Kuyperian Media

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Good evening, everyone. Well, tonight, you get to speak on Kiparian media. It’s going to be really focusing on social media just because I do see that it’s a big aspect of our life. And so before I get into it, I will pray, and we’ll get after it. Father, thanks so much for this night. And I just pray that you would be with me as I speak. Continue to give me wisdom and clarity and discernment. help me to put out my thoughts clearly and just pray that you would use these words to impact our body for those things that are not necessary pray that they would just not hit their ears but for those things that you want us to hear open our ears and let us hear those in Jesus name amen. So tonight we continue our centers into comfort series and so talking about social media I I think it’s an important topic for two regions.

Firstly, there is not one megabyte in the whole domain of the World Wide Web over which Christ, who is sovereign overall, does not cry mine. And secondly, we must consider what it means for a Christian to be faithful for the Lord Jesus when it comes to our engagement with the World Wide Web. When you step back and think about all that we have from the internet, from Amazon, email, Google, live streaming, podcast, apps, and so much more. There really is no better time to be alive than now.

We need to understand that the online sphere, it’s going to change us for good or for worse. It will have an impact on our souls. And social media is already having an impact on whether you realize it or not. Just think about, you know, from your smartphone, you can purchase something at a swipe, and magically tomorrow it appears at your doorstep. And so, you know, it’s teaching us in one way like that to not be patient and to wait.

From the comfort of your couch, you can tweet the governor or even the president, and maybe they respond, maybe they don’t, and you can imagine what bragging rights you’d have if they liked it or retweeted it. And even on the level of like the youth and adults, a lot of people get depressed because people aren’t liking their content, they’re not resharing it. And when it comes to our engagement on social media, we need to remember that it is the Lord who we are faithfully serving and we need to do all that we’re doing online for His name’s sake.

I mean, even, do you think about like some of the things that are evil, like if you think about like the past year there’s people that have live-streamed evil acts on Facebook for the for the world to be entertained by that and the word you can see in in culture that there’s a lot of cowards who pull out their phone to record these evil acts rather than stepping up and actually doing something for those that are are vulnerable or need protection. Edmund Burke said the The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And so we need to be considering, you know, how is social media impacting us on a whole different levels.

The truth is, like it never sleeps. Social media is like 24-7. There is always something to like, to share, or to amuse yourself to death with. Consider these mind-blowing numbers from, it’s a website called Data Never Sleeps. a 8.0 report. But every minute, Instagram users post 347,000 stories. Netflix users stream 404,000 hours of video in a minute worldwide. Zoom hosts 208 participants in meetings that they host. Facebook users upload 147,000 photos. WhatsApp users share over 41 million messages, which can vary from text message or video or just content that you can share. Door Dash diners order 555 meals. YouTube users upload 500 hours of video a minute. It would take you 21 days just to view that content. And then by the time you got done, you would have over 15 million hours of additional new content on YouTube. Twitter gains 319 new users a minute and about 550 new tweets. Consumers spend about a million dollars online a minute.

Amazon ships 6,659 packages a minute. TikTok is installed 2,704 times. And there are about 388,000 downloaded apps every minute. And over 15 million just texts are sent every minute. I mean, that’s just one minute. And then on Friday night, when I was, you can go to Internet Live Stats, And I was able to confirm that there was over in one minute 5.2 million Google searches. That is $2.7 trillion a day. The numbers are just growing by the minute. And I would challenge you to think about how the internet is changing you for good or for worse. The online world, for most people, is a door to get better at consuming.

What profit does the internet have on your character? How about your relationships? How about some doing the world and taking dominion? For all the good things that we can have access online, social media puts us in a driver’s seat of amusing ourselves to death. It is an older book, but I would highly recommend reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. He had some interesting things to say, and one I wanna touch on in this is the perspective of Huxley and Orwell. Some of you know these names because of omnibus reading. Huxley wrote The Brave New World, and Orwell wrote in 1984. Postman says, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing.

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by externally an imposed oppression. But Huxley’s vision, no big brother is required to deprive of people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people would come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared was those who would ban books, what Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one that would want to read one. Orwell feared that who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared that those who would give us so much that we would just be reduced to passivity and egoism.

