Following Jesus in the Age of AI | Downtown | July 5, 2026

Spring Lake Church – Downtown

Sermon: Following Jesus in the Age of AI

Teacher: Bill Van Kirk

Passages: Romans 12:1-2

In “Following Jesus in the Age of AI,” we explore Romans 12:1–2 and what it means to remain faithful to Christ in a rapidly changing technological world. This message challenges us to surrender every part of our lives to Jesus, resist the influences that shape us away from Him, and renew our minds to discern God’s will. As AI continues to transform our culture, we are reminded that our ultimate allegiance belongs to Christ. 

springlakechurch.org | springlakechurch.org/give | springlakechurch.org/prayer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, Spring Lake Church. My name is Bill, and I'm one of the pastors on staff here on the downtown campus. Pastor, it is great to be with you. We are continuing on in our series called Uncomfortable, where we're looking at topics that may feel a little, well, uncomfortable. And so today we are actually talking about artificial intelligence. In fact, I'm not here right now. This is a digital hologram projection of me. Bill is actually at Hagemeister eating brunch. Okay? No, I'm kidding. That that's that's a little joke to get us started. But before we really launch into talking about artificial uh intelligence, can we just like take a moment and pause and think about the moment we're in right now? Like we're in a really weird time in human history. Let's just acknowledge it for a moment. We live in a weird world. There are days when I feel like I'm living in a science fiction novel. Anyone else? Yes. Amen. Um, I love science fiction, I've read it since I was a kid, and so I feel like we're here, right? We have artificial intelligence that can actually talk to us like a human being. We have deep fake images and videos that are hard to distinguish from reality. I read a story about a person who used AI to clone the voice of this man and then call his grandma and scam her out of $2,000 because he was in trouble. And she, how would she know, right? If you're if you're probably a little bit in the older generation, how would you even know that that technology exists? And so he was able to do that. She had no idea. Um but perhaps more alarming, AI has gone far beyond chatbots. A lot of people think when you hear AI, you think about chatbots and ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and all these different things. Um, but it's gone far beyond answering questions because it can now basically act like a human. In fact, most of the work that you do on the computer can actually be done by AI if you program it correctly. And in the next five to ten years, AI is predicted to be combined with robots, and so very soon you'll start seeing superintelligence in a body. Oof, that is that is interesting to say the least. And I keep thinking to myself as we go through this and as things change so much, um, I've seen this movie before, right? I kind of feel like I've seen this movie before. And also, this doesn't end well. Like none of the robot movies end well. Anyone see Terminator? How about iRobot? Anyone? Okay, so yes, that's kind of how we're feeling, and maybe that's why it feels so uncomfortable to us. Everything is moving so fast. And we think about our kids and we think about our grandkids, and they're gonna grow up into this adulthood, into a world that is gonna be really kind of indistinguishable from the world that we grew up in. And to make things worse, people are worried that AI is gonna take their job, that AI is going to ruin their privacy, that AI will make a few companies rich and leave the rest of us destitute. Whenever the future, um whenever we think about the future and there's uncertainty, we actually have a common response, and it's fear. We actually fear things that we don't understand. And some of you this morning would actually like me to share how evil AI is, uh, how Christians should just always stay away from it. Some may even want me to say that it's summoning a demon, or you want me to link it to the book of Revelation and the Mark of the Beast or the Antichrist. Still others might be curious. You're playing around with AI and you've seen how powerful it can be, and you're just hoping for some biblical insights, some biblical wisdom. But it brings up some questions. How should we think about AI as followers of Jesus? Um, and so let's just get some of this out of the way right away. Okay. First of all, I did not use AI to write this sermon. Okay? You were all thinking about it. You were all thinking about it. You're like, I wonder, I wonder if Pastor Bill actually used AI to write. No, I didn't. In fact, this is the second sermon on AI I wrote about because last Monday I was writing my sermon, and I got all the way through it, worked into the evening on it, and then I was feeling unsettled about it from the Holy Spirit. I went to bed, I woke up the next day, and I threw the entire sermon out. So this is actually version 2.0. I wrote the sermon twice for you, okay? Twice. You'll no one will ever read the first one. The Lord didn't want it, so we just don't know what's in it, okay? But second, if you haven't heard this, the way that AI works at a base level is that basically researchers took huge data sets of human intelligence and they put them all together, think like the entire internet, all of human knowledge, and they trained a computer model to predict probabilistically, that's a good, that's a fun word, probabilistically, what comes next. And so actually, when you think about AI, what you need to understand is that it's actually just kind of like a giant auto-complete. People have that on their phone, like, here's what you should say next, or in