I am tired of opening my Instagram app multiple times a day, scrolling through the exciting summer pictures that everyone keeps posting and logging off, wondering where that 30 minutes went. Last week in church, our pastor told us to open up our phones, and look at the battery usage, and see what we were spending the most time on our phones on. There it was, at the top of the list, Instagram. Why do I do this? I find myself opening up my phone, scrolling through Instagram, closing the app, and reopening it literal minutes later.

The main problem I find with this Instagram culture is that I am constantly comparing myself to the people that I see on not only my feed, but also the explore feed. Am I as skinny as they are? Do I have as big of a friend group as they do? How in the world do they have that clear of skin? Do they ever not look perfect? Here’s what we tend to forget. People typically post the best pictures of themselves. Have you ever noticed that when you look at a picture to decide if it is good of you and your group of friends or not, you always look at how you look in the picture first and that is what you make the decision on? When you look at someone’s feed and they look flawless in every picture, remember that they are choosing a good picture of themselves to post, just like you do.

Everyone wants to put a picture up on social media that reflects him or her well, but if we base our self worth on this, we are not letting the King of Kings, who created each and every one of us in His perfect image, own our hearts. God calls us to find our worth in Him. The smile of someone who is experiencing the joy of God is worth all the likes in the world if it leads someone to discover the glory of God’s immense love.