A Tool for Whom?

A Tool for Whom?

Much has been said against the internet. We’ve all heard the cries of the mis-informed, the PC police, and the plain legalistic religious zealots. It is a pornographic playground. It is a paedophiles delight. It is temptation for the weak and gamblers Death Valley. In short it is nothing short of being the Devils weapon.

Well – I have a different perspective for you. Despite all the possible uses for the enemy, it can also be used as a powerful weapon of God too. There is a very large Christian community of all flavours who use, for example, Twitter – a chat room or social networking tool. Personally, I have a few thousand contacts on Twitter, many of whom are Christians. Then there’s the ‘big one’, aka Facebook, with a global audience of several millions and a huge Christian following.

Oh sure, you get the weirdo’s and the cranks, and the plain ornery folk. Yet lining up with them are the atheists and agnostics, the political animals and the usual assortment of frustrated, and usually completely untalented soap-boxers. All of these and Christians too – isn’t that just wonderful? These internet programs gather together a wonderfully eclectic collection of Gods most famous creations – people. As Christians, and especially as Christian pastors and leaders, we are urged to ‘Love the people, to love the people, and to love the people.’ So let me tell you just one story, a testimony, of the good that can come from “the devils toolkit” or internet as it’s best known.

Many of you on Facebook or Twitter will know this story. In March 2006, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and, despite all our prayers and the hospital treatment, she died in April 2007. I received a prophecy at that time that the Lord had another wife for me but I wasn’t really interested at that time. Instead, I ‘threw’ myself into ministry with my friend Peter and the UK based RoFMI ministry run by Peter and his wife Glenys. We travelled most of Western Europe and did around 100 or so trips together flying around 200,000 miles altogether. Whilst at home, on my own, I joined Twitter, the internet social media chat room.. I wrote blogs – short articles – for a Christian organisation.

One day, I got a response to a blog I wrote asking me to have a look at another blog and critique it. The writer was a lady from Fort Worth in Texas and I told her she wrote very well. I recommended her to the people I wrote for and she too became a blog writer for them. We communicated spasmodically until one day, I was briefly hospitalised with a bout of labyrinthitis – a powerful vertigo virus that stopped me driving and even walking out on my own for about 3 weeks. Peter and the rest of the RoFMI team came over to pray for me. While he was there, Peter remembered the prophecy given three years earlier about ‘another wife’ and he promptly called her in. He spoke into being that which was not.

A few days later, the lady from Texas and I resumed our email swapping. To cut a long story short, within three weeks, and despite the fact that we had never even spoken let alone met, we both knew that she and I would be married. We both fell head over heels in love – all through the medium known as Twitter, the internet social media site. We eventually met in September and then in November 2010, I flew to Fort Worth and we married in a chapel in the hospital where she worked. Her name is Linda and we love each other deeply and are now working together for the Lord.

So what is the point of all this? What exactly am I saying? Simply this – the Internet is the same as any other social communications medium – it can be used for good as well as evil. It can be used by the devil and it can be used by God. So, before you discard anything in this world, consider first if it can be used in the Lords service too. If it can, then use it for Him and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Was it not William Booth, when criticised for taking money in bars, who said, “We will take the devils money, consecrate it, bless it, and use it for Gods work.” Likewise we can take the devils weapons, consecrate them, bless them, and use them for Gods purposes.

Just a suggestion – that’s all.