Can I Have Your Attention

(audience applauds) What's so good to be with you all today. Really glad to see your faces. We're glad to have you joining us with the online campus. And if we've not met before, my name is Dylan. I'm one of our pastors on the team. Really grateful for that pastoral team that I get to be a part of. And I'm excited to share with you for a few moments from God's Word today. And last week, we had a guest of the house stay over from unique conference. Pastor Bianca gave a word last Sunday. If you were here, you know how good it was. (audience applauds) She talked about being built to build. She also taught you all how to talk back to the preacher. You remember that. So it's on the front end. I wanna give you permission to give your best amen or get on that bus, whatever the spirit stirs in you. As you hear the word today. But I'm excited because now this week and next week, we're going to get into some conversation around social media and technology and really ultimately what it looks like to live with discernment in our digital age. And before we do that, I wanna move our attention to a very pre-digital age

that of ancient Israel. And we're gonna jump right into some scripture today from the book of Jeremiah in chapter seven. If you are ready, say let's go. (audience laughs) Okay, let's go. I hear you talking back. Jeremiah seven, 22 through 26. This is in the Old Testament and we have God's people, the Israelites. And if you are unfamiliar, throughout the Old Testament, it's really this hot and cold relationship with Israel's faithfulness to God. They would walk in obedience and then turn to disobedience. They would worship God and then they would turn around and worship idols and they're caught in this kind of cycle. And God is speaking to that here where he says, starting in verse 22, for when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I give them this command. Obey me and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you that it may go well with you. So just quick pause, even notice here, the heart of the law being articulated

that even in the Old Testament, the heart of the law was not rules and regulations, burnt offerings and sacrifices. The heart of the law was that God's people would be in relationship with him and this is what mediated that relationship at the time. And so God speaks to this, but he says in verse 24, but they did not listen or pay attention. Instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again, I sent you my servants, the prophets, but they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors. So notice in this short passage, two times repeated almost back to back this phrase, they did not listen or pay attention. Pay attention, are you paying attention today? I wanna give you a message titled, "Can I have your attention?" Because really, this is the question that so many things ask of us in our lives. In fact, from the moment that you wake up to the moment that you fall asleep again, you make a long series of consecutive decisions about what you will give your attention to, what you will fix your focus upon.

And along the way, there are thousands of things that will seek to draw your attention their way. All of these things that seem to call out, "Can I have your attention?" "Can I have your attention over here?" Over here, look this way. All these things that call out, "Can I have your attention?" And you can imagine how your attention may naturally move about throughout a day. All of the different things that you may fix your focus upon. You think the very first thing that gets your attention is the alarm clock. And it goes off and it says, "Can I have your attention?" And you go, "Boom, nope, snooze." And then a little bit, a few minutes passed by, "Can I have your attention, snooze?" And then finally, it's like, "Can I have your attention?" And you think, "Okay, I do have to get up "and get on with the day." And so you finally get up and then your alarm clock is probably your phone. So maybe there are some notifications and you pay attention to that and then you think, "Okay, I've got to get ready." You shift your attention to maybe showering or you did a little breath check And then your attention moves to your stomach. You think, man, I'm kinda hungry, some food would be nice.

And then to your brain, it says no, coffee first would be a good idea. And then back to the stomach, which says no, remember what happens when we have coffee before we eat bad idea. And then you continue on, maybe you're a parent and you need to get kids ready for school and you're trying to get other people's attention. And you're saying like, hey, come on, you guys, we're going to be late and nobody is listening to the parent profit, they're just kind of moving at their own pace. And maybe finally, you're out the door and you're driving, obviously you have to pay attention to traffic. And then you've got billboards and advertisements trying to draw your attention their way, even as you're driving or maybe an advertisement on the radio, perhaps the gas light comes on. Hey, attention, we need to go to the gas station. You finally perhaps get to work and there might be emails or Slack messages that are marked unread trying to get your attention or you work with heavy equipment that you really need to pay attention to so that you don't like lose a hand or something or you really want to nail that presentation or you have a board meeting or you have customers that are going to need your assistance. Along the way at some point in the day, you get a phone call, your phone rings and that gets your attention.

