Kayleb Foerster: it’s been since 2012 I would say that I’ve been on a journey in talking about technology and how we as a younger generation should interact with it how we should put it into place in our lives and so So coming right off of the 0100 message, this is all about Jesus Christ living in us and through us, even in our use of technology.

And so this has been helpful for my own self, I trust, to be able to give you some principles from God’s Word that you’ll find helpful. I’m going to give you a passage that we’ll turn to a read. We’re going to talk about it a little bit.

And then we’re going to take some time to look at some statistics, but then jump into God’s Word and kind of break up a little bit here. This is a workshop, so I want to try and get you all involved. You’ve had a lot here in these past two days of preaching and that,

but you can see from God’s Word, okay, this is what it means to take principles and apply them into my life here to make them a part of what I’m doing. So, if you would, turn with me to Hebrews chapter 12.

If you have your Bible, go there to Hebrews chapter 12. And we’re going to look at the first two verses in Hebrews chapter 12. I feel like these touch on many areas of our life, but specifically in technology.

And there’s a lot of other verses that we’re going to look at, but these to start off on. Hebrews chapter 12, starting out in verse 1 and 2. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,

let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us. and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,

who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

And there’s two verses that I feel that talk about technology. These would be two of the key verses here. And before we start here, Elijah, can you open up that window?

That way we just get a little bit of airflow. Yeah, you can open up that one there too. I’ll get a little bit of airflow.

coming through here. That would be fantastic. We are in a race here as believers.

If God didn’t have a specific plan for your life, why would he not have taken you to heaven when you got saved? And so as we step back and we think about our use of technology, we think of 0100 with my phone,

we realize that as I’m on this race, we see that there’s going to be an enemy that’s going to do all that he can to keep us off that race, all that he can to keep us from being effective

in helping to reach others. Because in this race, as we can see through other parts of scripture,

in this race, even the example of Jesus Christ himself, we find that we are to be making a difference for eternity. And so in my use of technology,

I want to know, is that keeping me from making a difference? Is that keeping me from honoring and glorifying God? And if that is, what steps do I need to take so that my use of the phone, my use of technology can be pleasing to God?

And most importantly, letting Jesus Christ live his life through me in this. He wants us to be effective in reaching out. This race is one of helping others on their spiritual journey.

Remember those who have gone before us. We could think of Old Testament prophets. We could consider some of those other various believers there in the Old Testament.

And at this point, we can look at even New Testament believers. Think of the Apostle Paul. Think of Jim Elliot, even here in recent 1950s, that gave his life.

And we have these that have placed their life on the line for the sake of Jesus Christ. All of Hebrews chapter 11 talks about great examples that are there. Jesus Christ, though, is the ultimate example.

Verse 2, looking unto Jesus. He’s the author and he’s the finisher of our faith. He’s the one that’s going to enable us to run this race in a way that pleases him,

that pleases God. Let us lay aside, though, every weight. Where are these weights coming from?

The sin which doth so easily beset us. It entangles us so easily. And let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

Satan, in this race, he is our enemy. And he’s the one that’s putting weights into our life. And I grew up in New Mexico, and as it would rain out there,

sometimes it would dry and we’d be running around, and you’d hit a spot that looked like it was dry, but underneath would be wet.

And clay, when it gets on your shoes and you run over that spot, it becomes a definite weight. If you ran in the rain, which is fun to do

because you had just this clay going all over the place. But you could get very far until your shoes were, you know, three inches thick of mud on the bottom.

And when you have all that weight on you, I can tell you one thing I wasn’t going to be doing. I wasn’t going to be running a marathon.

So I would do spurts of, oh, you know, all this mud going everywhere. But this weight really kept me from going a long ways. In the same way in our Christian life, the weight,

the problems that we could have with our phone, maybe not even bad things, but they’re causing weights. And I feel, as I’ve been studying,

and I’ve talked with a number of young people, that those weights in our life dance on the line of a weight, it’s not a bad thing, to then becoming sin. And you know, we’re spending time, this is not,

it’s okay. And then it becomes too long, leads from one thing to the next thing, we’re viewing things that we shouldn’t be, looking at things we shouldn’t be, reading things that we shouldn’t be.

And so, in the use of the phone, here we are. Satan’s putting weights into our lives. Satan’s putting sin that entangles us so easily.

