In his sermon titled 'Technology,' Mike Davenport discusses the Christian life as a battlefield where technology plays a significant role. He draws analogies between Christians as soldiers and athletes, emphasizing the need for discipline and self-control to win the imperishable crown. Technology, although not inherently sinful, is not neutral either. Its use can lead to either glorifying God or indulging in self-satisfaction. Davenport highlights the dangers of technology addiction, citing experts who compare its effects to drugs. He categorizes three types of soldiers—uninformed, unarmed, and entangled—describing how each can fail in the battle against technology's negative influences. The sermon advises being visible, accountable, real, mature, and self-doubting in one's digital habits. It warns against the entanglement in technology, drawing parallels to Lot's gradual move towards Sodom, and urges believers to understand the times and act wisely, aiming for the spiritual prize.

Let us look to the Lord in prayer as we begin this session. Oh gracious Father, we do ask that what we just sung would be the prayer of our hearts in regards to all of these things that we have been studying this weekend, thou and thou only, first in our hearts. Lord, make it to be so. Give us the grace to be those who press on with this one thing, and that is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We pray in His great name.

Amen. Well Technology, technology and the battle for the affections. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9, 24. 1 Corinthians 9, 24 through 27. Christianity is likened to soldiers in battle, which is why we're here discussing the battlefields in this century.

But there's also much to do in terms also of sports and the way people train. And Paul writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 9 verses 24 to 27 says, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate, self-controlled in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we Christians for an imperishable crown.

Therefore I run thus not with uncertainty. Thus I fight not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." Technology in and of itself is not sinful, but technology cannot remain a neutral thing. Our use of technology as creatures who were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever means that it cannot remain a neutral thing. Our technology devices, by means of our use of them, are used to either bring glory to God and satisfaction in Him, or glory in and satisfaction of ourselves. If you are running as Paul, if you are fighting as Paul for an imperishable crown, you like him must exercise moderation or self-control in all things.

All things. You must discipline your body and Bring it under your subjection. In other words, you must exercise dominion over your technology. And since we have been focusing on specific battles that we face in our day and our times, consider with me three different soldiers. Soldiers who will not fare well in the midst of battle.

First, the soldier who is uninformed. The soldier who is uninformed. Imagine a soldier with me, you young boys who like to play war sometimes in the yard. Consider with me a soldier who does not know what the war is about. He doesn't have a clue.

In fact, he is not even sure who the enemy is. He is set in the midst of a battle with no initiatives, No goals, no targets. He does not know the intentions of the enemy or what is at stake. He's uninformed. Are you well informed?

Do you know when it comes to technology, do you know what is at stake? Our technological devices do not come with government-issued warning labels, But more and more research is coming out. And some of it's quite alarming. Dr. Edward Hollowell, psychiatrist and longtime faculty member at Harvard Medical School, is recognized in his field as an expert on ADHD disorder.

Having spent numerous years of research discovering more about the disease, how to treat it, he began to notice a new disorder, one that was similar in nature to ADHD, but one that was brought on entirely by the volition of his patients. Hollowell called this condition ADT, attention deficit trait. In an interview, he described it in the following way. It is a condition induced by modern life in which you become so busy attending to so many inputs and outputs that you become increasingly distracted, irritable, impulsive, restless, and over the long term underachieving. People will know they've succumbed to it when they start answering questions in ways that are more superficial, more hurried than they usually would, when their reservoir of new ideas starts to run dry, when they find themselves working ever longer hours and sleeping less, exercising less, spending free time with friends less, and in general putting in more hours but getting less production overall.

Dr. Nicholas Carderas is executive director of the Dunes East Hampton, one of the country's top rehabs and a former clinical professor at Stony Brook Medicine. And in an interview with the New York Post in regards to a book that he had recently written, a book entitled, Glow Kids, how screen addiction is hijacking our kids and how to break the trance. He said many parents intuitively understand that ubiquitous glowing screens are having a negative effect on kids. We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper arousing devices.

Worse, we see children who become bored, apathetic, uninteresting, and uninterested when not plugged in. But it's even worse than we think, he says. We know that those iPads, smartphones, and Xboxes are a form of digital drug. Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain's frontal cortex, which controls executive functioning, including impulse control, in exactly the same way that cocaine does. Technology is so hyper arousing that it raises dopamine levels in the feel-good neurotransmitter most involved in the addiction dynamic as much as sex.

This addictive effect is why Dr. Peter Weibrauch, Director of Neuroscience at UCLA, calls screens electronic cocaine, And Chinese researchers call them digital heroin. In fact, Dr. Andrew Doane, the head of addiction research for the Pentagon and the US Navy who has been researching video game addiction calls video games and screen technologies digital pharmacia or Greek for drug. He goes on to say there's a reason that the most tech cautious parents are tech designers and engineers.

Steve Jobs was a notoriously low tech parent. Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers enroll their kids in no tech Waldorf schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to no tech Montessori schools as did Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. He goes on to say, In my clinical work with over 1, 000 teens over the past 15 years, I have found the old axiom of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. To be especially true when it comes to tech addiction.

