Are You Addicted to Technology?

Ps. 26:2-3 “Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart. For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.

Are You Addicted to Technology?

I wasn’t expecting a sermon on the Power of Prayer to start off with, are you addicted to technology, but it did. After speaking about Ecclesiastes Pastor went on to speak about the selfie-driven world, then listed astronomical statistics. He said there are 93 million selfies taken EVERY DAY! He went on to say that the younger generation will take 25,000 pictures of themselves by the end of their lives.

This was not against technology this was about the self-driven nation. We are so absorbed with ourselves that we then forget about God. We may fool ourselves into believing we’re all about God but seriously when you’re so absorbed in a technological gadget, posting on facebook and twitter, hanging out on Instagram and Pinterest, where is God in your life then?

He asked:
Do you take your cell phone to bed and keep it close to you?
Do your friends and spouse complain about it? (the time spent cradling it?)
Do you check your phone first thing in the morning and the last thing before bed?
Do you feel bummed when you forget to bring your phone into the bathroom with you?

Then you’re addicted.

He said, “We think of our phone serving us but we wind up serving them, and that is really the definition of an idol, isn’t it?” He went on to tell us he was not anti-technology he was just pointing out the fact that the more we are absorbed by the techno gadgets, the more our prayer life will be hindered. Connecting with God is an afterthought after we’ve connected with the media world.

Pss.139:1 “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
[2] Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
[3] Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
[4] For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

[23] Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
[24] And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

You may say, “I’ve got my friends, I’ve got facebook.” But how many friends do you have right now that you could call and they’d come to your assistance? Your thousands of friends that LIKE your posts release a dopamine high and you get the rush of feeling loved and that’s all well and good, but do they KNOW you? Really?

Burger King had an offer for a free Whopper meal if you unfriend ten friends on facebook. They had to pull the plug on THAT little promotion because over 230,000 people had been unfriended and were angry! They did find out how much a facebook friend is worth, .37 cent!

People like the appearance of having over one thousand friends, people thrive on being liked but in reality, the average person has four friends, some have less. Four true friends that they physically see on a regular basis and are actual friends, but for appearances sake, they have thousands of friends in the social world, each of which they have no idea who they are they just feel important adding people to the list.

Ecc. 4:9-11 “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?”

“We are drawn to our technology, that provides the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship.” Terry Sherkel says, “Technology seems to address all the greatest needs we have, the need for attention everywhere, to be heard and to never be alone.” 

Ecc. 5:1  “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.”

Yeah, these days’ people even take their media gadgets to church with them. I hear many say it keeps the bible at their fingertips but I wonder, is that in between a selfie? A picture of their breakfast/lunch/dinner? I’m only asking because I have no idea what the excitement is by taking a picture of yourself. I’ve never taken a selfie. My phone is for phone calls and I don’t text so it is used just for phone calls. Enlighten me on why people need to let the world know what they’re doing every minute of the day, even when they’re sitting in church?

My only techno-gadget is my laptop and I use that for my blog/writing or playing a game of chess or solitaire. I read mail, and sometimes go to facebook to say hi to friends and see all of the prayer requests needed for each day but that is the gist of my techno use and knowledge. I’m happily old-fashioned and I like myself that way, not tainted by the media and all the baloney people post to sling hate to their thousands of friends. Yup, attention seekers survive via their social media outlets. Poor things, they need all the prayer I can give.

My prayer isn’t only for the attention seekers and media addicted folk, my prayer is for the awakening of the world that they may see how they are all a piece of the puzzle that is forming the world-wide web of hate. I can now see how a sermon on the Power of Prayer turned into an enlightening piece of the technology addicts of the world. By tuning into our gadgets that is one less minute we are spending with God. Wonder no more why the world is the way it is today. 

Technology - This Day and Age

Dan 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

This Day and Age

This day and age we are bombarded with the virtual world. Kids are being raised to think it is cool to post ‘selfies’ of themselves nude; after a murder they take shots of themselves with their ‘kill’; college kids post pics of sorority pledge rapes and the unthinkable list continues.

Are we such a naïve nation to think that these pictures are our property and no one will see, get in trouble or even steal these works? Just recently a friend of mine had her facebook account hacked and they stole all her beautiful flower pictures and did who-knows-what with them.

In this day and age I keep my information as private as possible and even as such I’m still vulnerable to attacks via internet, cell phone and snail mail. Nothing is private any more and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can learn to raise our children with this knowledge that privacy is in place for a reason. Modesty is necessary in this cold-run viral metropolis.

I became very modest after my father told me one time that exposing myself (cleavage, butt-bearing tight shorts) was a window for the wrong kind of man to lust after me. He was right. All the catcalls and whistles were not because I was a pretty girl; the men were more likely thinking what they’d like to do with this little lady, and it wasn’t good.

So I became extremely modest to the point of being too tightly wound and being called a prude. Ha! I’m a pretty prude, but a prude nonetheless. I’m okay with that. Now when I’m gawked at, whistled at or complimented, it is a more respectable man admiring my beauty not my body. Lesson learned.

I sure wish the kids today could understand this. I know where they’re coming from; ‘I can do what I want’ attitude and today’s kid is basically raising themselves doing just that, what they want. This is why we’re in such a virtual-living world. Kids today have lost human physical contact and they are drawn to the illicit, inappropriate, seemingly private world of the internet.

Take a game system away, an Ipod or Ipad, or computer privileges; you’ll see a child thrust into the throes of withdrawal just as when an addict has his drugs taken away, they become lethal. We are raising addicted children and not seeing it as such because the child seems happy. So we ignore the addiction and instead feed it by giving them hours upon hours of non-communication with the physical world. We are in the depths of running to and fro as technology has increased.

Just today a kid was shot by police officers in Baltimore, Md. It was found out that back home in Kentucky he had killed his mother, father and sister. The article stated: “the teenager was angry at his parents for taking away his computer privileges days before the slayings.”

One day we’ll realize our mistake and try to intervene and actually help these lost in the system addicts. Intervening with an addict is not an easy task because children addicts need to see that they even HAVE a problem, which they don’t, so parents are left on their own in fighting the child, oftentimes growing into addicted adults.

We have intervention programs for the alcoholic and drug abusers. We have help for the over eater, the anorexic and bulimic but we have nothing for the Dependent on the Virtual world programs. Someone who can’t go an hour without texting or checking their facebook page or posting a tweet or just the need to interact virtually are at the mercy of their obsession that has over taken their life. While technology can be a good thing, it has been abused, and will continue to be abused, until we all wake up and see the problem facing us.

The virtual world is consuming humans in the record numbers and as we adults stay fixated on it, our children are learning that it is an okay way of life. My neighbor texted me the other day and I had to call and tell her that text cost money, money that I don’t have on a plan that doesn’t have free texting. Everyone assumes that everyone else is in the text freak world. Everyone else assumes everyone is an addict too.

While my son was in school, all of his friends had phones but my son didn’t. Besides being poor he just doesn’t need another thing to fixate on. I try to teach him the value of the net and it isn’t on facebook or twitter or texting. My prayers are that when he goes out into the world, he sees the difference in reality and falseness the internet can lead to.

In this day and age, we are living in the Prophecy foretold in the Bible but people are so busy running to and fro, that they don’t see or don’t even care, they are sleeping. As you can imagine, my mornings, afternoons and nights are all consumed with prayer. Prayer for the people who seem lost in the chaos.

God be with you all!

Isa. 5:21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!