Who are you following?

My name is Kimber, and I am a Twitter addict.
For years, I never understood the hype about Twitter. Limiting yourself to 140 characters? Seriously? As some of you may know, I'm not one to limit myself when it comes to something I have to say. (Comments regarding my not posting for a month or much this summer will be ignored. Peter.)
So when I finally caved and got a Twitter account a while back, I really took a while to warm up to it. Who did I want to see tweets from? My friends, obviously, even though for a while it was just like a limited Facebook. Pretty lame. And it took me some time to remember I couldn't send the same things to Twitter and Facebook from my phone since the character allotment is different for each.
Then, I realized I could follow celebrities. I'm not one to obsess over celebs typically, but when I realized that people such as these: Adam Richman (from Travel Channel's Man vs. Food, my favorite show hosted by my future husband. Just gotta get him to love Jesus.), Adam Levine (lead singer of Maroon 5 and also another future husband that needs some serious introductions to Jesus), and Michael Phelps (I'm not going to explain who this is because if you don't know who it is then you've been living under a rock for approximately the last 12 years of Olympics) had Twitter accounts, then all bets were off. I was in.
I quickly became addicted.
What could I say that would make others laugh in less than 140 characters? I could tweet my friends instead of texting so others could see our hilarity and be so jealous. I hate posting pictures of myself on twitter unless I'm with friends, so I made full use of finding opportunities to send a picture. Hashtag, addict.
(#addict. Had to.)
Today, at work, the store was a bit slow. Naturally, the dream team (consisting of some of my favorite people to work with) decided to make a Twitter account for our Subway. We immediately took pictures and sent them to the account. Obviously. 

Jay thinks he's Bolt and Blake's "in charge." Typical.

The first week of August is always the family camp meeting for my church camp, Whitehall. Some of you who have been around for a while may remember me talking about it before. Every year I always go home with something placed on my heart, and this year was no different. I took away so many incredible things from camp this year, but one thing really made me pause and think.

The speaker at the barn this year was amazing. He had a way of connecting to each and every person during each sermon. One night, he was talking about sincerity of our faith. He challenged the group to think about different aspects of their faith and how they measured up - were they on Facebook more than reading their Bible? Were they talking to friends more about silly things rather than asking them about their belief in God?

Were they tweeting as much as they were praying?

Oops. 

Naturally, that stung. Quite a bit, actually. I remember breaking into small groups the next morning during the morning devotion time, where I was a leader, and admitting that I passed 5,000 tweets the week before camp. The group of young girls I was leading laughed, but inside, a part of me cringed. Seriously, 5,000 tweets but not nearly as many prayers?

In the battle of my faith vs. Twitter, who was I really following?

Luke 9:23 says this:

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Pretty sure it doesn't say in the New Testament that God has a Twitter and you can follow Him that way. Sure, there are plenty of parody accounts you could actually follow. But is that seriously what you would want? The creator of the universe is inviting you to follow Him daily - far away from the internet, from your phone, and from all sorts of social networking. He wants you to follow Him in every step of your life. 

I will be the first to say that my Twitter addiction is still something I deal with. I have Twitter up right now, but I haven't checked it too many times while writing this post - I think. I may have lost count. I checked my profile and saw that I have 5,199 tweets right now. Still deciding if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.

Anyways.

Your NR challenge is this: step back and take a look at your own life. I did, and found that rather than following God with all my heart, I was following Michael Phelps and retweeting pictures he tweeted from the pool. (Sorry, men that follow me on Twitter. Ladies, you're welcome. And God? Great work.) I have to change who I'm subscribing to. What do you have to look at? Take a look. You may be surprised.

Are you in?

-Kimber.