You pick it up, hello, it's a prince from some faraway land, he wants to give you out of the generosity of his heart, some of his wealth, he just needs a little bit of your bank account information. Think not a chance, not giving you my attention as if I would fall for that a third time, not gonna happen. (audience laughs) But you know now that you're on your phone, you notice a notification from Instagram and so you click into there and oh, it's a friend's post and you look at the post and wouldn't you know it? Below that one is another post and then another post. And there's another one after that, they just keep coming. You know, yeah, I gotta get back to whatever it was that I'm doing and your attention shifts and eventually finally you see the other side of the billboards on your way home, you maybe think about what's for dinner, there could be extracurricular activities or chores that need to get done. Perhaps you finally sit down and turn on a show and have pay attention while you scroll on your phone. This is how many people's days go, something to this effect, it's not hard to imagine, how this could look and in so many ways, our digital age in particular is a battle for attention. We live in what has been called the attention economy

where advertisers and marketing firms and other entities are after a precious commodity and that commodity is your attention. Digital platforms supply and sell it by extracting as much of your attention as they possibly can. It could be candy crush, you know, you get a few easy levels in a row so that you can quickly pass them and you get the dopamine spike of achieving and then of course it's a really hard level that you have to use all your lives on so that then you can watch advertisements to get more lives, it's very slick, very tricky but that's also small potatoes because the big players in the game, right, are social media platforms that supply via your personal algorithm, a feed tailored to maximize interest and engagement, all of the right posts to make you laugh uncontrollably or rage about politics or follow a threat of conspiracy, maybe save another recipe that you'll never actually make. It doesn't matter what you're interested in, just that you are interested, just that you are paying attention. It's your own pond to swim in where every hook has your favorite bait on it and this is not only captured our attention but it has changed our attention. Research from Dr. Gloria Mark an American Psychologist and Professor of Informatics suggests that from 2004 to 2016,

our average attention span decreased by nearly 70% down from about two and a half minutes to 47 seconds. Much of which she attributes to social media use in the explosion of short form content, all of these quick blips and flashes that come across our attention has shrunk in length and of course a shorter attention span means we have become more easily distracted. And also digital distraction is obviously nothing near new. We've been at it for a while but there are major developments changing the landscape. None more so right now than artificial intelligence. And I just wanna say, I could happily talk about AI far longer than you could happily listen. but here's the one thing that I would want you to catch today that what social media has done to the length of our attention. AI has the potential to do to the depth of our attention. New research has already led to the observation that heavy use of AI can lead to diminishing critical thinking skills in users and you think why is that? Because they're outsourcing their thinking and outsourced capabilities lead to diminished internal capacities. You think about it like a muscle that you don't use for a while and it begins to grow weak and atrophies because it's not receiving the appropriate use or stress that it would take to maintain its strength. And I want to say too that there are some things I'm totally like okay outsourcing. I used to know how to do calculus that was in my brain. It has left a while ago and I'm not really trying to get it back in. In fact, I depend on my phone for far simpler mathematics like most edition and multiplication and things. I'll ask Siri about that. You know, I'm okay with having help with the accounting for the business or maybe taking notes in a meeting as long as the goal is that that allows you to be more present and pay more attention not that you can just not pay attention and AI will do it for you. You know, things like vastly improving the efficiency of repetitive or aminial tasks or I'm hopeful that we'll have incredible medical breakthroughs with the help of artificial intelligence. So there are some things that there are great use cases but here's what I would argue is not good. Heavy dependence over use

for deep thinking, reflection, problem solving even. I don't want to be like the grown the equivalent of the grown adults who still calls mom to ask how long I need to heat up the leftovers for in the microwave because I can't just critically think about it for myself. I don't want to turn to chat or whatever the case is for every single question or every single problem that comes up. I want to be able to think for myself because if we overuse, if we depend too heavily upon it, it leads to shallow thinking, diminished discernment and the Lord knows that we need discernment in our day and age can lead to a crippled capacity for contemplation, deep thought, creativity and what's at play is not only information and thinking but also emotion and feeling. According to Harvard Business Review for the past two years now the number one use of AI has been therapy and companionship which is fascinating. So not simply asking questions or getting information but the use of AI for therapy and companionship and again I'm not making a declaration on whether or not that's ever a good use case or a helpful one but here's what seems clear to me that if someone is regularly depending on AI for a synthetic companionship and connection rather than truly experiencing these things in relationship with other human beings and with God there is certainly a severe risk to relational and emotional capacities. So just imagine with me for a moment your four-year-old asks you to read him a book before bedtime. Well AI could read it to him and more dramatically and with the real fake British accent you would be so engaging you could let AI do it. Your best friend's mom passed away and you need to write a sympathy card. AI can find all of the thoughtful and consoling words and write them even more beautifully than you could as well so you could just let AI do it. You're marrying the love of your life and you want to impress her with your vows. Come on AI can strike the perfect balance of humor and intentionality of sentiment, wit and charm maybe let AI do it better not to let your heart bleed across the page for your wedding day. You're feeling worried or anxious or lonely you could pray you could cast your cares upon God and bear your soul before him or AI is just a click away ready to affirm with efficiency. You could turn to AI instead. You know if you have kids or if you've been around kids one thing you might know is that they often like to ask questions. Our kids are no exception to that rule they love to ask us questions and I think about one of our kids in particular for whatever reason which is, "Daddy, can I ask you a question?" And it's usually if we're like walking to the school in the evening to go play on the playground

