Social media and technological connectedness have become ubiquitous aspects of modern life. Much of it is tremendously helpful and a great blessing to us. However, many dangers are present in the unwise use of these technologies. Distraction, seclusion, idleness, lust and narcissism are very real dangers, among others, that are lurking in the realm of social media. Use these tools wisely for the glory of God and not for your own fading kingdom.

Well, we've already learned so much, haven't we? There's so much just in the last talk before lunch there with Mr. Brown. If you took the time and hopefully, I don't know if these recordings will be available, I hope so. I'd love to get that one and go through it five more times and taking thorough notes to cover that information.

But if you just this year focused on putting that talk into application in your life, it would just change everything. There were so many good things I learned. Thank you, Scott, for that. I just, it's so good to just constantly be encouraging each other and doing what is right and for the right reasons. And as you'll notice, I'm not a pastor anywhere.

I'm a father. My husband and father is my primary role in life. And So my talks are more like probably a fireside chat instead of a meaty sermon. But I just want to express to you things that I warn my own children about and I talk to them about to help them understand, again, so they can be purposeful in taking every thought captive and every minute captive and being purposeful in everything they do. Because this world is after them.

If you haven't noticed, it is after our young people. That's the whole game. They don't care about us older people. They know we're gonna die off soon. They want the hearts and minds and souls of the children.

And so, and like was talked about earlier, in the last 10 or 15 years, the game has gone up about 50 notches in their attacks against us to trying to do things God's way. It's amazing. I mean, every day there's something new, you're like, good night, where did that come from? Well, it came from the pit of hell where they all come from, but we need to be warning and protecting and guiding our children through this minefield, because the culture is in such rebellion against God. I mean, what they're gonna see in their life is gonna be mind-boggling.

I can't believe how far we've gone in the last five years. Another 10 years or 20 years, when you throw God out, I mean, there'll be nothing off limits. Whatever the most depraved thing you can think of, it will be pushed as normal, natural, healthy. And so, but we have to prepare them for that. Because, like the old saying goes, every story sounds true to hear the other side.

We need to be saying the other side. Otherwise their deception and their cleverness in cloaking the evil to appeal to their flesh and appeal to just the way we are as sinful human beings is very strategic. And so That's what we're up against as parents. But I know God, with His Word, can show us the ways to do that. I want to read a few verses before I get started.

James 4.14, and I'll read that for you. James 4.14 says, Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow, for what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. Our life is a vapor. If you ever met, I like tea so we make tea.

Have you seen the vapor come out of the tea kettle? That's what God is telling you. That's what our life is like. It's gone instantly And we feel like it's a long time. It's not.

And that's why we have to use it so carefully. In Ephesians chapter 5, starting in verse 15, it says this, listen, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, be not unwise, but be understanding what the will of the Lord is. I know you care about that, that's why you're here this weekend, to find out what's the will of the Lord in how I am doing the things I'm doing in my family. And I'm so glad you're here.

It's so encouraging to see this many people that are hungry to want to do it God's way. And He's going to bless you for it, I promise you. In the last verse I'd like to read, when I was young It was always my favorite verse in the Bible. It's kind of a different one than most people, but I just like things cut and dry and laid out for me. And it's in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, starting in verse 13.

And, I mean, Solomon, he didn't always act wise, but he had biblical wisdom given to him by God in a special way. We know that from the story of that. And when that kind of man exists, and he has lived his life not always obeying the wisdom that God had given him, a lot of the time not, but then he comes to the end of his life after having chased the wind and done all the things under the sun that can be done, this is what his conclusion, and I just love this, this is what he said, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. This is it, This is life. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. That's, in a nutshell, our life here. And he's reminding us of, we will give an account of our time. And so the thing I want to talk to you about today, social media is something that is taking a lot of the average American's most precious resource their time. Especially once we're saved, I believe Satan knows that we're God's children, and so I think he then looks in his attacks against us to do whatever he can to get us to use our time doing anything besides what God has asked us to do.

He doesn't care what it is. It might not even be a bad thing, but it's not the thing he should be doing. It's not the best thing. He doesn't care. He wants to use our time because like that little vapor coming out of the tea cup, he knows it's going to be gone soon.

