Less than two weeks ago, I asked a friend at a cross country meet far from home which company he hired to do their family's custom closets. The next day, ads for the company he hired were all over my browser and Facebook pages. Soon after, my husband and I were both being bombarded by internet ads, phone calls, and emails from custom closet companies.
With all these ads and proposals in our faces, we felt an urgency to make a decision and place an order (how much of that urgency was out of a desire for an earthly product vs. a desire to stop seeing those annoying ads is unclear). After the order was placed, the ads did not go away. They only become more irritating. We may be so sick of the ads (despite having sophisticated ad blocking software installed on our PCs) that we may end up loathing the closet organization solution we just purchased last night by the time the items arrive and certainly before they are all assembled and installed.
That's how it goes with the things of this world. Big Brother's targeted advertising only amplifies and speeds up the process. We see something someone else has. We compare it to what we have and decide we must have it. The more ads we see the more urgent the perceived need becomes. So we waste time evaluating options, checking the budget, planning, shopping, assembling, installing, and maintaining what we just had to have only to realize any perceived happiness it brought us was fleeting. Soon we despise it for the way it owns us.
Conversely, the internet can flood my feeds, inbox, and internet searches with scriptures, Biblical precepts, sermons, praises, testimonies of God's work in individual lives, or affirmations of God's unchanging truth, and it never ever grows old. I dare you to try to give me so much Jesus that I am weary of Him. It will not happen. Only He fully satisfies today, tomorrow, and forever. Instead of resenting the way earthly stuff owns me, it is pure joy to serve my God, and perfect peace abounds as I gladly surrender to His full ownership of me.
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." - (Matthew 6:19-20)
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)
For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things. (Psalm 107:9)
In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)
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