[Tuesday's Devotional] - Who are you in touch with?

Some years ago a website called ‘Friends Reunited’ was launched. It allowed you to post your particulars under your school year and the name of your primary school, secondary school and university etc. It was a way of finding people from your past that you had lost touch with. The advent of Facebook meant that ‘Friends Reunited’ simply became a tool for finding friends to add to your Facebook list. Now you can expect to be in almost daily contact with people that you may not have seen for years via online social media. Personally I know that I wouldn’t be in contact with my cousins ‘Simon and Rachel’from one decade’ end to another if not for Facebook. I would completely have lost touch with Dan an old school friend too by now if not for daily meetings with his thoughts on Twitter and FB. The world has changed massively and quickly as has the way we communicate.

So what does this mean for us as Christians? We will explore tomorrow how we are people of greater influence because of online social media, but for today the question is, how do we use our connections for Christ’s kingdom? The answer, I believe, is not simply to make every single post evangelistic.  I have at least one atheist friend who dislikes reading my ‘Gody’ thoughts, but remains my Facebook friend because of the other things that I post too.  The fact that she dislikes my ‘Gody’ posts means she is reading them!  But it strikes me that it is not just the ‘Gody’ posts that witness to my Christian faith.  Because I am a Christian and that is known by people, every post that I put up is a witness to my Christian faith for good or ill.  The fact is that Christian social media users are online witnesses to Jesus and potential online evangelists.  We may not be good at it, but our every post tells people about the difference that Jesus does or does not make in our lives.  It is easy to see our online activity as ‘virtual’ and removed from our face to face interactions with people, but what we post (say) online has a real impact on the reader.

…and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8  [NIV]

For prayer… Talk to God about how you reflect him online.

John Martin-Jones