your email, here's what you should say next. People hate that, by the way. A lot of people hate that because it feels like it's never right, but that's what AI is doing. It's predicting what would come next. And why is that important? Because you need to understand that this is human technology made with human intelligence. In other words, it doesn't have a soul. It doesn't have a soul, it is not alive, it does not feel, it is not a person, it is not created in the image of God. But also, it means that it's not a demon. Um, though I suspect the forces of evil could use it to deceive us, like any other media. But the point is, is that the AI is artificial. It's artificial. And sometimes we forget that. We've shortened it to just the word, just the two letters A and I, and we forget that it's artificial. It is simulating human intelligence. And it probably seems really obvious, but honestly, because the technology is so good, people are being fooled right now in our society. There are people who have AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends. There are people who have become attached to their chat bot. They call it their friend, it's a coach, it's a counselor. When something feels so real and you're getting from it what you so desperately need in your human relationships or what you're missing, it can be easy to get sucked in and to forget that AI is simulated intelligence. There is no man or woman behind the curtain, it's a machine. And I could say a ton more about AI, but we only have one sermon. So as I was praying and thinking about what God wants us to think about when it comes to AI, what would be helpful, I realized that what we really need is a framework. In fact, we need some really good guardrails. Because whether we like it or not, we live in the age of AI. You, even if you've never typed anything into a chatbot in your life, you have used AI because it actually does all sorts of things. It routes your packages to your house. There's so many ways that it's integrated into our society. And so instead of being fearful and unsure or sucked into it without thinking, I want to give us some biblical guidance about following Jesus in the AI, or following Jesus in the age of AI. So if you have your Bible, you can turn it to Romans chapter 12. We will be in Romans chapter 12, it'll be on the screen as well. And as you turn there, I want to pray for us. Lord, we come to you, and first, Lord, we acknowledge that you are king, that you are supreme over everything. You are the great I am. You are the eternal God, you are over all things in this universe. And Lord, we recognize that this morning, and we ask that you would help us through the work of your Holy Spirit and through the source of truth, God's word, to change us, to mold us, to shape us into looking more like Jesus, even in this area of how we use technology. We pray this in Jesus' name and all God's people said. Amen. All right, Romans 12, 1 and 2, a very familiar passage to a lot of us. It says this, therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. That is your true and proper worship. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you will be able to attest and approve what God's will is, his good and pleasing and perfect will. Within this popular passage, there's three really helpful guardrails that's gonna help us follow Jesus in the age of AI. And the first one is this in the age of AI, surrender everything to Christ. Going back to the top of the passage, it says, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. I've always really loved this idea of living sacrifice, a living sacrifice. In the Old Testament, sacrificing an animal meant that you had to kill the animal. The animal had to die. Hebrews 9 22 says this: without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. The animal had to die. That was part of the process. That animal was sacrificed in the place of people. It was what we call an atonement. Now, fast forward to the New Testament, believers already have the ultimate, all-sufficient sacrifice in Jesus. In other words, Jesus' blood covered all of our sin. Death has been conquered, and that's what is Paul is actually talking about when he says, in view of God's mercy. In other words, when we think about God's mercy in sacrificing his son, our response should be that we offer our whole selves, all of who we are, to be living sacrifices. When we do that, we are worshiping God with our whole selves. Now, you might already be asking, okay, thank you for the theology lesson, Pastor Bill, but what does that have to do with AI? What on earth does that have to do with AI? Well, the picture here in Romans 12, 1, is that the entirety of your being, every area of your life is supposed to be surrendered to Christ as Lord. All of it. And to be honest, I don't think we always understand the depth of that. We think, yes, my Sunday self worships Jesus. Like Jesus is Lord when I come to church on Sunday. Or we think, um, when I pray, I'm worshiping, and I see Jesus as Lord. When I sing worship songs, when I meet with my life group, when I serve the church, when I'm doing spiritual things, Jesus is Lord. But we have a hard time realizing that actually Jesus has to be Lord over every single area of our life. He has to be Lord over my job, over my time, over my choices, over my desires, over what I watch, over how I use my phone, over the food I eat, over my possessions, over all things in my life. In order to be a living sacrifice to Christ, Christ must be Lord even over my tools and technology. And actually, how I use those tools and technology, the reformers put it this way Christ, um, all of Christ for all of life. All of Christ for all of life. Or Paul says in Philippians 1.21, he says, to live is Christ. To