Recently I was playing golf with a guy and he asked me a great
question. He said, what is the toughest
sermon to preach? My response was simple.
The one I'm not living when there is a gap between my life
and the truth of God's Word, where I'm still wrestling and
trying to bring my life into line with it.
That sermon is a tough sermon to preach.
The second toughest sermon to preach is the when there is a
gap between where people are and the biblical standard or the
biblical truth that people just can't even fathom one day living
in alignment to God's word. It's like if somebody were to
say, Clayton, I just visualize one day you running marathons.
I'm like, no, that ain't going to happen.
I don't see myself. Just just shoot me now.
I I'm not running the third hardest sermon to preach is the
one where nobody agrees with you or is even remotely interested
in making the change. There is a real possibility that
today I'm going to check all three boxes.
I want to welcome all of you guys joining all of our
different locations online and inside.
And I also want to welcome those of you who are new here.
And I want to encourage you to swing out to the new here booth
in all of our lobbies at the end of the service.
And I also want to tell you, please come back next week
because today's message is going to be a bit of a deviation from
normal sermons. I also want to celebrate you
guys may remember many of you guys helped us do this.
We launched Vine Co Counseling Company in January and they just
crossed their 100th client. Would you give them a big round
of applause? Super thankful for that
ministry. We've been hiring additional
counselors. We have AI think a six week
waiting list. The ministry is doing wonderful.
And I received more texts, phone calls, emails with people
saying, hey, you did a merch drop when you launched it.
We missed it. We want it.
And so I was like, you know what, we're going to wait till
they cross a big milestone and they did.
So today there is a merch drop available.
If you take advantage of the QR code, you can, Full disclosure,
you can get all the stuff that we had the previous time plus a
couple updated looks if you're interested in that.
And it's super expensive. The reason it's super expensive
is because we're taking all the profits and we're reinvesting it
into Vineco to help people who need help but maybe can't afford
it. And so if you want to be a part
of joining us in that, we would love to have you join us.
We are in a sermon series called Not Just Another Day.
We are taking a hard look at what it means to raise kids in a
way that honors God. And each day we have with our
kids is not just another day, but a day for us to prepare them
for life and more importantly, for life in Christ.
We learned an uncomfortable truth in Week 1. 75% of the time
that we will spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by
age 12. Raise your hands if you have
kids over the age of 12. We are managing the remaining
25%. We looked at a couple key
passages of Scripture. The first one is Proverbs 22
verse 6. Start children off on the way
they should go and when they are old they will not turn from it.
Start children off train children is the English language
trying to unpack the Hebrew word hanok which means to dedicate,
to train, to narrow the focus. How do we hanok our kids, train
them, narrow their focus for life and life with Christ?
Well, the Bible actually gives us some insight into this
because this is what God says in Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1 Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
strength. These commandments that I give
you today are to be on your hearts.
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at
home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when
you get up. Tie them as symbols on your
hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
Six years ago, I did a sermon called It's Just the Phase where
I talked about device usage and social media.
Three years ago, I preached A sermon called Glowing
Rectangles. Two years ago I preached on a
sermon series called Reclaim on the addiction that was happening
to social media. I keep preaching on this issue
because I believe this is the single greatest issue facing the
family. It is robbing us of time with
the Lord, and it is robbing us of time for the Lord, and it is
robbing us of the precious time that we need to have with our
family if we are going to hanak them.
It is destroying the relational fabric of your family and it is
rotting the minds of our kids. And I know some of you might be
going. We kind of like having a, you
know, Clayton, you're young, you're fun.
But I need you to know I'm not just young and fun because
recently I became a grandparent. Look at that.
That is baby genera. Yeah.
This guy is a grandpa at 42. Let me tell you how this went
down. I had to take my oldest son to
the junior high and drop him off at school.
