From His Heart

Pastor Jeff Schreve: The things that you can see and hear and read about are endless with a smartphone. They're powerful things. And it has access to the internet and to all social media, and it can get you into terrible trouble. Smart parents recognize the danger in smartphones.

Guest (Male): Parenting is a lot harder today than it was 15, 20 or 30 years ago, for sure. And one of the big reasons for that comes in a little device, a smartphone. It's put into the hands of our children who don't have the maturity, the discernment, the impulse control to guard their hearts and minds, and the devil knows it.

So, what is a parent to do? You'll discover practical advice for raising kids to be smart with their smartphone today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve.

The message is entitled, "Smart Parenting in the Age of Smartphones." And it's the last in Pastor Jeff's seven message series, "We Are Family," that we've been airing all this month.

Right now, though, open your Bible to Ephesians chapter 5, and let's get started learning what to do to be a smart parent in the age of smartphones.

Pastor Jeff Schreve: I hold in my hand a little device known as the iPhone. These devices, we'd all have to agree, they've changed our lives. In some instances, they've changed it for good, but in other instances, they've changed it for the bad, and they have made a huge change in our teenagers.

A smart parent is going to recognize that this little thing, there's a lot of inherent danger in this thing. Somebody has said, "Well, is this phone bad?" Well, it's not necessarily bad, it's not necessarily good. It's not immoral, it's amoral. It's neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it that can be good or that can be bad.

The things that you can see and hear and read about are endless with a smartphone. They're powerful things. Smartphones, because they're powerful things, they can get you into terrible trouble. Terrible trouble, serious trouble can come through this little device. And when we talk about smartphones, we're also talking about computers. We're talking about tablets, but we don't really carry a computer or a tablet in our pocket. This is the thing that goes with us.

And it has access to the internet and to all social media, and it can get you into terrible trouble. What are some of the things that can happen with a smartphone? Well, it can open the door to evil and addictions. All sorts of evil that you can see through this phone.

Now, don't look for it, it will look for you. It will come to you. You can do an innocuous search for something and things can pop up and there there is evil embedded in that internet to come after you, to steal away your soul, to open the door to all sorts of addictions. Addictions with pornography, addictions with online gambling.

Addictions for those who have trouble with becoming shopaholics. Well, you can shop 24/7 with this thing. You can get all sorts of things. You can get yourself into so much debt. You can wreck and ruin your life morally and financially in no time at all with a smartphone. It opens the door to all sorts of things. It opens the door to sexual predators that want to go after your sons and daughters, especially young sons and young daughters who may be naive to the ways of the world.

Many people get addicted to social media. It opens up all kinds of problems, all kinds of addictions and evil. It doesn't have to, but it's inherent in there. Just like the car that my girlfriend Lisa had, if you weren't careful with that thing, man, it could take off on you because that thing was fast.

And listen, we know as parents that when if you're going to give your 16-year-old a car, then you're going to make sure they go through driver training. You're going to make sure that they know how powerful this thing is. They know very first thing that you teach your kids when you're teaching them how to drive, "Where is the brake?" Because before we go, we need to know how to stop.

Why why do we do all that? It's because that car can become a coffin if you're not careful. There's power in that thing, and this thing can wreck and ruin your life if you're not careful. Opens the door to evil and addictions. Secondly, they can distract and harden your heart. Distract you and harden your heart. You know, sin hardens your heart.

And if this thing, it becomes the gateway for sin to come into your life, through lust and through greed and through other means, then it'll harden your heart toward God. The Bible says, "Encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called today, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

Solomon was God's king in Israel, David's son, started out so well, but he didn't finish well. Why? Because he had many wives and his many wives turned his heart away from the Lord. He loved many foreign women. When you start to love other things and get your loves out of balance, and it turns your heart away from God.

And it's a distraction. How many times do you have this happen? And I'm preaching this sermon to myself because I have trouble with this thing, too. How many times do you you're sitting there and you're waiting at a red light? Oh, I'll pull out my phone, see if anybody's texted me, see if anything's going on, see what I got on Facebook. You know, I posted something, maybe somebody likes it.

You know, we live and die by the likes, by the comments. And you're, you know, you you're driving in your car, you're reading your text, you're texting while you're driving. That's the formula for disaster. But we constantly, we don't like to have any downtime, so we have to have something in front of us all the time to occupy our minds. It's a distraction.

