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Prime Time Tweeting: This one is very personal

by Todd Horne  
4/21/2010 / Computers/Technology

So I set up my personal Twitter account a few months ago, mainly to tweet new articles I post to DerDiz. And of the two social networking "tools" I use, Facebook and Twitter, Twitter had by far been the less personal of the two.

The other day, though, Twitter rattled the cages more than a little bit, shaking Facebook's stronghold on social networking intimacy.

God can apparently use either potently.

Now I'm not saying Twitter is less personal for everyone. How would I know? But until God intervened the other day Facebook was where I had reconnected with more of my older friends, connected with my current circle of friends, and where I naturally found myself when news broke or where I went when wanting to talk, share or laugh with a friend or a group of friends.

I've experienced more life on Facebook than I have on Twitter. A few of my friends have died since we re-met on Facebook. As sad as it has been to lose contact with these friends this way, I thank God I had the chance to "talk" with them again before they met their untimely deaths. They were all in their 40s and at varying levels of health each. But, come on now, who amongst us, even if we are diagnosed with a fatal disease, expects to die in the prime of life?

That's actually an odd term when you think about it . . . prime of life. A misnomer. I mean how does one really know when the "prime of life" is when they are actually living, when they are in the thick of life.

You're in the thick of life the whole time you're alive, at any point, whether things are going well or not, whether you're up, down or in between. You might think you're up when, in tomorrow's retrospective reality, you're really down.

Whereever you are, though, if you're breathing, you're living. And if you're living, you are in the thick of life. But the thick of life is not synonymous with the prime of life now, is it? You could be 20, you could be 40 or you could be 90 and at any stage I would think you might be in the "prime" of your life? Whatever that means it is definitely a relative term. It is also a term that people cannot definitively use with accuracy, I don't think, until they can perceive and perceive fully all of whatever it is they are trying to label as prime.

Perception is really the issue. And maturity. Perception and maturity matter much more than age. Of course, the most important ingredient for maturity, some might argue, is experience. Experience, so the logic rolls, comes with age. Only thing is, I am not convinced that this is always true. Who is to say that a 20-year-old with less experience than a relative or friend of, let's say 45, does not possess more clarity and more maturity? Conventional wisdom might dictate the older one is the wiser, and probably more often than not this is the case. However, the fact is that the true measure of maturity in any individual is wisdom, not conventional, but Godly. Godly wisdom instilled in our hearts and minds changes our perceptions forever.

I see people with Twitter accounts, some that I follow or who follow me, that have thousands and even 10,000 or more followers. Talk about a lot of tweet impact and influence. Think about it. You've got something to say and you can unilaterally in an instant reach say 10,000 people or more with a 140-character message, including a link. Reminds me, sort of, of firing darts into a furnace of activity. You definitely have a reach, but how much real influence and how much real impact can you really have?

God tells me that if you can reach one person, influence one person, impact one person's life for Him, it is worth it. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son and whosoever believeth Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

God's been tweeting that message through man, from one person to another, for a long time. And the more quality time we spend with our Face in the Book the more Godly wisdom we can bring to the exchanges we are bound to make and people we are bound to meet.

If you don't think God can use technology for His purpose then you aren't paying attention. If you don't think Satan can exploit technology in an effort to confuse and confound people regardless of where they are in the thick of life, then you aren't paying attention.

Attention matters. It matters more than you can imagine. God is a jealous God. He created you and He wants your attention. He wants every bit of it and He wants it all of the time, forever and ever. That is God's desire.

When in the thick of your life you realize how real God is and you realize how much you want to give Him every ounce of you, and you are without reservation, you have reached the prime of your life. Age is irrelevant. . . As a matter of fact, you do not even have to still be physically alive for God to use His works through you to network socially with the dead and make them alive, spiritually, forever more and bring them into the primes of their lives forever more.

Oswald Chambers was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1874. He died in 1917. He spent a season in 1906 teaching at a school in Cincinnati, Ohio and two years later he was back on U.S. soil for another relatively short period of time. Some 48 years after Oswald Chambers died in Cairo, Egypt from a blood clot in his lung, in a small, rural town called Kentwood, Louisiana I was born to teenage parents.

I first met Oswald Chambers in 1996 when a co-worker of mine in Southern California gave me his book, My Utmost for His Highest, as a gift. I read it often, and found it quite hard to understand more often than not. The internet had only just begun and very few people were connected to it.

Earlier this year, about a month after I set up my personal Twitter account and some three years after re-committing my life to the Lord I received an email telling me that I had a new follower, Oswald Chambers. Every morning since that day, Oswald Chambers, physically dead since 1917 the year my deceased maternal grandmother was born has tweeted me on Twitter daily excerpts from My Utmost for His Highest. I see clearly, much more clearly, what Chambers is talking about every day. It's like I am Walking with the Lord while also in lockstep with a dead man from another century who lives.

You can't beat that for intimacy.

Chambers had this to say earlier this week:

"Are you ready to be poured out as an offering? It is an act of your will, not your emotions. Tell God you are ready to be offered as a sacrifice for Him. Then accept the consequences as they come, without any complaints, in spite of what God may send your way. God sends you through a crisis in private, where no other person can help you. From the outside your life may appear to be the same, but the difference is taking place in your will. Once you have experienced the crisis in your will, you will take no thought of the cost when it begins to affect you externally. If you don't deal with God on the level of your will first, the result will be only to arouse sympathy for yourself.

"Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar" ( Psalm 118:27 ). You must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire; willing to experience what the altar represents-burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose-the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God. But you don't eliminate it, God does. You "bind the sacrifice . . . to the horns of the altar" and see to it that you don't wallow in self-pity once the fire begins. After you have gone through the fire, there will be nothing that will be able to trouble or depress you. When another crisis arises, you will realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What fire lies ahead in your life?

"Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be."

Tweet. Tweet.

Todd Horne is a husband, a father, a writer, editor and publisher. He lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter and is a member of Crossroads Church. Todd publishes http://www.DerDiZ.com in his free time.

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