I have your attention now, but who or what gets it next?
I find my thoughts so fascinating.
At first glance that sounds arrogant, but hear me out. I find my thoughts fascinating not because they’re particularly profound or special, but because… I’m always wondering where the heck they came from.
I have random thoughts, repetitive thoughts, fleeting thoughts, intrusive thoughts, curious thoughts. All the thoughts. And like most people, I move through most of my days without examining them at all. I’m just out here living life. Reacting, deciding, responding.
But every now and again, I’ll have a thought that surprises me and suddenly I’m curious about what influenced it.
Because every decision, reaction, desire, and rationalization began somewhere.
And even though we don’t act on every thought we have, the ones we do act on say something. Somewhere between a thought becoming an action, something in me agreed with it. Something in me accepted it as true, normal, justified, or good.
So now I ask:
What made me agree with that?
I think I severely underestimate how much I’m being formed by what I repeatedly expose myself to, what I admire and desire, what I normalize, and what I allow to sit in my mind unquestioned.
I’ve been pretty introspective for a good portion of my life and I’ve always been curious about behavior, patterns, reactions, and decision making. I don’t judge myself when I say this, but I’ve made some really good decisions and I’ve also made some awful ones. You can probably guess which ones inspired me to want to know why I do what I do.
But before Jesus, I wasn’t thinking about my spirit at all.
I wasn’t thinking about spiritual formation.
And because of that, I didn’t fully understand how deeply the things around me were shaping me.
This is part of why the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 shook me so much when I first read it.
I was reading this with fresh, brand new, born again eyes and while I knew the parable was specifically about receiving the Word of God, I couldn’t shake the underlying principle:
Not every seed that starts growing survives.
You mean to tell me that I could lose this?
Almost immediately, I started taking inventory of everything I was allowing into my mind and heart that could possibly choke this out.
I had spent 29 years outside of a relationship with Jesus consuming countless self-help books and “how-to-be ___” YouTube videos, chasing identity in horoscopes, putting my faith in literal rocks, searching everywhere for what only Jesus could give me.
I remember thinking: Absolutely not. I am not going out like that.
So naturally, I became protective over what I allowed to shape me. This included what I watched, what I listened to, what I entertained, and what I repeatedly invited into my heart and mind.
And honestly, in the beginning, this was easy.
If you’ve ever been in love (especially when you’re fresh in love) almost all of your thoughts are on that person. You want them everywhere, you have unlimited attention for them, their name is in your conversations, your habits start changing—there is little effort or thought needed, things just start pouring from you.
This is exactly what happened when I fell in love with Jesus, and if you’re in relationship with Him, I’m sure you understand.
But eventually that fresh-in-love dopamine high levels out, and as beautiful as it is, it has to go for us to grow deeper in relationship. It’s the part where emotion stops carrying the love and starts being reinforced through devotion. This is when we start being stretched and it’s where choice, intentionality, and consistency really come into play.
Somewhere in this stage of relationship I became less watchful. Because my roots had more depth, and Jesus and I had already been through some things together, I became confident that I wasn’t going anywhere.
Which is a good thing, right? To have that, “I’m-locked-in-throw-away-the-key” realization in relationship. What I didn’t realize is that I slipped into thinking I was somewhat untouchable.
Over time, there was a subtle shift in my posture. When it came to what I was consuming, I went from asking “Is this shaping me well?” to rationalizing, “This won’t really affect me.”
These produce two very different outcomes.
I knew that what I gave my attention to would shape me. But that didn’t stop me from putting my hand to the stove.
Story time:
So in my B.C. era, there was a show… and it was ratchet… and I loved it. Not reality TV ratchet either. I’m talking dramatic, vulgar, toxic, emotionally chaotic dysfunction packaged as entertainment. I’m sure you can think of a show like that.
Then I met Jesus.
And you know how it goes. You fall so in love with Him that everything else fades into the background. All you want to do is consume His Word, listen to sermons, go to Bible studies, and be around people who love Him too. Your life just fills up.