Blaise Pascal, French physicist and mathematician and theologian, he said this: "The only thing that consoles us from our miseries is distraction. And yet this is the greatest of our miseries, for it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves. Distraction amuses us and leads us unconsciously to death."

See, we don't like to just be alone with our thoughts, to think through things, to think about our lives. So we just distract ourselves, and we always have something filling our minds and filling our ears, and earbuds in our ears all the time and and we just stay distracted. It's very hard for God to speak to us when we're distracted. You know, the Lord speaks in a still small voice, the sound of a gentle whisper.

And if you're always distracted by other things, you're not going to hear His voice because He doesn't shout. He whispers. "This is the way. Walk in it." So, it becomes a distraction for so many of us.

Thirdly, they can hurt your development and self-esteem. Teens are not developing like they used to. The studies are showing that. They're they're slower to mature emotionally. You know, it used to be we talk about getting a car, it used to be, man, when I was a kid, you were looking forward to the day you turned 16. And when you turned 16, you were at the driver's place taking your test to get your license.

God forbid if you should fail, because then you had to go back to your friends and say, "Oh, I failed." You know, and the big thing was, "Did they make you parallel park?" "No, they didn't make me parallel park." You know, you didn't want parallel parking because who can do that? You know, I mean that's a hard thing to do. And so that was a big deal because you wanted to get your license boom when you were 16.

Then you could be free like all your other buddies and you could take your 1971 blue Corolla out and out on the town, you know. But now, you don't see kids lining up on their 16th birthday to get their license. They wait. 17. 18. We had somebody call the church not too long ago, a few months ago or so, and he was talking about needing to get a job. He was 21.

He said, "But I couldn't get a job because they said I had to have a license." I was like, "Well, why don't you have a license?" "Well, I just never got around to it." It's like, "You're 21. When are you going to get around to it?" I mean, it just floored me. I probably shouldn't have said that to him, but anyway, I was a little surprised.

They're not developing like they once did. And the social scientists are saying a lot of it has to do with this and with social media, and the fact that they're just not engaging in things like they used to. You know, relationships now are all with texts, so many of them. Everything's text, text, text.

One social scientist said this: "You miss three key elements in a relationship if your relationship is primarily texting." Number one, you miss the element of the face of the other person. Number two, you miss the element of the sound of the other person's voice. And number three, you miss body language.

You know, it's very hard to tell in a text if this person is joking or if they're serious, or if they're upset, or what it is, and you can take things in a way that was it was never intended that way because it's just text and it doesn't have those other elements in it. It can hurt your development, it can hurt your self-esteem.

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff will elaborate a bit more on this in just a moment from the message, "Smart Parenting in the Age of Smartphones." It's from Pastor Jeff's series, "We Are Family."

Now you can listen to any messages you may have missed from this series when you go to fromhisheart.org and click the listen link. You can also download an MP3 of any broadcast along with the sermon outlines and notes from Pastor Jeff. And you can get that link and send it to others who you know may need to hear it. Just go to fromhisheart.org today.

Listen, we're ending this month with the family series from Pastor Jeff, and we pray today's lesson and all those family messages from the whole month have been a blessing to you. We began this month with a new series called "Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way."

Why so much family teaching? Because uncompromising biblical truth teaching families need to have will help you resist the devil. And it's vitally important for our faith, our culture, our world. And we're deeply grateful for your steadfast partnership. You are the backbone of this ministry. Together we're standing strong for this unwavering belief in God's word.

This month is our fiscal year-end month, and we'd appreciate you joining us on this day as we need to fill a gap, a substantial financial gap that we need to close by the end of today. And when you do, we'll send you Pastor Jeff's new series, "Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way," and the companion booklet, "I Still Do," written by Pastor Jeff and his wife, Debbie.

To get your series and the booklet, call 866-40-BIBLE. 866-40-BIBLE. Or go online to fromhisheart.org. And know that what you give will be multiplied countless times through the faithful proclamation of God's word from Pastor Jeff.

Now, let's conclude today's lesson, "Smart Parenting in the Age of Smartphones," and the series, "We Are Family."

