Soundbites – The Starvation Diet

By John Miltenberger

Fellow patriots, please listen to this short, inspiring message from General Flynn. General Michael Flynn exemplifies patriotism, courage, and love of God and country - despite some of his own countrymen relentlessly attacking him. Donations for his defense are greatly appreciated. If you can only give $5.00, please do so - every little bit helps. Thank you so much, and God bless. Letter from General Flynn.

5/10/2017

In 2006, when I first began writing blogs, I realized I should stick to one-pagers because most contemporary folks can’t hang on any longer than one page. Sad, but true. Someone once commented that most Americans read at a third grade level. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know this…many do, all too many, and we tend to read in soundbite sized pieces. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this except that it is as true for the church people as anyone else…and it ought not to be that way.

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I know people who thoroughly chew their food, and they usually take small bites at that! What a waste of time! I learned to eat in the U.S. Army, where we were given a full five minutes to finish our meals, and if we looked up from our plate, we were ushered out of the mess hall to await the inevitable five mile shuffle following the meal. I still eat that way, although I forego the shuffle, and it’s a friendly point of contention between my chew-every-bite wife and me.

Yesterday, my wife emailed me a link to a fifty-five minute video sermon that was initially aired in the year 2000. And as I began to view the video content, I was struck by several things. First, fifty-five minutes is quite a time commitment in today’s soundbite world; second, I’m not at all sure I could have listened to the sermon in an audio format, and third, the content was pure gold, especially the last five minutes of it. I wonder, are there any of us left out there willing to invest in anything more taxing to our minds than soundbites? And I’m exclusively referencing the church, and I’m not excluding myself, although I wish I could.

It wasn’t that many generations ago that a man would pan for gold all day just to get a handful of gold dust, but I fear we’ve grown too impatient as a culture to work like that, and again, I reference today’s church. Our limits on what constitutes acceptable spiritual messages seems more based on time rather than content, and as such, I think we are missing so many timeless treasures that are right before us.

Those eternal treasures were mined and refined for us by previous generations of very serious Christians, in the hope that future generations (us) could build on those truths, but I think, if we think at all, we waste so much of our allotted time poking around for titillating soundbites. Perhaps we’d rather have the glitter than the gold. God doesn’t cast His pearls before swine, and perhaps this is a message for us today: soundbite Christianity is a starvation diet, and Christian people can die that way.

Rather than log onto Facebook so I can take a self-absorbed selfie of my latest restaurant experience, I use Facebook as a publishing medium in the hopes something I post can change a life for the better, and perhaps even draw someone closer to God. I’m not saying anyone who doesn’t do as I do is wrong, I’m merely pointing out that right now is the only time we have to voluntarily draw close to God; when we all stand before Him, as we all will, it will be too late to get it right.

Sometimes, people will post a fifty-five minute sermon on Facebook. Perhaps they’re willing to take a chance that somewhere out there is some hungry soul willing to dig out the genuine gold buried within it. There probably aren’t many left who are that hungry, that patient to endure risking fifty-five precious minutes of their time. Undoubtedly, there are probably many more than a few who think nothing of watching hours of television every day, or posting silly pictures of themselves on Facebook, in the vain hope anyone else really cares, but I’m banking that God will feed His Remnant real food.

I’m banking that the Remnant of God will be able to put off the headline-driven, soundbite diets that are robbing them of real life. Most real gold is harvested with hard work, and I’m worried I am being made too lazy with the fake gold so prevalent and so easily available to us. For me, the temptation is very real, and I don’t want to be dumbed down by soundbite Christianity.

I have to continually remind myself that I have a choice, and I would encourage the Remnant – take a chance and invest in the real gold. Sometimes it’s buried in a fifty-five minute meal. I too, have to learn to chew every bite.

John