We need so much stuff coming in, and you just have time to think about it in process. He continues, Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the Feelies, the Orgy Porgy, or the surficical Bumble puppy. As Huxley remarked, the brave new world revisited this the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions. In 1984 Huxley added people were controlled by inflicting pain in the brave new world they’re controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us Huxley feared that we will love what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. Social media is ruining physical fellowship. Many in our culture are more excited about the life they get to live online versus the life that they have on the ground. Social media is like a Sims game. People become better at living life in the iClouds than they do in their backyard. We can know that we are amusing ourselves to death when we find ourselves being more engaged with our device than another human. Think about the last time you went out to a restaurant. When life had no restrictions or lockdowns, you would find most families gathered around the table with their faces in the device.

It seems more fun to scroll through feeds seeing everyone else doing Doing what they’re doing then to be present and engage with the people that are sitting right in front of you Think about that Social media can keep us from what is most important We need to learn to have self-control and discipline when it comes to using our devices Another thing I found interesting in postman’s amusing ourselves to death was the idea of information action ratio Imagine you’re on your favorite social media feed. The most popular are Facebook or Twitter. If you’re Dave Light, you like CNN, cable TV. How often does it occur that the information provided to you changes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not have otherwise taken, or provides insight to some problem you are required to solve.

Social media is meant to keep you busy and remove any space you might have had. It wants to keep you from thinking and reflecting on things from one story to the next our feeds or news or Stores are filled with nothing that we can do about like we’re just we’re amusing ourselves to death That isn’t always the case. I mean if you’re paying attention Like there was one time where I mean I’ve been sitting on Boeing stock for a while and Chuck tweeted something about or posted on Facebook like the stock market went crazy. So I pull up my iPhone and Googled it and wow, like it’s time to sell Boeing stock. So it was a profit.

Another thing is like, let’s say you see a family that posts something where they had a situation, tragic, you know, like they can give a meal, you can pray for them. I mean, so there are ways that we can certainly engage with the feed, but for the most part, people aren’t going to the feeds to find how they can be a blessing to other people, they’re going to consume. So basically, just get back to start with the message. I want to basically just talk about a few areas where, you know, ideas that we can use to either strengthen our homes or to be growing with how we’re engaging with social media. And so we should, but we do need to consider what the King would have us to do with social media.

So let’s start with media and motivation. Why do you want to engage any social media platform? You should ask that before you go, what’s your purpose? Like, I mean, we all probably have Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, whatever it is. Some of you don’t, and I get that. But for those that do, like, why are you going? What’s your purpose? Like, we should be asking ourselves these things. You know, Proverbs 4.23 tells us, to keep our heart with all villages for from and for the springs of life. And so these questions really keep you focused on your own heart and can keep you from getting into trouble. Because if you’re just going to these sites or these platforms without any kind of idea, then you’re probably going to get into trouble.

Which goes into media and parenting. Good question to ask is, how is social media impacting parenting? It’s easy to put Google and YouTube in the position of the parent. Technology is ready to teach your children everything there is to know about life. The problem is that it comes unfiltered with no biblical worldview. Our kids need parents to help them understand social media. They’re learning from us and how we engage it and that we need to teach them about what it is because they’re gonna get into it regardless if you want them to or not. So why not help them when they’re in your home to train them, to raise them, to be able to be good stewards of how they engage online.

When is it appropriate to introduce your child to a device? This decision comes with wisdom and discernment. I think it’s probably better later than sooner. I think devices can cause a lot of problems. I mean, reports even show that some kids have like attention deficit disorders because they’re just so stimulated all day with the screen. And they’re not really engaging with just regular, normal, real human contact. I mean, it would not be wise to let your sixth grader just have unrestricted, unlimited internet access on the computer. I mean, just one quick search is probably gonna find them a lot of things that you would probably not want them to be engaging with.

Parents need to teach their children about social media. Proverbs 22.6 tells us to train up your child in a way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. And so if you really put in the time and the effort to help your child understand not only the positive things about social media, but the dangers, they’re gonna be better in the long run. And that is our responsibility. A parent has to make sure that they are helping their children think biblically just about anything. But here we’re talking about social media. So in that way, when they’re engaging the content, they can have an understanding of what honors the Lord and what doesn’t and what helped them discern between giving in, what does it mean to have self-control, what does it mean to be a friend online.

