Well, how do we tweet to the glory of God? Uh, surely we all have a lot to learn in stewarding our media platforms for eternal purposes. And here's the question as it arrives from Lisa, a regular listener. Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast and thank you for your presence on social media.

I want to reach the people in my online sphere with the gospel. What are some simple things average Christians like me can keep in mind to use social media with eternal purpose for evangelism and for edification. The last 20 years have created a whole new world of possibilities for good and for ill in broadcasting our thoughts to the world before the internet.

We could distribute tracts. We could use billboards. We could rent newspaper ads. We could write letters to the editor. Uh, try to publish an article in a magazine or a book, uh, or write a book. Uh, we could distribute doorknob hangers or hire a skywriter or, uh, put on a bumper sticker.

But today we can go to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and blogging, et cetera, and the possibility exists that something you say might reach thousands, even millions besides the cluster little cluster of friends that you have several dozen folks or several hundred folks that you have now that's a new situation.

And for Christians, it's another stewardship that God has given us to manage, to steward, and he will call us to account. Jesus says for every careless word, we utter Matthew 12 36 careless words on Twitter or Facebook or in blogs. So the best way to know how to manage or steward God's gift is as always to go to God's word and listen to his counsel.

So what I'm going to do for the next few minutes is just prime the pump for Lisa, who asked this question and for others who are listening, prime the pump so that you can carry on what I start here. And my guess is that someone could easily write up like Jonathan Edwards, 70 resolutions for the internet.

Waiting for that to hear it. Tony, maybe you, you should do that. 20, 70 resolutions for, for the internet and all of them should be biblically warranted, biblically grounded. So here's a start for those of you who want to make this your, your goal. Lisa specifically asked at the end of her question for guidance about evangelism and edification.

I was so glad to hear those traditional words. They're very good words used. That's a great pair of goals to have when you're on the internet. Speaking words that evangelism, that is display the good news about Christ and his way for unbelievers and seek to build up. That's what edify means.

Build up in, in faith and hope and love, build up believers into wiser, stronger, into wiser, stronger disciples of Jesus. So here are a few texts from the Bible that I think give good guidance for, for not only what we say, but how we say it when we, when we use social media, the mandate for evangelism locally and globally.

First Peter 2, 9, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession. Why? That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. So there we go. The mandate proclaim through social media, the excellencies of Jesus.

I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. So Psalm 40 verse 10 saying, I don't keep things to myself that I see in God's word and that he's done for me.

I broadcast them to the great congregation. Proverbs 15, 7 puts it like this, the lips of the wise, and I looked up the Hebrew word here, it's spread in the ESV. It's the word for scattering seed. It's almost always used for scattering seed. The lips of the wise scatter.

Like you take a handful of seed, throw it out there on the ground. So let me read it without all my comments. The lips of the wise spread knowledge. Not so the heart of fools. So we should just scatter to the winds with Twitter and Facebook scatter seed, like knowledge to the wind of the internet.

Or Acts 5, 28, where the leaders in Israel charge the disciples like this, we strictly charge you not to teach in this name, Jesus. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. Oh, I love that phrase. Fill your city, fill your city, fill your nation, fill your Twitter feed and your Facebook with the teaching of Christianity.

Laden things down with truth. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. I mean, if God wills, you have a chance to touch somebody anywhere in the world with what you say. And the Bible says, "Declare his glory among the nations." Do that. Psalm 96, verse 3.

What a possibility exists for touching someone 10,000 miles away, supposedly outside our reach. So pray over your tweets, pray over your blogging and your Facebook, pray over it that God would breathe on it and send it by his appointed means to somebody who has exactly a need for what you have said.

That's the way I do. I put tweets in my scheduler almost every day, and they come from the Bible, almost 90% of them, and I'm saying, "God, do something extraordinary with this verse. Make it be timed perfect for somebody's need." Both proclamation, as we've been talking about, but also defense of the gospel, because it says in 1 Peter 3, 15, "Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect." So there's a place online for answering objections and responding to people gently and respectfully so that you can show error where you see it and defend the gospel.

