(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But if it does, maybe you better check to see if you have an addiction. Digital addiction specifically can have a big impact on your body that many people don't even think about. One, they impact your sleep. This is scientifically proven. Okay, people who are looking at their phones and looking at screens, looking at laptops, right before you go to bed, have a harder time even falling asleep because the impact that the light has on your mind, on your eyes, on your brain, it keeps you active in a way that takes a lot longer for you to be able to get relaxed and ready to go to sleep. It has a physical impact. And people not able to, you know, you might not even think about it. People say, oh man, what do people do? They can't sleep. Oh, I'm just going to go on Facebook for a while. That hurts you. It's going to make it worse. It takes some time to all just turn on the TV for a while. No, that's bad. Don't do that. And here's the other thing, too. When it comes to technology, when it comes to these possible addictions, you don't want to use technology as something to do when you're bored and you don't know what you want to do. You know, an idle mind is a devil's playground. And you have no purpose. Oh, I'm just going to, I'm just going to wander in over here. I'm just going to go down this path for a while and just see where it leads me. Now you're walking dangerously. And it reminds you, turn if you would to Proverbs chapter 7. People just want to go online, just go out into the internet and just be like, I'm just going to see where it's going to lead me. I'm just going to see where it brings. And I'm just going to surf around and just, let's just see what's out there. That is a very foolish thing to do. That is very foolish. Because what's going to happen when you have no direction, you're like, oh, I'm just going to go, I'm just going to walk this way, I'm just going to see what's going on. You're setting yourself up to have things come in front of your eyes that you didn't really want to have coming in front of your eyes. And that could appeal to your lusts and then draw you like, well, I'm not doing anything anyway, so why am I going to do this? And the thing about the digital stuff especially, so often people could get away with it and do it where no one else can see. There's no accountability. Way too many times. For people who normally wouldn't, in real life, you walk down the street, normally people wouldn't just be gawking and staring at someone, say like a man staring at a woman. But then all of a sudden, well, if it's on your screen, no one else sees your screen. No one else knows what you're looking at. And then you just take that extra time to indulge the lust of the eyes and the lust of your flesh. Even people, let's say, I don't ever want to do that, then don't just start going off into wherever on the internet. Because guess what the world's going to do? It's going to throw that stuff at you. It's out there. It's already out there. Proverbs chapter 7, look at verse number 21. And again, this is in regards to fornication, but it's the same type of mindset that people who just want to go out there will have. Verse 21, actually, let me turn there because I want to go a little bit earlier in this chapter. Let's go up to verse number 6. For at the window of my house, I looked through my casement and beheld among the simple ones. Simple means they're ignorant, they're unlearned, they're kind of dumb. They don't know anything. They don't know any better. And behold, among the simple ones, I discern among the youths, a young man void of understanding. Okay, some young kid, just void of understanding, doesn't know, doesn't have wisdom, doesn't have knowledge, passing through the street near her corner. And he went the way to her house. He's just going to walk this way. He's got no understanding. He's just void of understanding, kind of walking around. And now he's saying, you know, and he's going the way to her house. And we're going to see who the her is in a minute. Who is this her? Verse 9, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night, under the cover of dark. You know, most evil things happen at night anyways in the darkness. And there's a lot of dark areas to the internet. There's a lot of dark digital areas. And one of the reasons it's dark, it could be dark in the daytime because no one else sees what's going on. The reason why people do things and do so many wicked simple things at night is because there's more cover so people can't see you. You know, there's a lot more thieves trying to break in and steal things at night than they are in the daytime. Why? Because they want to be obscured. They don't want to be seen. You could get around and go places when other people are sleeping, when other people are, you know, not paying attention, not watching. Well, unfortunately, online, you know, people could put themselves in that situation where no one's watching, no one's seeing, all hours of the day. In the twilight in the evening, in the black and dark night, verse 10, and behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot and subtle of heart. Yet, you know what? This woman in the attire of a harlot shows up because he went her way by her house. And then she shows up. Imagine that. Whereas the people with understanding, they're not going her way. They're not going by her house. They're going to have to even