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Why So Many Christians Feel Mentally Scattered Today – Highlight Episode 386 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: It really is an issue in our in our in our day and age.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think more than anything, we hear about it with what's happening in the school system here in the United States of America.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: But what's crazy is now it's like in most schools, every child is given an iPad.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like my daughter, uh Julia teaches at a Christian school, and all the kids like have a special, you know, pad that they're given.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so you got technology, you've got entertainment, you've got the flesh, desires.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so many things that that contribute.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a danger.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: We we joke about it, we laugh about it, you know, we're doing that now.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: We can be light about it, but there is a seriousness in losing focus.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um you like the idea or do not like the idea when you see a kid with an iPad at church or in a restaurant.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Disneyland.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: At Disneyland.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen a kid with an iPad at Disneyland.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: While on a ride.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: I I I hate it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I I in fact I detest it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because you think about, well, a couple of things.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, the time that it's taken away from nurturing that child's heart and mind because they're just sitting there zoning in on the screen.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: But also the content of what's being piped to a lot of because you know a lot of these kids' parents aren't using any sort of filters.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really concerned.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's so much happening, the rewiring of the brain, the you know, the death to meditation and careful thinking.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think progress is backfired.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: We were just talking about it before, you with your super watches and um Apple Watches, lawsuit.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you just want to go back to simple simplicity in a lot of things.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think it's backfired in that there was a time when um travel needed patience because you're sitting on the back of a horse.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's a long time ago.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now we sit in a car that hands free, goes as fast as we want, and all that's happened is we get road rage.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't helped our patience whatsoever.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's made it worse.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I would like to go back to a quiet time.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I do have quiet times.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, you know, I get up at night to pray, and it's not no big deal because you've got night shift workers do it all the time.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that's my getting away from it all.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just absolute silence for about 30, 40 minutes.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Patience is no longer a virtue.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that's can you finish this?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Patience is a virtue, possess it while you can.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard that?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: How does it go?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Patience is a virtue.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: You possess it while you can.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, it goes further.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Patience is a virtue, possess it while you can, often found in women, seldom found in man.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember who it was and said it, but someone said that entertainment is the death of the soul.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people, a lot of neuroscientists have come out recently and recognize the importance of boredom, which is interesting because we are petrified of boredom.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: The second you feel bored, you feel inefficient, you feel anxious, you feel uncertain, like the big questions of life begin to creep into your mind.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: We fill our moments of boredom with scrolling and distraction and whatever we can to keep the neurons and synapses firing off in our brains, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's actually one of the reasons why so many people have their best ideas in the shower is because your brain finally has a moment to breathe.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because in the shower, you're bored.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have a screen to distract you.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think it's really important that we, especially as Christians, that re we are able to redeem this idea of silence because that is where God speaks, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: So often, I mean, meditation, prayer, solitude, reading of God's word, all of those things take time.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: You don't sit down, imagine this.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine you're trying to build a relationship, imagine being a father, trying to build a relationship with her child.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, all right, child, I'm gonna give you 15 minutes a day.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: Give me everything you got.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me everything you want me to tell you about yourself.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: But after those 15 minutes, get out of here.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'll see you next week.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: Or I'll see you tomorrow morning.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: Are you really spending time with that child in that same way?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like we do that with God.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay, God, I'm gonna give you three minutes this morning.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's gonna be my time in your word.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: And everything else, it's gonna keep me really busy.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna stay distracted for you, from you.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Boredom is such an important aspect because we give our brains to think.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: Not only do we give our brains to think, but we give our souls an opportunity to hear from God.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when we think of scripture and the norm for the believer, you know, I often think about like when Isaac was out in the field, it says when Rebecca was coming, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: With with uh the servant, and it says he was out in the field meditating.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, man, like when people think meditation, they immediately go to, oh, you must be some mystical, you know, Eastern.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: So but but that is that's the the tone and tenor of scripture.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: You look at the Psalms and how often it talks about meditating, you know?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Mark, what's the value of meditation?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's the the idea is ponder by talking to yourself, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We but we take it past that and we we meditate on the Lord.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Pausing and meditating and being slow, slow to speak and quick to listen.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 1, verse 2, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, he meditates day and night.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say a glance, it doesn't say uh quickly go through.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's to meditate and to meditate through every aspect, perhaps every word in the midst of the verse, and just meditate through through life.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards was huge on meditating through um the environment and everything that's going on.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: David Brainerd was not, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Jonathan Edwards did not understand David Brainerd's inability to enjoy sunrises and sunsets and the birds and things that he looked at it like kind of like commotion.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes God will slow us down so that we can enjoy what God has given us.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Attention is something you have to fight for.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you're absolutely right.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: It is, it is a muscle that we need to build, and it will build over time.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: But it's important to recognize that God has designed our brains in such a way that we gravitate towards the easy, or maybe that's a part of the fall.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: How can you start building your attention memory and your ability to grow in your attentiveness?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Is remove distractions.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: In the same way you got to get rid of the chips if you're trying to lose weight, remove distractions.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Put your phone somewhere else.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: Don't make it easily accessible.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: Make it make bad habits hard to do.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a very powerful practice.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: Make bad habits hard to do.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's really good, Oscar.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I want to give practical tips like that.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for those that are listening.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Spurgeon, he said this, he said, meditation and prayer are the rails upon which the locomotive of godliness runs.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Say it again.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Meditation and prayer are the rails upon which the locomotive of godliness runs.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's true.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you need rails, and and when those are in place, you know, and I think that that is probably a major barometer for whether or not we've lost our attention or focus.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's are we praying?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: A shallow mind produces a shallow Christian life.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: The word of God must be deeply thought upon if it is to shape the soul.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Agreed?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I would say is whatever you do, read the word daily without fail.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh uh and I've mentioned this before, and so many Christians are so predictable and saying, Do you read the word every day?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I try to.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It always comes.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I say to you, try and eat your food.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always no, I don't.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I because food is prioritized.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, put the Bible before your belly, you'll never go wrong.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when you can claim the promises of Psalm 1.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters Podcast.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Friends, we value your time.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.