And they've wasted another day, and they've wasted more time, and it's slowly disappearing. And I don't want them to influence others. I don't want them to be obedient to this, because it'll make a huge difference in their life and those around them. And so, I really believe one of the things he is doing is using social media. And we could talk specifically about— there's so many different ones, if I don't mention the one that you're into.

These are just principles. And I'm not saying you can't use any of them. I think they can be used constructively, some of them, and carefully and purposefully. But the culture of being obsessed with information that is not necessary for us. Okay, it's like the news cycle, just constant news.

Well, here's the reality. I'm 53. In the last 53 years, there's maybe been 10 days where it was important to know what was going on in the news. Maybe. And on those days, like September 11th, we got rid of our TV 25 years ago, so I haven't seen a newscast, and we're doing just fine.

September 11th, I was teaching at this school, some math classes, got there, and they said, did you hear what happened? I go, no. And they told me, so then I go, oh, thanks. I mean, we have to sit there and obsess for 50 hours on something, whatever it is, and you're going to hear about it if it's something important, but they're going to consume your time. Why?

Because they make money off you spending your time staring at the TV, or staring at Facebook, or anything, because the ads. So it's a money-making machine, so they want to consume every second of your life to profit from it, whatever it might be. And we have to say no, no thank you, I have things, I have too many things to do. This is the amazing thing is, just think 10 years ago before all the social media, or 10 or 15 years ago, we were all still too busy. And yet the average American spends two hours a day just on the social media.

That's not counting TV or computer or video games or any of that. Just social media between all the different platforms, they average about two hours a day. Well, what went? If we were too busy before that two hours a day, and now we've added something that's consuming two hours a day, we obviously had to stop doing something. And I think it's the important things that we've stopped doing.

I think they've created this monster. And I even have a clip with me, but I'll just tell you what it said. One of the founders of Facebook said this. He said, our point in doing this, he said, you might even call it evil. He said, we wanted to consume every second of your life.

And the way we were going to do it, we knew when we designed this like button, we were going to give you a little dopamine hit, and you would put up a picture of something and five people like it, and that would draw you back to post more media to get more likes and it would be a vicious cycle and he was saying he goes I do not use Facebook he's one of the founders of it I would never allow my children to be on Facebook because it is a psychological manipulation to suck all your time away. I mean, it's him just saying it straight out himself in an interview, and I was like, wow, they knew exactly what they were doing. He said it was, he goes, we were evil in doing that, but what do you expect? He said, what do you expect from a bunch of computer hacks? And so that's what it is, I mean a lot of this thing.

And as I thought through it too, something very interesting about it. It is, you know, We're also against age-segregated peer grouping for good reason. Because when you age-segregate peer group, you get everyone equally ignorant, only being influenced by those that are equally as ignorant as they are. So they're very easy to manipulate because they don't really know anything about anything. And you keep them that way their whole life, all through the school system, and then they're used to that when they get older, and so they're never receiving wisdom from above or giving wisdom below, which is one of our key roles here on earth.

But this peer grouping, all these different platforms, what they're doing, it makes everybody incredibly dependent on people's opinions. We as Christians cannot be dependent on people's opinions. Your opinion on any topic in the world, and my opinion on any topic, is meaningless. It either agrees with the word of God so it's valid because it's backing it up, or it doesn't, so it's idle chatter. But they're creating this thing here.

And any time you peer group, and it's not age segregated, but it's peer grouping, and They are wicked. I mean, the founder of Facebook, I mean, he's a hardcore atheist, and they have this community now that has two and a half billion people in it. That's how many people have Facebook accounts. Two and a half billion. Okay?

And they dictate what is acceptable in that culture and what is not. And if you step out of line a little bit, you'll be reprimanded just by the culture itself. Oh, that's hateful. How dare you say that? And you'll be whipped into line, just like the peer pressure of an age-segregated group, and you learn, oh, I better keep my mouth shut.

And if you step over the line too much at all, they will remove your account, saying you are not even valid to exist in this community. And if you're not in this community, you're nothing. And we're buying into that. And it's evil. I mean, last summer I was amazed at showing how far it's going of their control.