Fathers, do you have a pulse on your children and what they’re doing online? What apps are they using? What content are they posting and sharing? I am not sure about all devices, but the iPhone, you can actually check screen time. It’ll tell you what they’re doing. When we have family meetings, we try to look at that, or if we’re trying to keep our girls accountable, we view it for the sake of knowing what they’re doing. And we talk about those things. A father needs to be asking their children about purity, which I’m going to talk about here in a little bit. But you need to be asking questions. What are they doing?

What are they thinking? Don’t just assume that because they’re in a Christian home that they’re actually behaving and doing really well. Because oddly, sin is knocking at the door. And if we do not pay attention, it will get us. Another thing is, in terms of accountability, I know with the computer, you can delete the history. So I mean, if you really, and that’s something that we don’t do in our house. It’s a no-no. Like, if you’re deleting the history, that means that somebody’s probably doing something that they’re not. I mean, I know sometimes if we’re planning on a trip or something, we’ve deleted it, Joel and I, because Google tracks the last price that you got.

So next time you put it in, it just raises it. So I try to delete it so we can get the lower price, because they’ll see that you’re trying to figure out what price to be at, and they want to get more money. Yeah, and social media, it’s a great resource for helping our children become contributors in our home. From podcasts to YouTube, we can help our children learn how to be productive and to be a blessing to the people in the home and to our neighbors. I mean, if you, let’s say you, I mean, I know with me, like our garage store in the back of the shop broke, so I had to YouTube and figure out how to fix it, and it worked.

Like, you know, I wouldn’t have done that on my own. I mean, thankfully somebody recorded it, and I was able to be blessed by that so I can not pay a repairman to come out and fix it. So fathers, what is your, you know, think about what your plan is for your family and social media. Like, do you have something in place? You know, how are you holding your children accountable to what they’re viewing and what they’re posting? Like, I mean, like I get notifications from Mike Kaitlin, you know, so I know when she post and I’m looking at it, we’re talking about it, you know, because I want to be involved with her and, you know, as a father, my job is to fill her love tank. And so sometimes, you know, she’s posting a lot of selfies. Well, that’s something I need to get after.

She needs me to fill her heart. And so fathers can see what, especially their daughters are doing online and like, and that may be a clue that you need to actually step up sons, like you need to make sure that they’re being men and acting like it.

So, but you know, and not, we don’t do this in a way of like controlling, but just like, you know, it’s just a conversation. Like we’re trying to understand, you know, where our kids are at and what they’re doing and how we can help them, you know, work through that because sometimes they’re not going to share those things. Yeah, so study your children in such a way to where you can actually help them find content for things that they want to learn or they’re interested in. You know, from music, arts and crafts, martial arts, starting a business, you know, working on a car, you know, there’s plenty of opportunities there to help your kids become producers. Next is media and purity. Pornography is a problem in our society. And as a repentant porn user, I can tell you that I think about it often, you know, how do I guard my own heart. You know, I kind of got disgusted with it before the Lord interrupted my life, but after the Lord did interrupt my life, reading the Bible and reading scriptures, I realized

that I had sinned against the Lord and against my wife. So, you know, but you know, how we view our relationship with that is important. I recently was listening to a podcast that was kind of was edifying in a way that like I thought about some things that I never really thought about before, you know, in terms of like thinking about it in a good context, you know, because today on your smartphone, like back when I was, you know, before we got married, I think you had internet but you didn’t have a smartphone, like you had a flip phone so you weren’t really accessing any apps or anything like that. This day and age, like with a smartphone, you can pretty much get an endless supply of adult content, you know, but But for those that would be having a hard time killing the sin, we need to change our mindset.

Many believe that this is really just a man’s problem, but the stats show that more women are actually engaging in this more and more. I mean, some of them said it’s 50-50. I think I found like one in three users is a woman. So it just doesn’t impact the man. it impacts females too. So, and if one is going to have victory over this they need to change how they feel about pornography. It’s both wrong and bad and a sin that needs to be repented of. It’s wrong because it violates God’s law. The seventh commandment is thou shall not commit adultery. God loves marriage, sex is for marriage. The cause for singles to be pure and disciplined. Pronography He comes out of a lack of self-control.