deal with the situation of a harlot standing in front of them dressed and looking like a harlot selling their body. But when you just go and ramble around on the internet, you're going to find all kinds of things trying to be sold to you through the lust of the eyes. And then it describes her more being loud, stubborn. Verse 13, so she caught him and kissed him with an impudent face that ended in my peace offerings with me. This day I paid my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved work, with fine linen of Egypt. Now this woman also is a deceiver. She wasn't out looking for this guy specifically, but she's telling him all that stuff, right? Wants to make him feel so, oh wow, like he's already drawn in through the lust of his eyes, and now she's just telling him everything he wants to hear. Okay, digitally this happens too. This happens on social media. This happens in social gaming. This happens where people want to present a persona that's not real. People can get drawn in and led away with, you know, by these people that are pretending to be someone else. And you know what? That's dangerous too. You want to be careful what you do. I was literally, came across a story and I totally forgot about this, but I remember, I vaguely remember hearing about this quite a while ago. Who remembers, who knows who Manti Teau is? Does anyone know who? Okay, a few of the guys know who that is. He was a professional football player. Okay, he went to Notre Dame and then became a professional football player for San Diego Chargers. Okay, a very talented football player. Now look, I haven't been involved in football for a long time, but this was back a while ago. He succumbed, he had this girlfriend, so he thought, online, and the girlfriend turned out to be a dude. Okay, it turned out to be this big, scandalous thing, right, because it's like, and supposedly she died, but then she didn't. There's like this whole weird mess. And you're like, well how could anyone fall for being a dude? Well, the voice sounded like a woman. He never actually met this person in reality. It was all digital. It was all through text. It was even the phone calls, and I heard the voice. I was just like, that's crazy. If you heard the voice, you would think, yeah, that's a woman. This pervert was able to change their voice. And he looked like a fool public, I mean, you talk about looking like a fool publicly, because he was invested in this person thinking it was one thing. Totally different, total fraud. Now look, and this goes just more into the dangers of just getting out into the digital world. That was kind of a weird event. That was a while ago, when it was not as common to even know about that. This stuff happens all the time now. Okay, you never know, if you're just starting to engage with people on the internet, you have no idea who you're talking to. You have no idea. If you let your kids just get involved in a lot of these, you know, especially with the VR, the virtual reality stuff, they have this social gaming, it's weird. It's weird. Look, I got this VR headset, Brother Matt, he's the one who sucked me into that, you know where he is. But there's nothing wrong with it in itself. I mean, he showed me this cool game where it's just like you walk out on a plank and you feel like you're up on a skyscraper, whatever, right? It's neat, it's kind of cool. It's interesting, it's fun, but there's nothing wrong with that at all. But then there's these other games and other things that they have in there where you can go and literally get involved in these chat rooms, you know, back in the day, chat rooms were like a black screen and you're typing words, right? Like that's the old school chat rooms back in the 90s or whatever. Nowadays, it's like you have a whole image of a person and you're walking into bars or lounges or wherever, anywhere you want to go, really, in this virtual land, in this virtual reality, and you can literally talk to people and hear them, but you have no idea who they actually are. There's a lot of predators now who have been going on into these areas and presenting themselves as kids and presenting themselves as teenagers trying to prey on other kids. Not actual kids, right? They're not kids. Prey on kids. Prey on your children. Okay, and kids get sucked into this, and what's weird about this, and this is what's mind-blowing, is that people get, just like with the men's potato thing, they think they're talking to someone and they start getting emotionally invested in someone because they just have this image or idea of who they think they're talking to, and then it just turns out to be, it's just like, what does that do to your mind? What kind of damage does that do to you? You've been talking to someone, maybe even pouring out your heart, and then you follow up, dude, it's a dude, like what in the world? Like that's going to mess with you, thinking how could I even say so? The guy was saying, I think he was saying I love you. It's just like, man, how could you go there and you find out it's sick, it's disgusting, it's twisted, it's perverted, okay? You never want to be in that situation. You definitely never want to have your children get in that situation. You need to be aware that it exists, and when people just start going, whoa, that just looks like fun. Let's just go out and just jump right in and get involved with something. Look, people are getting way too used to virtual worlds