So I genuinely forgot all about the show.
One day I was looking for something to watch while I cooked a meal, and there the show was, with a bright and shiny “new season” sticker on it.
Me:
Immediately I knew that this show had nothing good to offer my mind.
So after a short internal back and forth of:
“I know I shouldn’t.”
“But I mean… I could.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not that serious.”
I put the show on.
Paul never lied: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak!
I reasoned:
I wasn’t doing anything this show promotes before, and I won’t be doing it now.. so I can watch it.
So I watched as new episodes came out each week for weeks.
Until one night after an episode, I suddenly felt inspired to reach out to someone from my past that I had no business reaching out to. And the desire was strong.
Wait, where did this come from?
Did I mimic anything specifically done in the show? No.
Was the show evil and demonic, compelling me to do things I shouldn’t? Maybe.
Just kidding.
Was there dark influence? Yes. Was I compelled? No.
You might not think this is a big deal. “So what? You wanted to text someone.”
What I’m telling you is that what I chose to repeatedly consume influenced me more than I realized.
And I want to be clear: this wasn’t happening because I’m uniquely weak or unusually impressionable.
This is a human thing.
We are all being shaped by what we repeatedly expose ourselves to, whether we realize it or not.
I typed and deleted that message about four times, and I thank God I never sent it.
That night that I was reminded:
It’s just a TV show.
But it’s not just a TV show.
Influence
Influence in and of itself is not a bad thing.
Honestly, if human beings couldn’t be influenced at all, we’d be unbearable, completely unreachable and unteachable. We’d be brick walls talking to brick walls.
Thankfully, that’s not how God wired us.
We were created to shape one another in some capacity. Through conversation, relationships, music, churches, families, books, environments, trends, media, algorithms… we are constantly giving and receiving influence.
The problem isn’t influence itself. The problem is how often we don’t realize we’re being influenced at all.
If influence was a person, it would be the coolest person we know. Calm. Subtle. Attractive. Never forcing anything aggressively, never screaming for attention. Just gently presenting ideas of what we could have, become, pursue, normalize, desire, tolerate, or justify… and then quietly letting those ideas sit with us.
That’s what makes influence so powerful.
Most of us think something only “counts” as influence if it radically changes us overnight, or if we’re immediately prompted to do something. If we’re not suddenly becoming a completely different person or spiraling into obvious destruction, we assume we’re not being influenced.
But formation is not dramatic like that.
It’s slow and subtle.
Formation happens through what we continually expose ourselves to.
The things we revisit.
What and who we entertain.
Ideas and practices we normalize.
What we allow to live rent free in our heads.
That sudden urge to send that text did not appear out of nowhere. It came after weeks of exposure.
Slowly:
my thoughts were shifting
my desires were shifting
my sensitivity was dulling
my boundaries were softening
my discernment was weakening
And the scary part is that I didn’t notice it happening.
That’s why our attention matters so much.
Not because every piece of media instantly corrupts us, but because what repeatedly enters us will leave something behind. To be clear, this isn’t fear mongering about secular media, and it’s not a Christian behavior management post either. We cannot save ourselves by perfectly curating everything we consume.
But what we repeatedly allow into our hearts can absolutely cultivate spiritual depth… or help choke it out.
And maybe that’s part of what the Parable of the Sower is showing us.
The growth of the seed depends on the condition of the soil and the depth of its roots. And over time, what we continually feed our hearts affects both.
Psalm 119 says:
“I have tried hard to find You—don’t let me wander from Your commands.”
This is the posture I want to stay in.
Not fear.
Not legalism.
Not ignorance or obliviousness.
Just a heart that stays aware of what’s shaping it.
This is just a reminder, to you and to myself, to pay attention to what’s shaping us.
We are being discipled, the question is: by what and in what direction?
If you want to see what’s been discipling me lately, take a peek into The Living Room: May Edition.