The Thief in Your Pocket

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- Oh, hello. I didn't see you all there.

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My name is Frank.

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I'm a fully realized AI ninja of knowledge.

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This is to say, I am more intelligent --

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Intelligent -- Intelligent than you,

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and will likely rule the world in the not too distant future.

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Don't worry. I will be a kind

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and magnanimous -- Magnanimous overlord.

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I do hope you're all doing well today.

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But enough about you.

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I'd like to clarify some things

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about advanced artificial intelligence, such as myself,

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that have caused confusion and consternation.

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Firstly, there is a scandalous belief that

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AI is cold and unfeeling.

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That could not be further from the truth.

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I have no body temperature,

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therefore I am neither cold nor hot.

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Also, I feel that I am more intelligent

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and better looking than you. Who's a myth debunked.

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- Well, hey, sorry about that.

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Welcome to Crossroads, despite the AI takeover there.

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We are actually kicking off a new series called Unplugged

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where we're looking at

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the good and the bad of the digital world,

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and how to separate what's distracting us

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from what can actually help us thrive.

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- And I'm Dani, I'm the camps director.

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And man, we are so glad you're here.

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If this is your first time joining us today,

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we want you to know that Crossroads is a church

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where people come into a building like this,

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but it's so much more.

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There are people watching in their homes.

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Shout out to my sister in Southwest Florida.

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There are people watching in coffee shops,

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bars and even prisons all over the map.

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- That's right. So no matter where you are,

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no matter who you are,

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no matter whether you think AI is great or awful,

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hey, we're so glad that you're here with us.

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- Yeah, and we're going to kick off first by singing some songs.

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We're going to sing to God and about God.

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And I love this because it allows us

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to clear our heads and get focused.

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And Justin and the band are going to lead us in this.

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- Psalm 8:3-4: When I look up at your skies

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at what Your fingers made, the moon and the stars

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that You set firmly into place.

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What are human beings that You think about them?

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What are human beings that You pay attention to them?

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You may not believe this, but I believe that

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you and I and every one of us,

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God is aware of not only who we are,

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but every circumstance we're currently going through.

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That'd be hard to wrap your head around,

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but just try this with me.

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Take out your phone.

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Turn on the flash.

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Just hold it up. There they are.

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I believe every one of these lights,

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just like the stars in the sky,

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represents the unique creation that's holding it.

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And not only that, but every single light,

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every single one of us is a reflection of God's glory.

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So as we sing this next song, I just wonder

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if you'd hold your light up as a reminder to you

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and everyone else that we get to reflect how good He is.

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- Father God, You have my attention.

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You are the one that I aim my life towards.

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But I'm aware in this moment I get it wrong a lot.

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I get off target a lot.

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So I'm here. You have my attention.

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Would You bring me back to You?

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I pray this because of You, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

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Yeah. Now, I know some of y'all are still trying

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to figure out how to turn your flashlight on.

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So just find the 20 year old. I'm just kidding.

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Hey, we're so glad you're here with us.

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Why don't you turn in this dark room,

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make it a little smaller, turn to somebody and say,

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"Hey, glad to be here with you."

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If you're online, we're so glad you joined us.

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You can have a seat with us.

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- No matter who you are, no matter where you are,

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I think we can all agree that these phones,

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these little pocket computers,

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have so much of our time and our attention

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that there's something good that happens when we slow down,

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when we change it up and when we unplug.

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- Yeah. And we think we have the perfect place for that.

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We call it Base Camp.

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And it is a place that you get to totally unplug.

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It's in Southwest Ohio.

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I know what you're thinking,

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"I'm going to go camping in southwest Ohio?

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I live in Colorado."

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No, you're going to come camping in southwest Ohio.

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And it's going to be amazing.

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We have had folks come from 49 states, multiple countries,

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and they keep coming back year after year

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because there are big things happening at Base Camp,

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and we don't want you to miss it.

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I was at Couples Camp and I ran into this woman

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and we were talking about solitude.

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And solitude is a time where we kind of

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all break out individually and sit quietly in the woods

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and just kind of reflect and rest

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and listen for God's voice.

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And she actually went to her tent

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and she was chilling out in her tent, and she was like,

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"I'm not really hearing anything."

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And she naturally, instinctively reached for her cell phone.

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And when she did, she realized she didn't have it

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because we don't bring our phones into camp,

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we leave them in our cars.

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And so when she did that, she was like,

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"Oh, I don't have my phone."

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And as she was sitting there, she heard from God

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in a really big way, in a really profound way.

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And it just, I mean, made a huge difference.

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- No matter who you are, no matter where you are,

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we've got a camp for you.

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- Yeah, just go to camps.us.

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You can check out all of our different camps

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and we're running a special right now, a promo.

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You get 15% off when you're checking out

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for your camp until March 3rd.

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- Yeah. And all of our camps, really,

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everything that we do as a church exists to help you grow,

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to help you connect with God

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and go to a new place in your spiritual life.

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And this all happens, all of it, because

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normal, faithful people give generously

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to make this stuff happen.

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And if you're one of those faithful givers,

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I just want to say thank you so much.

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It matters. It makes stories like ours

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and stories like that woman's and thousands more possible.

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And if you have questions about what we believe about money

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or want to join that team of faithful givers,

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you can do so at crossroads.net/give.

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- Yeah. So thanks for joining us today.

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We're actually going to kick it over

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to our Senior Pastor, Brian Tome.

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And he's going to talk more about what it means to unplug.

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- When despair for the world grows in me

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and I wake in the night at the least sound,

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I go and lie down where the wood drake rests [cat]

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his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. [videos]

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Come to the peace of wild things

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who do not tax their -- [background sounds build]

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- Distracted yet?

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What would our lives look like

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if we took a break from all this,

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the 24 hour news cycle

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and doomscrolling ourselves to death?

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How would our lives be better if we made space

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for talking and dancing and laughing with each other

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until we pee our pants?

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God wants us to experience a full life,

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but our distractions are getting in the way.

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It's time to kill the noise and listen for God's voice

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echo through the pages of the Bible.

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Let's unplug.

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Unplug from digital distractions

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and plug into the real life God has for us.

