The Downside of Your Bible-Saturated Newsfeeds

Want to grow in your walk with the Lord? It seems pretty simple these days. Tap your email icon to discover at least three recent newsletters from Christian websites. One email highlights the latest in a Bible study in Romans, another presents an attribute of God, and still another teaches on battling anxiety.

After that, simply open Instagram or Facebook and you can watch reel after reel with tips for how to love your spouse, disciple your children, and strengthen your prayer life. 

While you go for a run or tackle a load of laundry, pop in those earbuds and absorb various podcasts teaching about a new fruit of the Spirit, a proper body mindset, and three steps to fight discontentment—this, all in a span of a few hours. 

The amount of information that is not only available to us but that pings for our attention is enormous. In one sense, of course, it’s an incredible blessing. We’ve come a long way from the church in the second and third centuries where so many members could not own, let alone read, a copy of the Scriptures. Now, Bible commentaries flood in through radio, internet, podcasts, and television. 

Now, Bible commentaries flood in through radio, internet, podcasts, and television.

Yet this rush of availability comes with drawbacks. We become overwhelmed by the admonitions. We will exhaust ourselves if we expect to master the fruit of kindness while also leveling up our prayer life and at the same time parenting toddlers in three easy steps to get them to obey. The work feels like too much. 

And honestly, that’s because it is. 

The Means of Our Sanctification

Exhaustion is not the life to which God calls us. In fact, the good news of the gospel proclaims his yoke is easy and light (Matt. 11:28). This doesn’t mean our sanctification is easy, but it does mean we no longer carry our burdens alone. Christ by his Holy Spirit enables us every step of the way. 

But the pull of our hearts toward “salvation-by-our-own-effort” continues to tempt us at every turn, so when we read those articles and Instagram posts, we naturally want to get to work. We mean well. We want to do what’s right, growing and bearing good fruit for the Lord.

To do this, we must remember: the Lord plants and brings a harvest. Just as we have been justified by his grace apart from our own works (Titus 3:5–6), so he will sanctify us apart from our own work. As Paul challenged the Galatians, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). We so foolishly forget. 

Herman Bavinck wrote, “Sanctification proceeds from God alone” (quoted in Michael Allen, Sanctification, 91). God originates, and he enables. Yes, the Scriptures and teaching we consume convict and move us to act, but the reason they do is through the work of the Holy Spirit actively working to draw us nearer to Christ. 

The countless admonitions they give us on a given Wednesday aren’t the primary method of our sanctification.

This means our sanctification doesn’t rest solely in our hands, nor is it at the mercy of internet bloggers, Instagram platforms, or Christian websites. They may have wonderful words of encouragement, but the countless admonitions they give us on a given Wednesday aren’t the primary method of our sanctification. 

Instead, the Holy Spirit forms us—often more patiently than we would like. 

While we’d love to get our prayer life in order, learn the attributes of God, and foster deep discipleship with our children by next Tuesday, God knows our sanctification will most likely be a much slower process. 

Like a patient farmer, he sows the seeds of truth in us until their roots run deep. Perhaps this week we feel tugged to examine our lack of self-control. Each day that passes, God continually reveals it to us, day by day as we come to grips with all the areas of our life that sin infects. In a few weeks time we might be studying deep in the book of James and discovering what it means to do good works in our particular season of life. These lessons matter, and arguably they matter more than the dozens of other Bible studies and devotionals we might scroll past on our phones, because this is the work the Holy Spirit is doing in our hearts. 

The discipleship information we have available is a blessing, but it’s not enough. We need someone to take us by the hand and show us these truths again and again. We need to see them connected with the sermon on Sunday, with the passage we read at bedtime on Tuesday, and the article we read on Friday. We’re forgetful and stubborn creatures who need someone with us the entire step of the way. The Holy Spirit does just that. He guides the mundane conversations with a sister from church, the preached Word on Sunday, and our everyday circumstances with our family all to his great purpose. 

Likewise we need someone who knows us. Your favorite internet blogger may want to walk through a series on parenting, but the Holy Spirit already knows what you need even more that day is to rest in his sufficiency. Our Lord knows us best after all. He knew our being before we were born, discerns all of our thoughts, and knows every day in our life—both past and future (Ps. 139). He authored our faith in the beginning and he continues to perfect it until we will stand before his presence glorified at the end (Heb. 12:2). 

The Gifts of Christian Teaching

This means we can free ourselves as we open up our Instagram feeds and newsletters. We don’t have to do everything. We can’t do everything. We are created, limited by time, physical strength, mental capacity, and even spiritual maturity. As much as we’d like to reach glory now, we still sit in the in-between, battling our sinful flesh day after day (Rom. 7:15). We can take in the vast array of Christian teaching throughout our day and know the Spirit will use what he will. Sometimes he’ll use these teachings to move us deeply. Sometimes they will apply to exactly what we have been working on, and they may even kindle a fire toward a new path of Christian growth. 

But sometimes we can close the app and relax. We take in that article, but then rest in knowing that right now the Lord is working on your heart in another area. The authors of those posts know just as well that their words of encouragement and conviction are not meant for everybody. They merely offer up articles, devotions, or podcasts for the Holy Spirit to use as he sees fit. And he will.

If you find yourself exhausted by the admonitions filling your phone and mind, please know you can rest. We don’t tread through this Christian life alone. We don’t kill sin on our own—trying to smack down as many pop-a-moles as possible. Instead, the Holy Spirit leads us, carefully curating our sanctification better than any algorithm could ever imagine. 

It’s a wonderful gift to have so much solid biblical instruction at our fingertips, but please don’t forget our sanctification proceeds from the Spirit. Allow that truth to quiet your heart as you scroll through your feeds, and find rest in his patient, capable hand.  


Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.