As many of you know, I enjoy watching movies, making movies, buying movies, and heck, most of the music I listen too are from movies. Movies are one of my favorite things to spend time with. I spend most of my free money on movies. As much as I love movies, I keep it in the right perspective. I do NOT love movies more than God. I may have at one point in my life, but now I can see a bigger picture. Movies used to be over God. If I had a choice to go to the movies or go evangelizing, I would of picked the movies. The more I thought about this to myself, the more messed up I realized my thinking was. HOW CAN MOVIES BE COMPARED TO GOD? People these days are so caught up in the fast-paced amusing generation, that they completely lose track of what is really important, in this life.
Enjoyment is not something that your life should be centralized around. People indulge in it. You see people line up for a concert or a movie, but how many people do you see line up for the opportunity to serve at their church? Satan does not sleep, and he is deceiving people left and right. Don't tell yourself, "I wont be deceived, my focus is on God." What do you mean you wont be deceived? If you tell yourself you wont be deceived, you are deceiving yourself. When is the last time you gave into sin thinking that it was better than not sinning? Satan is at work, and there is no way you can deny it. He will use any way possible to trick you into drifting away from God. Believe it or not, Movies are a tool Satan uses to trick people. You have seen (in most movies today) how disgusting and perverted they are. They have affected the way this generation thinks TREMENDOUSLY. For example, watch an old movie from the 40's or around that time. How many bad things can you point out? Hardly any. Back then, in the film industry, they had respect for morality and for what was good. Today's movies? LOOK HOW LOW THEY HAVE DROPPED! They think blowing the brains out of some guy in slow motion is awesome! It's one thing to imply stuff like that into a movie to carry the story line, but it's another thing to capitalize off of something that is gross and wrong. You can see the drastic differences between the movies of back then, compared to the movies of today. It's night and day. Satan uses movies to manipulate the audience into thinking that something that is bad is actually good. It's the other way around also, they make good things look stupid and unimportant. Like when a "comic" movie takes Jesus and makes a joke about Him. What is so funny about that? All they are doing is slandering Jesus' name. God is looking less and less important because of these movies. (I'm sure you can think of a few like this.) This type of stuff has gotten into the church!!! It is shocking to see some churches and how they act like this world is not that bad of a place. It is sad to see this. Satan is deceiving people left and right, and if you really think about it, movies cause a "chain reaction", so to speak, and deceive people and get into the churches. Maybe you think, "This movie is not affecting me." YOU might be wrong. Even if you just spend time watching it or thinking about it, it is distracting you from other important things. This life is a lot more than entertainment. It is not about YOU, it is about GOD. Satan wants to keep you busy, and he is going to use whatever you enjoy to keep your focus off of God. We need to see this in the right perspective. We can NOT fully indulge in amusing ourselves, because all it is doing is taking our minds off of God. Do not let what you enjoy doing become your idol.
It took me a while to finally realized all of this. I used to make a movie everyday, and its not like they were good or anything. When I first started making movies, they may not have been that great, but they were creative. I only made a movie like once a month, but it grew and grew. I made more and more movies. Movies by myself, movies with friends, movies with church, and movies INSTEAD OF HOMEWORK. YIKES. This is when my movie making days turned on me. Satan used what I enjoyed doing and distracted me with them. They became my idol. I was not serious about serving God. Even though I was in the Teen Ministers Youth Leadership program at my church, I lost focus on what was really important. At first, I joined Teen Ministers to use my skills, to serve God. Making movies for my church became less meaning then it actually was. I saw movie making as "fun" instead of a gift to give a message to an audience. My Dad saw this happening. He realized how movies were pulling me away from my studies, and more importantly, away from God. He took my privilege of movie making away from me, and It was a blessing to see the changes it brought out in me. You don't really realize what you got until you lose it. I lost my movie making, now I realize that it wasn't about having fun with it all the time, it was about learning more about it so that I can make something to have a meaning. There is a time for fun and a time for work. I took advantage of the fun part, now I reap the consequences, and they are good consequences. I cannot say that I am unhappy now. I am even happier!!! Although it was a bummer to not be able to be a big part of making the end of the year movie with my bible study group, I have reaped the benefits. My grades are going up, my walk with God has become a lot stronger, and I have made more thinking time on how I am going to step it up with my movie making abilities for God's glory. Things are now in the right perspective.