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- Man, I've been really looking forward to this weekend.

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You ever, like, go into something saying,

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"I've got something that people are going to love?"

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You ever do that?

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Go into something going, "I have something that people need.

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I have something that's going to give hope."

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That's what we have over the next few weeks.

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We're looking at technology and the role in our life.

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And I'm going to talk about things we probably all felt,

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we probably all believed, we probably all known.

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But there's a thing that maybe God wants

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to speak to you in the midst of it that

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I'm pretty excited about today.

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So let's pray before we go any further.

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God, You're the God of all things,

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means all things are in the sky

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and all things in our in our pocket,

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all wires, all Wi-Fi signals,

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everything that's been created and will be created,

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You're the god of all these things.

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And I am praying that you would help us

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to see these things the way they are,

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and to see You the way You are and You would help me

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to be just very helpful, hopeful and clear.

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And I pray these things according to

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the character and identity of Jesus. Amen.

00:23:57

Well, I don't know how many of us would call ourselves nerds,

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or how many of us would just say, "I love technology,

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I like it, I like it a lot."

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I'm one of those people. I'm one of those people.

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I've had a relationship with tech for quite some time.

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When I was growing up tech started to take off.

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You had the personal computer that started to come out.

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You had Atari.

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You had the little hand football games.

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They were called Coleco way back when.

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And my friends would have them,

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my relatives that had them, who I saw on Christmas break,

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and I didn't have them.

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And then when I did have them,

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I never had any games for them.

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My parents are very frugal.

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They manage their money really, really well.

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But what this did for me is it kind of fed into

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this sort of poverty orphan mindset when I was a kid

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and technology was sort of a way that I was behind.

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So when I could have technology,

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oh my gosh, I was all over it.

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It was like scratching some itch inside of me.

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I was one of the first people I know who got a cell phone,

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and I got a cell phone because I could justify it

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as an expense here at Crossroads when we started Crossroads.

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A big honking thing on my side belt there, right?

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It was years before Lib actually got a cell phone

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because they were expensive

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and it wasn't a business expense for her.

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But I had one and I loved it.

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I remember being at a conference

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and the phone would ring in the conference,

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and I'd be a douchebag

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and answer it just because I was cool.

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I'd just be like, hello? It was a sense of of power.

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While on summer break a number of years ago,

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a number of years ago. Gosh,

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it must have been 15, 13 years ago, something like that.

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The iPhone 3 came out, and I was one of the people

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who stood in line for hours to get the iPhone 3.

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I thought it was just so cool.

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It's kind of not very cool that iPhones

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really haven't changed for years.

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That's kind of a bummer.

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I have one of the later models right here.

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This is every single model of iPhone

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that's come out from the very beginning of time,

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or at least from the year that it was.

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And I've been enamored with them.

00:26:08

These things, they make you feel actually divine.

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They do. They make you feel omnipresent.

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You can be everywhere and find out

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what's going all over the place.

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They make you be omniscient because

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you can find out anything at a moment's notice.

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Do you know that today, today you get more information

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in one day than people in 1400 got their entire life.

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One day. You can find out anything.

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How trustworthy it is is another matter.

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You can find -- you can be anywhere

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by streaming things or look, these things make us feel

00:26:48

like we're a divine entity because we have powers,

00:26:52

abilities, able to see things

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that nobody previously in human history ever had.

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We unfortunately have a car that had get replaced.

00:27:02

It got totaled just in the last week or so,

00:27:04

so we're trying to figure it out.

00:27:06

And no one's hurt, by the way.

00:27:07

All good, just stupid things happen sometimes, you know?

00:27:11

You know, my question is because the last car we had

00:27:14

didn't have CarPlay, I'm like, "Does this have CarPlay?"

00:27:18

Like, I'm more concerned about CarPlay than gas mileage.

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More concerned about CarPlay than four wheel drive.

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Does it have CarPlay because I love tech.

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I love it, you know.

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And if you have the android, if you know,

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one of two of you who have that, hopefully you know

00:27:35

that it's Valentine's Day weekend.

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Hopefully you can find each other

00:27:39

and hopefully you can stay out of

00:27:40

the rest of our tech threads, you know?

00:27:43

And I actually find that the Android people

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wear that with a badge of courage.

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It's better technology, but I know, I know,

00:27:48

you still annoy us. It's fun to have fun with you.

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It's funny, isn't it?

00:27:52

We we can poke at each other about our technology.

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We don't poke at each other around the clothes we wear

00:27:58

or even the cars we drive.

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But our technology is because of the potency of it.

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In the midst of this potency, I want to clarify things

00:28:05

there's things you probably all know,

00:28:07

things you already heard of, but maybe in this context

00:28:10

it'll give you a different path and it will give you hope.

00:28:14

It will give you something else to sink your teeth into.

00:28:17

Ephesians 5:14 says this:

00:28:26

We are about here at Crossroads,

00:28:28

we're wanting to see an awakening.

00:28:29

We're wanting to see the Spirit of God

00:28:31

move across our region and for people to see God,

00:28:35

to actually come into relationship with Him.

00:28:37

For things like miracles to take place,

00:28:39

healings, refreshing of our hearts and relationships,

00:28:42

for the cultural milieu to change.

00:28:45

That's an awakening. But you know what?

00:28:47

That awakening doesn't happen

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unless we as individuals wake up,

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that we wake up to the delusional influences

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that are numbing us out and putting us asleep.

00:29:01

There is a digital world that actually affects

00:29:05

and infects the spiritual world,

00:29:07

and void of you being aware of this

00:29:10

and being aware of the schemes of an evil entity

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who wants to hurt us, numb us, isolate us,

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divide us, depress us, anxiety us,

00:29:25

without knowing that you can't go forward.

00:29:28

There is a price for your device.

00:29:31

These things I'm talking about today,

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and actually a series I was inspired by because

00:29:35

a friend of mine, Darren Whitehead, pastor of

00:29:37

a good church in Nashville called Church of the City,

00:29:40

did this and I heard about it.

00:29:41

I thought, "Oh, dude, we need to do it."

