Recently I received a request to send everything to a certain person via email instead of by text because the person was having problems with receiving texts. My thought was that I didn’t remember ever sending this (very nice by the way) person any text messages. After a few minutes God got my head straight and I think I know what’s going on. What a refreshing change!
At our church, Amana Christian Fellowship, we have something called “Amana Prayer Partners.” We send reminders of church events, prayer requests and announcements, the Daily Bread daily devotional, and “Nick’s Walk.” It seems to work pretty well and all anyone has to do to get plugged into that is to provide the church with their email address. In fact, you can do that here. If they then have a prayer request or need, they simply send an email to amanaprayerpartners@googlegroups.com. Of course, they can fill out a form on the church’s web site, or send me an email, or call me or send me a letter, I guess. But sending the email directly is the easiest thing.
Not that long ago, only very computer savy people communicated by email. Now, it has largely replaced “snail” mail. For you younger folks, that’s putting a piece of paper in an envelope, putting a stamp on it and taking it to the post office. Very old fashion, I admit. But if you’ll pass by any post office you will see people, mostly old like me, standing in line to perform this ancient ritual. Old habits die hard.
Of course in 2011, many people communicate, sometimes exclusively, on Facebook. For those people, if they “like” Amana Christian Fellowship they will see on their Facebook page everything which Amana Christian Fellowship posts, along with the posts of all their “friends” and organizations, restaurants, whatever, that they ‘like.” If you are a Facebook person, click here and “Like” Amana Christian Fellowship. You will get all the info and prayer requests through Facebook. This is the same info that someone gets by email who has “signed up” to join Amana Prayer Partners. If course, with the New Facebook, they will start seeing stuff the didn’t ask for, but that’s for another day.
Some folks are Tweeters, you can follow Amana’s postings.
Of course, the youngest and the coolest (is that still a word) communicate mainly by text. This generation will have the strongest thumbs since the dawn of time. If texting is your thing, text “follow amanachristian” to 40404 and you will be texted all the Amana Prayer Partner reminders, prayer requests and announcements and so on.
If you surf the internet at all, it’s not long before you have signed up for tons of email, “liked” a whole bunch of things, are “following” everyone in the known universe, between texting everyone you know and some you don’t.
It’s easy to forget when your thumbs are numb, or your email inbox is full of “spam” that you started all this. For example, someone might say why is Amana (or Nick) texting me, emailing me, and facebooking me all the same stuff? Well, I’m not. Like kids will say, “You asked for it.”
But, thank the Lord, if you just remember that you are in control, you can stop the flood of information. You have the power. You can unsubscribe from any emails you are getting. Nice guys (like me) will take you off their emailing list. If they don’t, you can always filter out any emails from such annoying types. We can also “unlike” what we have “liked” before or “unfollow” what we have been following.
If you receive Nick’s Walk, I hope it blesses you; but if you wish I would just shut up that can be arranged. You have the power. I send my blog to Amana Prayer Partners (and some members of my family who I won’t tell how to shut me up 🙂 Some get my postings because they signed up for them on the blog. I can remove you from the list with a simple request. Kind of like what mamma used to say, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out.” The bottom line is you can stop getting stuff the same way you started.
I hope this will help you from stopping all that annoying “stuff” that gets thrown at you every day. I hope Nick’s Walk is not part of the annoying but in some small way part of the blessing. Either way, you’re the boss. I guess we should all remember that we control the information that comes our way. We are responsible for what we hear, what we watch and what we read. There is an awful lot of info out there and it ain’t all true or good. It’s an awesome responsibility.
Be blessed.
Nick
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