Then I had to go back home to get my youngest son and take him
to the elementary school before I could go to the hospital to
see my grandkid. I am in every phase of life
right now. Kennedy and her husband had
genera on February 10th, 2 days after my birthday, and we could
not be more thrilled. If there was a magazine for
Sexiest Grandpa Alive, I think I'd be the George Clooney of
grandparents. OK, now I have never done this
before, but I am going to ask and recommend every single one
of you to read a book written by an atheist.
It is called The Anxious Generation.
Pull out your phones. Please take a picture of this
book. I can't.
If you are a in the medical profession, if you are in the
school system, if you are a grandparent, a parent, you need
to read this book. I've instructed everybody who
works on staff at the crossing to read this book.
Now a couple of things. One, there are some things I
disagree with in the book. He has an overemphasis of
evolution. His statements about porn that
like parents might want to determine how much porn they
have their kids watch is ridiculous because the Christian
answer for how much porn should your kids consume is this much
0%. But even though he is an
atheist, he devotes an entire chapter to spiritual matters
because as an atheist he acknowledges that there is a
hole in the human heart that cannot be filled by things of
this world. His main claim in the book Now
he is a doctor of the social sciences and his his main claim
in the book is that we have shifted from a play based
childhood to a phone based childhood and it has resulted in
two huge problems and that is our kids are overprotected in
the real world and not protected enough in the digital world.
Our kids are overprotected in the real world, under protected
in the digital world. There's no way for me to unpack
all of this in the sermon, which is why you need to read the
book. High schoolers, I want you to
read this book because I need you to know what is happening to
you. College kids, you need to read
this book because you need to know what kind of world you're
going to live in. If you don't have kids yet, you
need to start thinking about this decisions you are going to
make with your kids before you have them so you don't have to
undo what parents of kids are going to have to undo.
Parents, you need to read this book because you need to make
adjustments quickly and I don't want the pendulum to swing.
So you need to read the book, have some conversations and
develop a strategy. Grandparents, you need to know
what has happened to your kids and your grandkids.
Now we all see it. We all know that there's
something wrong in us and in our kids and in the world around us,
and that we spend way too much time on our phones.
However, until I read this book, I did not realize how bad it had
become. So for the first time ever, I
get to preach a very similar sermon with a whole lot of
evidence. Let's start off here, Figure 16.
Now you guys are going to go, it's hard to read this great by
the book. Everything's in there.
This is the communication technology adoption.
This is how radio entered the United States.
This is how color TV made its way into the United States.
This is the personal computer. This is the Internet.
And that purple bar right there, it's going to show up in almost
all of the slides. I'm going to show you.
This purple bar represents the introduction of two things,
social media and the smartphone. And I want you to see what has
happened since that purple bar and during that purple bar.
And again, that purple bar represents the introduction of
the smartphone and social media. Let's start off with figure 11.
This is major depression among teens.
You will notice it started to skyrocket since the introduction
of two things. For those of you who are paying
attention, social media and the smartphone.
For girls, depression is up 145%.
For boys, it is 161%. It's on the rise.
It's skyrocketing. You may have noticed over the
last couple of years, news agencies have gone out of their
way to highlight what has been happening on college campuses.
They have been talking about how they have the woke mind virus,
how they're crazy, they need safe spaces.
They can't handle conflict. They've been talking about all
of this. You want to know why?
Because college kids are messed up right now.
Let me show you why. Schizophrenia is up 67%,
Substance abuse is up 33%, Anorexia is up 100%, Bipolar
disease is up 57%, ADHD is up 72%, Depression is up 106%,
Anxiety is up 134%. And where did the climb start?
With the introduction of the smartphone and social media, and
it's not just kids, it's happening to us as well.
Look at this one. This is anxiety prevalence by
age. For let's start at the top.
For ages 18 to 25, it's up 139%. Ages 26 through 34, it's up
103%. Ages 35 through 49 it's up 52%.
The only age group that has seen a decline is the 50 plus crowd.
Where's the 50 plus crowd at? Don't applaud.