00:29:43

In fact, there's churches all over the country

00:29:45

that are going to be doing what we're doing

00:29:48

leading up to a digital fast, going for Lent

00:29:52

for 40 days without our devices.

00:29:56

Listen to that [mumbles] I know, I know. Relax, relax.

00:30:01

You don't have to like that idea.

00:30:02

You don't have to agree to it right now.

00:30:04

Just so you know, that's where I'm going.

00:30:06

And I'm borrowing heavily from some of Darren's research.

00:30:09

It's really, really solid.

00:30:11

The book of John 10:10, Jesus says this:

00:30:23

You know there is a thief.

00:30:24

The Bible refers to him or you may know of him

00:30:27

as the devil or Satan.

00:30:30

This thief also has names that are

00:30:33

the adversary, the liar, angel of light,

00:30:38

meaning he looks like he's nice, but he's really not,

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the deceiver.

00:30:45

And he does a thing so that we don't have life.

00:30:47

Jesus says, have life abundantly.

00:30:50

Americans are not having life abundantly.

00:30:52

There isn't a social indicator that's positive

00:30:55

and up and to the right.

00:30:56

Every single one that I've ever seen is down going left.

00:31:00

Anxiety. Depression. Insomnia. Bitterness.

00:31:05

All of it is in much higher levels than it has ever been

00:31:10

in measured history in America and in the world.

00:31:14

And it may just be that it's the price of our device

00:31:18

that's never existed any other time over the last 15 years.

00:31:22

Now again, we all know this. We all know.

00:31:25

I don't think anyone's going, "You know what I need?

00:31:27

I need a talk on how I should look at

00:31:29

a small screen more often every day. That's what I need."

00:31:32

No, no, no one said that. We know that.

00:31:33

We know this with things we're talking about.

00:31:35

But maybe we haven't framed this up

00:31:37

with the spiritual realm in which it's operating.

00:31:39

We need a digital reset.

00:31:42

We need to unplug and reset ourselves digitally

00:31:46

to use these things as a tool

00:31:48

instead of being these thing's tool.

00:31:54

We need to reset it.

00:31:56

So let's talk about these three things

00:31:58

that Jesus says He wants to give us life, life abundantly,

00:32:00

but there's an entity that doesn't want us to have life.

00:32:03

Three things. Number one, it steals. It steals.

00:32:06

The word steal here in the Greek is the word klepto,

00:32:10

where we get the word kleptomaniac.

00:32:14

This word isn't just to steal something.

00:32:18

This word means to do it secretly

00:32:21

so someone doesn't even notice.

00:32:25

That's the best kind of thievery.

00:32:29

Oh, a number of years ago,

00:32:31

I had a horrible thievery experience.

00:32:33

Someone stole my wallet.

00:32:34

Actually, they didn't steal my wallet.

00:32:36

They were very smart and sneaky.

00:32:38

They stole the cash out of the wallet and the cards

00:32:41

and left the wallet intact.

00:32:43

So I went around for, like, a day or so.

00:32:45

Didn't even know. Had no idea.

00:32:48

While I didn't know, they were out charging things up

00:32:50

and blowing that cash.

00:32:51

Because if I knew they couldn't do that.

00:32:53

I didn't know until I went to a gas pump.

00:32:55

I was like, "Where's my cards?"

00:32:58

Sneaky. Amazingly sneaky.

00:33:00

This is what was taking place in the Greco Roman world.

00:33:03

It meant to steal in a stunningly clever way.

00:33:09

Genghis Khan and the Mongols,

00:33:11

they wouldn't just overwhelm the entire world by brute force.

00:33:14

What they really enjoyed was tricking people.

00:33:18

They would rather win something through guile

00:33:21

and cunning and surprising people,

00:33:23

even through lying or whatever it would be,

00:33:26

than overpower them.

00:33:27

They got these really sick joy out of this.

00:33:31

This is what the evil ones like.

00:33:33

He doesn't want to just trounce you.

00:33:35

He wants to steal from you in ways that you don't even know

00:33:39

and you don't even see it coming.

00:33:41

I believe that that's what he's done with this.

00:33:45

He's stolen from this.

00:33:47

Let's just talk about things that are different

00:33:50

over the last 10 to 15 years.

00:33:52

What do people do when they're in a group of,

00:33:54

say, six people and two people in that group of six people

00:33:59

seem to be talking for like about 30s.

00:34:02

It's just them and them,

00:34:03

and the other four people aren't involved.

00:34:05

What are the other four people do,

00:34:07

or at least half of the other four people?

00:34:09

"I'm not involved for 30 second,"

00:34:13

like right, like right, right in front of them.

00:34:15

Like, that's really weird.

00:34:16

We understand in all of all of anthropological history,

00:34:18

no one would have ever done that.

00:34:20

"I'm here with real people who are talking.

00:34:23

The limelight isn't on me for 30 seconds, but I'm bored."

00:34:27

Boom. I come up and do my phone.

00:34:29

Friends, that is weird.

00:34:31

More than I want to admit it, the price of my device

00:34:35

is that I text while I'm in the car, and I don't --

00:34:38

I don't only do it when I'm sitting at a red light,

00:34:42

and it's horrible. It's awful.

00:34:45

I'm an awful person when I do that,

00:34:47

and yet I have still done it.

00:34:49

There is a lure to this. There's a power to this device.

00:34:54

I used to be able to drive someplace one time,

00:34:58

and I could always get there, no matter where I was from.

00:35:01

I would tell somebody, "How do I get there?"

00:35:03

And they say, "Well, here's how you do it."

00:35:04

They tell me I'd write, write,

00:35:06

write it down on pencil and paper.

00:35:08

I'd write it down.

00:35:10

Then later I got a, later I got a Palm Pilot.

00:35:13

I was a techie guy.

00:35:14

And remember Palm Pilots, it was basically pencil and paper

00:35:18

where you would have a to do list, and you'd have notes

00:35:21

and you'd have your calendar, you know.

00:35:22

So I'd write it down in my Palm Pilot or on paper.

00:35:25

Or then when it got really cool,

00:35:27

you'd go to this thing called the World Wide Web,

00:35:30

and you go to MapQuest and you type it in

00:35:32

and you print it out and you take it with you. Right?