Pastor Jeff Schreve: Teens especially, they live and die by the likes and by the followers. And, you know, I was reading about Snapchat. I don't have Snapchat, but Snapchat is big, and it's big with the younger crowd and streaks, Snapchat streaks. You say, "What is that?" Well, I had to look it up. I didn't really know what it was either. But you have this thing going with a friend, and every day you have you talk to this friend via text, and you check in on them.

And the more streaks you have going as as a teen or as a young person, then the cooler you are, and you know, you're more popular you are. Now, when I was in high school, you wanted to be in with the popular crowd, because then you then people knew you and people accepted you, and you didn't want to be in with the unpopular crowd. Everybody has to have a niche.

And one of the reasons Debbie doesn't ever like going to high school reunions is because she didn't have a niche. She tells everybody, "I was just a I was a piano teaching nerd." And didn't play sports, and wasn't in the band, and you know, so she didn't really have anything. While I played basketball and I was in with all the jocks and so I look forward to high school reunion.

Debbie said, "I didn't have really very many friends in high school, so why would I want to go reunite with most people that weren't my friends?" You know, so it's a big difference, but now in the world today with the smartphone, things are related to how many likes that you have, how many friends you have, and all this stuff. And people have so many friends and so many likes and so many streaks, and they're so lonely.

And it just exacerbates the comparison game, especially with girls. Girls have trouble with the comparison anyway. That's just that's a natural thing for a girl is with insecurity. And so when they start to look on Facebook and they say, "Well, this person has so many friends, and this person has so many likes, and I don't have that many friends, and I don't have that many likes."

And on this social media platform and that social media platform, and they say, "Well, I just must not be worth very much." And they get their self-worth off of social media, off their phone. Let me tell you something, this is for everybody. What are you worth? For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That's what you're worth.

It has nothing to do with likes. You have one big like and that's from God. He says, "I like you. I love you. I died for you." Knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. God gave His son, Jesus gave His life for you. That's how much you count, how important you are to God and how much worth you have. You're made in His image. You're a God original. We are His workmanship, the Bible says.

So they can hurt your development and self-esteem. You know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a book that was written in 1964 by a man named Roald Dahl. And he had the Oompa Loompas talk about television, because one of the guys on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was Mike TV, and all he ever did was watch TV. So in 1964, TV was a big deal. You know, it came out in the early '50s, so it was a big deal by 1964.

And what Roald Dahl has to say about TV, we could say even more so with smartphones and tablets and computers. He says this: "It rots the senses in the head, it kills imagination dead, it clogs and clutters up the mind, it makes a child so dull and blind. He can no longer understand a fantasy, a fairyland. His brain becomes as soft as cheese, his powers of thinking rust and freeze. He cannot think, he only sees."

That's why reading is so critical as opposed to watching, because reading kicks in imagination. If you see everything, then you don't imagine anything. But if you read a story, you imagine what the characters look like in your mind. How many of you ever ever had the experience of actually reading a book and then going to see the movie that was based on the book? Anybody ever done that?

How many people were disappointed because it didn't look the way you had envisioned? Yeah, because your imagination has kicked in. Isn't it going to be interesting for us when we get to heaven and we meet Jesus and we see what He looked like when He walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem and Israel. We we imagine Him looking a certain way, we imagine Paul looking a certain way, we imagine David looking a certain way, or Samson looking certain way.

Samson's just a big strong guy. But I don't think Samson looked like that. I don't know, we'll find out. I don't think Samson looked like Hulk Hogan. I think he probably looked more like Ben Hogan. I mean, it's just kind of a guy is just like, where's that guy get all his strength? He's he's a buck 50 soaking wet. But we see, we're going to see all that. We have it in our imagination, but then it becomes sight.

And the the thing that reading does is it makes your imagination go and it helps you to be creative, and this steals that away. And then not only all of those things, but the smartphone can derail your family communication. 13-year-old girl was asked one day by her teacher, "What are you going to do tonight?" She said, "I'm going to go home and watch my parents stare at their phones until we go to bed."

Hey, I'm I'm guilty of spending too much time on this thing. And it can become a distraction for me, and it can start sucking up all kinds of time, and you're go out to eat, what do you see when people go out to eat? Nobody's talking, they're all on their phones. This thing can disrupt your communication. There's danger in the smartphone.

