife and division, lying to ourselves about what God wants, neglecting our families, being disloyal, being afraid of what man will say and can do to us if we don’t abide by their rules only, and a host of other things.
We believe we should show conditional love and help others as long as it doesn’t get our hands dirty or make us uncomfortable in any way. But there is hope for us.
How Do We Overcome What Society Says?
We have a choice we can make. We can keep choosing death or we can choose life and live. If we choose life, then the very first thing we need to do is to repent to God.
Ask Him to forgive us for believing the enemy over Him. For putting the enemy before Him. For walking contrary to His Word because we prefer to satisfy our flesh instead of our spirits.
We need to acknowledge how weak we are and how strong He is. How willing He is to help strengthen us.
Next, we can begin to take back our lives by immersing ourselves into what the Word of God says so we can believe Him more than we believe the world.
Then we choose what we put in front of our eyes like David did.
“I will set no wicked thing before my eyes.” (Psalm 101:3)
No one is forcing us to watch what we’re watching. No one is forcing us to sit in front of the news every day, hearing about all the crimes going on, making us fearful to leave our homes. We watch the news like we eat – breakfast, lunch and dinner and a night time snack.
Finally, we speak life where there is death. We proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. He came to heal, deliver, and set free all who come to him. We let everyone know God is good and willing to reconcile with them.
We become the light we were intended to be and not the darkness we have become.
We become hot instead of lukewarm, which God hates. We become like our Father who is in heaven.
If you are willing to take on this challenge, let me know in the comments. Also, tell us how you combat the media’s constant invasion in your life? Leave your answers in the comments below.
Until next time, peace be unto you,
Further Reading
1 “Adolescents’ TV Watching Is Linked to Violent Behavior.” http://www.latimes.com/health/la-hew-kidviolence2002-story.html
“Be careful little eyes what you see!” http://www.biblestudyguide.org/articles/sin/be-careful-what-see.htm