They just don't know their password.
We know you. We know how you operate.
Can you get me logged on? My dad?
I love him. He has about 50 Gmail emails.
Because we can't get into it. All right?
The only reason you're doing fine is because you can't log on
and haven't figured out Face ID. Listen to me.
Why am I telling you all this? Parents and your kids are both
dealing with an increased level of anxiety.
If you are a grandparent, your grandkids are not living in the
same level of sanity in the home as you gave your kids because
your kids are dealing with more anxiety than ever before.
Our minds are being turned to mush.
Our emotions can't keep up. How bad is it?
I just want to talk for just a second to the girl dads, I know
you've got a bookmark and a hat and probably a shirt or
something and a sticker. Let me just let me just talk to
you right now. Social media is the worst thing
that could happen to your daughter.
Let me show you a couple figures.
This is emergency room visits for self harm For boys, it's
we've seen a 48% increase in girls, it's 188% increase.
Look at look at this, it was on the decline in girls.
And then you notice the huge uptick.
It's in the purple part. And just a reminder, the purple
part of that graph is the introduction of social media and
the smartphone. If this is not bad enough, it's
impacting suicide rates as well. Figure 1/5 For girls, it's up
167%. For boys, it's up 91%.
But look at what happened in boys.
We were doing the best we had ever done and then it
skyrocketed. Our kids are way too connected
in the virtual world and they keep trying to measure up, but
every time they hop on social media, they are bombarded with
their social standing. How many friends compared to
other people? How many followers compared to
other people? How many likes?
How good is their life compared to other people?
How nice are their outfits compared to other people?
How do they look compared to other people?
And when it comes to looks, girls are getting decimated.
It used to be hard enough for a girl when she was going through
her teen years to look in the mirror and navigate the changes
that were happening. But now they hop on social media
and they see a altered version of everybody else.
How did the social media companies navigate this?
They gave them filters. And so now you can take a normal
beautiful girl and you can add filters that make them look
unrealistic. This is figure 6/4.
This is a girl who did this. This is in the book.
This bottom right hand corner is her real self.
And then it just shows you the levels to the left.
On the bottom left is 1 filter up.
But if you want to go a little bit further, you can go upper
right hand corner. And then if you want to go all
the way and do the Angelina Jolie, you can do the upper left
hand corner. And so a girl can manufacture
what she looks like. So that way she looks like
somebody that's is a somebody. Why does this matter?
Because since they've been under protected in the digital world
and overprotected online, they're having a harder time
going out in public because who they actually look like does not
look like how they have presented themselves.
And so there's now an increase in the medical profession,
specifically where plastic surgery is concerned as teens
are trying to get cosmetic surgery to look like their
profile. Add to this the constant
connectivity. We all or many of us take
advantage of Life 360, which is great.
It allows you to know if your kids are actually at the house
that they said they were going to be at and or how fast are
they driving or for my family, how fast am I driving?
It's been great. But it's also brought this other
thing into the world, which is now your kids know where all
their friends are and what happens when their friends get
together at a friend's house and they're not invited and they
feel left out. So to combat this, some kids
will just turn off their location services.
And so a kid is sitting at home on their phone and all of a
sudden all their friends can't be found.
And they have to wonder, where's everybody at and why wasn't I
included? We didn't have to navigate this
when I was growing up because if my friends were hanging out with
some of my friends, I didn't know I was drinking out of the
water hose hoping mom would make some kool-aid and let me in
because it's hot out here. We lived in a different time.
Imagine having your best friends live across the street from you
and constantly seeing other people's cars in their driveway
and you not getting the invite. You wouldn't think in terms of
whether or not you were good friends or not if they lived
across town because when they invited you over, you would just
go over and have a good time. But if you are constantly aware
of all the other people that they were having over, you would
wonder why they didn't invite you.
Your kids during their most vulnerable season of life are
being bombarded with way too much information.