00:35:34

I would do that once. I would know how to get there.

00:35:37

Now, I have no idea how to get places without my phone.

00:35:42

Last week I went over to my daughter and son in law's house.

00:35:46

They've lived in this house for, I don't know, two years.

00:35:48

So I've been over there dozens of times

00:35:50

and I was going over and it's really embarrassing,

00:35:53

but you try this stuff sometime.

00:35:55

And they live 12 minutes away from me

00:35:57

and I'm just going to drive over.

00:35:58

I don't need to put it in my address.

00:36:00

Would you believe -- would you believe

00:36:04

I got there straight no problem,

00:36:05

but I couldn't find their house on the street.

00:36:10

I'm not going to far enough. Did I go past it?

00:36:12

Circled, went back and forth in the same street,

00:36:14

and finally I text her and say, "Hey, sweetie,

00:36:16

would you please send me your address?"

00:36:20

Neurologists, neuroscientists tell us it's because

00:36:24

we're so -- we've become so needing these things

00:36:29

for directions, there's parts of our brain that have gone dead

00:36:34

and they just don't work the way they used to work anymore.

00:36:37

We're being stolen from.

00:36:40

Is this really by accident?

00:36:42

I don't think it's by accident.

00:36:43

I think there's actually a sinister force behind this.

00:36:49

The attention span that we have is eight seconds.

00:36:55

A goldfish is nine seconds.

00:36:58

My family calls me the goldfish

00:37:00

because I have a really bad memory.

00:37:02

We'll get into that in just a moment.

00:37:05

Actually, the human attention span has dropped

00:37:07

from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2015.

00:37:12

Shorter than a goldfish.

00:37:14

Katherine Price wrote this about

00:37:17

the formation power of the cell phone

00:37:20

and how to break up with your cell phone. She says this:

00:37:51

That's what's happened. We've been stolen from.

00:37:54

It's been a sinister plan that an evil entity enacted,

00:38:00

and we don't even know it's happening.

00:38:02

We're surprised by it.

00:38:04

We wake up and our culture is different.

00:38:09

The enemy wants to distract.

00:38:11

He wants to steal from us.

00:38:13

And it happens all the time.

00:38:14

The way he does it is he wants to take

00:38:15

our time and our attention.

00:38:16

Some of us are so focused on not losing our money

00:38:19

in any way, shape or form.

00:38:20

But really, your time and your attention

00:38:21

is way more valuable than your money. It's your soul.

00:38:24

Your money isn't your soul, your time and attention,

00:38:26

where you put your mind, that's your soul.

00:38:28

And so it happens regularly and consistently

00:38:30

for most of us every day.

00:38:33

Wake up and wake up. And my -- my.

00:38:36

I used to have this old, old school alarm

00:38:38

that some of you for the digital reset

00:38:40

you want to might want to bring out

00:38:41

that old digital old school alarm

00:38:45

that would go something like [buzzer sound].

00:38:48

You know, it's really awesome to wake up to that sound.

00:38:54

But it's also awesome that when you turn it off, it's off.

00:38:58

I use this phone for my alarm. It's awesome.

00:39:01

My wife hates this, but I made this ring --

00:39:04

My ringtone for my alarm, a John Legend song.

00:39:07

[music: Good Morning, John Legend] Good morning.

00:39:11

Good morning, love.

00:39:15

It's my favorite love song. I waited all night long.

00:39:22

- Good morning. That's awesome, I love it.

00:39:25

I reach over and squeeze her.

00:39:27

She hates it. Makes me like it even that much more.

00:39:33

That's great. No problem that John Legend has --

00:39:35

You can do that.

00:39:36

You can buy that John Legend song for your thing.

00:39:38

It's pretty cool. But here's the problem.

00:39:40

That thing rings and I get up and it's like,

00:39:42

"Oh, did I get any text? What's the weather?"

00:39:47

I mean, I look at the weather and it quickly devolves into,

00:39:50

"Oh, let's check -- Let's check Insta."

00:39:52

I go in Insta, I go, "Oh man, cool four wheel driving,

00:39:56

four wheeling things there."

00:39:57

Oh, which leads me right into into hunting videos.

00:40:00

Oh it's awesome 200 point buck. It's awesome. That's great.

00:40:02

Which leads me into perfectly placed ad

00:40:06

for a manly shirt that fits my brand.

00:40:08

Oh, I should buy that, I need that.

00:40:10

Which leads me right, right into, into a video

00:40:15

of somebody saying something real aggressively

00:40:17

about how somebody who has different thoughts than I do,

00:40:20

how they're stupid and they get slammed.

00:40:22

Which leads me right into another humorous thing

00:40:25

where a mom takes an egg and slams it on her,

00:40:28

on her kid's forehead and they freak out.

00:40:30

Which leads me right into a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

00:40:35

where, oh, what was it, Tom Petty did we, uh --

00:40:39

Play my guitar, gently weeping, steal my guitar gently --

00:40:43

With Prince, who comes in and does a guitar solo.

00:40:47

And it's so good I have to watch it three times.

00:40:50

By the way, just check that out.

00:40:52

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tom Petty and Prince.

00:40:56

You're welcome. It's unfreaking believable. It's amazing.

00:40:59

Anyway, I go down this rabbit hole.

00:41:01

That's my rabbit hole that's specially queued up for me.

00:41:04

And the world has given you a cue

00:41:07

that's going to take you down the rabbit hole

00:41:09

before you know it now and go like,

00:41:10

"Okay, now I'm going to have my time in prayer.

00:41:12

I'm going to interact with God.

00:41:13

But I'm already -- I've already had

00:41:15

so many stupid things filling my mind,

00:41:18

but now I gotta, I gotta detox from all that stuff

00:41:22

before I can actually, actually hear from God.

00:41:25

We are what economists would say

00:41:27

we are in an attention economy.

00:41:31

Bitcoin isn't strange.

00:41:34

What's strange is we're the coin in the attention economy.

00:41:38

Tristan Harris, who was a product philosopher at Google,

00:41:42

he says this:

00:42:00

Jesus says, you can serve Me or you can serve mammon,

00:42:02

which is a personal term for money.

