If God Had A Facebook Account, What Would He Write On Your Wall?

I was asked to share at the first annual Gateway Christian School Alumni Chapel about Hearing God’s Voice, a chapel filled with energetic students from grade four to grade twelve, some of their parents, their teachers, and a dozen or more alumni.  As I prepared, I started to think  a lot about prayer.  I believe prayer is essential to the life of faith, the way that we stay deeply connected with God.

I asked the questions, “How many of you have heard of Facebook?” and  “How many have a Facebook account?”  Most of the four hundred kids’ hands in the gymnasium went into the air.  Most of the children’s parents knew they did, and most checked their accounts at least once a day.

I have a Facebook account too. To give you a sense of how cool or uncool I am, I have about 400 hundred friends. Some of my friends are people I’ve never met, and probably never will, which might tell you something about me, or the social networking site.

To be honest, I resisted having one for a long time because at first the concept seemed weird (Do I really need to know when someone walked their dog?).  Facebook also made me uncomfortable (Who will be reading what I say… what if I don’t know them… is it an invasion of privacy?).  And thirdly, I didn’t know what to say (Will people think what I have to say is stupid, and will any of it matter?).

Even though I thought (and still think) there are things about it that are weird and uncomfortable, and, even though I don’t always know what to say, I signed up.

And I’m happy I did. Having had the  opportunity to travel all over the world (and hoping for more of the same) through Facebook I can stay connected to friends in Africa, and Europe, and the Middle East, and Asia, and the United States, Mexico, in Red Deer and anywhere and everywhere in between (except perhaps now in Pakistan).

What I like is that I can see photographs of friends, I can post updates about what I’m doing and where I’m going. And it’s a great way to know what my friends are thinking, and doing, and where my friends are going too.

But I didn’t show up at the chapel to toot Facebook’s horn, nor is that why I’m posting this ditty here.   The whole point is that I think the quintessential networking site of our time is a great metaphor to understand prayer.

Most everyone has a Facebook account. Some of us are on Facebook a lot. I know some people who are on it so much, it seems, I don’t know if they do anything else. They have iPhones or Blackberries, and they’re always Facebooking or texting. They text and Facebook, in fact, without ceasing.

Saint Paul, in an important letter to an upstart new church plant in Europe in the first century, tells believers to pray without ceasing. It’s an exhortation that always seemed a little lofty, if not unrealistic.  However, after spending an afternoon with my nephews and their friends who seem to be able to text and chat without ceasing, it doesn’t seem like as much of a stretch anymore.

We get on Facebook because we want to chat with our friends and connect. I started to imagine what it would be like if, with the same regularity, veracity, or interest we had Prayer Accounts and started to log into God during the week.  Do we have Prayer Accounts?  A good question.  And I suspect many do and that most who do not encounter reservations like the ones I had before I started my Facebook account.  It seems weird (Who am I talking to?)  It’s uncomfortable (Can I be honest and can I expect a response?). And if those two hurdles are cleared, what do we say?

Therefore my question for the school and for anyone reading this post:

If God had a Facebook account, would you be one of his friends?  What would you post on his wall? What events would you invite him to? And perhaps more importantly, what would God write on your wall?

Facebook is a cool metaphor for prayer, which is one of the main ways that God speaks to us. God, I believe, speaks to us in a lot of ways – through nature, through pastors and teachers, through the Bible, through each other.

Yet prayer is a main way God speaks. It is a conversation: We speak to God and he responds to us; God speaks to us and we respond to him.

If God had a Facebook account, what would he write on your wall?

I’m certain of three things, though it’s not an exhaustive list.  The first thing God would write on your wall is that He Loves You and has good plans for you.  God shows his love through parents, by giving health, by providing for the food we eat and the clothes we are wearing – giving us the faculty and the means to acquire them -  through teachers and through other people in our lives who want the best for us (to name but a few ways).

God would also write that He Loves People.  The ones we encounter every day and those across the world.   Our classmates and colleagues, teachers and students, brothers and sisters, our parents – people not always so easy for us to love.  And he loves people we don’t know: leaders of countries, the rich and the poor, the old and young.

The third thing I’m certain God would write on your Facebook wall is that he wants you to love yourself too, and to love the people around you and the people who you don’t know, near and far – by serving them like God serves us, by being kind and generous like he is to us, and by doing what is right.

That’s the basic stuff, the public information written on all the walls of any person with an account.

But there’s private information too.

You know how in Facebook you can write on people’s walls, but you can also send people a message that no one else can see?  This is what I like best: sending friends notes to talk to them personally. I’ll write my friends in Malaysia and ask them about their lives, how I can pray for them, share memories or jokes that I don’t want everyone else to see.  In the same way, God has messages for each of us. It’s private and it’s personal.

The messages concern things others can’t tell us or things we can’t really ask anyone else about.   Answers to questions we might have about the future, concerns we have about your family, ourselves.  Our fears.  They are things we don’t feel comfortable to share publicly.  Maybe it is the sin we struggle with, or the things that have hurt us where there is just too much pain.

I think that’s a really fine picture of prayer: private messages to God that only the person knows about.  Prayer, all of a sudden, doesn’t seem so far off or strange.

Before the days of Facebook, Christ once told a crowd of people how they should pray:

“Whenever you pray, go into your own room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6).

That’s a surprising verse.  We live in a time when not much is private any more. Facebook is great, but it can make us feel like everyone can or should know everything about us all the time.

Today I think it is important to remember that God wants time with us and he wants to be in conversation with us individually and in a way that he is in conversation with no one else.

Do you take time to send messages to God? Do you take time to be alone with him?

The secret to life, I believe, is to spend time in secret with God.

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life, out of all the things I’ve learned when I was a student in Red Deer at Gateway, or in high school, or at College or University, or from friends and family, or from all my travels around the world, are the words a friend and teacher said to me:

“Andrew, there’s no substitute for a life lived with God.”

I believe that is true. It’s where we  get our strength.  It’s where we get our power.  It’s where we get our faith and hope, the answers we need, the words we will share, the creative ideas, and the energy to do what’s right.  All by spending time alone with God.

Be a true friend of God. You’re never too young or old to be one. You’re never to cool or uncool to be God’s friend. You’re never to rich or poor. You’re never too happy or sad. You can always be God’s friend and you can share anything with God. And he will share everything with you.

God is real. He is the most interesting and important person in the world.

Have a prayer account with him. Send him messages, and take time to be quiet and alone with him so that you can receive the words and the messages that he has for you.  It will make all the difference in your life.

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The above post was adapted from Andrew’s address to the students and alumni at the Gateway Christian School in Red Deer, at the first annual Alumni Chapel on 27 May, 2010.

Tagged as: address, alumni, chapel, Christian School, facebook, Gateway, God, prayer, red deer, writing