The Road Traveled

Ep: 7 Changing Your Inner Algorithm With Scripture

• Aaron Degler & Allen Heugatter • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Your feed is shaping you more than you think—and not just the one on your phone. We explore how Proverbs 13:20 maps onto modern life, where “walking with the wise” looks like choosing what you linger on, who you spend time with, and how long you sit with God’s Word. The result isn’t behavior management; it’s a new inner algorithm that delivers different outcomes across your thoughts, habits, and relationships.

We share candid stories about friendships that changed as faith deepened, the pull of peer pressure at any age, and the quiet responsibility that comes when people are watching—kids, spouses, coworkers, and friends who take cues from our choices. You’ll hear practical ways to set boundaries without turning your back on people: filtering shows and social content, limiting time where you’re tempted, and seeking out Bible study, prayer, and community that sharpen your soul. We unpack how small shifts—what you search for, where you stop, how long you stay—compound into a life that craves Scripture more than scrolls.

We also tackle generational patterns. If you inherited compromises, you can interrupt them. Like typing new search terms, opening the Bible and returning to it consistently brings a flood of better inputs: clarity, conviction, and hope. Over time, your circle begins to reflect your pursuit—friends who pray with you, speak truth to you, and help carry the weight of real change. This is a road you don’t walk alone, and every step matters, even the hard ones.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage to reset their inputs, and leave a review so others can find the road where real faith meets real life.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to The Road Travel, a Christian podcast for Minute, where real faith meets real life. Through honest conversations and personal stories, we help you apply God's word to your everyday journey by sharing the road when you travel. Whether you're walking through challenge, change, or calling, this is your road. And you don't have to travel it alone. Now, let's take the next step with your host, Aaron Degler and Alan Hugator.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome back to the Road Travel. Thanks for taking a little time to join us on the road today. I'm your host, Aaron Degler, along with uh your host Alan Hugator. We're here today to just share a little bit about our road and the road we've traveled and intertwine some some stories, some biblical truths and some scriptures that have helped us along our road. And just share those with you, and hopefully you can glean a little bit of insight and uh we can share some of that with you that you can take on down your road. So Alan's gonna open us up with a little bit of scripture and then we'll get started.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Read now the NIV version of the Bible in Proverbs 13 and 20 says, walk with the wise and become wise. For a companion of fools suffers harm. Well, walking with you makes me wiser. So but uh He's not a fool. I I read that and it referred me to thinking that I'm on Facebook, social media, Facebook, and I don't keep up with the local news, I don't keep up with who's doing talking to who, and all the chit chat goes on. I don't even have a bunch of friends on here or nothing. I mainly go to it, I'll look up what's going on in the football world. I'm a Cowboys fan, I watch it. I'll watch uh or look and and watch the rodeo world and my ropin world to see what ropings are coming up in this area. And I get a lot of Christian-based knowledge and experiences and some different preachers and different. I'm just a student of watching this because there's a lot of good on here. Now, there's a lot of bad on these things too. Now, I mean, if you want to stop over here on the wrong page and look at a young lady or something, it'll just snowball you with the AI that's involved. The more you look at anything, the more of it you'll get. And and I just noticed that a lot whenever I'd start stopping on these pages about Christianity that, boy, here come more, here come more, here come more. And and it excited me because all I thought was the was all I'd heard about it was bad. But it's kind of what do you want? Are you wanting the good? Are you wanting the bad? And I'd encourage a lot of people to go and pull up more Christian things on it because it's it's brought me a lot of uh ideas from the Facebook. Then I gotta think about life in general. About who do you hang with? You know what are you good in, good out, trash in, trash out? What are you feeding your mind, you know, with who you hang with? What do you read? What TV shows do you watch? You know, what are you feeding your mind full of? How do you expect to become a better Christian if you're sitting there watching a bunch of movies that are referring to sex and cheating and all of this stuff of acceptance and in this world that we are they're trying to push down our throats, in my opinion, for us to accept it's okay. That's what everybody's doing. It's unmarried couple living over here together. Oh, it's okay. Everybody does that now, Dad. No, not everybody does. And even if they are, go back in your Bible. Does that mean it's okay because people are doing it today?

