Handling the Influences that Confuse Wants and Needs in the Modern Home

(edit end of 2024:  Originally written when I was seeking to coach Christian single moms around stress, money, and feeding their kids a healthy diet.  The advice here is applicable to everyone however, so it stays posted here)

“How do I guard against society’s unhealthy perspectives on what I need versus what I want for myself and my kids?” My answer to this is two-fold:

1) The biggest way to turn off unhealthy input into your household is by turning off the TV and installing an ad-blocker on every device that accesses the Internet! Because so much of what is available for entertainment is now online, you don’t even need your cable TV monthly subscription when services such as Pureflix are out there. Even without that subscription, my own kids have found many hours of entertainment available on youtube, which you don’t pay for.

2) Cancel magazine subscriptions and start following those company’s blogs instead. With your ad-blocker installed, you are reducing deliberate exposure to what society thinks you should be doing. Examine the voices you’re following too. Are they telling you to do what you can’t afford or don’t have time for? Is this a source of stress because you can’t live up to the ideal they are placing before you? Turn that voice off! Turn off every voice demanding more of you than you can give, demanding you look, eat, do and go where you are unable to. If that voice is in a newspaper or magazine, you’ve just saved yourself more money, as well as saved yourself more effort dealing with the accumulated recycling that has to be put out to the road.

3) Turn on Christian worship music radio. Turn on Christian Bible study talk radio shows such as Focus on the Family, Chuck Swindoll and others. Follow voices that pull straight from Scripture in how they invite you to live, be, talk, do, and go.

4) Replace former TV time with family altar around God’s Word each evening. Romans 12:1-3 talks about renewing your mind and this is only done by replacing bad influences with good ones.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
Romans 12:1-3

We talk to our kids about making wise choices in the friends they pick. Scripture talks about how bad company corrupts good character. In the KJV it is worded this way:

Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. 1 Corinthians 15:33-34

The same is true for the media we consume (and those who promote it and say you need to listen to it), whether that is gaming, music, books, magazines, television, blogs, who we let into our contact list on social media, the pages and groups we follow on social media, what we consume on youtube, netflix, hulu, the online news sources, etc. Much of our world is ad-driven now and the general message from these ads is selfish entitled dissatisfaction. Scripture talks about learning to be content with what God provides, that even our jobs are blessing from God and to work as if He were our boss. So just as we caution our kids about influences at school, we need to caution ourselves about influences we expose ourselves to as parents.

There is a new term out there called “cancel culture”. Cancel the bad influences in your home. Get rid of them. Replace the bad influences with Godly influences through music, movies, books, magazines, and online sources that uplift how God says to live, think, do, be, and go.

One of the best places in Scripture to learn about managing everyday life is the book of Proverbs. This is followed by Romans, and then the GEPC (General Electric Power company) Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. Those four are short books, but packed with how God asks us to live in everyday life among family, church, and other interactions. As the mother of the house, I urge you in your personal devotional time to spend time in the Psalms renewing your mind to come to God as David often did. Teach your kids the joy and purpose of God’s Word going through Psalm 119 in a translation that breaks it down by the Hebrew Alphabet into it’s stanzas. Read a stanza each evening in your family altar time.

Shifting your mindset and perspective around your time and household finances honestly begins here. It is very hard for a smoker to stop smoking when they are surrounded by other smokers. The other influences have to be removed from that person’s life so they can get an honest effort and expectation toward positive change to better their own health. The same goes for a drinker wanting to come clean, or a druggie wanting to change his habits. Sin is at the heart of these vices just as it’s at the heart of the worldly ways of thinking around time and money management.

Obey your advice to your children and turn your back on the influences that make it hard for you to develop healthy thoughts and attitudes around wants and needs. Surround yourself with God’s idea of wants and needs instead.

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