It brings many pitfalls. In referencing this phenomenon, Tony Reinke, author of the book, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, he states, let me get to that,

the impulse is not hard to understand as we have our phone that’s involved in our life. Our lives are consolidated on our phones. There are calendars, our cameras, our pictures, our work, our workouts, our reading, our writing, our credit cards, our maps, our news, our weather, our email, our shopping.

All of it can be managed with state-of-the-art apps in powerful little devices that we carry everywhere. A few statistics about this. On average, the average American picks up their phone 50 to 80 times a day.

So maybe you don’t have a device, but maybe you would see your friends, all they’re doing. Now Apple has put in the screen time so you can be looking. How many times have I looked at it?

How many times have I had pickups? All this time that’s going into this, is it all honoring God? The survey found, this is a leading survey from the New York Post.

They also found that per Doy Little’s 2018 mobile consumer study, 60% of U. S. consumers, 18 to 34,

so maybe a little bit older than you, but a number of you would fall into that. Admit to smartphone overuse.

This is the highest level of any age group. And if you start to research any of this, you’ll find that young people are saying,

no, we’re becoming very lonely. It’s on the phone. We’re doing all this time.

We have all these social media. We have all these friends, all these different connects. But I don’t really feel like I have true friends.

They’re also feeling like, yeah, you know what? I do overuse my phone. And they try to put in the different controls or take out the different things to help them.

Okay, I’m going to be careful. I’m going to spend less time on my phone. But most people, they recognize, I can’t do this.

They quit it. One young person put it the best way. My phone died.

I met my family. They’re nice people. You know, and how sad.

So many people dealing with their phone, on it. I was talking with a number of young people. you know they’ll do a meet up okay hey let’s get together yep no problem they’re going out they’re

gonna do go get a hamburger go do something and you can find four or five of them they plan to meet up and instead of talking and engaging right there here they are you know what this is fun but wow there might be somewhere better that I’m not at and so we have this overuse here some of our time

is driven by the fact that we become afraid that if we don’t continue in the digital distractions especially through social media, we will be forgotten about. If I’m out of sight, I will be

out of mind and I won’t really matter anymore. And a number of young people are dealing with that. But I don’t keep on.

If I don’t post another picture, if I’m not getting a like or an update, if something’s not happening, I’m not seeing traction here. And if I quit posting, people

will totally forget about me and my life won’t even matter here. Oh wait, it’s not just something that you’re looking for in a race, it literally means a burden.

How has technology been a burden in your life? Could be through needless apps, just wasting time, through games, through news,

through sports, other types of apps. Group text, chats, email, social media, obviously, can all be a part of this.

A lot of times these take time. Yeah, another workshop, and if you want to talk a little bit about the time and using my time rightly.

So focused into this that you miss out on the people around you that God wants you to impact. And so instead of becoming zero, 100,

Jesus, how do you want me to live my life? And listening to his voice, you become, well, this makes me feel good right now.

Right now, I deserve this time on my phone. Right now, I deserve to be able to play this game.

And maybe a few minutes is not bad, but when it becomes a few more minutes and maybe a few hours, that’s when it becomes,

you know, this is the problem here. Look at the opportunities that impact a sibling,

impact another youth group young person here. The way that I want you to walk through,

I want to walk through a number of verses here with you and I want you to leave.

Just realize, and the Bible does speak to my use of technology.

So when I’m trying to live a 0-100, it’s not about doing what I feel I can handle.

Okay, so with my device, If I feel I can handle this, then I’ll be okay. No, what we want to do is we want to look at God’s Word

and see how it addresses any problems that might be coming into my life, any problems that maybe my friend even has. Okay, what’s God’s Word say about it?

I don’t want to give him just my good advice. What does God’s Word say? And then I want to look to Jesus to enable me to use this in a way that honors him.

So with that, I am going to pass out a couple handouts here. And if you can just give one to each row, that should be, obviously there’s a few extras that are there.

You can just set them off to the side. You should be able to take one and pass it down. And here’s what we’re going to do.

I want to give you this one last illustration, and then we’ll jump into these principles. A man gave this illustration of a minivan, and he said, you know, imagine me driving in my minivan. Based on the dashboard readout, my van can travel at 140 miles per hour.

