A gentle rebuke

I have dropped away from social media for a time. Call it a “Holy Spirit timeout.” The rebuke came this morning when I was in a men’s Bible study and we were reading in 2 Timothy 2. This phrase in v. 25 stuck out:

correcting his opponents with gentleness…

Gentleness. It’s not that correction wasn’t necessary. It was the attitude that made the difference.

Gentleness has not been my forte for a very long time. Right then, with that phrase jumping out at me, the Holy Spirit went to work.

“You haven’t been gentle. This was missing the last year of ministry before the move. It’s been missing on social media. Stop. Now.”

To which my ego promptly jumped in, “But what about your blog posts?”

So, this will probably become more of a diary that will be largely private online. My main generator was social media. Oh, well. I wasn’t setting any records on this thing anyway. I have given Facebook and Twitter a rest. Instagram will stay active because I post pictures without comment there.

I will still have strong opinions. I just need to work on dialogue more. I do it fairly well in person. I need to modify my approach to the online side.

For now, this is the place to “see” me and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. I hope you keep reading. If it’s worth sharing in your social media space, I hope you would share it.

I need a return to a spirit of gentleness in all things. This is the Holy Spirit exercise I take right now.

Blessings!