and not enough time in the real world. This is why we're running across such a terrible problem with customer service. I mean, you should be experiencing this for yourself. You go out shopping somewhere, you go out to a store. I mean, the kids these days that have these jobs, the lower-level jobs, they're on their phone like, hold on a second. You know, like telling you, hey, you hold on a second. All right, all right, what can I help you with? If they even put it down, look, it's insane. But this is a daily occurrence, though. Happens all the time. And not just that, it's like the ability to communicate with people. Kids these days are getting scared to even have a conversation with someone because they're so used to just everything being on their phone. It's like, no, why don't you go up to the desk and talk to the person? Why don't you go and ask them for something? You go to the restaurant, no, I just want to place my order online and not have to talk to anyone, not have to deal with anyone. You need to be able to do things in the real world. Okay, now look, I like sometimes not having to deal with people. Right? But you're the pastor, I know. I'm confessing my faults, okay? But you don't want to let it get to a point to where you can't deal with people. Okay, and just, these are some of the dangers of getting too involved with this, especially when it just becomes addiction, it just becomes a habit, you know, people being involved in virtual worlds, you're going to lose grip on reality. And I'll tell you what, things are heading that way more and more and more and more and more, okay? Back in my day, you play like Super Street Fighter 2 or something, I mean, you're not really thinking that it's very real. But now it's like, I mean, you got, you could have like real people in games that exist in the world and they look very lifelike and you could be doing things in games now that's just like kind of blurring the distinction between reality and what's fake. And with the deep fakes out now, and I'm going to go into this more probably this evening on not being able to trust everything that you see. Okay, that's my evening sermon, just a little preview. But, man, you got to watch out for this stuff. Let me step back here a little bit, though, because there's other problems that having a digital addiction can have on you, right? I kind of went a little bit off down a rabbit trail of some of the dangers that are out there. But not only can it affect your sleep, but it can affect your attention span. The flashing of the screen for prolonged times and especially in developing children, especially, now it can impact everybody, but the more kids are getting these video, these visual responses, the visual flashings, it impacts the development of the brain to keep your attention. Everything is attention seeking on a video out there, on actual YouTube videos, whether it be any type of, all the marketing is trying to get your attention, get your attention. You've got these quick sound bites, you've got these quick things. Oh, I just need to get your attention for a minute here, for a minute there. It causes you to get scatterbrained. And then not be able to actually sit down and listen to something patiently because you're just, oh, I'm bored already. I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored. Why? Because you're being fed so much with just exposure. This, this, this. Oh, look here, look at here. Oh, this is cool. Now check this. And it's designed to even keep you going. The channels, the YouTube channels, whatever, they have the next video. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? Oh, that's it. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? Just getting you going on and on and on and on and on. And then they lead you down that rabbit hole and then you're spending hours of time. What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? That's not good for you. It's not good for you. Social media. You know, social media has an impact when people put out their image. They put out their persona where you literally get good feelings from getting likes and bad feelings from getting dislikes. Good comments. Positive. It's, it's, you know, everybody likes receiving compliments, right? Real life. It makes you feel good. There's a little release of dopamine in your body that's like a reward center. Oh, wow, I did something good. Hey, that feels good. You do good. People praise you. It's good. But you, you introduce so much more of that on an inordinate scale when it comes to social media and especially people you don't even know. People can start changing their own life and mindset based on what a mob may think. What's the group think? What are the most people like? What are the most people think can shape And again, you know, everyone is affected by this, but especially the children. Younger minds. People that don't have as much understanding, that don't have as much roots, you know, rooted down, keeping you solid in who you are and what you believe. It's a lot easier to be swayed off one direction or the other by the group, by the group mentality, by the peer pressure, by the, oh man, no one likes this. No, you need to have enough truth and dig down deep into who you are and what you believe, especially to guide you. And as believers, you know, you ought to be rooted and grounded in the truth, in the word of God. To guide your path and not care what other people think. Because look, if you're going to stand for the truth, you're going to have way more people hating on you than loving on you. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. Disciples, are there a few that be saved? What do you say? Straight is the gate which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. Because wide is the way and broad is the gate that leadeth unto destruction and many there be which go in there at. And those in darkness, they don't want to be reproved by the light. So you know what that means? Negative comments for you. I mean, these days they're just shutting you down. You know, people who are speaking, you just get shut down, you just get canceled. So how much time do you want to be spending in a world, in an environment where the people are actually saying anything that's worthwhile are actually getting shut down? How much time do you want to spend in that arena, in that world? The social media provides for instant gratification, just the digital world in general, not having to wait for things. People often become self-absorbed. It's all about me, it's all about the likes, it's all about, you know, how about the here's my, here's what I'm eating, here's what I'm doing, here's, you know, so everyone else can look and see, oh wow, that's great, you know, give you the praises of whatever it is. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, think about it, people just do it because it's so easy and because you see other people do it. And it just becomes this whole, wow, other people do it, so I'm going to do it. But for any of you who are a little bit older, do you ever remember grandma or grandpa or your mom or your dad going like, like taking a Polaroid when Polaroids came out and being like, and like taking a picture of your meal and like sending it off in the mail and just going like, hey, here's what I had for dinner. Has that ever happened ever in the history of the world once? Like, probably not, I don't know, right? It's just weird because why? Why would anyone want to do that? I don't know, why does anyone do that today? For the instant gratification, for the instant just, oh look, here's where I'm at, try to bring people in and see, you know, give me the like, give me the share, give me, you know, whatever. It's just, it's just kind of silly. Now look, if you've done that before, I'm not like, oh wow, how foolish are you? Okay, I don't care, but why? Why do you, you know, question these things. Question it, why do you even, why do it? What's the point? Where is it leading? Why am I even doing this? Why am I participating in this behavior? Why? Because you're being shaped and molded by other people. Okay, that might be, look, it's harmless to take a picture of a meal and post it. That's harmless. In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with that. That's, who cares, right? Nothing wrong inherently, but the point is to think about it. How are you being sculpted? How are you being molded? What is it, you know, the more time you're spending in these environments, the more influence is being put on you. Can you take a break from it? Can you stop? Can you stop the pattern? Can you stop the behavior? Because often times, people really start to see the difference once you've distanced yourself from it. And I'll tell you this, I'll give you one more example just for my own personal life and my own experiences. And again, related to alcohol, once I quit drinking, okay, I didn't take the stand of like, of never being around alcohol. I first took the stand of saying, I'm quitting for myself. Okay, I'm no longer going to participate in this. I quit completely, cold turkey, no more drinking. But I still had friends that liked to go out to the bars and hang out. And once I realized, you know, after a very short amount of time of me being completely sober and hanging around with a bunch of people that were getting drunk, my eyes were open. Wow. This is stupid. People are saying a lot of really dumb things. People think they're real funny and they're not. People are saying some really filthy things. People go, there's all kinds of things that go on now from a clear mindset going like, wow. I didn't know that before. It didn't take very long after that just to be like, you know what, I'm not even going out anymore. Now I don't even want to be in that situation. Now I don't want to put myself in these weird situations where people are getting drunk. Who knows what could happen? Why even put yourself there? But you have to sometimes distance yourself to be able to see the picture clearly. There's a lot of things going on digitally. I encourage you to take a break. Maybe see what you can see a little bit different after just putting everything aside. This happens, especially the TV programming and stuff, the reason why the envelope's been pushed so far with all of the perversion is because it's been introduced slowly. Some things go a little too far, they scale back, but they keep on pushing and pushing and pushing. And when you're consuming all of this material, you may not like it at first, but it becomes normalized. And then you're going to find your own way of thinking being pushed and molded and sculpted and changed over the years as you allow the influence of the world to impact you. Because you are just getting sucked in with everyone else by the tell-lie vision. And I'm standing here, I'm no different. I'm no different. I'm just saying things