He usually leads to masturbation, which is selfish because it has no productive ends. It is only for self-pleasure. God made us in such a way that we will desire the opposite sex. A man looking on a woman or a woman looking on a man and desiring him is wrong unless they are your spouse, and in that case, rock and roll. But to covet in another that God has not given you in marriage is a sin. According to Jesus in Matthew 5, 27-30, to look on another woman with lust is spiritual adultery, a violation of the seventh commandment. And it is bad because it disrupts God’s order. Pornography removes sex from its design.

It’s a sex drive is meant to push you towards marriage and to have babies. God builds households through families. And so marriage, like in marriage, we’ll make it great again. Like we need more families, we need more kids. But when it comes to pornography, if you struggle with it, you gotta think differently about it yourself. Do not be controlled by your desires, but you need to rule your desires and aim them in a way that honors God. Giving into pornography and masturbation is a failure because it lacks the production. That’s not the way God intended it to be. That is for a covenant relationship with a husband and a wife.

So we need to maintain a Godly mindset. I would encourage you to consider memorizing Psalm 119.9. How can a man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word? If we want to have this mindset, we must know God’s word. If you wanna conquer it, you need to be just flooded with God’s word. We need to chew on it, we need to meditate on it, we need to put it to memory, We need to bring it up when we need it. As a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, which means you can pray for help and ask God to strengthen you by His grace to be self-controlled in this part. And that is, Galatians says that self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit.

When you face temptation, you need to preach to yourself. You need to find some scriptures to put to memory and to use as needed. You need to find some people that you can actually reach out to and get accountability. someone that’s actually gonna, in one sense, punch you in the face if they need to or rip your computer out and throw it down the street. Because pornography does not do a marriage any good at all.

And there’s other things that you can look at with in terms of purity, but that’s the main thing that was really, at least on my heart, and wanted to encourage the body with. Because I know that it’s an issue in our culture, and it’s getting more and more with just the technologies that you have. And we need to be thinking like, what has God given us and what does He want us to do with it? And you know, sex is great in marriage. And we need to be patient and wait when God gives us that. Next would be media and entertainment. When it comes to movies and music, how should a Christian engage them? I will say that there’s no neutrality when it comes to art and entertainment.

Christians 5, 15 through 17, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Christians are called to be holy and walk as children of light. When it comes to movies, we need to consider, like, what is the story? Like, what’s the content? Like, who wins? Good or evil? Because I don’t really want to watch the movie that evil wins. Just, that’s not the way God made it. does not win. It could be a good movie, but is it full of debauchery? Is it full of things that are sinful that we should not be entertaining ourselves with? Or as a movie, these days some movies are making evil to be good and good to be evil. Those are types of movies that we wouldn’t want to engage in or entertain ourselves with. We do want to at least try to find something that’s going to help us grow and be excited about what we’re watching.

I like movies, and so I often will go to various review sites to review what movies. And there’s been a bunch that I wanted to watch, and I go read the review and I’m like, well, not going to watch that one. And if I have watched it, I’ll tell you. I regret it. Because the Lord has given us tools to figure out, is this good for me and my wife? Is this good for my kids and oftentimes if I have not taken the counsel of the review site, I’ve regretted that. And I’m not saying that you can’t watch a movie when there’s bad things because we live in a rated R world. There’s bad stuff all the time but it’s just a matter of whoever made the movie, what are they trying to say about God and this world because good has to win.

But yeah, I’m not really into ratings, more on content. But there should be a line that we are bothered by, like that we don’t want to go near. What is that line? There is a time to turn off a movie. It’s okay if you made a mistake and this isn’t really good, just turn it off. But I also do feel like there’s nothing wrong with watching a movie for entertainment purposes. It doesn’t need to have any redemptive purpose, but still, it should have something good that you can take and be thankful for. Movies are an opportunity to talk about character, choices, and situations. Why this is good, why this is bad. It’s one of the best tools you can have for building a biblical worldview into your family.

