Turn Your Eyes from Worthless Things
By: Amanda Idleman
Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word. - Psalm 119:37
Your eyes are a powerful tiny part of your body. What you say is okay to view influences how you think in huge ways. As Christ-followers we should be diligent in guarding our eyes and turning away from looking at worthless things!
In our culture, there is a lot of competition for our attention. We have social media, advertisements we see at every turn. Netflix, YouTube, and so many other forms of media vying for our attention. Even more dangerous are darker forms of media that can grab our lives, hold our eyes captive through addiction, and steal the health from our marriages.
It’s a jungle out there! Our culture wants to sell us the lie that sinister media, sexual content, and gruesome violence on our screens is okay because it’s just “entertainment.” We want to ignore the obvious truth that the Bible points us to, which says what we view either brings us life or leads us towards sin and death.
When we watch evil on a screen, we are allowing worthless things to occupy our minds and hearts! In our marriages there is an extra danger in that when we allow sin-filled media into our homes; it can change how we view each other.
When we watch sexually explicit content, it stirs up lust for others. It creates unrealistic expectations for our own sexual encounters. Let’s be real; married life has its ups and downs when it comes to sexual intimacy. We are in this thing for a lifetime. We have kids, stress, jobs, and so much more that make an impact on our private time. Every time is not like the movies but sometimes it is. That’s totally okay but the media can skew our expectations.
When we spend too much time viewing other people’s seemingly “perfect lives” online, it can be easy to compare our real life to their fake online lives. This can lead us to spend money we don’t have, blame our spouses for not giving us the lives we think we “deserve”, or become unsatisfied with the situations God has placed us in. We have to protect our hearts from the “worthless” comparison that steals joy and contentment from our homes.
Angry, violent, and crude media can steal our patience and stir up anger in our hearts! Stress, kids, and other responsibilities can make it hard enough to keep our cool with those who are closest to us. When crude language or violent media are a part of our norm, it brings anger to the surface of our thoughts, making it harder to live our lives with self-control.
On the flip side, putting extra effort to consume life-giving media helps to give us life in the areas that we may struggle with. If we are depressed, reading words of love and hope from the Bible can be powerful in changing our mood. If we are feeling dissatisfied with our spouse, we need to feed our hearts with messages of encouragement to persevere through these hard times. Feeding our hearts with the right images can make the difference between success and failure for our homes.
Amanda Idleman is a writer whose passion is to encourage others to live joyfully. She writes devotions for the Daily Bible Devotions App, she has work published with Her View from Home, also for the MOPS Blog, and is a regular contributor for Crosswalk.com. You can find out more about Amanda on her blog or follow her on Instagram.
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Originally published Tuesday, 03 September 2024.
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