I've already learned, I've already experienced, I've already gone through it. Okay, the first time I actually heard real preaching from the Bible about, like, sodomy, that was, like, mind-blowing. Mind-blowing? Why? Because my mind was so in the world, was so involved in the programming of what the world was putting out there, so much geared towards tolerance and acceptance, and all manner of filth is just okay until someone's actually going, like, no, this is what the truth says, this is what the Bible says. It's like, whoa! Whoa! That's real! What do you mean? But when you're saved, as I was, I'd be like, well, I mean, it's right there. That's true. That's right. The Holy Spirit bearing witness with what I'm hearing, going, that is right. That is true. Stop being so tolerant for the filth, stop allowing the world to mold your mind and to shape you into accepting all manner of filth. Just stop! Just cut it out! And it happens slowly, gradually, over time. It doesn't have to be any one particular program, it could be an accumulation of all of them. When it's all coming of the world, it's not of the Father. And then how much time are you spending with that? How much influence does that have on your life? Do a litmus test. Stop it for the next 28 days. How about for the next 30 days? Because you can start today. And go all the way through February. There's so many other things. More screen time can lead easily to other sins, like covetousness. Because you're being marketed to all the time, of all the things you need to have. Covetousness, not just spending money, but how about with just other people? You start seeing, oh wow, this person, they're eating fancy every day. They're going on these trips. Everything's so beautiful. I want that life. You'd be happy with the life that God gave you. You'd be happy with the spouse that God gave you. You'd be happy with the family that God gave you. You'd be happy with all that. You'd be content. And stop looking on what other people have and wishing you had that. So how to stop the addictions? One, I mean, my, you know what I love the best? Just stop. How to stop the addiction? Just stop. I've dealt with addiction before. More than one. Just stop. Stop. You can do it. And don't, but you know what you have to do, though? You have to make the decision for real. That's when you stop accepting the fake excuses to yourself. As I mentioned before, you know, I've dealt with the thing with the booze. Oh, but it's Friday. Oh, but it's my buddy's birthday. Oh, but, you know, like, just stop. Stop with the fake excuses. Do you really want to stop? I mean, just stop, then. Just stop. Say, no, I'm not doing this anymore. And sometimes that means separation. Just physical separation. I'm not going to go out there. I'm not going to put myself in that position. Physical separation. I'm just going to turn that off. And at the end of the day, think about it. I mean, unless it's going to affect your livelihood, what would really happen if you just turned this thing off for a while? Just off? Do you know there was a time when people didn't even have telephones? Do you know that? I don't know if you're aware of that, but, like, for all human history, there's been plenty of time where people didn't even have such a thing. You actually would have to, like, walk over to someone's house if you wanted to talk to that person. Or get on a horse, get on a trusty steed, and ride over there, right? You have to do something different to go and communicate with people. And you know what? It was okay. It was okay. Stop. Man, if there's one phrase that drives me nuts in this digital age, I hear all too often, but what will we do? What will the kids do if we take them out of the iPad? What will they do? God, what will we do? What will I do if I can't play the video game? What will I do? Oh, man. That's when I just go. Now you're going to have to figure out what you're going to do. You want something to do? I'll guide you in what you can do. Because I've got lots of work to be done at home. We've got a backyard that needs some rakes. The leaves raked. We've got other. The wife's got some dishes that need to be done. We've got some floor that needs to be repaired. We've got work. We've got work. We've got things that need to be done. You've got plenty of things to do. How about just going outside? Just go outside. So many things to do. Don't ever accept that. Well, what are they going to do? You know, there's a thing called books. It's old technology. Print, paper, you know. You might have heard of it. That actually engages the mind. And in fact, you know, we're talking about sleeping problems. Reading will help you and help your mind to get in a state. And I mean reading on physical books. Not reading on the Kindle. Not reading on the phone because you're going to get that same, the light stuff there. Even if it's not real flashy, it still has an impact. Read the book. Find something. You want to get rid of the addiction? Find something good to replace it with. You can't leave the void there. So I'll tell you this. Here's part of the challenge. If you find yourself struggling and you want to do this digital challenge. And you find yourself struggling. What am I going to do? Well, you came to church at the right time. You know what we're doing as a church? In the bulletin, you'll see here this thing where it's got a picture of a Bible here with a little cross on it. See this Bible memory