He summarized that what has basically happened is we have
moved from a play based childhood to a phone based
childhood and the atheist Dr. backed by science makes this
claim that it is destroying our kids mentally, relationally and
spiritually. And the worst part is the social
media companies know they are doing this.
Francis Hagen participated in something called the Facebook
Files where they got access to internal documents that were
used at Facebook and it proved that not only did they know that
they were doing this to our kids and to us, they are desperately
trying to get better at it. One particular training focused
on the neuroscience of teenagers, and it walked them
through the points of vulnerability during the
maturation process of a teenage kid, and then it gave
recommendations on how app developers could exploit them to
keep them on the platform as long as possible.
Here's a screenshot of the training Girl.
Dads, I want you to ask yourself this question.
How would you feel if that was your daughter in the middle of
the screen and during the most vulnerable season of her life?
This company was trying to figure out ways to exploit her
vulnerability. How do they do this?
They do this through something called the hook model.
This is the hook model trigger action, variable, reward and
investment. Here is the trigger.
It starts external. All of my friends have social
media. All of my friends have a
smartphone. And so you feel pressure and
your kid feels pressure to join the same social media platform.
Then they give you, that's the action.
Then they give you some kind of reward.
You feel good. You're finally in the circle.
Then they get you to make an investment.
The investment's relatively small.
Set up your own username, set up your profile pic, maybe like a
couple posts, maybe create some own content on your own.
Then they get another external trigger.
They send you a notification. Something just happened, and so
you pull your phone out, you hear the alert on your watch or
you feel it buzz in your pocket and you pull it out and you open
it. That's the action.
And then while you're on there, you get a reward.
Somebody liked your post. Somebody said happy birthday to
you. And they keep giving you some
reward every so often. Then they get you to keep making
investment on time. More posts, you upload, more
content you like, more of other people's things.
And then it becomes an internal trigger where you, without being
prompted, you want to know, did someone look at your photo?
You want to know if somebody liked your post, you want to
know what somebody else is doing with their life.
And so you keep pulling it up and we do it non-stop.
We do it in the bathroom, when we're on the toilet, at the
stoplight, in the line of the drive through, in the car, at
the dinner table. I drive a black Ram of 1500 and
I honk. And all you suckers out there
who are holding up traffic at the stoplight because a red
stoplight is enough time. You can't handle not looking at
your phone in the drive through. You can't go from waiting to
order to ordering to picking up your food without picking up the
phone and wanting to know how are we this addicted?
I'll tell you the hook model. And the most important part of
the hook model is the variable reward.
This was one of the key discoveries of behavioral
psychology, that it is best not to reward a behavior every time,
because if you don't, you can create addiction.
The science backs this up, that if you reward somebody about one
out of every 10 times, sometimes a little more depending on the
person, sometimes a little less, you create the strongest, most
persistent behavior. They discovered this through
training rats. Here's what they would do.
They would train a rat that every time it pressed a bar, it
would get some food. If it pressed the bar, it would
get some food. Then they could take this rat
out of that environment. They could put in another place
with the same bar, and the rat would go over and it would touch
the bar. And the moment it saw the bar
and went to touch it, endorphins, dopamine would come
surging through the rat's body as it waited in anticipation for
the food. And it would get it.
And then the rat would touch the bar.
No food. Touch the bar, no food, and
you'd think that the rat would walk away, but no.
The more it pressed the bar and food didn't come, more
endorphins went surging through its body as it waited because it
knew at some point it would get the food.
And what happened with us is they took this.
If you've ever wondered how you spent a couple hours throughout
the course of the day scrolling. They are training us like rats.
Just keep scrolling and there's no off ramp.
In an app with a bottomless feed, there's no signal to stop
and so we just keep scrolling. How bad is it?
Tech company executives are simultaneously hiring
specialists to create algorithms to keep us scrolling while at
the same time sending their kids to schools that limit technology
and not allowing their kids to get on the very apps that they
are controlling. Why are companies doing this?