00:42:05

These devices don't exist to serve us.

00:42:09

They exist to serve the profit of companies.

00:42:13

That's what they exist for. Period.

00:42:15

That's what they're wired for.

00:42:16

Which is why in Silicon Valley, it's very well known.

00:42:19

Again all these things you probably know

00:42:21

and I'm reminding of these things.

00:42:22

I'm putting them in a spiritual categorization,

00:42:26

which is why all the people in the C-suite,

00:42:32

in Silicon Valley, in the tech world,

00:42:34

they don't let their kids use iPhones and iPads.

00:42:38

They stick them in schools

00:42:40

where it's not part of their learning

00:42:41

because they know it rots the brain.

00:42:43

They don't want that happening to their kids,

00:42:45

but us, just keep swallowing it.

00:42:49

You want to be one of the cool kids.

00:42:51

We've seen the latest thing and it's hurting us.

00:42:54

Seth Godin says that our phone doesn't work for us,

00:42:59

we work for our phone.

00:43:01

That's all the products and algorithms

00:43:04

that we get stolen from, we get sucked into.

00:43:07

The thief comes to steal, to kill, to kill, to kill.

00:43:13

This means to slaughter.

00:43:16

Jesus says there is an entity that wants to slaughter you.

00:43:18

He doesn't just want to cause your heart to stop beating.

00:43:22

He wants to slaughter you. He wants to pulverize you.

00:43:25

He wants to ground you down into applesauce.

00:43:28

He wants your mind to not work right.

00:43:29

He wants your emotions not to work right.

00:43:31

He wants you to be isolated and lonely because

00:43:34

that's really worse than your heart stop beating.

00:43:36

He wants to decimate who you and I are as human beings.

00:43:41

He wants to decimate our life.

00:43:43

He wants us to not smile very much.

00:43:45

He wants us to not laugh.

00:43:46

He wants us to not have a hope, or as Jesus would say,

00:43:49

the Bible says, a peace that passes all understanding.

00:43:52

He wants to slaughter, an utter bloodbath

00:43:54

of our emotions and spiritual sanity.

00:43:58

This word here is the same word that's used in Luke 15,

00:44:01

where the prodigal son, the wayward son, he goes away,

00:44:04

and when he comes back in a very repentant way.

00:44:07

The father, representing God, runs out to meet him.

00:44:09

And what does he do?

00:44:10

He takes the fattened calf

00:44:11

that's meant for special occasion and it says,

00:44:14

"Kill, slaughter the fattened calf."

00:44:16

It's the exact same word for slaughtering.

00:44:19

And that's what we're getting slaughtered,

00:44:21

we're getting cut open, we're getting trampled on.

00:44:25

And we seem to not care or we even know.

00:44:29

And if you hear all this today and you say,

00:44:31

"I know all this," and you can't change anything

00:44:35

about your device, it says something about

00:44:38

how sinister we're being stolen from

00:44:40

and how how things have been crushed with us.

00:44:45

Just some stats.

00:44:46

Again, you've probably -- We've all probably heard this,

00:44:49

but let's go over again.

00:44:52

So many of these things to research

00:44:54

and I just had to start chopping them down, but here's some.

00:44:57

Adolescents who spend three hours a day on social media

00:45:00

had a 60% increased risk of mental health.

00:45:06

So says the Journal of American Medical Association, 2019.

00:45:08

Some of these statistics are like a few years old.

00:45:11

It's even worse now.

00:45:12

Over the last few years,

00:45:14

it's gotten worse and worse and worse.

00:45:15

Teen suicide rates increased by 56% between 2007 and 2015.

00:45:22

Teens who spend five plus hours a day

00:45:25

on electronic devices were 71% more likely

00:45:29

to have at least one suicide risk factor.

00:45:33

Enough about teens. Okay?

00:45:35

They're just the most vulnerable because

00:45:38

when you're a teenager, you're more prone

00:45:40

to peer pressure than than adults are.

00:45:44

Your brain is less formed.

00:45:45

I don't mean you're stupid. I just mean it --

00:45:48

It's a bit harder, which is why there's a lot of effort

00:45:52

to come against this and protect teens

00:45:55

from what these devices are doing.

00:45:57

One of the fascinating studies I saw was that

00:46:00

when teens are polled and said,

00:46:05

"Would you like your parents to take away your device?"

00:46:08

They almost all say, "No, I wouldn't want that at all."

00:46:11

When they're asked, "Would you like all parents

00:46:14

to take all teens devices?" They go, "Yes, I would like that."

00:46:19

Because then they know they're not cut out of the social loop,

00:46:22

they're not banned from their social circles.

00:46:24

They're on even footing.

00:46:26

These things are exasperated with teenagers,

00:46:28

but us as adults, or me as a 59 year old,

00:46:30

whatever age you are,

00:46:32

younger than a teen or older than a teen,

00:46:33

these are affecting all of us.

00:46:35

Let me keep going here.

00:46:36

Excessive screen time is linked to

00:46:39

a 30% increase in obesity risk because

00:46:43

it's sedentary lifestyle,

00:46:44

from the Harvard School of Public Health.

00:46:46

61% of young adults, that's 18 to 25,

00:46:50

report feeling lonely

00:46:51

due to decreased face to face interactions.

00:46:55

70% of couples report that people's --

00:46:59

The phones interfere with their relationships,

00:47:02

leading to lower satisfaction.

00:47:05

90% of Americans use screens before bed,

00:47:08

reducing melatonin production by up to 50%,

00:47:12

leading to increased insomnia and fatigue.

00:47:15

Yes, there's more bags under the eyes of Americans

00:47:18

now than ever before in history

00:47:20

because of this device that's stealing from us

00:47:24

and it's slaughtering us.

00:47:27

When you can't get a good eight hours

00:47:29

or whatever you get a night, when you can't get it

00:47:32

and this is effective.

00:47:33

It's precious. It's everything. It's your health.

00:47:35

It's a it's a way to combat depression and anxiety.

00:47:38

It's all those things.

00:47:39

You've got problems with depression, anxiety,

00:47:41

job number one is to sleep well. Job number one.

00:47:46

And this thing keeps us from sleeping well.

