Excited to be "Unplugged"

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.” 1 John 2:15-16

Prior to moving to Connecticut, we sold quite a few of our belongings. In addition to not wanting to move everything we owned 2,000 miles away, we also knew that our new apartment was only 750 cozy square feet – about 1,250 square feet less than the spacious house we had in Somerville, Tennessee. It wasn’t until we started selling a lot of our possessions that we began to realize the value of simplifying, not to mention the added benefit of making some much needed cash for the move.

One of the things we coveted most was our television – and we didn’t have just one in the house, we had four!! Prior to the move, we decided to sell ALL of our televisions with the plan of getting a new, flat-screen HDTV. We figured we deserved something new and, after all, they are pretty to look at. But, the finances didn’t go as planned once we moved and after a meeting with the “ways and means committee” (a combination of Quicken and our Excel budget spreadsheet), we decided to nix the new television plans until after the new year and watch television through our computer in the meantime. And we did. The computer was hooked up to cable box and it worked like a charm!

The funny thing about feeling “called” to be somewhere is that you also need to abandon yourself to God completely or you will miss your purpose. But with so many distractions in our lives these days it can be very hard to hear Him. After a thorough evaluation, we realized that one of our biggest distractions and consumers of time was our television and a quick call to the cable company solved the problem.

So far the decision has been freeing, similar to the way we felt when we sold some of our belongings prior to the move. Television can be a form of bondage, and for us it was. Our free hours were once spent mindlessly in front of the TV. Now we can read, study God’s word, or even better, spend more time in prayer. So yeah, you could say that we are excited to now be “unplugged.”