The GOP, the Republican Party, I mean, not some real conservative group or anything, they rejected their ads. They had ads that they were going to pay millions of dollars to put on Facebook, just showing the atrocities done by big government over the years, and they said, no, they're not welcome on here. We do not want people influenced by your propaganda. And they wouldn't even take their millions of dollars. The GOP, that's how controlled they are.

We do not want them influenced by you at all. And so, we just need to think through these things that we're doing. I think Another problem with the constant texting, I think I saw the average person says 200 texts a day are received. It's sidetracking us constantly from the things we are supposed to be about. I mean, if you pay attention to yourself, you'll see every time that phone buzzes or be you kind of you just your sidetrack off of what you were doing.

Just just constantly just oh just just So whether you were talking to your children, whether she were doing, it's just constantly sidetracking you. And it's trying to present to you a cheap imitation of friendship by having this world where you've got 900 friends, or a thousand friends or whatever, and making you feel like you have friendships, but you really don't. It's just a cheap imitation. I mean, even just texting, You know, you get a heart from your wife or vice versa or whatever, and it's fine if you can't be there right then or whatever. But I just, I feel it's just a cheap imitation for real relationships with real people.

The Bible says, you know, the eyes are the windows to the soul. I do not believe you can have a real meaningful, impactful relationship if you can't at least sometimes be in person looking into their soul. We were meant to be able to do that. If I'm texting a man trying to encourage him and, hey are you guarding your heart? He can easily text back, sure am.

I don't know if he is or not, but if I ask him that in person while I'm there with him, and say, are you guarding your heart? And he turns red or he, I can tell, hey, you're not. Look, can I help you? What's going on? And it allows you to really connect, which does take time and energy.

A real friendship takes work. It's not just heart-heart, send. And I think there's so many things. It trivializes what really is important in this life, those meaningful types of relationships. And I was thinking, what is a friendship?

I mean, a friendship is something where you have influence, encouragement, accountability, and a good friendship is always mutually beneficial. Both people are being benefited and blessed by being in this relationship together. Even if it's one where it's the one person just giving to the other. Well it's a blessing to be the person that's able to share the wisdom you've learned with someone that's younger. So I get a blessing if I'm trying to encourage a young person, and hopefully they're getting a blessing by getting some wisdom for someone older.

I've always encouraged my children, and I encourage you the same way. Try to have all of your main body of friends be people quite a bit older or quite a bit younger. If you focus on your own age group again, you're just, you're pooling your ignorance because you're both at the same stage of ignorance of not knowing what's going on. If you have older friends and you've picked them wisely, they're gonna be able to teach you a lot of good things, which is gonna bless you and it's gonna bless them because it's gonna help them learn how to be a good teacher, an instructor of wisdom and understanding. And then you're gonna take that experience you got from them and dump it down lower.

Your little five-year-old brother, hey, daddy said not to do that, remember? Don't do that. And you're influencing, you're training for what you're going to be doing your whole life, influencing others. Age-segregated peer-grouping of course eliminates that from ever happening, which was a key part of the strategy. It's a Marxist strategy to do that, and that's what it's from, though.

They don't want anybody influencing anyone except them, And that's all these platforms. Facebook wants to have influenced the world. I mean, and that's what they're doing. They're having a tremendous impact. My mom, when I was a kid, always would say, wherever you are, be all there.

And she would just over and over again, if I was talking about, oh, I can't wait until we go to whatever, she goes, no, no, no, that'll come soon enough. Wherever you are, be all there. Be engaged where you are. I think all this social media has made us where we're never where we are. We're always getting, oh I got to go get this thing, I've got, oh yeah maybe somebody liked my picture, maybe, and just constant obsession again with other people's feelings towards me or something I posted.

And I don't think that's what we're supposed to be where God has put us, wherever that might be, and be all there to maximize and use officially that day or that moment. We're not well half there I was having lunch with a guy but I got interrupted by ten texts. No, we have to say no to that. If I'm here trying to be a blessing to someone I need to let them know, this is not more important than you, I'm here for you. And what can we do?

