why do you post what you post?

​Before you hit “post,” do you ever stop and ask yourself why? Are you sharing something helpful? Asking honestly for support? Encouraging someone? Or have you gotten into the habit of turning every inconvenience into a public crisis?
Not everything needs an audience. Some business should stay private. Some thoughts need to be taken captive, not walked around social media town like a little dog without a leash, barking at everything that moves.
There is a difference between reaching out when you’re struggling and making complaining your daily content. Real pain deserves compassion. Asking for help is not weakness. But every frustrating moment is not a tragedy, and every responsibility is not an unfair burden. Sometimes it’s simply life—the ordinary work of showing up, keeping commitments, caring for people, and doing things we don’t particularly feel like doing. Doing life with the faith, hope, and confidence of who is in control of our lives. Strong people don’t go around screaming how strong they are. They simply live life strong. Most of the time you won’t know what is going on in their life unless there is a purposeful sit down with them. You won’t know because they don’t have time to post about the difficulties of what they are doing. They are too busy grinding out the success. Good leaders don’t tell everyone how hard things are. They can’t afford to waste the energy. They get busy doing the hard stuff, without complaining and the need to make the hard stuff public. They don’t need the praise of others to convince them of their self-worth. Their look is inward and not outward. 
Sometimes we make life feel heavier by constantly telling ourselves—and everyone else—how heavy and hard it is. Social media allows us to tell that story and infect so many people with the same heavy burden.
i think Facebook needs a special section called the “Facebook Whinery.”
A place where certain posts could sit and age before they reach the public. Let that complaint ferment a little. Give that frustration time to settle. Let that hill that we are calling a mountain come into better focus. By tomorrow, we might decide it needs a little perspective instead of an audience. If those posts stayed in the Facebook Whinery for a little while, maybe after perspective, there could be more deletes and fewer infectious posts. Maybe we could post no “whine” before it’s time.
Some posts don’t need a platform full of comments. They need a cooling-off period.
Before posting, it might help to ask:
“Am I looking for support, or am I fishing for applause?”
“Do I want help moving forward, or do I want everyone to agree that I’ve been wronged?”
“Am I sharing a hard moment—or turning a hard moment into the story of my whole life?”
Those questions are worth asking ourselves, not just applying them to everybody else.
 
i know some people carrying burdens most people never see. Their lives are genuinely difficult, yet they still find ways to encourage, serve, and point others to Christ. That doesn’t mean they never hurt or never need help. It means their pain isn’t the only thing they have to offer. They don’t feel the need to involve an audience to fight through their difficulty. In fact, you may never read about their struggle or their victory. They simply are elevated by the heart attitude by which they take on day-to-day life. Their example reminds me that we can be honest about hardship when it is necessary and productive, most of the time private, without letting hardship become our entire message.
And let’s be honest: doing everyday things doesn’t always require a standing ovation. Doing things that many before and many after us can and will do doesn’t require 110 likes and 50 hearts. We do the work because it’s ours to do. We take care of our families. We go to work. We handle the inconveniences and adjustments that life brings. We do the next right thing, even when nobody notices, because it is ours to do. There is dignity in that. There is strength in living a good life, doing hard things, and not so hard things, without needing every moment publicly affirmed.
As Christians, we should also remember that our words matter online as much as they do face to face. A complaint doesn’t become more constructive because we put it in a Facebook post. It becomes more destructive because of the size of the audience. It does not have less effect in the form of a post, quite the opposite, because it gets passed on to more and more people. Before you post, ask yourself, are your words making room for gratitude, grace, and truth—or feeding resentment in yourself and others? As Christians we should do life well. Yes, even hard things well. God has made us different. Embrace things in a way that your dependence is not on the comments and responses of others. Instead, look up and be more concerned about what the Lord Jesus says and thinks more than the applause, sympathy, and agreement of the social media world. 
This isn’t a call to pretend everything is wonderful. Nobody needs a polished performance of a perfect life. If you’re hurting, say so, with purpose. If you need help, ask. But there’s a difference between being real and rehearsing discontent until it becomes your outlook. Sometimes we play the victim so long that the smallest of things holds us in the deep end of being the victim. So much so that it becomes a weight that gets heavier and heavier, more difficult to swim out of the deep end.
We can’t control every circumstance, but we can pay attention to the story we keep telling about our lives. The story we keep telling has an impact on others, but make no mistake, the story we keep telling has an impact on ourselves. Additionally, the agreement we get on social media does far more damage than good. It elevates the problems in the lives of others and tears down the view of what it means to walk with Christ. We are children of God, and we are sanctified, set apart, and we handle life differently than the world. Our posts should reflect that truth. If not, then we are not representing the Kingdom of God as a Hard Fighting Soldier.
So, before you post, pause. Pray. Get some perspective. Consider whether that thought belongs on your page, in a private conversation, or between you and God.
And if it’s just a little everyday whine?
Let it age in the Facebook Whinery while you go live your life, do hard things with the strength of the Lord, not the strength of you.

You might ask why do you pastor post this? Well i post this in hopes of opening someone’s eyes to how they are influencing others and how they are affecting both themselves and those around them. Matthew 5:13 says we are to flavor the earth, 13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” 

We have a responsibility to flavor, to affect to be an influence on all around us to Christ. So, when you post things with a complaining attitude you are pushing people away from Jesus not to Jesus. 
Our commission is not optional we are commanded to go and make disciples. Matthew 28:19-20 tells us clearly that we are commissioned to do the work of the kingdom, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

When you influence people negatively you are not making disciples for Christ, quite the contrary. You are built for better than that, you are stronger than that, you are a child of the Most High God, go therefore in the strength of the Lord Jesus!
 
dw