Do you Facebook? I know many of you do. It’s quite the communication phenomenon. I stayed on the periphery for the longest time, opting out of adding another computer distraction to my day. But, little by little, the allure of connecting with old friends and keeping up weekly, daily, hourly, and even minute by minute with my blogging friends, won me over. I was completely hooked.

Large chunks of my day began to become unaccounted for anything productive. I kept up with everyone, morning, noon and night, and awoke early in the morning to thoughts of what my friends might be doing that day. I even found myself rushing through my quiet time in order to get on the computer and see what I’d missed. Well, today I was called on the carpet.

Actually, it started last night during a conversation with my friend, Pat, who just spoke at a conference where she shared the podium with Kelly Minter. There were quite of few of us last summer that worked through Kelly’s bible study called No Other Gods. As Pat told me about her time with Kelly, and Kelly’s message to the audience, we talked about that study and what it had meant to me. I immediately felt an unsettling in my spirit, or a rising up, rather, of an unsettling that I’d been shoving down for some time.

The following is the definition of an “idol” or “false god” by Ken Sande, found on Day 1 of the NOG study:

Most of us think of an idol as a statue of wood, stone, or metal worshiped by pagan people…In biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our heart on (Luke 12:29; 1 Cor. 10:19), that motivates us (1 Cor. 4:5), that masters and rules us (Ps. 119:133: Eph. 5:5), or that we trust, fear, or serve (Isa. 42:17; Matt 6:24; Luke 12:4-5)


In addition, this definition from Richard Keyes, also from Day 1 of the study:

…All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them…Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God’s existence or character. It may well come in the form of an overattachment to something that is, in itself, perfectly good…


It may seem a little over-the-top to claim that Facebook had become an idol in my life, but by the definitions above, it had. It was “perfectly good” in and of itself, but the problem came in my allowing something other than God to “rule” me and my mind. It was beginning to dictate the way I spent my days instead of God. In short: not good.

Last night’s rising conviction grew even stronger this morning, and as I was praying (read: arguing) about it, into my mind comes, unbidden, my memory verse for these last two weeks:

I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to Your statutes. I will hasten and not delay to obey Your commands.
Psalm 119:59:60

So, today I shut my account down and allowed God to lift a weight from me that I didn’t know I had. He’s so good like that.

Certainly, I’ll still be around here, with hopefully a lot more meat and a lot less fluff. After all, I won’t be spending all my time on Facebook, but with my FACE in the BOOK.