Tell me about what's going on in your life. Or if it's one of your children talking to them. You can't be, just a minute honey, just a minute honey. We can't do that because it's being a poor testimony, a poor example to them, but again, those verses I read at the beginning, it's not taking seriously the admonitions that it's going to vanish away very quickly. And it won't matter if everybody saw the little picture of you eating yogurt with your daughter or whatever.

It won't matter. I went on there last summer. We had an account just for agenda where we post maybe something, where we're going to be or something. About once a year I'd go on there and post something. But last summer, I went on there just to figure out what is this thing really about?

I spent about an hour on there. I'd never done that before or since. And I started to go around to people I knew, and Christian leaders, just family, friends, and they, of course, cleverly, if you haven't been on there, that's great. They know enough about you to know who might be your friend, and they're very good at going, hey, these people you might know, and you're like, yeah, I do know that. How do you know I know those people?

Haven't talked to them in 20 years, but you know I'm connected to them in some way. It's almost scary in a way. But I started looking on there, and I was so disappointed. In so many ways, people would present themselves in such a worldly way that are Christian people trying to appeal to this community of lost people. I mean, I saw Christian ladies, I know they pop up because I know their husband, and I'd look at, she has 900 friends, 400 of them are men.

And she's a married woman with a family. What in the world is this? It just, so many things, pictures people would post of themself, I'm like, my goodness. I've seen that lady at a church before, but I mean, This is how she wants to present herself to the world? Or whatever, I mean, it was so many things, I was just discouraged at the end of it.

And I realized something. I think a lot of these things are a form of gossip. I felt unclean just looking at that stuff. And then I go, why is that? And I say, it's like going house to house and you're getting all this information on people.

It's none of your business. You don't need to know what all your friends are doing every minute of the day and all their private times and what they do with their families, that's not your business. It's like gossip. It's like you're getting all this information on you that you don't have time to listen to, but you also maybe shouldn't be listening to a lot of it. It's like, I don't need to know all these little intimate details about people's lives that, I just, anyway, I just, I encourage you to look at it and pray about it, considering what the book of Proverbs says on these things.

And I think it's like the person going house to house, just listening to ideas, and then going sharing with someone else. It's like you're just, you're spreading meaningless information. And what makes it sinful, or potentially sinful, is it's wasting people's time. And we can't do that. We have to encourage people to use their time wisely.

And we need to try to model that the best we can. And not encourage them to just flitter around, just non-stop, just all these things. Now, I haven't even talked about yet all the garbage that's on those things, okay? I'm saying if you didn't even see anything that would defile you, which you will if you're on there long enough, there are some of these platforms that they're just pornographic in their advertisements. I guess there must be different rules for that.

Like Snapchat, you slide the screen to the side, it's pornography. I don't know how they work that out or whatever, but it's unbelievable. Some of these things are just vile. Pornography right there, you weren't looking for it, you didn't search anything, You just turned the screen to the side. Boom, it's there.

And so these things, I mean, they're putting things inside of there to defile you. Why? Because Satan is the father of lies, and he will use anything he can to destroy us, or try to destroy us, and our influence, and our families, and our life. And I've just, I don't know, I just, I want to encourage you to carefully and thoughtfully consider what you are doing, who you're keeping track of, and is the information you're getting, is it that important? Or is it just more information to consume your time?

I truly believe this, to have a meaningful relationship with someone, the best way, if you're not in person, is the phone. You can hear their voice. If you ask someone on the phone, how you doing? They say, oh, pretty good. You can tell they're not doing pretty good because the tones of the voice communicate more information a lot of times than the words they're using.

On a text you can't see that. You can't relate to them. You realize, no you're not doing okay. What's going on? Can I help you?

Is there a problem? Whatever. And so what does this mean? It means to have a real friendship, it takes a lot of time. And what does that mean?

It means as Christians, we can't be friends with 900 people. I went on the agenda thing and I realized, oh, I have 12, 000 friends, isn't that wonderful? I don't know one of them. I'm just telling you, we've got to pull back, not accept the devil's counterfeit of meaningful relationship with all these things, and start carefully choosing, God, who do you want me to spend my limited amount of time for friends? Who do you want me to spend that with?