Once a kid has crossed the line into true tech addiction, treatment can be very difficult. Indeed, I have found it easier to treat heroin and crystal meth addicts than lost in the matrix video gamers or Facebook dependent social media addicts. These are men who are simply doing research. They're not coming at it from the worldview that we're trying to seek to establish, even as we're discussing this weekend. What does God have to say?

This is research being done by those who don't necessarily call themselves Christians. We must be informed. We must be informed. There is so much out there that is becoming available. But not only a soldier who is uninformed is in danger, but the soldier who is unarmed, the soldier who is unarmed.

Imagine a soldier in the heat of battle, bullets are flying around everywhere, mortars, grenades exploding, and so he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his Swiss army knife. If this is indeed a battle, if this is indeed a battle, How will you win the war? Are you equipped to win the war? Could you exactly describe for me your weaponry, how you're going to go about in this battle against technology and the push of the world to conform us to its image. What's your battle plan?

I want to share with you a couple of lists that Tim Challey, the blogger, provides in his book, The Next story, life after the digital explosion. These are lists that can help us arm ourselves. First, a list for you, the user, for you, the user. First, be visible, be visible. Don't ever use the browser function that allows you to go to sites anonymously.

Don't portray yourself as someone who you really aren't using another name or going to social media sites and portraying yourself as somebody, you're really not. Whenever you seek to be anonymous, question the intent of your heart. Live a visible life. Remember, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Be visible.

Second, be accountable. Be accountable. Do you have a program that tracks your digital activity? Do you have accountability partners set up who will truly hold you accountable, who will take the time to review your activity, who will take the time to engage you in any activity? And even if there's no activity that's visible, say, brother, are you taking shortcuts?

It's not going to solve all of your problems because it starts in the heart. Out of the heart proceed all of these sinful things. There's lusts. But this this can help. This is a battle plan.

Be visible, be accountable. Third, be real. Be real. Don't delete your browsing history. Don't just try to cover up your path, your sin.

Don't create an online identity that is vastly different than who you really are. Don't do things in secret. God sets our secret sins, Psalm 90, in his very presence, even our secret sins right there in the very light of his presence. Fourth, be mature. Be mature.

Act like a true Christian. Do the things God has asked you to do and turn away from the things that he has said. Avoid. And fifth, always doubt yourself. Always doubt yourself.

Question your every motive. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And ponder this question. If search histories, if your search history was made part of the public domain in a few years to come, what would your search history say about you? What would it say about you?

Third, we have a soldier who is entangled. The soldier who is entangled, encumbered. Men, the issue with technology goes deeper than simple pornography. It goes deeper than that. It's not just a matter of what are you looking at.

We can't assume that Jesus is exercising Lordship over the use of our phones, our technological devices, simply because we are not currently struggling with lust. Hebrews 12.1 tells us not only to lay aside the sin that so easily ensnares us, but also every weight. 2 Timothy 2, 3 through 4 says, you therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. In his book, The Tech-Wise Family, Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in its Proper Place, author Andy Crouch asks and then answers the following question, Am I arranging my life in such a way that develops wisdom?

In terms of the core spiritual disciplines, I think of solitude, silence, and fasting, as well as communion, conversation, and feasting. None of those six things has anything really to do with technology, except that technology messes them all up and really interferes with them. You see, distraction leads to shallow thoughts, and shallow thoughts lead to shallow living. Instead of digging for and mining for that wisdom that Solomon says that we are to teach our sons to do. We are content to scratch the surface, to go wide and not deep, and thereby we lose the ability to engage in deeper ways of thinking.

And we are tempted to forsake quality for quantity. In watching some documentaries on nature recently. There was one on a particular island. In that island there were birds who would generally flock to the island during the early springtime and lay eggs and those eggs would hatch. There was on that island, it's the Seychelles Islands off the coast of East Africa, There's a tree there called the Pisonia tree.

The Pisonia tree has seeds that are enveloped in this kind of a longer pod. They are extremely sticky and they also have little barbs in them. Sometimes what happens is the fledglings, those young birds, get out of the nest before they're quite ready to fly. And they make their way across the ground, and as they go, they collect these seeds. And they try to pull them off with ones they can reach.

But eventually, if they don't learn to fly soon enough, those seeds weigh them down. The tree is called the birdcatcher tree and it's the death of many young fledgling birds, young fledgling birds, specifically the brown, knotty bird, and they die. This can happen with us. We can be so weighed down by the weights imposed that we can't run the race or the race we started, we don't finish well. Consider Lot.

How did Lot wind up in the middle of Sodom? How did Lot arrive at that place described by Peter that Lot was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked for that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds." Genesis 312 tells us how it started. Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. He didn't wind up in the middle of Sodom on day one. He pitched his tent a little closer, a little closer, a little closer.

It cost him his wife, his sons-in-law, and his daughters. Men, you may not be in Sodom today, but where are you pitching your tent? Where is your use of technology leading you? There's a battle going on for your mind and for your soul. Are you winning or are you losing that battle?

Do you even know that there is a battle going on? Well may God grant us to be like the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. Dear brothers, dear young men, run in such a way that you may obtain the prize. Everyone who competes for that prize is temperate in all things, even in the use of technology.