That’s unconfirmed. So I could race the van every weekend on a local racetrack for fun, but that’s not what the van is for.

It’s not intended to win races or to exceed speed limits. It exists to provide safe transportation for my family. To draw out the full benefit of my van,

there is no need for me to use all the features at maximum capacity. If, in fact, my van can reach 140 miles per hour, which I doubt, that is so it can reach 70 miles per hour legally, safely, and comfortably.

There are unsaid limits to what I ask the van to do. Certain features serve my family. Others don’t.

You know, we put these kind of limits on a van, a vehicle, other types of things that we use around the home. And yet with our phones, a lot of times we feel like,

if my phone can do this, if my phone can have data, I’m going to put it on there. My phone can have social networking, social media.

I’m going to put it on there. If my phone can do these things and bring these things into me, if it can play games, I’m going to play games on it.

And the reality is that in life, we put parameters on other things. And so we want to take and put parameters even on our technology in a way that would make it honoring and pleasing to God.

Remember this, that technology makes life easier, but immaturity makes technology self-destructive. technology makes life easier but immaturity makes life and makes technology self-destructive

in this race for the plan that god has we want to take and live our lives in a way that they honor and please god we don’t want weights and we don’t want sin to be hindering us from making that difference in the life of another person a sibling a parent at my church and my community

and the phone is a way that Satan has used to bring weights and sin into our lives. So let’s look here at that handout, and I want you to split up in groups of like three and four right here in the room,

and let’s talk, first of all, you have the lips there, the speech. And I know that you’re not necessarily speaking things, but written speech and verbal speech are both part of language,

and there are some verses here that talk about language. So what you’re going to do is split up in groups of two, three, maybe four, and look at one verse and write out one application.

How would I deal with my speech from this verse that we look at? Does that make sense? So look at that verse.

We’re just going to deal with speech, so don’t go to the next one. Okay, you got your groupings? Get in your groupings right there.

You can move around a little bit if you need to. Move the chairs around a little bit. Look at one of those verses.

Choose one of those verses and look at what one of those verses says there and then grab an application point. Okay, how could I apply this?

What would this mean in my use of the phone? We’ll take like two minutes on this. Two minutes.

So read a verse real quick. Just take one verse and write an application on that. Just get one verse and then write a statement that how you would feel to apply.

Audience: So just one verse for that category? Right, right. Yeah, for that category.

Kayleb Foerster: Okay, it will take like 30 more seconds on that one. Okay, let’s have a thought about that. Savannah had a thought on the verse that she read, Matthew 12, 36, I believe, right?

What did you say? Okay, perfect, right there. Okay, every word that you speak, you’re going to give account of in the day of judgment.

This should cause me to think about what I’m saying and also what I’m writing because speech, if you look at it in the dictionary, defines verbal and written language that’s there. So Jesus Christ, you’re going to come into account.

How can we say things, you know, say, well, it doesn’t matter what, you know, it’s just what I say. It’s not what I type out. So you could write a lot of bad things typing out.

No, it’s all going to come into account. So be careful. Another thought, maybe from a different verse.

Everyone maybe look at that verse. Okay. Okay.

Careful everything I say. And that’s going to take, look into Jesus Christ. Wow.

Every word is going to come into account. I don’t know if I can do this. Okay, so I’m going to be zero.

Jesus Christ, you’re going to have to be 100 in my life. And what we’re going to bring us to is I need to walk with God.

I need to hear his voice. When I mess up, I need to come back to him and ask for a confession.

I’m going to be zero. This is a high standard. Okay, why don’t you go to the eye gate?

One verse there and a point of application. The eye gate. The eye.

Okay, any thoughts on that? I know we’re kind of going quick, but I want to get you kind of thinking through this a little bit here.

Any thoughts on the verse that you read and how it could apply to our use of technology? Maybe from someone else who hasn’t said anything yet.

Here we go.

Audience: The connection, like, I think it was Brother Jim yesterday was talking about our eyes as the downward file of our brain. Yes.

So the connection there was made in jail and one about making heaven to your eyes and then thinking.

Kayleb Foerster: Right, right. Yeah, and I appreciate you bringing up that fact.

And I feel like some of these verses, you know, it’s specifically related to the men, but yet ladies as well.