And what would you like me to do with them? I think we're way overloaded on friends, is my personal opinion. I see, even in good circles, young people's friendships, even with other Christian being a negative, not a positive most of the time, unless it's in a very limited form. It's just our families, I mean, just to do what we need to do, to build strong friendships with our families, if God's—especially if he's blessed you with a big family— that's a lot of work. And those are worth investing in those relationships, because they're—as long as you're here on this earth, they're there.

And they're meaningful. And a brother is born for adversity. I mean, to build those relationships are of such value. And the husband and wife and stuff, instead of all the buddies and all the stuff. I think we as Christians should primarily look for friendships, make sure we have time for them, different stages of life.

You might have almost no time for other friendship except maybe one godly man or one godly woman that you can get together with once a month for an hour and just build each other up and encourage and bless and then get back to the business of training your children and doing the things God's asked us to do. Another thing that doesn't happen in those type of relationships, There's not the touch or the hug, or even a man just shaking another man's hand. There's something that's just bonding about that. It just, it makes him feel closer, giving him a hug. I know ladies love doing that.

And we just, again, I just encourage you to be looking at things like that and thoughtfully and carefully and seek to have the deep, meaningful, real relationships with real people that are mutually beneficial. A lot of people say, you start to talk on subjects like this and they're, well, what's wrong with it, what's wrong with it? I mean, they're wanting to have confrontation. And I'm not trying to tell you at all what to do in your family. I'm just giving you a talk.

I've given my children many times and in other friends just to try to be a blessing and getting them to at least be purposeful in the way they do that. God has put us on this earth not to focus on not doing what's wrong. He's put us on this earth to focus on doing what is right. If we fill our time with doing what's right, we're not gonna have to worry about doing what is wrong. And so many people guide their life by the opposite principle of just, well, what's wrong with it?

What's wrong with it? I'm like, what's right with it is the better question. And if you can't show me from this book where it could be a benefit and a blessing and to build you up, to make you strong in the Lord, then you've got a problem. And you better be able to defend whatever you do with that. And again, I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm just saying, I see it now as we go travel the country to, you sit in an airport, you'll be in a room with five, six hundred people waiting for their planes.

Everyone is, I mean it's like you look around, it's like a movie or something from 1984, George Orwell or something. I mean Big Brother has convinced us to carry around something that videos everything we do. There's a mic on it, and I mean, it's really funny almost. It's like he would never have dreamed. You know, people are gonna voluntarily carry a video camera and a recorder with them wherever they go, and they're gonna be so susceptible to the culture of those social platforms, we can get them to believe anything.

One thing I came across as I was studying this is the US military is really involved with Facebook in learning how to use Facebook to control us as a people and getting us to do whatever they're wanting us to do, whether it's an engagement, a battle, or there's a war coming up, to get to stir interests where we'll want to do that and stuff. They spend millions of dollars every year just studying. They'll put out little test things to see how people react so they learn how to manipulate you based on how you react to these things. And they're spending millions of dollars every year on it. That's just one thing I happen to come across as I was studying some of this.

I think we've got enough issues without bringing some of these things into them. So just be careful, be cautious, be prayerful, just pray about it. And I know there's exceptions to everything I've said as far as the heart of it. I mean, I know the Browns Skype their grandchildren and teach them classes every day. I was like, if God allowed Skype to be developed for no other reason than that, that is so wonderful.

I just love that. I will do that with my children if God continues to bless me in that area. Now that's a good use of technology. So they can have a Bible study with them or teach them a course every day, and they're right there where they can look into their eyes, and they can look back into their grandparents eyes. So technology can be used in a wonderful way, but most of the time it's just sucking away from us our most precious and valuable resource and one that we never know how much we have left.

And so I encourage you to be careful and thoughtful and vigilant because your adversary the devil walketh about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Don't let him do that to you or your children. Please don't do it. I think that is the end of this, but thank you for listening and I hope something I said might help you have a good conversation together as a family about these things when you get home and and just be careful in it because we are in a spiritual battle and when you're in a battle the enemy is pursuing every weapon possible to destroy. And I think five years from now there will be a whole different era, more things coming at us.

But we need to be alert and perceptive of that. Thank you so much.