And then insight number three, smart parents need to implement smartphone rules. Smartphone rules. Now remember, rules, parents, rules without relationship leads to rebellion, so the rules have to be in the context of good relationship with your kids. So your kids know you have their best interest at heart, and you're going to go by what God has to say.

And we can trust God because God is good and God loves us, and He never leads us astray. And His will is good and acceptable and perfect. Because some of the things I'm getting ready to say for rules with your smartphone, your teenager is going to say, "I didn't like this sermon at all. Let's go to another church." I mean, "This is not good."

So, rule number one. And this is for moms, dads, kids. Rule number one: We will operate our phones in the light. In the light. Ephesians 5:8 says this: "For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light." What does that mean? It means no secrets. Means you're not going to have secret conversations, you're not going to have secret accounts on your social media where your parents don't know.

And husbands and wives aren't going to have, "Well, you can't get into my Facebook. You can't see my messages because then I would be exposed." You know what integrity is, the best definition of integrity: "Nothing to hide and nothing to fear." And so your spouse can see all that you're doing, and parents can see what the kids are doing, and they can know what's being sent out in texts.

And there is accountability there, and we're going to walk in the light because the devil dwells in the darkness. And if we start dabbling in the darkness, we're going to hurt ourselves and we don't want to do that. And so we're going to walk in the light.

Second rule: We'll have no smartphones at the table. No smartphones at the table, no tablets at the table. We're going to put all those up. Why? So that we can eat together and talk. And we can sit around and talk and find out what's going on and share things that happened during the day. You know, you know what's a good thing to share? I heard this from a preacher once, I thought it was really good.

He would share around the table, "Highs and lows." "Give me one high. What was a high that happened to you today? What was a low?" And you go around the table and you share those things, and you have fun, and you laugh, and you you get insight from your children as to what's going on in their lives.

Thirdly, we will have a smartphone curfew. Smartphone curfew. Now, you need to decide what that would be for you. Maybe it's 8:00, maybe it's 9:00, maybe it's 10:00. But there comes a time where these things are put up. And wise is the parent who says to teenage boys and teenage girls, "No smartphone device, no iPad or tablet, no computer in your bedroom."

Why? Because they can get into all sorts of trouble. At night when you're not there to supervise, they can get in all kinds of trouble. So, you don't have that in the bedroom. If you're going to do it, you do it out in the family room where we all can see what you are doing.

Did you know that 82% of teens sleep with their phones? 82%. Did you know there was a study done in the UK, and they asked teenagers, "What is the one thing that you would like your parents to help you with?" And they said, "Number one thing is to help me with sleep." Because they're not sleeping because they have this with them all the time.

And this is dinging and sending notifications all throughout the night, and they got to keep their streaks going, and all that stuff, and there's pressure. They said, "We want to sleep." But they don't want to part with their phone. And so parents need to come in and help their kids with that and say, "Hey, come 9:00, every phone goes into the basket and we put it up. We lock it in the safe. We do something with it."

Everybody needs to rest. And they say, "Well, I I need an alarm clock." Well, they have those at the store. You can get an alarm clock. You don't have to have your phone. It will be a good thing for your family. And then lastly, we will hold each other accountable so we can please God.

Parenting is hard, but God will help us. He says, "I know it's hard, but you come to me and I'll give you the strength. I'll give you the wisdom. I'll give you the way in which you should walk."

Guest (Male): Well, thank you, Pastor Jeff, for showing us how important it is to be smart parents in the age of smartphones. Today's message is from the series, "We Are Family," and you can find out how to get it when you go to fromhisheart.org, click the listen link.

As we've been telling you this month, we're airing messages from two family series, and one of them is called, "Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way." And that series is our gift to you for your support this month to help us close out our fiscal year end. It's available in multiple formats, and when you do make that gift, we'll also send you Pastor Jeff's booklet, "I Still Do."

Now, today is the last day for this offer and the last day of our fiscal year, and it would be a blessing for you to help us this year. To make your gift, call 866-40-BIBLE. 866-40-BIBLE. Or go online to fromhisheart.org.

Well, thank you for being here, and we trust you'll join Pastor Jeff Schreve next time for an extensive series next month called, "Leaving a Legacy." That's on Wednesday, when we'll again open up God's word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from His Heart.