And there's a place for exposing sin. Ephesians 5, 11, "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness or don't join into the darkness of the web, but instead expose them." Now, I don't think the dominant tone of your life on the internet should be exposing darkness. You're going to get your hands and your heart dirty that way.

But periodically, God's going to burden you that something you saw needs to be set right, and you're going to expose some sin. So all of that, having to do mainly with evangelism and outreach, what about edification? Romans 14, 19, "So let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding." Oh, what a great mandate for your internet interaction.

Or Ephesians 4, 29, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only what is good for upbuilding as fits the occasion, that it may minister grace to those who hear." Or John 17, 17, "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth." Or John 8, 32, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." So we fill our mouths, our Twitter feed, our Facebook with Scripture accurately cited, wisely interpreted.

This is the safest way to do good. Minimize yourself, maximize God and His Word. I'm going to say that one again, because broadcasting is so much self, and we have to work at checking our hearts again and again, "Am I just wanting to be seen, just wanting to be known?" Like standing on the street corner like the Pharisees, blowing our trumpet, wanting everybody to see what we say, or are we minimizing ourself by maximizing what does God say, what is God like?

And then be vigilant over your tongue. Matthew 12, 34, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Oh my! You may not know it, but you are revealing yourself all day long. What kind of person is this? Is this a feisty person? An angry person, a cynical person?

A mean person? A gentle person? A kind person? A loving person? A whole person? A broken person? I mean, what comes out of your mouth shows what's inside. That's the way the world is going to read it. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. Our aim is life, not self-exaltation, but other people enjoying life in Christ.

So how then, what kind of guidelines for how you talk? Not just what, but how. And here's just a few examples. Ephesians 4, 15, "speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ." So truth in love, truth in love. Proverbs 16, 24, "gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body." Colossians 4, 6, "let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt." Proverbs 16, 21, "the wise heart is called discerning, the sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness." Proverbs 15, 4, "a gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness breaks the spirit." Colossians 3, 16, "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching, admonishing one another in all wisdom and singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." And what I would underline there is, do people detect that you are a brimmingly thankful person?

Thankful for God, thankful for eyes, thankful for ears, thankful for mind, thankful for heart, thankful for the gospel, thankful for church, thankful for country, thankful for friends, just brimming. Or are you a sick heart, always, always giving evidence that you're angry about something? Proverbs 25, 11, "a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver," which simply means timing, tone, content are crucial.

And finally, "let everything be done in love," 1 Corinthians 16, 14. When I think about my Twitter presence, for example, I think not only about the content and tone of each tweet, which vary a lot, I mean, sometimes they're very severe in pointing out the judgment of God, sometimes they're very tender in reaching out to the brokenhearted, but what I do is look not only at each tweet, but at the overall effect of thousands of tweets over years, I think, what are we at, 17,000 so far, something like that?

Any given word from the Bible can be misused by anyone, anytime, you can't avoid that. My hope is that the overall impact will be for the magnifying of Christ, the winning of the lost, the everlasting holy joy of God's people, and the glory of God. That's the overall impact of my presence that I hope God will do.

Amen. Taking a long view of what seems so immediately ephemeral, Pastor John, thank you for that perspective. Well, this is our 10th episode, talking about Twitter and social media, all of which, those episodes can be found in our podcast archive at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And there you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes, you can scan through a list of our most popular episodes of all time, which is a list that's updated every day, and you can read full transcripts of most of those episodes, and you can even send us a question of your own from there.

Again, that's at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And of course, to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast and your favorite podcast player. Well, isn't a drug user and a Godward joy seeker just two different kinds of junkies who both seek new highs, new spikes in an immediate experience for which they cannot sustain beyond a fleeting moment?

Well, now there's an interesting question for John Paver. I'm your host Tony Reiki, and we'll see you back here on Friday with that one.