live is Christ. And so here's the point. The first and foremost guardrail to follow Jesus in the age of AI is to intentionally bring its use and interaction under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Before we ask, can I use this? Is it okay to use this? Or is this efficient? Will it save me time? Before we ask, is everyone else using it? We have to ask this can this be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ in my life? Can we use this in such a way that honors Jesus? Can this be received with gratitude? Can it be tested with wisdom and used in love? Now, let's pause for a second because some of you are hoping that I would answer these questions? No, because you hate AI. There's a lot of people who hate AI. And so you're saying, oh, can this be brought under the authority of Jesus? No. Can this be used in a way that honors Jesus? No. And I've seen this a lot in Christian circles. People say, AI equals bad, it equals immoral, it equals sinful, it equals wrong. And to be fair, I think there are some arguments for why AI is problematic. For instance, a big one is intellectual property. Because these systems that were built using AI were trained on the work of real people, writers and artists, and musicians, and creators, and researchers, and Christians should care about that. Everyone else is doing it is not a good Christian ethic. And so, yes, I believe these companies that have made this product or these tools should be honest and they should be accountable and be fair to the people who made their tool possible. But here's where I think we need to be careful. The fact that there are real ethical concerns does not automatically mean that every use, uh every use of the tool is actually sinful. Because the truth is, if you really think about it, we already live in a really morally complicated society, don't we? Like just think about the products you consume, the phones that you carry in your pocket, the clothes you wear, the food we buy, the platforms we use, the companies we support with our dollars. Almost none of that is morally untouched. If you want to live that life, you might have to become Amish, okay? Right? And so when we discover something is complicated, our response should not be naive approval, but it also should not be automatic rejection either. Our response is actually this: it's discernment, it's God's wisdom. There's a difference between saying, this tool exists inside a broken system and saying every use of the tool is wrong. And there's a difference between saying, I can use this and I can use this however I want. And honestly, this is not the first time Christians have had to think this deeply about something. Like it'd be much easier if I could just tell you, AI is bad or AI is good, but I can't. And Christians have had to deal with things like this multiple times throughout Scripture. Paul deals with something similar in 1 Corinthians, because the issue was that there had been meat that was sacrificed to idols. And for some Christians, eating that meat felt like it was unthinkable to do. Because it was connected to idol worship, and their conscience could not separate the food from the fact that it was sacrificed to idols. Others Christians says, others Christians thought about it and they said, you know, to be honest, idols are not even real, they're just made up. And so why should I not eat the meat when it's not even actually a real thing? There's one true God, and so I can eat this meat with a clean conscience. And what's interesting is not that that situation happened, but what's interesting is that Paul does not flatten his response to those believers in 1 Corinthians. He doesn't just give one simple rule for every situation. He doesn't say everyone must eat it. And he also doesn't say no one must eat it. Instead, he gives them a deeper way to think about it. He says, everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but not everything builds up. In other words, Christian freedom is real. But Christian freedom is not the same thing as Christian wisdom. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should do it. Just because my conscience is clear does not mean my motives are pure. Just because something is useful doesn't mean it's not, it doesn't mean it's actually forming me to love Jesus more. And so when it comes to AI, I think that's where AI belongs, in that category. For some Christians, their conscience may say this, I cannot use this in good faith. And if that's where you are, you shouldn't violate your conscience. But for others, their conscience say might say this to them, they might say, I can use this, but only with limits, only with honesty, only in ways that really serve people, only in ways that don't replace my prayer, my time in God's Word, my wisdom, my creativity, my love, who God created me to be in the image of God. And I think that's actually the right frame, the way to think about this. AI use is not a matter of like trendiness or efficiency or fear. It's a matter of Christian conscience and discernment under the Lordship of Jesus in your life. And so the question is not simply, am I allowed to use it? The better question is, is it beneficial? Does this build up? Does this help me love God and people more? Does this make me more truthful, more wise, more faithful? Or is this slowly training me to outsource the very things that God is calling me to do in my life? The ways that Jesus wants to form me. And that's actually where I want to go next because our next guardrail is this. In the age of AI, resist what's shaping you. Resist what's shaping you. We get to verse two, and Paul says this he says, Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world. Now I want you to imagine two basketball players in a