SPEAKER_01:

And the interesting thing about algorithm is what you're talking about in social media, is if you're looking those things up, then whatever that is, then you start seeing more of that. And the interesting thing is that with the algorithm, I mean they do this a lot, whether it's politics, whatever it is, you know, maybe you're Republican, Democrat, whatever it is, you're looking up those things. So guess what? All you see is Republican or Democrat. And you think, the whole world's Republican. Well, the whole world's Democrat. I can't believe they think that way. And the same is true.

SPEAKER_02:

Is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. It's the whole world, you know, but really that's not true. It's the algorithm feeding you because that is what you're looking at, that is what you're associating with. So that is part of all that you see. So the same is true with us. I mean, we each we all have an algorithm. And just like, you know, social media influencers say, oh, I don't get as much many views or this or that because they, you know, Facebook changed the algorithm on me, or TikTok changed the algorithm on me. And that's the great thing about us, is we can change our own algorithm. And just like you mentioned, it's it's the things you begin to change and look at instead of the shoot 'em ups and and the movies with with all the sex, maybe you start looking at some other things that fall in line with what God would have for your life.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. And again, there's some people that you don't need to hang with. Jesus warns us of that. Some people that need to be excluded from your life. I know of a person that I used to run with some, and since I've become closer to God, I don't see or hear from that person as often. Maybe I don't even contact them as often. So I'm not saying I should be pushing them away.

SPEAKER_01:

So where do we find that line? Where do we, you know, how do we balance that as Christians to be examples to others, but yet not be of that? Does that make sense? So how how do we how do we find that that balance is? I don't want to associate necessarily with that and become that, but maybe by them hanging with me, as I've grown, they become, they grow a little as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you want it to be invited sure to where you can share the word of the Lord with them. But yet, what did Jesus tell his disciples that you will lose your friends? When you truly devote yourself to following Jesus, you will lose some of your friends. I'm not saying all of them. Like your Christian friends will hang with you, they understand where you're going a lot more, but a lot of them that don't will fade away. But Jesus told his disciples, and he told me that you'll end up losing some of your friends, and then your some of your family will turn from you, and then you will lose your life. And that's what and they literally done all those things as we know, as we studied. And I think of that one over, you know, in Luke, where it mentions to lay down your cross daily, or pick up your cross, excuse me, pick up your cross daily and and die to your cross, saying, die to this world and follow me in mind, that you're gonna lose a lot of that. They're gonna be left behind because your life is changing and it don't fit their their deal. They're not willing to give up things of this world. And hey, peer pressure exists. I don't care how old you are. You want everybody to like you. Oh, I don't give a shit. He likes me or not. Oh, yeah, you do. You may say you don't, but you really do. You would love for everybody to love you to death. You'd like for everybody to like you. And there's peer pressure from family. Oh Lord, how much peer pressure is it from family? You know.

SPEAKER_01:

To get along, to love each other, like each other.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, I want my wife to like me and to love me and to get along. But if we have a difference of opinion about something like this, for your so the point in hand is you want to feed your mind for as much of the gospel and of the Bible and of the walk and what God has explained in the Bible for us to do. And hope it does run off on some of your friends, and it not run them off, but they will see and and they will migrate to you for that reason. And if some of the others don't want it, then they will step back further away. But that's their choice.