or maybe we're driving in the car, he'll say, "Daddy, can I ask you a question?" And every time I respond with the same one word response, I say, "Always." You can always ask me a question. And I could farm it out to an iPhone, say, "Hey, Siri's always around." You can always ask her a question. I'm like, "No, it is dad GPT all the way." That's what I'm here for. And mom GPT is more accurate, but I'm still gonna show up. Like, if you need a date on the calendar for an event, you better ask mom GPT, but dad GPT is here, okay? Like, I wanna show up. I love and even think about, I think God so desires that his children would come to him with their questions, with their wrestling, with their joys, with the many things of our lives. God delights in us bringing those things to him. And yet you can outsource it all and shrink your capacity for connection and relationship, for empathy and love for prayer. And I highlight social media and AI today because there's some of the primary sirens of our day that may turn the ship of our attention toward them. Social media sings out, "Come to me and forget your problems."

AI sings out, "Come to me and find all of the answers "to your problems." And yet Jesus invites us, "Come to me, "all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, "and I will give you rest for your souls." There are these invitations and to some of us, the two former may be very alluring. Others may be listening and thinking, "You know, I have a flip phone. "I'm not really on the AI train. "I don't struggle with digital distraction, "but there will always be a battle for your attention." The ancient Israelites had no iPhone, no generative AI, no social media. For them, the doom scroll was like a prophecy about destruction, the old-fashioned scroll that is totally different world. And yet, we read God's dismay that, quote, "They did not listen to me or pay attention." There will always be calves, statues of them made of gold or silicon. It does not matter, pick your material. The question is, "What will you pay attention to?" Because what you behold will shape who you are becoming. What you attend to with your focus is forming you, always. And to be clear, I'm not hating on technology. I just wanna say that. I'm not suggesting that we become luddites and burn the tech industry to the ground. You might notice there are no hammers

for an altar call later to smash our phones. That's not the goal. I don't wanna romanticize the little house on the prairie where I survive by the sweat of my brow to the ripe old age of like 40 or something. Like, I use technology all of the time. I benefit from technology. Recently, I was at the store with my wife, Kendra. We were getting work gloves for a task that we had to complete. And I was looking at these leather gloves. I was trying them on, you know, bending my hands and she walks over and she's like, "Why are you looking at leather gloves? Do you really need leather gloves?" Like, "What do you need those for?" Like, "I don't know man stuff. What are you talking about? Why are we questioning this?" You know, the keyboard on my MacBook is kind of rough. I don't know. (audience laughing) That kind of came to the realization. Maybe she's right. I'm not like out splitting wood to heat our home. And I'm not complaining about that. Like, I'm more than happy to live in an age where if the house is a little bit cold, all I have to do is walk over and push up on a button a couple of times

and the house is warmer. So like, I'm not down on technology at all, but what I am saying is that the cultural moment that we live in requires what every single one before it has, that we live with wisdom so that we may pay attention to God in a world of distraction. I want my mind to be more saturated with scripture than with the infinite scroll. I want the direction of my life to be led more by prayer than by the prompt. I want with my mind and my heart to attend to what is pure and noble and excellent and praiseworthy. This is what I want. The question is, how was it done? Well, you must curate your attention. There's no three-point message today. This is my one point. You must curate your attention. And the first thing to be said about this is pretty obvious that part of this, part of what we need to do, is to minimize distractions. Sometimes we just need practical steps like setting screen time limits on our phone or down times. Maybe it's deleting apps or moving them off of your home screen, you name it. Some of us would do well to be off of social media entirely, if we're honest. What does it profit a man to gain a million followers and yet lose his soul?