The mindset for your kids. You watch a movie, something comes up, you pause it, you talk about it. It’s OK. I know some people don’t like to pause movies, It’s a good opportunity to talk about character, or why that was bad, or why, man, that’s really good. That’s something that we need to be thinking about doing in our own home.

The same thing goes for music. Obviously, asking your child, why do you like this song is helpful. I mean, the child should consider their own heart. Maybe they don’t know, but they may need you to help them. And so you can always get lyrics. You can find out the meaning of the song. Some songs that you may think are bad might not be bad, and some that are actually good might be bad. It all depends on what is being sung. Because the music that our kids are listening to is going to have an impact on how they behave. But ideally, one way to guard against that is for them to be able to filter what they’re listening to and understand why this is bad and why this is good and not allowing that to impact them in a negative way.

When it comes to the things we watch and listen to, we must remember to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, because the Lord matters. We should be watching things that we could say that we’d sit down with Jesus and watch. Or you’re an elder, like you would sit down and have them over and watch that with your family. Like if you wouldn’t, then you should question why you’re watching it. We should be moved by Paul’s prayer for the Philippians, where he prayed that their love would abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that they may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Social media, movies, music, whatever it is, like we need to engage it in a way to where we are actually gonna be becoming more pure, more holy. If we’re not, then we’re entertaining ourselves with the wrong things. Media and communication is the next one. There are many platforms that we have that allows us to engage with other people. One of the gifts about the online platforms is that it gives you the opportunity to talk with others that might be radically different from you. So you never know the opportunities you may have with the people. Obviously, it’s weird on Facebook if you don’t know somebody that you’re like their friends, but some people are good.

I mean, I’ve found some people in Moscow and such that I’ve heard about or I’ve read some of their content that are really good to follow and to engage with. And some of them have been very helpful. Like you can, some of them will, you know, you can message or even, you know, email them and they’ll talk to you if you have questions or want to engage. But you know, Christians should be willing to engage with others that are not even in the faith. I mean, even like this idea where a lot of people want to leave Facebook to go to parlor, which I guess is fine. But like, I don’t want to be hanging out with a bunch of people on a platform that think the way I think.

Like, I want to engage people that think differently, that I can learn from, that I can engage them and share the gospel and talk about things that are important to me. And hopefully the Lord can use that to impact their own life. I mean, a lot of people on Facebook need encouragement. So a lot of them do think the wrong way. But don’t run from that. Look at it as an opportunity to engage. Like millennials, if you want to reach them, online is really the place to go. So where do you go to have those conversations, to ask those questions with people that are way younger? Ideally, they’re probably staying in their mom and dad’s basement, like, they’re never going to leave.

I’m going to order DoorDash dinner tonight. So the internet is a means of being able to at least impact them. And that’s why later on in terms of the community, I have some things that I think would be beneficial to think about. So we should be looking for opportunities to share the gospel, to bring salt to the conversation, to bring value. We shouldn’t be just responding to people I mean, you know, with just nothing that’s gonna, I mean, I guess in a sense you can, but like, you know, if you really want to impact people, you’re gonna need to bring something that’s got some kind of value to it. Like, oh wow, this person knows what they’re talking about, or I really liked what you’re saying there, expand on that.

We have God’s word, and that brings hope and gives us understanding of the world around us. A lot of people that are lost have no clue how to put all these pieces together, understand what’s going on. And we can filter that through God’s word and have a good understanding of being able to go at it with that perspective. Maybe they don’t agree with it. But either way, we can bring them at least a narrative that is hopeful. There will be people out there in groups that want to cancel. When you’re online, if you’ve been paying attention to any of the feeds, there’s been a lot of groups that they hate the truth. They want to cancel it out.

They want to ruin your life, dox you, have people come to your house and harass you and treat you in an unhuman way. But the truth is the truth and we should not run from that. We need to stand up and be willing to speak the truth when we’re on social media regardless of what the costs are. But hopefully this will all change, but I don’t know. As Christians, we must fear God. And if we’re faithful to Him, we don’t have any reason to be ashamed. You should be thankful for your heritage, for your privileges, for the things that you have, for whatever God gave you. If you’re white, be thankful. If you’re black, be thankful.

