Hesitations in entering the Blogging World

By God’s grace, one of the New Year’s resolutions I pray I will maintain through the year is to keep a blog detailing how God is working in my faith walk, in my marriage and in my service to God's church.

For the readers out there who stumble across my blog or who will regularly check in please know that I write this blog with some reservations. First of all, I feel reticent in keeping a blog because it seems to perpetuate the narcissism of our world that is all too prevalent in our Tweeting, Facebook culture. Do I really need to make known what is happening in my life? Do other people/should other people really care? My hope and prayer though is that the Holy Spirit might use this blog to minister to folks in His sovereign ways.

The other major hesitation to write a blog was because of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:1 that says, “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven” (NLT). Jesus goes on to detail to his disciples and the crowd at hand (5:1) that followers of Christ should not only not do good deeds publicly, but to also be aware of how they: give alms (6:2), pray  (6:5), fast (6:15) and probably others that I’m not remembering at this hour. The last thing I want this blog to do is make me like the hypocrites that Jesus is preaching against in this pericope.

But, Jesus is also clear in this Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:14-16 that followers of Christ “are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. … let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father” (NLT). Clearly, it seems that giving alms, prayer, fasting, blogging or any other spiritual discipline (is blogging a spiritual discipline? I guess it is a 21^st century journaling of sorts) is all about our motives. Is our motive for doing these things to be noticed? If so, then we are the hypocrites that Jesus was so against. Or is our motive to glorify God? If so, then we are accurately living out Christ’s command to let our light shine. My hope and prayer is that through this blog I can detail the ways I have seen our gracious and Heavenly Father be the faithful God that I know that He is!

The reality, as I know it, is that I am also a guy who likes to keep going and doing. I want to check off my to-do list (just ask my wife). And so my hope and prayer is that this blog will also help me to slow down and to reflect on how God is working and moving. My desire is through this blogging venture I might come to better know the deep truth of Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God!” (NLT)

So if you have made it this far, thank you! And I hope and pray this process, this journey, will be in the spirit of Ephesians 4:29, “let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them” (NLT). And most of all, may it glorify and honor the Real Author, the most holy “Blogger” Himself, our Triune Heavenly Father who authored the inspired Holy Scriptures which guides our lives and practice. Amen!

p.s. I just thought of another reason to blog, or 6 reasons … thanks John Piper. http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/6-reasons-pastors-should-blog

p.p.s. Here’s another Brother in Christ and his thoughts about blogging http://www.worshipmatters.com/2005/11/02/blogging-to-worship-god/ And if you read through part 1 then check out part 2, even more powerful, I thought.