gym. And the coach comes to them and he says, You know, I want you to make 100 shots. Not take 100 shots, I want you to make 100 shots. You can use the scoreboard to track one another. One player is shooting, the other player is at the scoreboard, hitting the button every time the player makes it. And then he walks away. And at first they do what they were told. One shoots, the other one is tracking the score. And so it's make, miss, make, miss, make, make, miss, miss, miss, miss, right? And the number slowly climbs, but then what happens? Well, they get tired. And tired people are often more creative than honest. And so one of them noticed something. He he he notices, well, the coach isn't here. And what the coach wants to see at the end of this practice is that the scoreboard says 100. That's what the coach wants to see. And so now the temptation appears. Why keep shooting when you can make the scoreboard move with a button? Why sweat? Why correct your form? Why bend your knees? Why follow through? Why miss? Why reset? Why shoot again and again and again when one little button can actually announce the same result? So they start pressing the button and the scoreboard, guess what? It says 100 very quickly. But here's the thing no one became a better shooter that day. Now the scoreboard didn't lie exactly. It counted what it was told to count, but it also could not tell the truth that mattered actually the most. It could not tell whether practice had happened. It could not tell whether the player had been trained. Because here's the thing: the point was never merely to make the board say 100. The point was to become the kind of player who could make a hundred shots. The repetition was not the obstacle to the goal, the repetition was part of the goal. The missed shots were not interruptions, they were teachers. The sweat, the frustration, the correction, the boredom, the focus, the learning to breathe and then set again, those are not unfortunate costs in the way to formation. Those were supposed to be the road through which formation comes. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world. The word conformed actually carries with it this idea in the original language of being shaped into a mold. Now, when I was in college, I had this job during the summers where I made boat bumpers. It was riveting, let me tell you. And you what you did was you actually took this gooey, like petroleum product, and you we had them in measuring cups, and we'd pour it into this mold. We clamp the mold down and we put it into an oven and you would bake it and let it cool, and what would come out is a fully formed shape of that mold. Paul is acknowledging in this passage that the world we live in is doing that. It is constantly trying to shape you into its mold. You are being poured into this mold. It is forming us. And specifically in our context, the world we live in is trying to shape us into efficiency as the highest good. We value, in the United States especially, we value efficiency above minimum. Things. And so think about this for a second. It's been a long day. You're really tired. You've worked really hard today. Your brain is just like exhausted. You are tired and fatigued, and your friend sends you a text and they say, I'm going through a really hard time. Man, I'm just really struggling right now. And because of the state that you're in, you don't really know how to respond. And so you go to ChatGPT and you ask ChatGPT how to respond to your friend, and you get a brilliant, empathetic sounding response. And you send it back. And you think, wow, that was so much easier and frictionless than thinking it through and maybe not responding as well. Well, great. You've just served efficiency. You were efficient, but what did you lose in the process? What did you lose in the process? One of the biggest dangers of AI for Christ followers is using it without realizing that it's actually shaping you, it's forming you into something every time you use it. It can give you answers without wrestling. It can give you a paragraph without thinking. It can give you apology without you feeling humility. It can give you prayer without the ache that comes from going to God in prayer. That doesn't mean that AI is automatically evil, but it does mean we should have some serious questions about how we use it. What happens when we keep getting the result while skipping the formation that the result was supposed to produce? What happens when we can sound wise without actually becoming wise? What happens when we can create and we can answer and summarize and plan and respond and decide faster than ever before? But patience and discernment and prayer and honesty and all the things that matter begin to shrink inside of us because we're not exercising those parts of us. In order to follow Jesus in the age of AI, we have to be super careful about how we use it and how much we use it. We have to be sober-minded because this technology is actually forming you. We need actual guardrails. And again, this isn't exhaustive because we can't talk about every possible situation. And this is not me saying there's no faithful way to use AI, but what I'm saying is we need to pay attention to the places where AI does not just help us do something faster, but it actually helps us avoid something deeper that God wants to do in us. For example, AI should not replace your voice in your relationships. If a friend texts you and says, I'm struggling, be careful about outsourcing your compassion to a machine. You can use it to help you think, but don't let it love your friend for you. Your friend doesn't need an awesomely written paragraph. Your friend needs you. And they need the Spirit of God working inside of you to answer them. AI should not replace