passage? We're in Hebrews chapter 6. But you know what we're doing? We're memorizing the entire book of Hebrews as a church. All those times that you want to turn on the TV. Scroll through here for a while. How much do you think you might be able to commit to memory if every time you're going to do that you had this folded up in your pocket? And you pulled that out instead. Or even this. You could even do it on your phone. Download a Bible app. You know we have an app that you can use for Bible memory. And I'm a big fan of this stuff because it can be hard to, you know when people quit smoking for example, they need to put something in their mouth. So often times when people quit smoking they'll have a sucker or something. Because you've gotten so used to doing certain things and you've got this muscle memory. And you know what? I think that's great. Go ahead and do that. If chewing gum or something is going to just kind of bring you off of that, away from that sin or whatever it is, great. As long as there's nothing inherently wrong with what you're replacing it with. Well there's nothing inherently wrong with having a Bible app on your phone. Bible memory then you know for all people I could never memorize anything or oh I don't have the time. Let's find out how much time you got. Find out how much time you got. Sounds like I'm out of time according to someone here. I'm wrapping it up. I know I'm a little bit over time this morning. I've got a few other scriptures. Actually I didn't have as much scripture this morning. But you know the Bible says, this I say then walk in the Spirit you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. If we're walking in the Spirit we're not going to be committing sin in general. So try to replace things that are addictions with things that are godly. Walking in the Spirit. Stopping addiction you could pray to God to help you with that, to strengthen you. Don't make opportunity to do the sin. As I mentioned before the Bible, this is from the Bible too. So a lot of things that I'm bringing up. I didn't have the biblical reference. Romans 13, 12 I'll read this for you. Turn if you were to James 4. It's the last place I'm going to share with you, James 4. Romans 13 verse 12 the Bible says the night is far spent the days at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day not in riding and drunkenness. Not in chambering and wantonness. Not in strife and envying. But put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. Don't give yourself an opportunity to fulfill that desire. To fulfill that lust. To feed that addiction. Take it away. Take it away. And you know for some people with other addictions or drug addictions, sometimes you just have to get yourself out of those circle of friends and just remove yourself from that situation. You see I'm not going to make provision to my flesh. Because if I hang out with these people, if I put myself in this position, I'm going to be that much more enticed and much more likely to just get back into it. You know what, if this is a problem for you, turn it off. And I can't even believe probably the number one biggest problem, I started going off into social media and video games, photography. It's huge. It's rampant. And I would be remiss if I didn't bring that up. I mean just seeing statistics is staggering how rampant that is in the digital age. And you know, you got a problem with that. You know what verse I would memorize? If I offend you, pluck it out. I'm not even kidding about that. Because pornography requires an entire sermon in itself. I preached on it before. But the damaging ramifications that that does, that impacts your brain, it impacts your way of thinking, it impacts so many areas of people's lives. That is super damaging. And you need to quit now. You need to stop immediately if that's something that is a problem in your life. And you know what, especially digitally speaking, you might just need to break your phone or something. If you're under that bondage, get rid of any avenue of going the way to her house like it says in Proverbs. Just don't have that even be a possibility. Because that is damaging. James chapter 4. And now I'm just tempted to go on for another hour. James chapter 4, look at verse number 13. At the end of the day, you know what, our time is precious. Our time is short. So the social media, video games, all this stuff, remember, usually it just doesn't even matter. It's just a big waste. It's a big waste of time. But you need to understand, we don't have that much time. Kids feel like they have all the time in the world. I get it, I was a kid before, but you know what, the older I get, the more I realize how short our time actually is. I'm struggling to try to get things done now. It's like, man, value your time. Don't waste it. James 4 verse 13, the Bible says, go to now you that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. The Bible says your entire life. It's like a vapor. It's like you go out on a cold day, you breathe out, you see that little vapor in front of you and then it's gone. That's how the Bible is describing our lives. It's so short. It's here for such a short amount of time that we shouldn't just be boastful of all the things I'm going to do. Yea, you know what, all the great plans and things that people really want to do and I want to do these great things and I want to serve the Lord. You know how often times we'll just hamper that? All