Sub-tweet/post…

You’ve heard the term and if not you’ve seen it happen. “It’s the shortening of “subliminal tweet/post” which is directly referring to a particular person without mentioning their name or directly mentioning them and it basically indicates that the tweet in which the hashtag is used is a subliminal tweet.”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been a user and/or victim to this. Excuse me as I take a moment to raise both hands in the air…

I think everyone reading this can think of a time that would cause their hands to the sky.

Let me talk about me so I won’t talk about you and then see if you can relate at some point…

Facebook and twitter were more than just social networks for me, they were escapes from reality so that I could express my feelings. You know, how I truly felt, because there I didn’t have to say anything to the person I was dealing with. In fact, I didn’t have to say anything to anyone about anybody. I could express how I felt without a name. Of course the person would know that I was talking about them since they are aware of the situation. But to me, that didn’t matter. I didn’t use their name so they are walking under assumption right?!

My church has been in Vacation Bible School this week and I teach the teens and on last night I taught on the breastplate of righteousness. Now righteousness, I know, if being in right standing with God, point-blank period.

Well after all the classes and activities are finished, we all meet in the sanctuary and each class picks one or two people to share about what they learned in their class. Well the last class to present was the adult class. The one volunteer got up and talked about not leaving the house without your breastplate of righteousness and then she said something that made me stop and think. She said that to walk in righteousness we must practice mercy. Mercy; not giving someone something that they deserve.

Thinking on mercy led me to think on forgiveness which then led me to all the crazy situations that I have found myself in within the last two months then I thought on how I responded to those situations.

I don’t like drama and I hate talking about people negatively behind their back so I keep my friend number low so that I won’t even have the chance to do so but I found my responses were always sub-responses. My dear friends twitter and Facebook.

This morning on my way to work I was laughing to myself and thinking on how ridiculous it is for people to make statuses to say that they don’t care about this or they are not worried about that. When obviously, you must be concerned about it if you take the time to type it up in a status or tweet. Then I stopped laughing and thought, “Wait!!! I’ve done that! I do that!!”

Then it hit me, isn’t a sub-tweet and sub-post the same thing as back-biting or talking about someone, maybe even gossiping?!  Yes.

Is that Christ-like? No.

So am I practicing the righteousness that I just taught my teen class to practice if I’m not being Christ-like? Not at all.

The world tells us to go ahead and to let it all out but God urges differently in His word. He lets us know that a soft answer turns away wrath and that we are to forgive our brother/sister over and over and over again. He tells us to bless those that persecute us and to always walk in love.

We can say that we forgave a person and act cordial towards them but if we go and hit our social networks about the situation newsflash… we haven’t truly forgave.

The bible talks about a man who owed $100,000 to the king so that king ordered the man and everything that pertained to him to be sold as slaves. The man threw himself at the kings feet and begged for another chance and the king agreed and forgave his debt of $100,000. Right after leaving the king’s presence he saw a man who owed him $10 and he ran up to him and demanded that he pay. The man didn’t have the money so the man who had been forgiven of his debt a few moments ago called the authority and had the other man thrown in jail until he was able to pay the $10 he owed him. The king heard of this and got extremely angry. And threw him in jail until he could repay his entire debt.

How can we, as Christians, ask Christ for his mercy, forgiveness, and restoration when we are not willing to let it go.

I had to repent this morning because I saw myself in this scripture. When we ask Christ to forgive us and truly mean it beyond our words He does and then he forgets it ever happened and doesn’t bring it up again.

I thought I had forgiven individuals that had hurt me in the past couple of months but if the opportunity came up I was going to talk about it, tweet about it, or make a Facebook status about it. And that is not Christ-like. I was not living righteously before Christ.

To live righteously we are going to have to give up our right to hold grudges, our negative sub-posts and sub-tweets, our brick walls that we tend to put up when someone crosses us, and so much more. We have to carry our cross as we follow Him. It might be heavy and uncomfortable. It might even leave bruises or scars but God is a healer all things, a restorer of all things, a deliverer of all things, and so much more. Whatever we need to come out of bondage, He is that.

If you have participated in sub-tweets/posts, apologize and repent to God and the person who it was aimed at. If you’ve been a victim of this, forgive. No need to comfort or condemn, simply forgive.

I’m so glad God loves me enough to reveal my mess to myself. He is such a “Wow” God!

In love,

C.B.