God’s good in all of it. We can honor Him with what He’s given us, and we should be more thankful than… there’s no place to be ashamed of who we are and what God’s given us. So some things that Christians should consider when communicating online with other people is, be quick to hear and slow to click send.

There’s a lot of times where you can save yourself heartache just for realizing, is this appropriate? Is this building up? Is this tearing down? And sometimes we need to learn that Social media is trying to train us to interact differently. We should not take our cues from the Internet. It’s better to deal with a lot of the heavy things face to face, like together, like when you’re with people talking about it. There’s a lot that you can do online that just gets muddled. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as good for building up in as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

We want to speak online in a way that impacts the people that are hearing it, and also gives people a taste of who we are. Be kind. Proverbs 15.1, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. I mean, you can be a jerk online and get a lot of people upset, but you would benefit yourself and people by being kind.

Christians are called to expose the works of darkness, Ephesians 5, 11, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them. When we do this, God may go before us and cause evil doers to repent and come to know the truth. We bring it to light because in that God is glorified. Use wisdom, be above reproach, bring clarity, don’t speak in vague terms, avoid vain discussions before you even get involved with the discussion is even profitable to do. Is it worth your time? Are you going to have to put something else off that’s more important? Or are you going to be online chatting all day long and at the end of the day, it leads to nothing and then you’ve neglected your home, You’ve neglected your family, your job, whatever it is.

And even on that, we should be careful when we’re using it and when we’re engaging it. Don’t act like an expert. Ego and pride will hinder your influence. There is an ongoing discussion that you’ll find online, and I think that’s great. But if you go on there and you’re just all, like, I know everything, and you don’t know anything, and you treat people rudely, you’re not going to be able to gain any influence. Before sharing an article, be sure to read the whole thing and understand its contents. Like, what is the article saying? I mean, is it like, would you get in trouble by sharing that? Like, let’s say somebody in the church sees that you share this article, and it’s just like, this is not something a Christian should be sharing.

So making sure that you know what you’re sharing. and never forget that what you do online is never disconnected from real life. A recommended resource, which I didn’t really want to speak more on this, but Lin Gao, there’s a book called Blood Letters. She lived in the time of Mao’s China to his dictatorship. It’s a good story. She ended up going to a Christian school, got saved, and ended up speaking out against Mao’s dictatorship. And they found it. And ended up arresting her. She ended up getting a firing squad. So she lost her life. She was a Christian, but it clearly gives you a picture of what it looks like for a corrupt government to silence the voice that stands in the way of its propaganda.

And those types of things should encourage us. We should be bold and courageous to step up and speak out, even if it would cost you your life. And the next would be media and community. Since I was assigned to Top Hook of Media, I’ve been thinking about our body life. Like, how can we become a force to be reckoned with online? You know, like, what is our purpose online as a church? Now, when I say online, it does not have to be limited to Facebook, but as a church, what would it look like to be strategic for the purpose of building up our body and love? You know, because most of us are online. Romans 1.28, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

We can do this with social media. I would say that’s an addition to this. This is what’s most important, coming together, worshiping together, sharing life together, men to men, titans too, your L2Ls. That’s where we need to be. The social media or online is like an addition to that. It’s never a substitute. Like I don’t, you know, I don’t like virtual church. I understand that there’s maybe times when a pandemic first starts that you can do that, but still we were meant to be together and to share life. And that’s very hard to do that virtually.

But some of the things that I’ve been thinking about, which are just their ideas. So I’m just throwing them out there thinking about it. But what would it look like for a TEC to pursue concentration, like Doug Wilson talks about in Rules for Reformers, to do it in a way where the enemy and the devil get nervous. Maybe there’s a way that you can, because if you’re all online, why not try to find a time where people can post a question or something and then everyone can engage? Or have the opportunity to? Because a lot of the people that are on our friends list may not be saved. And for them to be able to see that engagement, a body, just having a great, fun discussion about truth and just life, you never know what opportunities that would come out for people that are following.

Because people do read some of the things going on with the threads and things that they’re interacting with.