these little distractions, all these little things that just get in the way. Yea, people talk a big game and they all really want to do all this stuff, but you don't end up doing anything because you've wasted your time. You talk the game about doing this stuff, but you don't actually do it. You run out of time. How many people ran out of time trying to read their Bible of the New Testament in the month of January? I'm not asking for a show of hands. I'm just saying. Did you run out of time? Did you also run out of time to play video games? Did you also run out of time to scroll on Facebook? Did you also run out of time to just scroll through whatever you scroll through? I mean, I don't even know. I'm not saying the things that I know. There's always more things coming out there, so who knows, right? Whatever. But did you have the time for those things? Did you have the time to do all the meaningless stuff, but then you ran out of time to read your Bible? You're running out of time to pray? Maybe that's another sermon. Where is God in your life? Is He first or is He last? Does He get your leftovers or does He get the firstfruits? Let's keep reading here in James 4. Verse 15, Verse 15, You know you're supposed to do good. You don't do it. That's a sin. There's a lot of sins in the Bible. There's one. There's one. I don't know anyone who's not guilty. People know to do good. Don't do it. Guess what? That was a sin. You know you're supposed to pray. You know you're supposed to hear from God, read His Word. You know you're supposed to do it. You don't do it. It's a sin. But you're able to do all these other things, right? Take the challenge, please. Take the challenge this month. Make yourself a little uncomfortable. Try it out. Give yourself the test. Anyone here that says, I'm not addicted to any digital stuff, and you know what? There's plenty of people who might be able to say that, and it's just absolutely true, okay? I'm not going to doubt you. You test for yourself. You say, I'm not addicted? Test yourself. Try it out. I say you are. Prove me wrong. Or maybe you're sitting here saying, you know what? I know I'm addicted. Well, do you want to continue? Do you want to continue being addicted? I mean, do you want to let that be bringing you into bondage? You say, well, it doesn't feel like bondage. If you're addicted, if you can't stop, you are in bondage. You are. We need to walk as children of light. Let's have a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you. Thank you so much for all the wisdom you give us and your word. Lord, I pray that as we continue to be exposed to more technology, that you'd help us to be able to make good judgment calls, good discernment on how we ought to spend our time, and help us, Lord, to avoid the areas that are just going to lead us down a dark path, just like we could see from the simple one in Proverbs 7, Lord, that followed the path to the harlot's house, that ultimately, if we would have kept reading, see that her path leads down to hell and to destruction, dear Lord, that we could also be wise concerning other areas, other avenues, other streets that may not be physical in the world but digital, dear Lord, out there online, that we could avoid those paths, avoid those streets, not go by that way and not get sucked into other sin. Lord, help us to manage our time well. Help us to overcome any addictions in our life, whether it be digital or otherwise, dear Lord. We pray for your strength. We pray for your power, Lord, and I pray that your blessing would be upon our church. We love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. We're going to sing one last song before we are dismissed. And then those of you who are attending that luncheon today, please just try to see me as soon as possible after service. All right. Brother Peter. All right, church, let's sing this out. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and praise. Through death and to life everlasting, He passed and He followed Him there. Lord, us in the war have dominion, for more than twelve hours we are. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and praise. On the last day His Word shall not fail you, we promise. Believe Him and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying, this perfect salvation to tell. Sing it, church. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and praise. One more announcement real quick. I forgot to mention this during announcement time. We have our giving statements all available. Hopefully most of you already have received them. I gave them to the ushers. For those of you who have given and assigned your names and given that you've done over 2022, we have statements for you. If you gave to our church and you didn't receive one, please just start by seeing one of our ushers and see if they have an envelope for you. If we don't have an envelope for you, talk to me and I'll double check our records and make sure that we have something for you. We would only have it though if you've written a check or if you broke your name on the giving. Obviously anonymous, we have no idea who gives that. If you just threw cash in a plate, then you won't be receiving anything. But I just want to say that those are available. If you have any discrepancies, any problems with it, review it. Make sure it looks right to you and if there's any problems, let me know. Alright, we're dismissed. Thanks for being here this morning. Thank you.