All of us have seen or heard The Bible scripture:

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." — Joshua 24:15

Whether you've seen it hanging in your mother's kitchen growing up, your pastor's house plastered on the wall first thing when you walk in, on someone's social media, or just have heard it in conversation. You've seen and heard it somewhere. This verse is so well known that people really forget the significance of it. Reading this scripture sparks an important question in me that may seem silly to others: "Why is it just you and your house serving the lord? Why aren't you and your friends serving the lord? And lastly, the question that inspired this article "Why aren't you and your social media serving the Lord?"
You may have a simple answer to that question and it may be "Well, I am not really sure how to 'Serve the Lord' via social media" My answer to your confusion is simple and can be done in multiple ways.

DISCLAIMER:
Before I dive into telling you all the ways you can go beyond just the Bible verse in your bio on Instagram and Twitter, let me just say this, I am not perfect either. My social media, if I am being honest, doesn't always display your typical Christian girl. My Snapchat stories do include a lot of me doing a morning devotional before my day starts but they also do include me going out with friends on the weekends and having a few. Please don't take this article as me preaching at you and telling you everything you are doing wrong on social media because believe me, I have probably done it myself and I am right there with you. Take this as a word of encouragement from someone that is struggling to serve the Lord with all aspects of my life including my social media.

1. Stop Making It Look Like You Have it "Altogether."

It's easy to make yourself look good online. And this, of course, is a big part of why people love social media. We get to pick and choose which parts of our lives we want to talk about and display to our followers and friends. We talk/post about our funniest and most impressive moments, share our most attractive photos (and maybe airbrush that one mole we don't like.) Meanwhile, most of us choose not to document the unglamorous moments we spend scrubbing the bathtub or clipping our toenails. Our Facebook profiles and Instagram pictures depict the people we wish we were.

Far too often, Jesus becomes part of our airbrushed online persona. He's easy to invoke as we tweet about our successes ("#blessed") and post photos with toothpaste-commercial-white smiles. But the Jesus who loves us at our worst, the Jesus who forgives us when we curse, or have too much to drink on a Saturday night at a bar after your college team wins the game and then on Sunday morning we come to him crawling back in repentance—that Jesus isn't so easy to find on Facebook. The more we make Jesus the spokesperson of our supposedly perfect lives, the more we communicate a gospel for well-behaved people, a gospel that excludes real-life sinners.

The world doesn't need our airbrushed Jesus. If that's the only Jesus we show them, they're right to call our bluff. The world needs the real Jesus. A Jesus whose grace is big enough to cover over the ugliest parts of our hearts and lives, the parts that will never make it onto Facebook

Whatever you do, don't let talking about Jesus online become a substitute for developing meaningful, in-person relationships with people who hold different faith perspectives. The best evangelism doesn't happen online. Now more than ever, in our social media-saturated digital age, the world is searching for something real. They don't need your best 140 characters tweeted at them. They need an encounter with the Living God.

Jesus does tell us that he works and moves best in our weakness, not in our "perfectness."

"Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me." - 2 Corinthians 12:9

The key phrases in that verse are "My power works best in weakness" and "now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses."
Do you realize that Jesus is literally telling us in that that it is okay to show weakness to the world?
Something that makes me cringe at society today is that everyone is so quick to post that picture of their $7.00 Venti Iced Coffee from Starbucks but no one wants to show the world the $1.00 McChicken they are chowing down on because they are out of groceries and don't have enough money to shop.

But our God tells us that His power works best in weaknesses and struggles. So stop posting things that don't accurately display your life. I challenge you to start posting the real stuff. "Today I ran out of gas and my neighbor had to lend me $20 because I don't get paid until Friday. But God is still good and at that moment I saw Jesus in my neighbor!" I think that says more about Christianity and who God is in your life than "I'm so blessed, look at my new Michael Kors bag."

2. An alternative to posting "Look what I did today!"

If you can document all your successes and accomplishments without mentioning The Lord or giving him some sort of credit for the things that come as blessings to you from him, the real question is, don't get butthurt, are you sure you're following him at all?

To be clear: I'm not advising you to broadcast Jesus like a huge build board would, from your social media accounts. Not at all! If you're the sort of person who's constantly Instagramming and Tweeting and Facebooking about your life and thoughts, I just hope that Jesus is part of those posts in some way or another. I hope that you talk about Jesus (whether online or offline) the way you talk about your significant other or your children — unable to keep quiet because you're so obsessed with Him and thankful that so many awesome things are happening in your life and you give him all the credit for them.

3. Before you go overboard posting about The Lord think about that annoying salesperson.

Even personal profiles have turned into sales pitches if you think about it. Think about that guy you know that just graduated and started selling insurance to pay off his student loans so he has now messaged you so he can "hear how your family is doing and share an exciting opportunity with you." Or think about the business recruiter who tweets every morning how amazing her company is (and just happens to mention that they're always hiring, in case anyone is looking for a "life-changing opportunity") *cough cough* "It Works, People."

To protect ourselves from the constant emotional strain of being advertised to (and to keep from going broke), a lot of us who spend substantial time online have learned to stop paying attention the moment something starts to smell like a sales pitch.
These days, the world is full of people who say "I don't have an agenda" and then pull out a pen and point to the dotted line. Sometimes Christians are guilty of this kind of evangelism: We become more agenda-driven than we are gospel-driven. At other times, people might perceive us as agenda-driven simply because of the ways we use social media to talk about Jesus. If we want to proclaim the gospel effectively, we need to think carefully about our posts about Jesus in a social media world where sincerity and sales pitches are so easily confused.

Ending this I want to warn you that the world will be ready to find every fault in you after you make this transition into suddenly posting about God all the time or including him in your posts in one way or another. The world and your followers will be the ones that are quick to call you a "hypocrite" when you go out on Saturday and post a picture with your friends and there is a beer in your hand.

But the reality and the message you can convey to them then is, "I am not a hypocrite, I am human." And I serve and love a God that works best in my weaknesses and he is still working on me.

Please know: this isn't a coupon to abuse God's grace and go out this weekend and get "Hammered."

Because the reality of it is, we should be striving to be like Christ in school, at work, and with our social media accounts but mistakes don't exclude you or disqualify you from His grace. In fact, your mistakes communicate to people that you aren't perfect which is the ultimate goal here right?