Christianity isn't easy to live out. Anyone proclaiming different simply hasn't read the Bible. Allow this to be our encouragement to stop sitting outside the ring, tape-up our knuckles, and go to work ("against lust, against pride, against me, 'til I die!"). Let us be active combatants in our faith, rather than just the punching dummy in the corner.

Links to John Piper's related messages:

• http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/how-to-kill-sin-part-1
  
• http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/how-to-kill-sin-part-2 
  

I noted in my first entry that I would share my experiences in my efforts trying to regain my digital societal freedom. Well this, is one of those times. 

I just recognized that I haven't heard a peep out of my phone in days! Not because it is on silent (it isn't), but rather having turned off my notifications and cleaning up my inboxes and such, has given me some distance from the rest of the digital world (so to speak). Admittedly, summer is usually a little slower in terms of communication for me. Anyway, it has been quite odd... all the silence. Don't get me wrong; it's great, but odd none the less. 

Also, I have found myself somewhat at ease knowing that I don't have that much to check anymore. But... and this is significant. It hasn't been completely simple in giving up time on the internet. I seem to find myself absent-mindedly going over the same information at times, thinking that I haven't read it yet. #Firstworldproblems for sure. 

Here's to hoping the rest of the month goes well. In the comments, tell me if you have thought about doing anything to recapture your time from digital society.

Hello from day #5 of 1.H.O.T. I hope your fourth of July was fun. My family and I got together with some friends for a bar-b-que. We had way more food than we should have eaten and I enjoyed every minute of it, especially the Oreo Mint Ice Cream my son made!
   On the technological front, two times during our evening, I found myself feeling a little odd due to my little experiment in cutting back the social media. At one point during the night, I got to texting a friend and recognized how out of place it was in the midst of the great time I was having with my friends there in the backyard. The other was when I noticed that my phone was eerily just sitting in my pocket and I had no need to be checking it every several minutes. Cutting the phone notifications has been a huge step in getting back in touch with the people that I am spending time with in person (read my second entry below). 
   But something else that has really helped tremendously, has been "Unfriending" people from Facebook. During my week of preparation, I cut my list in half (over 150 people) and my goal is to be well under 150. I know, I know. I can almost hear the cries now... "Don't unfriend me!" "Why would you EVER DO THAT?!?" Well, I can honestly say, after cutting all those people and having about 60 or so more that I am considering, my Facebook has become a joy again and not a burden. Like in olden times, it is something I can check really quick, instead of feeling stuck at cycling through my "News" Feed for 30 or more minutes.
   You can't tell me that there is something appealing of being in and out of Facebook in under 3 minutes, even with commenting on friends' stuff. That's right. Under 3 minutes from the newest posting to where I left off the last time I checked.
   Or maybe your comment would be something more like, "I don't know that I would be able to delete anyone." You probably have more than you realize when you add up the personalities that you really aren't friends with, that person you randomly added as a friend because of some event, and that person who only posts to FB once a month other than their game requests (which happens more often than you might realize). Also, I have found that I had many husband and wife teams, both as friends, either both posting the same stuff or one always posts while the other one rarely does. Choose one. Delete the other. It's ok... they will both still like being your IN REAL LIFE friend (probably).
   FB doesn't make deleting bunches of people easy either. You actually have to find each person one by one and delete them. You can do this via the News Feed when they randomly come up, but if you are going to be serious about doing a purge of over a hundred people, let me make a suggestion. Make a new list of friends called something like "delete." Then you can add friends into that list super quickly. From there you can look at your "delete" news feed only and then delete people from there a little faster. Give yourself some time to get this accomplished. To delete my 162 people, it took me more than 30 minutes to make the list and delete them at a pretty good clip. Once you've got your list cut in half, try going through your newly cleaned up friends list again and put another 1/3 of your remaining friends in the "delete" list for consideration for a few weeks. You might be surprised at how your attitude changes as you get the delete snowball rolling. People who made the cut the first round, might seem like legitimate candidates for getting cut the second time around.
   Since the big purge during my week of preparation, I have come to find out about "Hiding" a person from your news feed. This feature hides that person's posts without the social stigma of you unfriending them and they will never know they are hidden from your news feed. It allows you to honestly say, "No, I didn't see that picture you posted," because we all acknowledge, though we may not understand, that dynamic of FB- Once you get over 100 friends or so, you simply don't get every post from everyone. The hidden FB gremlins do some new math and try to predict whose posts you want to see instead of giving it all to you. I considered doing this for the 60 or so folks who are in my "second cut" consideration list. After thinking on this for about two weeks, I think I have formed my opinion about "Hiding" people. To me, I find this "Hiding" as a case of "Let your yes be yes and your no be no," (Matt 5:36-37) and a matter of honesty. I don't really understand the whole, "I would rather tell a small white lie to someone, than hurt their feelings" attitude, especially over something as trivial as FB. I would rather be able to confidently say that I am starting to reserve FB for my closest friends and family. Most people seem to be okay with this and it isn't as big of a deal as you might think. And you know what... now those people that I unfriended and I have something to talk about over coffee or dinner and make it a priority to catch up with one another. And that's not "Unfriendly" at all.   ;-)

So today was the first day of my new regimen of only having 1 Hour Of Technology a day (watching movies and e-reading excluded). Things went well, but only because I had made the proper preparations last week.
Yes, it took an several hours over the span of several days to be able to get to the point that I wouldn't be disturbed by my technology every 15 minutes. There were several things that I did that I will elaborate on throughout this week, and it wasn't long before I was seeing some real breakthroughs. 
The first, and probably most significant, that I would like to share with you today is getting a grip on your cell phone. Thanks to the way of things, most of us have smart phones now-a-days (with "dumb" phones being difficult to find). And though this is good for those who need to get our emails, quickly we start downloading apps, games, receiving notifications of status updates, and before you know it- it is hard not to go half an hour without looking at your phone.
Don't get me wrong... it certainly is nice to have something to do while you are waiting for your friend to come along and join you for coffee, or to check up on things while you are waiting as the 10th person in line at that store- you know the one. It has 25 checkout isles and only 5 that are open. Yeah, that one. But in all reality, things can get out of hand real quick. You go from checking whatever it is that the phone notified you about, to the next thing you know... you are taking a photo and posting it to Facebook with a silly comment while you are going down the highway (let's not mention how fast) in the rain {**meekly raise my own hand- guilty as charged}.
So here was the first, and most dramatic change I made last week (and the ramifications were tremendous)- I turned off ALL the notifications being displayed on my phone with the exception of phone calls and texts. No more "pushing" statuses and tweets. No more email chimes. No more being constantly in a digital loop and slave to my technology. Now that I am not getting every last thing pushed in front of my face, when I talk with people, I get a truly rich experience of hearing and seeing it from the source and not some 3 inch screen. 
The only thing that I have needed to be disciplined enough not to do, is constantly check these things manually on my own. But with having times I know I will be in front of a computer tends to help me shy away from pulling my phone out of my pocket every 15 minutes.
Let me challenge you: Don't let your phone get away with cyber bullying. Try it for a week and see how different your day becomes. Turn off ALL your phone notifications except your calls and texts.