And many people are losing their souls for a lot less than a million followers. There are things that technology is doing to us if we're not using it intentionally. Maybe you need less time on Netflix or whatever your preferred streaming platform is. You know what is distracting you better than I do. And your screen time report might know better than you do. And so sometimes we need these practical things to look and say, what does it look like to engage this with wisdom? And I want to say as well that if something is distracting you that is sinful, it needs eradication. It needs to be pulled up at the root. But there are other things that simply need moderation. Things that are not inherently bad or wrong, but that have swung into a place of excess. And you can think of it like this, that sin is like poison. It has no place in your diet, right? You got to get rid of poison. But many other things are more like sugar. There's nothing wrong with some dessert. I love some dessert. I mean, praise the Lord for tiramisu, okay? But eat too much or too often, and it becomes something that is detrimental to your health. And so we need to be intentional, especially with technologies that are engineered on a slant toward overuse and overconsumption to capturing as much of your attention as possible. Because if you don't dictate how you will use technology,

someone or something else will dictate how it will use you. That is just the reality of the world that we live in. Have you ever told yourself that you're not going to let a device distract you, but it does? You think, oh, I'm going to spend last time on Facebook. And then like 10 minutes later, you're back on Facebook. How did I get here? I opened my phone to like write down a note. And now I'm clicking through stories. It's really easy to think, you know, don't look at or don't think about. And you notice that sometimes when you do this, the more that you try not to think about something, the more that you think about it, you can't stop thinking about it. You can't stop focusing on it. And really the best way to shift your attention away from something is to direct your attention toward something more beautiful, more compelling, or more captivating. If you were distracted by all of the bright and shiny things around you to borrow advice from an old hymn, turn your eyes upon Jesus. And the screens of your devices will grow strangely dim, won't they? We need something better to meditate on. We see this example all throughout the Psalms in Psalm 1. It says, "He meditates on the Lord's instruction day and night." Psalm 49, "My heart's meditation brings understanding."

Psalm 62, "I meditate on you, on God, during the night watches." Psalm 77, "I meditate in my heart and my spirit ponders. I will reflect on all you have done and meditate on your actions." Psalm 119 is full of these. "I will meditate on your precepts and think about your ways. Help me to understand so that I can meditate on your wonders. I will meditate on your statutes. How I love your instruction. It is my meditation all day long. Your decrees are my meditation. I meditate on your promise." Psalm 143, "I remember the days of old. I meditate on all you have done. I reflect on the work of your hands." See, we meditate, we muse upon God, on His instruction, His works in ways, His promises. Because again, what you attend to with your focus is forming you. And there's a downside to this when we focus on the wrong things, but the upside is seen in places like 2 Corinthians 3, 13 through 18. This is now in the New Testament, and yet it reflects back to the Old Testament times we were looking at where it says, "We are not like Moses. was passing away, something that was hiding the glory of God. But their minds were made dull. For to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all who with unveiled faces contemplate, who think deeply about some translations say

behold the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Meaning that as we behold God and we look at him as we contemplate God, we become like God. By the power of his Spirit, we take on the character of Christ in our internal capacities for love and joy, peace, patience, compassion, all of these things they expand beyond what we could muster on our own. And one of the most common ways that we quote contemplate the Lord's glory is by spending time with God in the quiet place. In Mark 631 it says this, "This is now an account of, while Jesus was with his disciples doing ministry." It says then, "Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat." Jesus and the disciples, they can't even get food from the table to their mouth. It's so busy. There's so much distraction going on around them. He said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." What a beautiful invitation. Bring back our thought experiment from earlier about how your attention shifts throughout the day, but this time it's the morning and your alarm goes off and you don't snooze it because you went to bed at a good time the night before because you weren't scrolling. And so your alarm goes off and you wake up and your attention shifts to God. You prayerfully read his word, you converse with God both speaking and listening, sitting in his presence. Maybe you sing a song or you journal, perhaps you slowly sip on tea and ponder the goodness of God in your life, whatever that time away, that quiet time with Him might look like. And then you leave that place and you go about your day, but God remains present in your attention. We never outgrow this kind of intentional time set aside to be with God because it's by attending to God in the quiet that we develop the capacity to attend to God in the