I want to quote here. Younger users are particularly
valuable because the habits that they form early often times
stick with them for life. So, companies need younger and
younger users to ensure robust future usage of their products.
They therefore view the loss of market share among younger users
as an existential threat. It is as if social media
companies read Proverbs 22 verse 6 start children off on the way
they should go and even when they are old, they will not turn
from it. And so instead of our kids and
our lives being ha knocked to the Lord, we have been ha
knocked to a device. I actually want you to think
about device usage in your home and in your life and see how
well they're doing at living out Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at
home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when
you get up. Tie them as symbols on your
hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
The average person, the first thing they do in the morning is
check their phone. What do they do when they're
driving along the road? They're on their phone.
What are we doing when we're eating at a restaurant or
somewhere, we're on our phone. When we're waiting in the
doctor's office, we're on our phone.
Social media companies and smartphones are robbing you of
the very precious and limited time you have with your kids.
And I know right now there are some of you who are going well,
our story will be different. Maybe I just wouldn't risk it.
I grew up living in a vet clinic, not like my dad worked
there and we showed up sometimes.
I actually lived in the vet clinic and my dad is like the
Liam Neeson of veterinarians. He has a very special set of
skills and people come from all over to have my dad take care of
their animals. And one time some people who
owned a circus brought their baby Cougars to my dad's clinic
and I actually got to take a a picture with them.
Look, look how cute that kid is. That is me holding a baby
cougar. We got to hold it for a while,
rock it. We even got to feed it for a
little bit. It was fantastic.
And then you know what happened? The cougar went home.
You want to know why? Because my dad's no dummy.
Baby Cougars don't stay babies. They get big.
You've probably seen the documentaries.
You know of the people who got a pet polar bear, They got a pet
grizzly, they got a pet lion, a pet tiger.
There's people who have pet cobras.
You guys have all seen those people.
And then inevitably, the documentary ends.
Have you ever cried at the dude who got eaten by his chimpanzee?
No. You mean the tiger ate you?
I did not see that coming. Nope.
Nobody, nobody. And if you're, if you're one of
those people, we're going now. I mean, there's even the people
who are super well trained and they go in to the lion's den or
the lion and they got their stool and their whip and they do
it for a lot of years. Then eventually lion gets
hungry. And you know why I don't ever
have to worry about being eaten by a tiger because I don't keep
any tigers at my house, right? You know, eventually it's going
to get them. There's nothing wrong with going
and seeing the lions and the tigers and the bears and the
chimpanzees and the gorillas at the zoo, but it's a completely
different matter when you establish no boundaries and
you're allowed to live in your house.
Hear me? We didn't know when we gave our
kids smartphones and social media what we were giving them.
We didn't know what we were doing when we hopped in the car
and gave them an iPad to keep them quiet for the road trip.
What we were doing, nobody did. But we do now, so we better do
something about it. Ephesians chapter 5 has this to
say. Be very careful then how you
live. Not as unwise but as wise,
making the most of every opportunity, because the days
are evil. I have 5 action steps that I
want to encourage you to take, and all five of these have been
approved by Jessica Ella Fritz, who overseas our counseling
department. So this is free counseling #1
read this book and make a plan. Don't swing the pendulum and go
home right after this and blow up stuff with your kids that
you're not going to follow through on.
Read the book Make a plan #2 Set limits on phone usage.
Not in the bedroom, not in car rides, not at the dinner table,
Not unlimited #3 Delete social media for 21 days.
I have already deleted mine. Don't hop on and go hey guys I'm
super awesome and I'm super mature so I'm signing off for 21
days. Bro don't just and don't log
out. I'm saying delete it off your
phone. And for those of you who are
like but what about my birthday? Happy birthday?
What about my anniversary? Oh awesome.
What about I'm hiding? I'm I'm liking all your
imaginary posts for the next 21 days.