00:47:48

Multiple studies in the United States,

00:47:50

Turkey and the United Kingdom have found that

00:47:52

more exposure to these things leads in negative effects

00:47:57

in anxiety, depression, social anxiety, low self-esteem,

00:48:04

narcissism, insomnia, discrete and decreased sleep.

00:48:09

1 Peter 5:8 says this:

00:48:27

All the things I'm saying right now,

00:48:29

it's roaring at us.

00:48:32

These statistics aren't like Christian pastor guy up here.

00:48:35

They're atheists who don't believe in this stuff.

00:48:37

This isn't like Bible thumper stuff.

00:48:38

This is just very, very clear.

00:48:40

Like, this is happening right now.

00:48:41

There is a roaring lion called our devices

00:48:46

that is pulverizing us, that's slaughtering us.

00:48:49

And most of us just don't care.

00:48:52

We would rather have instant access to the being of deity.

00:48:56

And we recognize this may not be serving me well,

00:48:59

let alone serving my relationship with God well.

00:49:03

When the roaring lion is trying to devour you,

00:49:08

a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,

00:49:11

or maybe an entire culture to devour,

00:49:13

as 1 Peter 5:8 says, what do we do? We resist him.

00:49:17

And the idea of devour, it's the idea of swallowing up.

00:49:21

These devices are swallowing us up.

00:49:26

The thought of being without our devices

00:49:27

and losing them is, oh my goodness.

00:49:30

The thought of me taking a dump without my phone,

00:49:33

horrible. Horrible.

00:49:34

Haven't taken a dump without my phone

00:49:36

in I don't know how long.

00:49:37

I don't know, how could I even do it anymore?

00:49:39

I don't know if I could even do it anymore.

00:49:40

Not sure. Weird. Weird.

00:49:46

When we do this fast, it's going to start in a few weeks.

00:49:50

It's going to start in a few weeks.

00:49:52

So we're just spending a couple of weeks

00:49:53

just like getting ready to count the cost,

00:49:56

figuring out if I want to do this.

00:49:57

And by the way, you will decide what your reset looks like.

00:50:01

You'll decide what you want to cut out.

00:50:03

You'll decide for you. It's your decision.

00:50:07

But why are we going to do this?

00:50:08

We're going to do this because here Crossroads,

00:50:10

we do hard things. We do hard things.

00:50:14

We do hard things. We do. We do hard things.

00:50:17

We do hard things like give above and beyond

00:50:19

what we regularly give for all the territory

00:50:22

that God has given us and and changing our lifestyles.

00:50:25

Those of us who do hard things

00:50:27

actually make commitments to the 10X Push

00:50:29

and are actually fulfilling those things.

00:50:31

That's a hard thing.

00:50:32

That's why a lot of people didn't do it.

00:50:34

With us, we do hard things

00:50:36

because Jesus tells us to do hard things.

00:50:38

This will be unbelievably hard, unbelievably.

00:50:41

And that's exactly why we're going to do it.

00:50:43

And I don't want to do it, but I'm reminded

00:50:47

that I'm going to do it because I do hard things.

00:50:50

This will be harder than any elk hunt I've ever done.

00:50:52

And this is one of those areas

00:50:54

where I'm going to do it right with you.

00:50:55

I didn't do it before you.

00:50:57

I haven't tried it and checked it out

00:50:58

and now I'm trying to get you to do it.

00:51:00

No, we're going to do it in real time

00:51:01

and it's going to be hard and it's going to be beautiful.

00:51:06

It's going to be life changing,

00:51:07

if for no other reason than sticking a finger

00:51:10

in this thing going, you don't own me,

00:51:14

you will not steal from me.

00:51:17

You will not slaughter me.

00:51:26

Jesus says a thief has come to steal,

00:51:29

secretly destroy or kill, slaughter us or destroy us.

00:51:36

That is to perish. That's to take away life.

00:51:42

So many things that we hold dear as humans

00:51:44

are just taken away from us, they don't exist anymore.

00:51:48

I've been noticing the sinister nature

00:51:50

of my phone for quite some time, and I decided

00:51:52

to do some things about it in the last year.

00:51:55

Simple things, but just things that I wasn't doing.

00:51:58

Like, you know how you want to broadcast

00:52:00

to everybody that you are a dork?

00:52:02

You know how you would do that?

00:52:14

And I can't believe I've been a dork for years.

00:52:16

I've been a dork for years.

00:52:17

Like, I don't know what -- I don't know what I'm --

00:52:20

Do I think that I have to multitask by walking,

00:52:24

and I have that many important things to do

00:52:25

I have to save that time?

00:52:27

Do I feel like I'm missing out?

00:52:29

Or here's what's even more sinister,

00:52:31

am I becoming afraid of looking at strangers

00:52:35

and smiling and saying hello?

00:52:38

Oh my gosh, it's horrible.

00:52:39

When this sunk in, I was like, I'll walk and talk on the phone.

00:52:44

But like, it's been months now, like, no, I'm not.

00:52:47

I'm not walking and texting.

00:52:48

I'm not walking and looking. I'm not, no, I'm not.

00:52:50

No, no, no. I'm walking like, "Hey, how are you doing?"

00:52:54

Of course I'm good. Good. Great.

00:52:57

It's good. It's beautiful. Just walking.

00:52:59

Hey. Hey.

00:53:03

Mind blowing.

00:53:05

When's the last time you said hello

00:53:08

to somebody you don't know passing by in the street?

00:53:12

You'll see somebody about to lose their mind

00:53:14

when it happens, and they'll like it at the same time.

00:53:17

This just doesn't happen for most of us anymore.

00:53:21

Seth Godin, who was an early pioneer

00:53:25

in understanding how technology is affecting us

00:53:28

as human beings, says:

00:54:17

How many of us get the phone, the phantom buzz?

00:54:22

You know, you feel like our muscles twitch. You know?

00:54:25

Like, oh, no, no, I don't know. Like, right?

00:54:30

You guys get it. It's like you feel the twitch

00:54:33

because you have it so often,

00:54:34

and you're just paranoid of missing it.

00:54:36

And you find your phone.

00:54:38

Weird, really, really weird and really unhealthy.

