Last month, I finally took the time to unsubscribe from a few e-mail lists that I had mistakenly signed up for. We all have them – those weekly or monthly e-mails that have no relevancy to our lives but just annoy us. I’m not talking about e-mails like The Good News monthly eUpdate that encourages, educates and entertains you. Those are good e-mails.

As I scoured my inbox for specific e-mails that have no benefit to my career or spiritual life, I started to think about what kind of “junk mail” I could delete from my life. Wow, what a concept … unsubscribing from those little annoyances that are neither useful nor beneficial to our lives! I started to smile and chuckle as I listed all the things that I wish I could unsubscribe from.

At first, I wished I could just do away with frustration and stress, but then I started listing tangible things I could get rid of. A few practical things I could literally unsubscribe from were a few magazine subscriptions that I get and never read.

Maybe I could cancel my subscription to Blockbuster online and just watch old movies from TNT, TBS and AMC (my wife’s favorite). At first, I thought about deleting things that would save me time and money, but then my attention was drawn to more meaningful aspects of my life.

What if we could unsubscribe from habits or behaviors that we wish we could stop doing? For example, some people probably wish they could just “unsubscribe” from nicotine addiction and quit smoking altogether. I wish I could just hit that button and stop getting frustrated with people who take out their frustrations on me. It really gets to me! They may be angry at other things, but I guess I just find myself in the right place at the right time. But what if I could put things in perspective, from God’s view, and pray for them and help them out a bit?

One of the biggest things our kids got rid of this past month was Pokemon and Bakugan. One of our friends stopped by and shared a little bit about Pokemon with us. When we heard that it was started so that kids could “become friends” with monsters, a.k.a. Pocket Monsters, we had to talk to our boys. They actually took it very well. They didn’t want to have anything in their life that pulled them away from what God had for them.

The word “unsubscribe” took on a whole new meaning to me as I really looked at what I was subscribing to in my life that I really didn’t need. Piles of junk started to grow in my mind, and I realized how cluttered my life was.

Please take my unsubscribe fest as an encouragement to check out what you can be set free of in your life. You’re bound to find some junk lingering around your office, home or personal life that you can easily throw in your recycle bin.

I don’t want any to take this as incentive to unsubscribe from The Good News monthly eUpdate. We want you to subscribe to it online at goodnewsfl.org. Our goal for the month of October is to get 1,000 new subscribers. Who wouldn’t want a little Good News once a month in their in-box?