You don't need it. Do it for 21 days.
High schoolers, look at this face.
I'm doing it with you 21 days. Parents, don't ask your kid to
do something that you're not doing.
Now I want you to hear me say this.
The next 14 days are going to suck in your home and it's fine.
You want to know why it's going to suck because you and your
kids are addicted. You are going to go through
withdrawal. The fact that some of you are
really nervous about doing this is a signal that it has gotten
out of hand. Number four, have no technology
nights as a family. No Netflix, no dude perfect on
YouTube. A technology free night where
you go on a walk, play pickleball, listen to nature,
make a meal and have your kids help.
I can't go into all the stuff about how our kids are under
protected or overprotected in the real world, but #5 is you
need to give your kids something hard to do because kids are the
phrase is anti fragile. That there is a part of failing
and learning how to do hard things that is actually good for
their development. Do you know I'm going to go
along? Do you want to know why some of
you are looking at your kids and going, I have a really hard time
respecting them? It's because you're not giving
them anything to do that is respectable and your kids crave
your respect. Some of us, we swung the
pendulum so far from the hard life we got from our parents,
but we are hyper successful because of the hard life we got
from our parents. And then we thought because of
our success, we should shield kids from the very things and
tools that they are going to need in the future.
Give your kids something hard to do and let them rise to the
occasion. But you have to build that
momentum over time. I do want to give a devo.
I'll do it at a different sermon.
So why this whole sermon? Let me tell you why I'm
preaching this whole sermon. One, I really, really love you.
It is one of my greatest honors to be one of the pastors at this
church. And I never thought that I would
be recommending a book written by an atheist to you.
But I've been preaching about this for years, and I finally
have the data to back it up. And if you do not make changes
soon, that cougar is going to grow up and it's going to get
hungry. And I don't want that to happen
to you. Why else am I preaching A
sermon? Because God sent Jesus to die on
the cross, not just to save you from hell, but to save you into
a relationship with Him. A life that Jesus himself
described as a life that is abundant and full, that is so
much more than doom scrolling and swiping and posting and
gaming. He saved you to more than that.
And He put so much inside of you for you to learn and grow and
discover and explore. You were made for more than the
life that you have been lured into.
And I don't want you to miss it. We're moving to a time of
decision. To those of you in here who do
not have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
I mean what I said you were made for more.
Life with Jesus is full and abundant.
It is inside of this relationship that you discover
purpose, meaning, joy and peace, which are the exact opposite of
what you've been experiencing on your device.
And when you come into a right relationship with Him, it can
change absolutely everything. And the good news is you can
start that relationship today in just a few moments.
The people around you are going to stand and sing, and some of
them are going to come to the steps and pray.
And I want to encourage you to walk right over there underneath
that screen next to the baptistery, and give one of the
people on our team an opportunity to talk with you
about the relationship with Jesus.
That changes everything. It is why we exist as a church,
to help people just like you find what we have found in Him.
To those of you who have a relationship with Jesus Christ,
we were made for more. We were made to not just have
this relationship with Jesus Christ, but to experience it.
And so it's time that we step into the fullness of Him.
The Bible goes out of its way to talk about the condition of our
heart, and one of the things it says is above all else.
So there's a lot of things. But above all else, guard your
heart, for from out of it everything flows.
And sadly, we have not guarded our hearts nor the hearts of our
kids. And I think that should change.
And I think it should change today that we finally give God
His rightful place in our lives. We start guarding our kids as
hearts and training them in the Lord.
So what I'm going to encourage you to do is to come up here.
Pray over the commitments that you think you're going to make.
Pray over the conversations that you know that you need to have
so that you can chart a better path forward for you, for your
family, and for this region. Would you stand with me?
Heavenly Father, we need you. We need you more than we even
realize. And so, God, I'm asking that
you'd use this time right now in a significant way to bring about
a change that can only be brought about by your power and
your spirit. Help us.
Your name I pray. Amen.