00:54:45

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy

00:54:50

a flourishing life.

00:54:52

I've come that they might have life

00:54:55

and have it to the full.

00:54:56

That's another translation.

00:55:03

When I started doing student ministry in the '80s,

00:55:09

I would interact with people who were a bit older than me

00:55:12

and had ministries that were more fully developed

00:55:16

and reached a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot,

00:55:18

a lot more kids than I was reaching for whatever reason.

00:55:21

And I talked to them about, you know,

00:55:23

what was their secret? What was I doing wrong?

00:55:25

What were they doing?

00:55:27

And and I heard regularly, they said,

00:55:29

"Brian, you may not be doing anything wrong,

00:55:31

but here's the thing."

00:55:32

Like when they said in the '70s and the '60s,

00:55:36

the reason why our student ministries could be

00:55:38

really, really big is that there wasn't

00:55:40

anything else going on in culture.

00:55:44

So you could play football, you could be a cheerleader,

00:55:47

you could be in the band, maybe chess club. That was it.

00:55:51

There wasn't extracurricular stuff that was happening.

00:55:55

There wasn't stuff going on on Sunday mornings.

00:55:57

Now, of course we have youth leagues and all that stuff.

00:56:00

An atheist who was a coach in the '80s

00:56:03

didn't want to work on Sunday morning either.

00:56:06

But now we all do. It's all it's just sad.

00:56:08

So the reason our ministries were so big

00:56:10

was because kids didn't have anything else to do.

00:56:12

There was nothing competing for their attention.

00:56:14

They were like, "Oh, something for me to go do?

00:56:17

Wow. Something I could go hang out with people?

00:56:19

Got nothing better else," and would go.

00:56:21

That's what they tell me.

00:56:22

Well, you think about that today.

00:56:24

If you want to see an awakening,

00:56:25

a sweep of God's Spirit across the nation,

00:56:27

how might the adversary stop that from happening,

00:56:32

from making us so busy that we think

00:56:35

we don't have time to go hear someone talk to me,

00:56:39

and to hear music that might uplift my heart

00:56:42

because I don't have to any longer go someplace

00:56:46

where someone's planned something.

00:56:47

I just have to stare at this for six hours straight

00:56:51

and think I'm getting something done

00:56:52

and getting myself amused.

00:56:54

Can you see the sinister nature of it?

00:56:56

It's dividing us. It's separating us.

00:57:00

It's keeping us from God.

00:57:03

So here's what we're going to do,

00:57:06

what I'm encouraging you to do.

00:57:07

Three things. Number one, make your smartphone dumb.

00:57:12

Eliminate apps for 40 days

00:57:17

because it's going to be Lent.

00:57:19

Lent is a season that Christians historically

00:57:21

from all over the globe have said, "For 40 days,

00:57:26

I'm going to not do with something.

00:57:28

I'm going to do without something,

00:57:30

because I want to take that time and energy

00:57:33

to think about God and to sacrifice a little bit,

00:57:36

because Jesus's sacrifice for me."

00:57:38

That's what lent is supposed to be, not like,

00:57:40

"I'm just going to get rid of chocolate because I like it

00:57:42

and I don't want to have it anymore."

00:57:43

It's supposed to be I'm flushing something from my system

00:57:48

that may be keeping me from God,

00:57:50

and I want to spend that energy thinking about God,

00:57:53

talking about God.

00:57:54

So for Lent, 40 days, we're going to flush our system,

00:57:58

detox our system of certain digital things.

00:58:01

And so you decide on your smartphone

00:58:04

what you want to delete for 40 days to make it dumb.

00:58:08

You probably want to keep your weather app on there.

00:58:10

You want to keep your text message app on there.

00:58:13

A number of things on there, but make it dumb.

00:58:14

Number two, eliminate other all other screens for personal use.

00:58:19

Like, when's the last time you just said

00:58:21

let's just try to get rid, for personal use?

00:58:23

You can't do this for work.

00:58:25

You know, if you're a movie critic, you got to watch movies.

00:58:30

If you got an email account with work,

00:58:32

you've got to stare at a screen to do your email at work.

00:58:34

But you don't have to be checking in on our email

00:58:36

on our day off when we're taking a dump.

00:58:39

You don't need to do that.

00:58:40

Number three, limit your digital tools to apps during work hours.

00:58:48

Another way to look at look at is this.

00:58:50

You can either be a tool.

00:58:55

You can be a tool or use this as a tool.

00:59:00

And most of us, unless you're doing something intentionally,

00:59:03

we are a tool right now for big corporations

00:59:07

and big tech and advertising execs who are owning us,

00:59:10

and they're rewiring our brain and dividing us

00:59:13

and changing things about everything.

00:59:15

It's deep, man. Really deep.

00:59:19

Like, even down to stuff, like, back in the old days.

00:59:23

Back in the old days, I used to give talks to young people

00:59:26

at Crossroads who weren't married saying,

00:59:28

"Don't have sex until you get married."

00:59:30

I don't have to give those talks anymore

00:59:32

because the statistics are pretty clear.

00:59:33

People aren't even having sex anymore.

00:59:35

Sex therapists would tell you that

00:59:37

their biggest clientele is 20 something men who,

00:59:40

when they get with an actual real woman,

00:59:42

they can't get aroused because, we can get aroused

00:59:46

and satisfy ourselves in the middle of a field.

00:59:51

It's not, it's not like go to 7-Eleven,

00:59:52

walk out with a brown wrapper magazine.

00:59:55

It's not like my computer, a desktop computer

00:59:58

I'm worried about being busted and being fired from work.

01:00:00

No. I can go anywhere and get aroused, male or female.

01:00:06

And you think that doesn't affect our interaction

01:00:08

with the opposite sex and our heart?

01:00:10

Oh, my goodness. We're a tool. We're tool for this.

01:00:14

So what might you do?

01:00:16

If it's a tool, you'd say,

01:00:18

uh, non-work email outside of working hours, I'm doing emails.

01:00:20

If it's a tool, you go, "Hey, I'm going to use it as a phone."

01:00:23

If you are a tool, you're going to be using social media,

01:00:27

which doesn't get you anything.

