This weeks Live Free prompt is selfie, which is an actual word now. I love seeing the candid pictures of friend’s faces and sharing that moment with them, even if it’s only from the “like” button on Instagram.

I love social media, I really do. But, I also have a tiny bit of hate for it because of the lack of balance and waste it can become. Hear this social media junkie out.

We can either use Social Media as a tool, or we can let it use us.

We can see how many likes we get on a certain post, or wonder if we have “less friends and followers” as someone else.

We can use it to measure and compare and even stir up a petty girl fight, political rant, or post an article about how Diet Coke is going to kill so and so, tag her in the post because you care so much about her health and that she’ll probably die next year from poisoning from artificial sweetener, and post a million other things we should be doing.

We are bombarded with so many opinions and views, both worldly and spiritual, about how to be our best self.

But, because we are human, the emphasis and focus is always on ourselves.

The magazines say be you and be beautiful and you’re worth it.

To all of this I say, okay, those all sound nice.

And then it says, “You should be happy so whatever that looks like, just do that, because you deserve to be happy.”

Wait. What?

Sure, happiness sounds great and maybe even easy, but holiness sounds better. And harder.

Holiness tells me He’s worth it.

To find life, I have to lose it. (Matt 10:39)

I read about crucifying our flesh (Gal 5:24) and a ‘back of the line’ kind of servant hood that says to be greater in The Kingdom I need to be better at being the least, and humble myself like a child. (Matt 18) And somewhere in the mix of this #selfie generation is where we find the question mark when our priorities are out of focus, a way to find ourselves in Christ and forfeit any right to think we are a bigger deal than we really are.

Maybe, we are lying on Instagram. I know that I sure have. I’m straight up selfie liar. I need makeup, y’all.

We soften the focus to make ourselves look better, maybe crop out the dirty laundry that photo-bombed our as “close to perfect as humanly possible” picture.

We delete that status update that says, “My marriage is really struggling right now and we are supposed to have it all together.” Or, “I’m not okay and have no idea how to be right now, but here’s a picture of my babies with me smiling…because they are what is keeping me from loosing what’s left of my mind right now.”

We edit out our crazy. We post that edited picture. We filter. We fake it. And you know what, it’s not going to send us to hell. But, it will waste a lot of time and distract us from our God-given purpose.

I can make a picture look better by using a filter, but yesterday I didn’t filter my words.

I can polish my appearance forgetting that God cares more about a polished heart. He sees what no one else can, weighing my motives searching every untidy corner of my heart.

Living free in Christ looks like a lot of things, but mostly it looks like surrender. And repentance. And denying my flesh as I try to live my very best, less self-absorbed life.

Truthfully, Facebook is probably not going to help me with that, that’s what the Bible is for. Maybe I’ll spend less time filtering a picture and work harder to filter my words. Maybe I’ll lay off selfies and examine my heart and ask God to wreck all that is a waste of my time.

I’ll ask God to help me build a life that matters, not brand myself as another recovering Broken Girl who now by a miracle of God is Pastor’s wife who needs to up her meds fearlessly wants to take on hell with a squirt gun and make whatever difference I can in my real life more than the online, selfie taking, soul-sucking vortex of instant connectivity all the time.

Love you like crazy,

Jennifer