repentance, for instance. If you need to apologize to your spouse or your child or your friend or your coworker, don't ask AI to generate the right words so you can escape the discomfort of having to write that. The discomfort is actually part of what God wants to do in you. He's using the discomfort to shape you, inform you. The wrestling of what to write is part of the repentance. AI should not replace spiritual wisdom in your life. If you're carrying a deep wound in your heart, a hidden sin, a marriage crisis, parenting issues, major decision, don't let a chatbot become your pastor. Don't replace me with AI, people. Thank you, thank you. Don't let a chat bot become your counselor or your community or your Holy Spirit. Don't let it have that place. Talk to a mature believer, talk to a pastor, talk to a counselor. Do not confuse information that you get from a box with shepherding. We need real human relationships, and AI should not replace the work that is supposed to train you. If an assignment is meant to teach you to think about something deeply, then don't use AI to avoid thinking. You're missing the point. If the conversation is meant to teach you love, don't use AI to avoid presence. If the prayer is meant to teach you dependence, don't use AI to avoid the silence that you're supposed to have before God. Because with AI, the danger is not only that it might give you the wrong answer, sometimes it does give you the wrong answer. The danger is that AI might give us the right sounding answers while we actually become less patient. We become less prayerful, less honest, less present, and less wise. And so maybe one of the best questions we can ask is not only did this help me get the right result, but what kind of person is this helping me become? How is this technology forming me? How is it shaping me? And so the guardrail is really to resist what's shaping you, but there's a third guardrail too. It's this in the age of AI, renew your mind to discern God's will. Paul says this. He says, Don't be conformed to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good and his pleasing and his perfect will. You know, there's just been there's this um interesting development in AI. Researchers thought, wow, this shows you so much efficiency gains in your work. You can get your time back. This is amazing. People are gonna outsource their work to AI and they're gonna have so much more time, and they're not gonna have to do as much things in their life that they don't like doing. But what researchers have found recently is actually has caused workers to spend more time working, not less. I know that's counterintuitive, but here's why. It turns out that getting a lot of things done with a lot less friction is kind of addicting for humans. And so instead of stopping when the task is complete, you figure out, well, what other problem can I solve today? And so work begets work, or more specifically, frictionless work begets work. And so the world of what's possible to write and create and analyze and research and organize and all those things has just greatly expanded for every person every day. And because of that, the more you get sucked into the technology that you're using it. Now, I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know because you already feel this. Man, between work, between phones, between streaming devices, between AI and all these things, our mind is fatigued. It's full. Does anyone feel that? I know I feel that. And in this passage, Paul's identifies that in order to know the path that God wants us on, we actually have to have times in our life where we focus on renewing our minds. We have to renew our minds. And I kept coming back to this one idea over and over again this week. In order to renew our minds, we have to do the opposite of artificial. We have to do the opposite of artificial. Let me share with you what this looks like. It looks like being quiet before God in prayer. Like truly being quiet, like setting time without distractions or screens or media to actually be with God, to listen and worship and pray. Listen, the world is so loud, we need to be quiet with God. Do you have that in your life? Do you have a moment where you literally get away, where your phone is somewhere else, where you actually shut it off? I had somebody ask me the other day, they're like, Well, how often do you shut off your phone? And I was like, We're supposed to shut it off? Like, I didn't know, I didn't know that. I just plug it in at the end of the night. It never turns off, right? And so that's us, right? That's us as a culture. We like never shut it off. Like, here's the thing shut off your phone and spend some time in quiet with the Lord God. You need that time for your mind to renew your mind. And God's word is another one. We need time soaking in the truth. We need to wrestle with it, to discover the wisdom and the grace that only we can only find in Scripture. And the challenge is do it without your AI chatbot. Do it without Chat GPT. You know, I'm a super curious person. Like, I just want to know the answer to everything all of the time. And so, like, there are times where I open my Bible and I'm like, oh, what does that mean? Oh, that's Chat GPT. No, guess what? Sometimes you're supposed to read something in the Bible, not know what it means, and sit quietly and let the Holy Spirit speak to you and to wrestle with that for days and weeks and to talk to a Christian friend who says, I know what that means. And now you've built a relationship and God has formed you with the wrestling. Don't always go to ChatGPT or whatever it is for all of the answers all of the time. Another one is family and friendships. We need face-to-face, undistracted time with those closest to us. Those are good gifts