Pictures upon pictures of beautiful girls, attractive men, delicious food, incredible adventures.
Sound familiar?
As a girl, Instagram can be so so distracting from the truth and what God actually is leading us to do in our lives. To a typical person, Instagram might look like a glorious place filled with beautiful people, but once peeling back the layers there is so much more to each photo.
Insecurity, brokenness, heartache and longing for something better resides behind so many pictures we are smothered with daily.
Behind the screen of Instagram lies girls (and boys) who may actually be filled with self-doubt and brokenness. However, they manage to portray their lives in a positive light in order to make themselves feel like their life is actually together. Many times, Instagram can become something in our lives that we get to control and reside over. Your whole world could be falling apart, but by posting a photo on social media and getting hundreds of likes the pieces of the puzzles may seem as if they temporarily fit together for once. In other words, it can be fun to seemingly control our lives—we almost act as our own “God” because we know and await the outcome of every move we make on Instagram. This can be a scary thought, and not how God wants us to be using such a media platform.
In addition, Instagram can so easily root ourselves into the messy world of comparison and low self-esteem.
Day after day I hear girls say, “Wow she is perfect,” “I want her life,” “Why can’t I look like that in those clothes?” However, God calls out to us daily and tells us that we are enough. So why is it that we still compare ourselves to others through worldly things such as likes and followers?
Ephesians 2:10 states this,
“Grow in self-esteem rooted in being God’s workmanship”
In this chapter, Paul is telling the Ephesians to not focus on worldly things and to not live in the flesh but in the spirit. By living in the Spirit, Christ will show us “the immeasurable riches of his grace.” (Ephesians 2:6) God wants us to receive self-worth through Him and not things of this world. If we search for self-esteem through the things of the earth, then we will never feel content. The search will always be continuous-day after day, night after night. However, God is right here and He is our whole worth.
The world seems to smother in our faces that the best people are the ones who have the most followers, the perfect bodies, the best trips. However, God tells us that whoever is in Him are the best people.
Instagram is not bad, do not get me wrong, I use it daily. However, as we scroll through the plethora of ‘real’ photos each day we must be able to look behind the perfection and possibly think about what is residing underneath. No matter how ‘perfect’ someone is, they aren’t. No matter how ‘happy’ someone looks, they hurt too in some way.
Everyone is broken no matter what you see behind the photo.
So next time you feel less than enough, next time you feel unworthy, next time you feel ugly, know that God is your worth. He is enough.
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