Twitterdom vs. Wisdom?

Dan Miller


While attending a funeral recently, I glanced up and down just my row to see several people Twittering and checking emails in the last few minutes prior to the beginning of the service. It's now common during sermons and seminars to see people with their heads down, busy passing on tidbits of information instantly. This morning I read that one million people are following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter.
I suggest that this massive addiction to information leads us away from wisdom, not toward it, creating what author Shane Hill calls "a permanent puberty of the mind." Recognize that information, knowledge and even intelligence do not necessarily lead to wisdom. The overload of information in fact encourages the opposite of what creates wisdom - stillness, time, reflection and solitude.


With the internet, TV, email, FaceBook, Twitter and cell phones, there is no waiting. There is no such thing as stillness or quiet personal reflection. Meaningful experiences and the path toward wisdom can be diverted by constant information.
I am not anti-technology. I love having instant access to useful information. But this is much like having a bowl of peanut M&Ms in front of me. I tend to eat them just because they are there. At some point I will have to remove myself from the bowl or my initial pleasure will turn to misery and sickness.


And I believe allowing a constant diet of unlimited information and data into our brain will also ultimately turn from being a useful treat to something that will cause our mental lives to become bloated and deprive us of the characteristics we desire most. We have to decide when to push back from the table of information overload - where it leads to our emotional, social, philosophical, and psychological sickness rather than being a useful addition in our quest for wisdom. I have made strategic decisions to not be on Facebook or use Twitter. Not because they are bad but because I have to chose which tools that I can use effectively.
Increasing the rate of information input to your brain may make you a candidate for Jeopardy but it probably has little to do with increasing spiritual characteristics like love, trust, compassion, faith, courage -- and wisdom.


Want to increase your wisdom?


Practice reflection, meditation and introspective thinking for 30 minutes each morning. Many who allow constant input are keeping themselves in the shallow end of the wisdom pool. Don't be one of them.

•Turn off the TV for at least two hours every evening
•Read your email at set times during the day - perhaps once in the morning and once in the evening. Don't allow yourself to be interrupted with every new incoming message
•Spend four hours on Saturday without your cell phone or computer
•Plan one day a quarter on an "information fast." Get away from your computer, your cell phone, TV and the newspapers. You'll be amazed at how your creativity will increase - you may get the one idea that will change your future
•Read one good non-fiction book each month. Choose carefully from the wisdom of the ages.


Incidentally, according to a new Nielson report, 60% of Twitter users sign up and drop out after one month. And I seriously doubt that following Ashton Kutcher is going to increase your wisdom.

Choosing your destiny

Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him... -- Mark 10:21


I want to talk with you today about one of the most tragic pictures in Scripture. Jesus had just told the rich young ruler that he must sell all his possessions and give to the poor in order to follow him. The man went away brokenhearted because he was clearly unwilling to do what Jesus required.
Do you know what Jesus did next? He did nothing. He didn't cajole him and say, "Oh, come on back. I'm sure we can negotiate something." He let the man go.
This young man who had it all lost it all in an instant. He might have become a mighty preacher or used his wealth to the glory of God. He could have laid up treasures in heaven! But none of those things happened.
Now you have a choice to make too. You can choose to follow Christ and to be with him forever or to be separated from him for eternity. Jesus will not force you to follow him, and he will not change the terms of salvation. You come to Jesus on his terms, or not at all!
Right now Jesus is looking at you and loving you. And he invites you to turn loose of anything and everything that would keep you from following him.


Pick up your cross. Follow him, trust him, believe him and receive him into your heart right now.

JESUS WILL NOT FORCE YOU TO FOLLOW HIM.

Fenelon's Formula for Prayer

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13


Is your prayer life consistent? Is it rich and rewarding? Do you see measurable growth in it? If not, Francois Fenelon, a 17th-century Frenchman, tells us how to pray and get results. It's a tried and true formula worth following: 'Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles that He may comfort you; tell Him your longings that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes that He may help you conquer them; tell Him your temptations that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your soul that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved taste for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride hides you from yourself and from others. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs and troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject, for it is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words for there is nothing to be held back. Neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of their heart. Without consideration, they simply say just what they think. When they ask, they ask in faith, confident that they will be heard. Blessed are those who attain such familiar, unreserved communication with God.'

