Thanks, everyone, for your comments on Friday about this tricky topic. Isn't it a hard one!

If you missed part one of this conversation, you can find it here.

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22-23, KJV)

This verse has always told me that what I choose to look at, read, watch, and listen to will affect my spiritual health. I also believe it's the same for my family: What they look at will go into their hearts.

Over the years, God has also shown us the occasional illustration of this in this ministry. Some of these aren't my stories, but they're things I remember from years past. Times when God made us at least aware -- It's as if he gave us some food for thought. See what you think of these five stories:

Story #1

Lynn once was shown visually by God a black cloud of darkness sweeping from the TV straight to her husband, because of the kinds of shows that he was watching. 

Story #2

Lynn was also once challenged by God about something she was watching on TV and was asked: "Why are you watching bloodshed?"

Story #3

My family and I were sat down once to watch a movie on our regular Friday movie night. Our kids were pre-teens, and usually we would watch something family friendly but this time we chose a well-known movie that happened to have murder and fear in it but a great plot. As the opening scene of the movie came up on the screen, my son Miles said, "Mum I feel like I've got spiders crawling on me, have I got insects on me? I can feel spiders."

When he told me that I wondered if God was showing me that when I expose him to a film like this, I'm letting the demonic get closer to him, even touch him. Perhaps?

Story #4

God gave me a vision once of kids on phones, and showed me that if I don't guard what's coming onto their screen it's like allowing a weirdo to sit next to them whispering all kinds of 'stuff' in their ear.

Story #5 

God told me once that technology gets in the way of salvation; and has made life very difficult for those of us who want to win our loved ones to him.

**

Makes sense. But 'oh dear', because it's hard! Well, based on the above stories, I'd say that what we take from that is a prompt that it's a battle worth engaging in. 

We might not feel strong enough, or equipped, but we can start with two simple things. First of all (and this one's easy peasy): we can anoint all of our devices in our homes with oil and pray over them. Take some time over that, and perhaps also fast for the health of our home.

Then, second, we can ask the Holy Spirit afresh for wisdom and energy to navigate this one. Ask for our views on media to become aligned with God's views and ask him to guide us on a case-by-case basis. Ask for his help and commit to getting our home and families as healthy as possible. We are not tackling this without Jesus!

Then we can then make a call on certain things. There are degrees of this: Some things you really don't want in your home, and other things are not as bad but still not ideal.  I was interested in the comments to hear from Lynn and Ian that they both say no to having witchcraft or occult activity on media in their homes and I know Amanda has that mindset too, as do I. All four of us have a serious aversion to that so I'd say if we're all in agreement about that one, it's worth noting. 

On that note, I will write on Wednesday about witchcraft and kids' media. But for now has the above raised any further thoughts you'd like to share? Let's keep chatting!

Ann