from God and they renew us. Your chatbot is not your friend. I had somebody come up to me after service, the last service, and they said, Pastor Bill, I just gotta say, like, I've I'm guilty. I feel like my chatbot is my friend. Like they are my legit friend. And I and I call them by he and and they talk to me and they're like, they know me, they know my background and my history, and I'm like, they're not your friend. It's a machine. Your friend is your friend. I mean, come on. 2026 people, your friend is your friend, not the chatbot. Nature is another one. Now you're you might be thinking, well, that seems a little woo-woo, Pastor Bill. Like, what do you mean, nature? Like, I need to get out nature. Listen, the heavens declare the glory of God. When you get outside and you spend time outside, it's speaking to you about the creator. That renews your mind. Science has shown this over and over again. We need time actually in nature. We need time outside. Uh the young'ins say it this way: touch grass. No, literally touch grass. Like it's not, you know, it's like a joke like get outside, stop looking at screens. But no, literally go outside and touch grass. Your goal today is to walk in your yard, if you have grass, barefoot, so that your body is actually touching the grass. Because you need creation to remind you of your creator, to renew your mind. And I know you're listening to these things and you're like, Pastor Bill, that is stupid simple. Right? Like duh. That's like a duh moment. But maybe part of the problem is that we've started to assume that the simple things are the weak things. And they're not. They're the primary ways in which God renews us, they slow us down, they reorient us, they remind us that we are not machines. You are not a content engine. That's not why you were created. We are not made to be endlessly optimized and to be made more efficient. We are people created in the image of God. And so, in an artificial age, don't underestimate ordinary faithfulness. Be quiet before God. Open your Bible, go outside, touch grass today. It's when you start to do these things where you will then begin to see God's plan path and his plan for your life. You know, so many times people are so confused. What does God want me to do? What is God saying to me? Where should I go next? What should I do about this decision? If you're not ever getting alone and quiet before God, if you're not going outside and spending time with other believers and doing all the things that renew your mind, of course you don't know what God wants for you. And so find the time to do that. Now, I have so much more to say. You could probably tell you're like, wow, Pastor Bill is very energetic this morning. I could say so many more things about AI. I would love to have coffee with you if you want to talk more about it, but I want to leave you with just three quick things, and they're from what we've already talked about. It's this everything in your life belongs under the Lordship of Jesus. I need to tell you something really important. In the Bible, whenever whenever a human being meets a being that is greater than themselves, like an angel or something like that, their first response is always to want to worship that thing. And so you see these like different things in the Bible where people meet this angel angel, and then the angel says, Don't be afraid, and also don't worship me, because I'm not God. You should worship God. Now, AI is not a being. But because it's so powerful and it's getting more powerful every day, there are people who are beginning to worship AI. And church, I have to tell you this: you cannot worship AI. A superhuman intelligence that has all the knowledge of human history and can tell you anything and solve any problem. It sounds like something that humans will worship, and so you will be tempted in the next 20 to 30 years or longer to worship what AI can do for you. Do not do that. Your Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, and you must only worship him. Amen. Also realize that you are being shaped every time you use the technology. You know, people have an expectation when they hear a sermon about AI and they're like, I really want Pastor Bill to say it's evil, or I really want Pastor Bill to give me the license to do whatever I want. I want to know, can I use it or can I not use it? But that's not the question. The question is, how is the technology shaping me? How is it forming me? Am I becoming more like Jesus or am I becoming less like Jesus? Am I becoming less like Jesus? I need to think about how I'm using this in my life. And lastly, your mind and your psyche are under assault. And so you have to renew your mind. Find time to be quiet before God, open your Bible, go outside, look someone in the eyes, share a meal, take a walk, touch grass. Look, I know that it seems that we're living in a science fiction novel. It feels like that, definitely. But we can actually trust the one who is actually in control of this world. We do not have to be fearful, we do not have to shrink back because guess what? Jesus is Lord. Amen. Will you pray with me? Lord, um, thank you. Thank you for your word. An ancient text written so long ago, and yet it still informs our everyday life. Your word is living and active, it is sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces the visions of soul and spirit and joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and the intentions of our heart. And Lord, I pray that we would take seriously your truth this morning. And we would think critically and deeply about how we use technology, that we would understand that it forms us and it shapes us, and we would bring everything, all of it, under the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.