In what I view of, you know, these images, and I feel like, well, am I

as a being, am I matching up to that? So what do I need to change about myself

now to match up to what we see, secular people? And obviously,

we have to be careful not being drawled and by those kind of things and making that covenant. So, totally, with the phone.

Yeah, is that a problem in our day? Oh, yeah, big time. In both ways, for both genders as well.

So, yeah, definitely. God, I want to be zero. I don’t want to have any of that.

You’re going to have to be 100, so what’s that going to take? We’ll talk at the very end here, just a couple steps. Let’s go to the third one, our thoughts.

Real quickly here, our thoughts, and we’ll finish out with this one. Okay. Anyone have a thought on that?

A thought as we deal with our thoughts. Deal with what we think. Right back here.

Okay, so taking the thoughts captive. You may see something. Get a text message.

Start dwelling on that. You know, maybe a bad circumstance that happened or something else. Take that thought captive.

Okay, how am I going to deal with this? And obviously then it goes with the eye gate like I was just mentioned there so well and what we’ve heard preached.

This makes sense that you understand how that works out. There’s a lot of verses here. These are not, this is not an inclusive list.

Like this is all that’s there. But I gave these and trust that you’d even take and work through them yourself personally. As I think of 0100, Jesus Christ doing it, what’s the standard?

As I think of my mouth, my eye gate, my mind, and then the hearing, those parts that come in. We could talk about time, redeeming the time. So much of technology is just wasting time.

And I think if we’re honest about how we use it and look at our screen time and put away technology, we’d find out I am a lot more drawn into it than I am. You have one too there?

Okay. And we can make them obedient to God through His Word and looking at His Word. So bringing this all down, I want to boil this into one thing.

You have there at the end two action steps. First would be to be accountable, and you can find those verses there in Ecclesiastes, talking about how two are stronger than just one.

Three-fold cord, thank you, is not easily broken. And so when you have that accountability there, it just helps. So if you use browsing on your phone, like I have there, I have a lot of things turned off.

But then anything that’s there, I have accountability. And those reports go to different ones. And I know, and actually, Covenant Eyes just turned to screen time.

And so I know that what’s on my phone is going to be picked up and seen by someone else. And so it helps you just take and think. Okay, do I want them to see it?

And most importantly, do I want Jesus Christ, who’s here with me right now, to be seeing this? And so, 0100, Jesus, help me in my viewing here. Help me in what I’m doing on my phone.

Do I even want to be doing this on this app for this much time? I want to be spending this much time on email, this much time looking at news and becoming depressed about the world around me.

So, be accountable, be visible. And the phone has changed that so dramatically because this is a very, very private device. And you can feel like, hey, I can do anything.

It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to affect me. And you know, the lie that Satan wants you to believe about your device is that you can

do whatever you want and it doesn’t matter. No one’s going to find out. Can I tell you that God is looking?

God is there and he knows. And one day it will be revealed. And when we let that be in our lives,

you know, and even if you feel like, well, it’s an okay thing, but I know my parents wouldn’t want me

to spend this much time on this. Doing this, yeah, I really should be helping meet a need of someone else.

And instead, we go and we feed ourself, we feed our flesh. We’re not living with letting Jesus Christ live through us.

Be accountable, be visible. Isaiah 29, 15, they’re speaking of God. The people there,

God, who sees us? We can hide our works even from the Lord. The Lord says, you can’t hide these works.

What are you doing? So in our use of technology, would you walk away with that?

You’re in a race as a believer. God left you here for a purpose. He has a plan for your life.

Have we not heard that in the preaching, the messages here? But the device here brings in so many weights.

There’s so many sins then. I don’t know if you’ve ever been at that place, but I know in my own life,

as I work through using a phone, especially a smartphone, I’ll never do that again. I’ll never do that again.

I’ll never do that. And this time I really, really mean that I’m never, never going to do that again. And so what are the steps?

First of all, realize in Jesus Christ, he’s the one that has to enable us. We have to have that relationship with him. As we look through his word and we see the principles that he wants to guide our lives by,

we realize that’s a pretty tall standard. No wicked thing. I’m making a covenant with my eyes.

What I’m thinking about, what I’m saying, my speech, the accountability that’s there. Jesus, you’re going to have to help me. I want to run this race.

Look to Jesus who’s the author and the finisher.