I didn’t want to.

You may or may not have noticed that With Heart wasn’t in your inbox last Sunday. *Nervous laugh* This was intentional, let’s talk about it. Sometimes it can feel like the Lord is calling you in two different directions and we have to find the sweet spot of where those two callings intersect. I see the aching need for spirit-led evangelization in my generation. I also feel a deep call to do my part in fulfilling that need through digital evangelization, using the creative gifts that the Lord has given me and outlets that I am naturally pulled towards. But here’s the catch…I don’t actually love social media, but am I a slave to it? Yes. Can a slave truly love their master? However, I can see the goodness that social media hopes to achieve. Beauty, creativity, community, connection, inspiration. I just think somewhere along the way, the goal of social media and the affects of it have gotten jumbled. The fruit we see from it today look different than the seeds we intended to grow through the use of social media when it first came about. Instead of beauty, we see AI generated photos and unrealistic standards of what the human person is. Instead of community, we have this twisted communistic idea of followers-those who have more followers hold the true influence and a more desirable position as an “Influencer”. Instead of connection, we cultivate comparison. Envy, instead of inspiration.

I have even carefully curated my own following to be people that are intentional, uplifting, and Christian creators. Yet, I still find this to be the case. Because I felt this call from the Lord to digital evangelization, I assumed I needed to be active on social media, both as someone who posts more regularly and as someone who consumes. Before actively discerning and pursuing this call, I was hardly active on instagram for quite some time. It was glorious. In that time, I was my most creative and I was able to distinctly and clearly discern the voice of God speaking to my heart. My time spent back on social media over the span of the last two years confirms my suspicions that consumptions kills creativity. Our brains and our attention is like a sponge. When we are constantly absorbing content we become so full that there is no room left for the things that actually need our attention. We fill ourselves to the point that we eventually spill over and create a mess around us with all the gunk we’ve been storing.

Like I said, over the years I’ve tried, to the best of my ability, to follow moral people who hold the same values as I do. This of course includes influencers, people with podcasts, youtube channels etc. And I used to think, If I’m scrolling, at least I am consuming uplifting content. But over time, it’s possible to condition ourselves to believe that because we have watched 10 videos in a row that all talk about Jesus, that we’ve spent sufficient personal time with Him for the day. Our time spent absorbing media about Jesus replaces our time spent with Jesus. We are too busy listening to people talk about Him, rather than talking to Him ourselves. The opposite can also happen where we are so honed in on what we’re watching that we don’t want to put it down to enter into the actual secret place with Jesus, but we still feel that guilt in the back of our head. So, when those videos about Jesus do pop up during our doom scroll we feel obligated to stop and watch almost to fulfill our quota for the day, or negate the hour of other random crap we just watched. Sound at all familiar? Surely this is not a singular experience.

With Heart wasn’t in your inbox last week, and it’s reaching your inbox late tonight because-and can I be honest here?- I didn’t want to write a blog last week. Okay, I know. You’re thinking “Laziness is real human vice, and even though you didn’t feel like it, you should have disciplined yourself and written anyways, yaddah yaddah yaddah.” YES. But I already told you, this was intentional. Why? Because I deeply want what I write to be intentional as well. I don’t want to just send y’all excerpts to what is essentially my diary. I want the things I write on here to be pure of heart, meditated, but most importantly, spiritually lead and inspired.

My sponge was way too full that I couldn’t possibly absorb anything that the Spirit was trying to tell me. I watched a video from Fr. Mike Schmitz (Ironic, nearly hypocritical, I know, after what we’ve been discussing.) where He said “If you are too full, then fast.” and “If you’re exhausted, rest”. It seems so simple. But simple does not always feel easy. I have said it before, but what the devil cannot kill, he will exhausted. Even more so, if he cannot fill you with his own evils and agendas, he will fill you with other things in your life that may be good in moderation, but are detrimental in excess, so that you are in turn too full and no longer have an appetite for the good, Jesus Christ. We know that spiritual warfare is very true and present within our daily lives. Let us not forget that the devil fights dirty and will even use those goods against us. I am convinced he coined the saying “you can’t have too much of a good thing” for his own benefit. That’s exactly what I had to do last week, remind myself of the enemies tactics and combat them through prayer and fasting, and that meant no writing on here since the Spirit was not moving me. I needed to flush out all the noise that was occupying space in my brain and heart where God’s voice should have been. While I feel a call to digital evangelization, I am determined to not let the life of the Spirit get sucked out of me in pursuit of that call. So, while I am more restrictive in my usage on social platforms, I pray that the Holy Spirit overflows onto this blog as I invite the Lord to take up more space in my mind and heart.

With Heart, Ellie