Storytime: What I learned from Netflix

I remember someone told me, God can speak to you using anything, a tree, a donkey, whatever. Well wonderful, cause I'm totally calling that right now.

Let's just say like everyone else, I like Netflix. I mean coming from DSTV, it was an upgrade for me. But just like everyone else who was Christian, I had a problem with the inappropriate content. Many times in church, pastors would sarcastically make reference to Netflix and then everyone would laugh but I'm willing to guess that at least a third of that congregation would casually watch Netflix the next week. I know right.

So when I started working on keeping accountability for what I watch on Netflix, I resorted to checking PG ratings and reading the description. One YouTuber said that they activated a PG13 limit on their account but all my Diplomatic and Forensic movies were probably over that so I had to look for another way.

But that's just, by the way, yesterday, l was binge-watching a bunch of Nollywood films to keep my mind off of not getting to volunteer somewhere. After 2 movies, I decided to watch a series. The plot of this series was to show us the lives of four different women who were determined to get married before 30. This is where it gets interesting for me. I like to as they say "talk with the Holy Spirit." So the first thing that came to my mind was "Holy Spirit, can you imagine this rubbish, who are they to plan somebody's life? Of course, your girl also remembered Jeremiah 29:11 immediately. Such righteousness😅

Anyways as I was watching the series, so many times, when the characters did something, I would go, "Oh-oh, we know where that would lead us." It also really amazed me how they could go on doing the same thing but expecting different results but oh well. The series also hinted at the power of friendship and family but lately, I've been realizing that it's not okay to just have those things but you want the Godly version of them. One thing I heard in a sermon is that everything God made, the devil has a counterfeit version of it because confusion is one of his best tools, which is why Paul said in Ephesians 4 that we need to grow in order to discern right from wrong and not be blown by any doctrine. As Christians, we want to make sure we associate ourselves with the Godly version else, we're still in the devil's territory.

I'm not saying that friends who are not believers are bad because remember God can use anyone. Rahab, that donkey who talked to Balaam, even The kings who favored Nehemiah and Joseph were not Jews but he used them to uplift these men but we must make sure that when it comes to taking counsel on issues especially important, we ask the wise like in Proverbs 1.

Now back to the story, one thing I also noticed was that one of the friends was a born-again Christian. She was cool, reminded me of one of my friends but often when it came to big decisions they often still went with the popular/worldly decisions rather than what their friend might have done. The film tried to portray this worldview that sometimes things work out and sometimes things don't, it's just trial and error. And at the end of the series, even though it seemed like 4 episodes ago that maybe they might all get that happy ending, they all still went back to their natural instincts" as the narrator put it.

The last 2 episodes focused on mistakes. How mistakes can ruin a person's life. In the end, each character ended up in worse places than they wanted just because of "a mistake" they had made. Of course, there are a lot of things that being a believer I thought were mistakes but hey. God, he doesn't make mistakes, we might but he doesn't. All the "mistakes" we make that wrong him, he knows them, that's why he sent his son to die for them. We may continue to have flashbacks of the past mistakes we make before we become Christians but we must remind ourselves we have become new, that is no longer us. We have the Holy Spirit to prevent the old us from taking over. The ones we will make in the future, we will have the grace of God for that (not that we should now start intentionally sinning)

But you know one thing I realized, unlike the girls in the series, when we surround ourselves with the things of God and God himself, we get to soar on eagles wings, we get to fly, to see ahead, like eagles we get to see dangers or "mistakes" ahead and avoid them and sometimes we still make them too. Being Christian changes your identity from imperfect and dead in sin/mistakes to progressing-to-perfect and alive to God and in spirit. We begin to traverse our earthly world not only with earthly weapons, minds, and reasoning but with a spiritual dimension of all those things too. The cycle of falling into the same mistakes is broken by Jesus' blood. We are free. Our lives are too important to leave to chance or natural instincts. Our natural instincts don't have direction or purpose at the end, only fleeting satisfaction. Flying, on the other hand, gives maximum satisfaction, fewer obstacles, fewer mistakes, and room for greater vision. I wish the girls had known that.

Also, they didn't really show the ending or shall I say "the natural instinct" of their Christian friend. I wonder why, whether it was intentional and they wanted viewers to guess or maybe the producers just couldn't fathom what a Christian's natural instinct would be.

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed my story or learned something from it. Remember you can leave comments below if you'd like.

Seasons greetings!!🎄🎄

Kamikun.