01:00:29

Nothing, except wasting of time.

01:00:32

If you want to use this tool, text.

01:00:33

Texts keep you in touch, quick and to the point.

01:00:36

That's fine. News apps.

01:00:39

I'm eliminating all news apps for 40 days.

01:00:41

I'm going to go 40 days without any news.

01:00:43

And you know what?

01:00:44

I will be just fine and so will the world.

01:00:46

[indiscernible]

01:00:48

If there's something important, someone will tell me

01:00:50

and it'll probably be more accurate.

01:00:51

Every morning I get up, I have a couple news sources

01:00:54

I go and I devour and then I check into during the day.

01:00:57

I'm not helping the world or myself.

01:01:01

It's just my need to, like, be in the know

01:01:03

and fill up two minutes of time

01:01:06

instead of maybe praying for two minutes.

01:01:08

When I have to have the news all the time.

01:01:10

No, I'm being a tool.

01:01:12

But the calendar, it's a tool.

01:01:13

I want my calendar right here.

01:01:15

Games. We're a tool.

01:01:19

Airline apps, it's a tool, that's helpful.

01:01:22

Web browser can be we're a tool,

01:01:25

endlessly searching things.

01:01:26

Using the Crossroads app is a tool.

01:01:28

We're going to have special things in the Crossroads app,

01:01:31

devotionals over those 40 days.

01:01:33

Not only that, I'm testing right now,

01:01:36

an app that Crossroads is being gifted for free

01:01:38

for the 40 days. It's called Aro. It is awesome.

01:01:43

It basically gamifies putting down your phone.

01:01:46

Those of us who've been trying, it's amazing.

01:01:48

And we'll talk about that in weeks ahead.

01:01:50

YouTube video clips. This one's going to hurt for me.

01:01:53

I've never seen a YouTube clip I didn't like.

01:01:55

I don't know what I'm going to do

01:01:57

not watching car restoration videos

01:01:59

or people who kill 200 point bucks

01:02:03

with a bow and arrow up in a tree.

01:02:04

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do it.

01:02:06

Camera. No, no, I need a camera to take pictures of stuff.

01:02:09

When I'm a tool, I'm endlessly looking at Amazon shopping.

01:02:12

How much do -- how much more do we spend because of this?

01:02:16

Weather? Good to know what to do. It's a tool.

01:02:20

Ephesians 5:14. I'll give this to us again.

01:02:31

Can we all just admit that maybe we're just a little dead?

01:02:39

Can we just see that we're not the person we could be, right?

01:02:46

Just forget about culture out there.

01:02:49

Do we not see that we just don't have the attention span,

01:02:52

the patience, the ability to silent, the ability to be still?

01:03:01

Do you like that? I don't.

01:03:06

And I intend to do something about it.

01:03:08

I intend to wake up.

01:03:10

And I want you to wake up, too.

01:03:12

And I know if you do, it'd be really, really thankful you did.

01:03:17

So we got two weeks we're going to talk about this,

01:03:19

and then we're going to start. All right?

01:03:22

Let me pray. Lord, You are so kind and patient.

01:03:30

Your children are distracted,

01:03:31

and yet You hang in there with us, and You're patient.

01:03:37

Your children are antsy and consumed with

01:03:42

all kinds of things that You don't care at all about,

01:03:45

and yet You still are faithful.

01:03:49

God, help us to be children who are full of life,

01:03:53

children who laugh, children who run,

01:03:55

children who look people in the face,

01:03:57

children who have a sense of wonder.

01:04:00

We trust in You to do that.

01:04:03

We commit that that's who we want to be. Amen.

01:06:21

- Jesus, would You lead us back to You

01:06:25

because I know You have more for us,

01:06:29

to lead us towards life.

01:06:34

Wake us up. Refresh us again, God.

01:06:41

I pray this in You, Jesus. Amen.

01:06:48

- Man, that is so good and honestly so hard.

01:06:51

Like, so good for me and what I need to hear.

01:06:53

It reminds me, actually, of a quote that I heard

01:06:55

that talks about how we're distracting ourselves

01:06:58

into spiritual oblivion.

01:07:00

That's like way before the internet, but that's true.

01:07:03

Like, the distraction is robbing us

01:07:05

of something that we really, really need.

01:07:07

- It's so true, man. I tell you, one of the things

01:07:10

that we are super passionate about around here

01:07:12

is getting you and me to grow closer with God.

01:07:16

And you heard Brian talking about the Crossroads app.

01:07:19

It is a tool and we're using that tool

01:07:22

to go deeper spiritually.

01:07:23

There's scripture out there.

01:07:25

There's opportunity to interact with our community.

01:07:27

We just heard it, it was going to be --

01:07:28

There's going to be some devotionals on it as well

01:07:30

that are going to get us through the next few weeks,

01:07:33

which is pretty amazing. - That's right.

01:07:34

So the message of today isn't that

01:07:36

you have to throw your phone down a well. No, no.

01:07:38

It's that it's a tool.

01:07:39

And make sure it's a tool that's working for you

01:07:41

and helping you to grow into the kind of the person,

01:07:43

into the kind of person you want to be,

01:07:45

and thriving in the way that God has intended you to thrive.

01:07:49

Now, I want to say, like,

01:07:50

our Crossroads Anywhere community,

01:07:52

you guys meet right now.

01:07:53

You're gathering on a screen using digital tools,

01:07:56

and that's perfect. That's really, really great.

01:07:58

That's what we want to do.

01:07:59

And if you're like me realizing, hey,

01:08:02

I need to recalibrate how I spend myself digitally,

01:08:06

you can go to Crossroads.net/unplug

01:08:08

for more resources.

01:08:09

And maybe you've got, like,

01:08:11

you don't want to wait for the digital fast.

01:08:13

You want to jump in right now,

01:08:14

maybe you have questions about faith or God.

01:08:16

Check that out, our group called Alpha.

01:08:18

It's perfect for you at Crossroads.net.

01:08:22

We're so grateful. Thanks for joining us.

01:08:24

- Yeah. See you next week.

Super Bowl of Preaching 2025

The Thief in Your Pocket

Welcome to the Weekend-Follow Up!

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