The Worship Service

By Os Hillman

"This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed" (Lam 1:16).


Angie and I walked into the worship service. I pushed my Mom's wheelchair into the room among many, many others. This was no ordinary worship service. This wasn't our first time. The organizer recognized us and asked if we would assist in handing out the songbooks.


About only 20% of the participants could actually use them. For most of them it sat on their laps. "Why does life have to be reduced to this?" I questioned and prayed silently to the Lord. "If Jesus walked through this room, how many would He restore?" I continued to ponder. You see, Angie and I were in a dementia and Alzheimer's elderly care nursing home unit where my mom resided. A few chairs over sat the father of my older sisters' longtime best friend. Next to him was my brother-in-law's grandmother.


They were all once successful people - doctors, lawyers, business leaders, and stay-at home moms. They had, at one time, lived in fine southern homes. But they now lived in one-half of a single room. Some patients could recognize their loved ones, others could not.


The service began with singing. Only a few voices could be heard among the patients. A simple message followed. Then, something remarkable happened. The speaker said they would now close with a well-known song. It began this way; "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Suddenly, the voices in the room got louder. Patients that were not singing before were now singing. I looked over at my mom. She was whistling the tune. I looked over at Angie; tears were streaming down her face.


Yes, the presence of Jesus was walking through the room. But it wasn't in the way I thought He'd come. Sometimes the presence of God can show up in the smallest and simplest acts.

What's Good for the Goose (1)
Look at the birds in the sky!... Matthew 6:26

Speaking to an anxiety-ridden crowd, Jesus said, 'I tell you not to worry about your life... Look at the birds in the sky!' You say, 'What can I learn from looking at a bunch of birds?' If you've ever been to Pennsylvania in early winter, you'll have seen the skies literally darken as multitudes of Canadian geese gather for their annual flight to the sunny south. For the next few days let's look at their behaviour, and learn from it. Geese fly united; they don't fly separately, in random style, because no goose alone can go that distance. They're designed to fly in their characteristic 'V' formation. When a bird flaps its wings the air movement created provides an uplift, easing the workload of the bird behind it. Together, their flight range increases about 71 per cent. Even the youngest, weakest and oldest geese can make the trip. They accomplish together what they could never accomplish separately. There's a lesson here: when the Bible says, 'Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another...' (Hebrews 10:25 NIV), it means, 'Stay in fellowship with one another, and enjoy the uplift it provides.' You're not called to fly solo. 'The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"' (1 Corinthians 12:21 NIV). Occasionally a goose strays off on its own but soon becomes exhausted, loses altitude and ultimately pulls wearily back into the formation. 'Look at the birds', and learn.

When Others Disappoint You

By Os Hillman


"Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica" (2 Tim 4:9-10).


Adversity molded the apostle Paul into the greatest warrior for Christ the world has ever known. But there were times when adversity and disappointment took its toll on this rugged warrior. We can sense Paul's hurt and discouragement near the end of his second letter to Timothy:


Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica... At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me... Do your best to get here before winter (4:9-11,14,16,21).


Do you hear the pain in those words? Twice he urges Timothy to come to him. Do you feel his anguish when he twice speaks of being deserted by his friends?


In most of his letters, Paul seems to have an invincible spirit. Yet he was a man who suffered, felt betrayed, and was at times very lonely.


However, Paul chose to look at life from a heavenly perspective. That's why he could write:


We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (2 Cor. 4:8-10).


Paul had experienced a level of opposition and suffering that you and I can scarcely imagine. People said they would do things but did not follow through. He could not depend on certain people. Yet he was not crushed, and he refused to give in to despair. He viewed his life as a continual process of dying. His goal was to live in such a way that the life of Jesus would be revealed in his response to adversity.


Beware of placing too much expectation on others. Realize that people will let you down from time to time, but do not let that impact your faith. Trust God to work even through these disappointments.