Deleting Myself

    

     There's a quote that I absolutely love and reference a lot and plan to use as my senior quote that says "Where you invest your love, you invest your life." They're not the words of some eloquent philosopher, but rather lyrics to a Mumford & Sons song, but they're so true they might as well be scripture. 

     Last night I deleted about thirty apps from my phone. I had begun to love those dumb little squares on my screen too much, they beckoned me to click them and waste precious minutes of my life looking at essentially nothing. They'd become part of my routine, part of my hobbies, and in turn, part of myself. So I deleted the parts of myself that were useless, time wasters, not glorifying to God. Obviously there are still little idols in my life that I haven't gotten rid of, but this at least is a small start. 

     In church for the past few Wednesdays we've been discussing a method of repentance known as Hate It, Starve It, Outsmart It, as part of a larger discussion called The True Love Project by Clayton and Shari King. It's been a really eye opening series, but this Hate It, Starve It, Outsmart It thing has been particularly groundbreaking for me. I have so many little Achilles Heel sins that I really want to get rid of and I've tried repenting of for who knows how long, but I never really had a distinct plan of action to tackle these sins with. When we first read about Hate It, Starve It, Outsmart It, it was like finally there was something practical and technical to help me actually follow through with my repentance. 

     First, you have to hate your sin, and hate what it does to you and how it makes you act and the consequences brought forth by that sin. In regards to my app/internet obsession, I hate how lazy it makes me, and how I've replaced my love for things like reading and writing with scrolling through my Instagram feed and watching YouTube videos in the same manner that I pop m&ms, one after the next after the next. I hate that I always feel the need to have my phone with me so I can do stuff on it if I'm ever bored instead of trying to enjoy the moment. I hate the constant possibility of accidentally seeing things that I really shouldn't be seeing and don't want to be seeing. 

     The second step, Starve It, means that you have to cut off the life source of the sin. For me that was what I was doing in deleting so many apps. Sure you can say "I'm going to turn off my phone at a certain time every night so I'm not on it too much", but it doesn't really mean that much because as soon as you turn your phone back on, there's a plethora of notifications and new videos waiting for you, and you're basically back to square one and have to spend even more time just trying to catch back up. I had to chop off my obsessions at the root by deleting them altogether so that they're no longer right at my fingertips. 

     The third step, outsmart it, is probably the hardest, and is the one I haven't yet gotten to since I've just been to starve it. To outsmart your sin, you have to recognize that it is a temptation, and know how you can keep yourself from being put back in harms way. For example, if your sin is looking at dirty magazines, and you know that Sheetz sells Playboy, then you drive the extra mile to the next gas station instead. You have to be thinking ahead so you can strategize how not to be put in the way of temptation. I'm not sure yet exactly how I'm going to outsmart my internet problem, but I'll definitely be thinking about it in the next few days and try to invent some strategies.  

     The great thing about having a personal relationship with God is that even when you mess up--even when you re-download fruit ninja because you're just SOOOO bored (which hasn't happened yet but most likely will)-- he forgives you in the blink of an eye and will never love you any less for your struggles and shortcomings. It's like that Hawk Nelson song says, "If you could count the times I'r say you are forgiven, it's more than the drops in the ocean." That's a whole lot of forgiveness, and I'm ready to accept it if I fall back in my pursuit to overcome my internet obsession. 

-VaughnDL