Another good thing that I’ve thought about a lot about just like journalism, like you know coming together with like a band of writers that can write content for the sake of like even Marysville where you know you can inform them, give them things that they can actually act on and help them understand the community, what’s going on and you know being able to be a better citizen. And like in regards to like evangelizing, you know, what does that look like online? You know, I just, it seems that, you know, sharing the gospel, but really trying to look for ways to, for us to get involved with the ways that we’re engaging people, you know, like sometimes people go online and, you know, they separate, they’re like, I think we do a good job. I see some interactions where people are working together, but, you know, what can we do to be more strategic to take online opportunities, you know, to be able to share the truth and to, you know, really help each other out.

Another idea which I think is fascinating would be like debates. I always wondered like how cool it would be to have some kind of debates. I mean especially with the Evangel classical school, they’re training people up to be able to do these things, give them the proper tools, you know, it would be great for the community. I know way back in years, in some places, people loved going out to debates. I mean, they would flood, sit in, fill a whole town hall just to hear two people talking about a subject that is benefiting. I think that it would be an opportunity for people to engage the community, to put things on the table that would be worth having a debate about.

But that’s just, like I said, that’s just an idea. Another thing would be with these apps. My wife and I were talking about she’s part of a small group. And basically, you can take it out, which can be in addition to what you’re doing, and find opportunity to engage with each other in just regular life things. I think they use WhatsApp. And so you have a question. You can find something to encourage. It’s the idea that you would be running partners. you’re trying to help each other run well, it’s a way of taking like, you know, L to L or mental matter, tightest two and narrow it down to a smaller group. And like, who would that be?

I mean, even for some of the youth that have like iPods, I mean, you can probably download, I don’t know if you can on some because you need a cell phone number, but there’s gotta be things that you can get that you can actually have like running partners as the youth, like, you know, you can use it to help each other for accountability, for sharpening one another. I kind of call it a pit crew. You need people that are around you that are going to help you run well and to finish strong. We’re not meant to do this alone. And so why not find an opportunity to be able to band together in a way that adds to what we’re already doing?

And I think that there’s plenty of apps out there that would allow it. You’ve got group me, WhatsApp. You could do Marco Polo, but it’s more just video. So you can face to face. You can say something, and then they can respond. And I know that there’s people that have groups that they do that. So there’s all kinds of ways that you can encourage one another. And I think that having that a part of your arsenal, a tool belt for living out that we’re going to help each other finish well is a good idea. So to finish, all things considered, here we need to look at how we think about social media as a Christian and even as a church body.

The goal is for us to use media to become better citizens here on earth rather than better consumers. I shared a lot about some of the household approaches that I take and so that’s just food for thought. Like you guys, especially the fathers, You guys can figure out what would work well for your household. But either way, you gotta come up with something. You gotta figure out how you’re going to engage social media as a family. I think it’s important.

And do that in a way that edifies the people there. My prayer is that God would, that we would use social media as a gift and that we would use it to get better at life. I think the whole running partners is a great idea, like just trying to find people that are on social, you know, use the app and try to encourage each other, find more opportunity to encourage one another. Because in the end, we want to hear a well-done, good, and faithful servant. Above all, fear the Lord. Proverbs 1, 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools, despise, wisdom, and instruction. So we need to stay alert. We need to set our minds to action and go get some.

Like, we should not amuse ourselves to death. I don’t know how you would view, I know that this whole thing has allowed me to consider my own interaction with social media. I mean, there’s areas that I’ve seen that I need to grow and where I need to be more disciplined because it’s easy to not be thinking about those things. So to be active is great. So I pray that you were encouraged. I will pray and that’ll be it. Father, thank you so much for tonight. I do pray that you would continue to strengthen us, help us, where you have us, help us if we are involved with social media, how we can honor you and be faithful with that. Help us, Father, to continue to raise our families in a way that honors you, to consider how to go about the things that we are viewing or engaging in, and to do that in a way that would please you.

So I pray that you would bless the after-low tonight and that the conversations there would be great. And just thank you again for this body and for the opportunity to speak to them and just pray that you would use what I’ve said to encourage them and thank you very much and Jesus’ name, amen.