noise and in the activity of our lives. And so then you remember God as you maybe get the kids ready or commute, work, eat, all of it. And as you close your eyes to sleep, you cannot help but say good night to God, all too aware of his presence with you. Doesn't that sound nice? Isn't that easier said than done? Also yes. You might kind of instinctually respond, I have to focus on all these other things, I have to focus on my family, on my school or my career, my home, et cetera. And that's all true, but the key lies in how you will see these things. Think about how the visual, your visual focus is perhaps helped by glasses, each side of the frame holding a lens through which the eye can see more clearly. When it comes to our Christian lives, it's not that we take our attention away from God to attend to other important or good things, rather it's the case that God is the lens through which we see all of those other things properly and clearly as we view them. It draws to mind for me this quote from C.S. Lewis where he writes, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." So as God illuminates our world or brings it into focus, we see things with new purpose and meaning. We discover how to live well and how to live wisely. We find His goodness all around us. It shines upon our families or upon our work, our mundane moments, our joys and our griefs. but that they actually draw our attention back to Him. Sometimes, I think that I do this really well. Other times, I fail miserably at it. And maybe you feel like you have a hard time in this and it's certainly a wrestle, it can be a struggle. It's not hard to get swept up

into the whirlwind of life, is it? Brother Lawrence, in his spiritual classic, the practice of the presence of God offers these encouraging words, writing, quote, "I am not saying that we should put any intense constraint upon ourselves. No, we must serve God in holy freedom. We must do our activities faithfully, without trouble or anxiety. We are to bring our mind back to God gently and quietly, whenever we find it wandering from Him." And so the key really is this, to be able to take notice, to pay attention when our mind has wandered, moments when you realize God has not been on my mind. Maybe you find yourself being impatient or irritable or a little bit less than loving. Times when you perceive my attention has been preoccupied, not with what is true and noble and right and pure and so on, but with what is false or wrong or impure, or simply maybe just what is trivial and unimportant, like being preoccupied with things that really do not matter. And you take notice that your mind has wandered and then without shame, without condemnation, you quietly, gently bring it back to God. Can I tell you my favorite way to do this personally? I'm gonna tell you anyway, but I hope that that's okay. But my favorite way to do this, especially moments when I find that my mind and my heart

just feel kind of frenetic and rapid and like my thoughts are just racing past God. I'll do this, I'll do breath prayer, which is simply praying and attaching the words of prayer to the natural rhythm of my inhaling and my exhaling, a natural rhythm of my body. And I breathe deeply and I pray, and it's a way of slowing myself down before God. And I can literally look at my watch and it'll show my pulse decrease. And I just, I slow my body down, I slow my thoughts down. And I pray these words on inhaling, I pray silently in my mind, God, you are present. And then I pray here with me. And I start with God's presence because he is always the first one to the table of communion, inviting us to be with him. God does not arrive to the reality of my attention. My attention arrives to the reality of God. And so I pray, you are present, here with me. And then I am present, here with you. And then here we are. And I just pray that through a few times and it reminds me, I am not in the future where I'm thinking about that thing coming. I am not in the past with my regret. I am here now and God is with me, here we are. And even right now, you are here and God is present with you. You are present with him.

And for some today, God has not had maybe your attention at all. You've never glanced his way. And today you feel your focus being drawn to him. And his desire is not that you would simply look on from afar, but that you would draw near to him, that you would be with him and him with you. And this is possible through relationship with Jesus by surrendering to Jesus as Lord and Savior, by repenting, by turning your attention and your actions away from sin, away from your own lordship and turning toward Jesus. You can make that decision today. And if that's you, we would love to pray with you after service with our prayer teams as you take that step. But also maybe you're someone either turning or returning to Jesus today or maybe you've been following Jesus for a long time and your desires that God would occupy your attention and that you would become more like him from one degree of glory to the next as you behold him. And if that's you today, I just wanna pray with you all so even right now, when you remain seated, just close your eyes. Relax into the presence of God. Take a deep breath, slow yourself down even now. what's for lunch, what's next on the agenda. But don't go there yet, just keep your attention here. You are right here, right now, with God.

I want to pray with you, God, you have our attention. We don't want you to lose it. We don't want to pay it toward what is futile and hollow. We don't want to be distracted people living distracted lives. We want to behold you and your glory to spend time and attention with you. We want to see the beauty of our lives in your light and through your lens. Help us in these things by your grace. We pray with the psalmist that you would turn our eyes from worthless things, that you would help us to meditate instead upon your instruction, your works, and your promises, your very being. God, turn our eyes upon your infinite worth. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]