Everywhere you look you see negativity and panic concerning politics and the state of the world. Christians start their day with whatever assorted negativity is on the local news and they take that negative energy into the workplace.
Christians are overtaken by a sense of fear about how the world is turning and about the fate of the next generation. These people are too entangled with the world.
As we have explored before, the Kingdom of God never dies, it simply relocates. Yet even while knowing this most Christians are fearful about the culture of America. These Christians are prioritizing their personal comfort over their faith. They know that moving to Africa or some island would cost them a lot of time and comfort and they do not want to leave.
These Christians are worldly.
They know more about current politics than they do about the Bible.
They can tell you who is currently in office, but they couldn’t list five of the fifteen judges of Israel.
They know dozens of laws and tax codes, but you can count on two hands the number of Bible verses they know.
You can count on one hand the number of Bible verses they have learned in the past year.
This is a problem of priority. We have begun to place too much emphasis on this physical world we find ourselves in.
People forget that we die at the end of life, and where we go next is forever. There are only two possible places to go after death. One of them is eternal life and one of them is infinite death. How can we forget this and become entrenched in the world and in its meaningless trifles?
We have forgotten what is important. We sit around ingesting Fox News or CNN or any other mainstream outlet and wonder why our faith isn’t growing. Because we haven’t put any time into our faith!
We start the day with two hours of news yet forget to read our Bible every day.
Pathetic.
We need to get our priorities in order. God should always be at the forefront of our life, but we have placed the world at the front. We think about the world and politics more in one day than we think about God over the course of a year.
We care too much about political parties and the state of the world.
We care too much about the meaningless affairs of the world.
We care too little about God and about faith.
Today is the day we get our priorities in order. Turn off the news, it does not profit you. Do you even remember what was on the news last week? Last Month? Last year? I doubt it. But you definitely remember how watching the news made you feel: unhappy, depressed, and anxious.
There is no need for this to be our way of life. If we are unhappy and anxious we can never hope to convert other people to Christianity. Who wants to be part of a group of unhappy, depressed, and anxious people?
Of course, none of this is to say that politics and the state of the world is unimportant. It is very important – but it isn’t everything.
I’m not telling you to be ignorant of the state of the world. I’m not telling you to be uninvolved with politics.
I’m telling you to keep those things where they should be – below God in priority.
You need to be able to watch the news, catch up on politics, be aware of current events without having it bother your emotional state. This is absolutely key.
I’ll give you an exercise I performed to acquire this skill. It is simple, and involves managing your physiology. Because if you can manage your physiology, you can manage your mind and emoitons much better.
Dial up whatever news source you listen to. Preferably you can do this with some form of media that you can pause and restart.
Next, start listening to it and start a timer. While you listen, hold awareness on your bdy and emotions. Once you feel those old negative emotions bubble up [fear, anger, worry, etc.] stop your timer and pause your news source.
Now you have to wait for those sensations to go away. Introduce positive thoughts and do some deep diaphragmatic breathing. Bring your heart rate back down to its resting level and be aware of how those hot emotions cool off and leave your body. Do not restart your news source until you are as calm and peaceful as you were before you started. Then you may restart, and repeat the exercise.
Also, use your timer to record how long it takes before you get emotionally worked up. And then time how long it takes to cool off. Record and keep track of these numbers so you monitor your progress over time. You will find that as you progress, you are able to last much longer without feeling negative emotions.
You will also be much more powerful because you will be able to maintain a calm, cool, collected emotional state in the midst of disturbing stimuli. That will make you infinitely powerful in a world of people ruled by their emotions.
You are the general with your perspective elevated above the battlefield. You can now see things more clearly than the men engaged in the battle who are overcome with fear and stress. you have calmed your mind and physiology and can command yourself.
That is something to be proud of, not many people can do that.
You can also repeat this exercise in other areas of your life.
Correct your mindsets and place God back at the highest priority where He belongs.