SPEAKER_01:

And you know what uh when you think about the algorithm, and and I think the more we do those things, may maybe we get friends that kind of think like we do. I say that, but kind of believe the way we do, we we attract, we attract those friends, and we find friends that maybe we do a Bible study with, that maybe we don't cuss as much around, that we, you know, go to church with. And it's no different than the algorithm on social media. Our lives start to attract those things because that's what we're looking for. Isn't that all it is on social media? You're stopping and looking at those things. So now it gives you more of those things. And it's no different in the real world. We're looking for those things, we're looking for more connection. We're looking for somebody that's really into the word, somebody that understands the Bible a little bit better. We're looking for that nourishment in the spiritual nourishment. We go searching for those. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna find more of it. But the but the true the truth is opposite too.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but it's well, I think I hadn't had many steps back. Most has even migrated closer because they either want to know more, or they're glad that I have changed, and I've migrated more toward the walk of Jesus. And so either one of those brings them in closer. You know, just like we hadn't run together a lot, we've been together a lot more in the last year and a half. Why? Because we're both talking about the book, we're both talking about the Bible, we're both talking about our walks in this life, and now we started this podcast to share with others our walk. And our road, and that's great. But that's what brought us together, and it's brought me with some of my closest friends, even closer. Because when we're going, got a good friend, we go the rope and we're talking about the Bible or Bible study, what we've done, or talking about something going on, and and our challenges in this life that uh that we're challenged with on trying to walk the walk. And hey, it's refreshing, you know. We're not sitting here running down no paint roll over here because he's not, you know, this, that, or the other. We're talking about our own faults and trying to get better, and so a lot of it is migrated in tighter. No, I don't like to boast. I'm gonna boast one time here, and I don't think it's a big boast. But I had one man tell me one day that being around Maine made him a better man. I said, You got the wrong guy. But he don't know what he done to me that day when he said that. How that picked me up and made me try harder in walking the right path.

SPEAKER_01:

That makes you kind of feel like, oh, somebody's watching.

SPEAKER_02:

So I kind of had another man tell me one time that I think is a very Christian man, he said, you need to stop and look at the number of people that are watching you. And then just think about it in your own life right now, wherever you're at, you listeners. Who's watching you? Well, you if you still got your parents, they are. Your family, immediate family is these so-called friends are watching you. People that are in that you work with are watching you. I've already got more than a double handful there, smoking of. That's already enough that matters a lot. Not counting the others that just in general pass in or old friends or something. What why look at him, he sure has changed. But they're all watching you. They're watching you close on how you're walking, how you're living. And that don't make you want to straighten up a little.

SPEAKER_01:

And just like a friend mentioned, you know, there's people watching. And so it makes us walk a little bit different, talk a little bit different, act a little bit different. And then when we do that, it is goes into others, and others go, well, when I'm around Alan, it just makes me a better man.

SPEAKER_02:

Responsibility changed. When I heard those things, I go, wow.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you mean responsibility changed?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I realize, I guess, a little bit more that's more people are watching. And do I want to be leading them down the wrong way? Don't I have a responsibility of trying to be a a Christian man and leading them on the correct road in the correct manner instead of the wrong way? That's the responsibility that I've taken on with some realization of my lack of living correctly and the lack of but with people watching me closer than I thought. I got two great kids, but I also think they'd be any better if I had walked a more Christian life through part of their childhood than what I did. So there's responsibility to you have a responsibility to the Lord. Your family. Don't stop.

SPEAKER_01:

And and and that should matter how we're what we're stopping and looking at. Because other people are stopping and looking at us.

SPEAKER_02:

The way that we've walked, the way that that we do every day, the way we lead our children. Maybe some of their it says in the Bible, and I can't quote word, but that we pay for previous generation's sins. So where my ancestors were shortcoming with the Lord, I seen and I might have thought that was okay. So I done it. And now I'm paying, because I'm doing those sinful things, I'm paying for my previous generation's lack of leadership there. The same as I was mentioning with my children. Where I fell short to the Lord, and they thought, well, it's okay to act that way. Dad didn't. And now then they're trying to kick that and and they're paying from the previous generation sin.

SPEAKER_01:

And the the hope is that they would catch it and change it because just like we can change the algorithm we look at, you know, and really you think, well, how can I get out of this, you know, algorithm I'm at on social media? Well, you put in the search tab, football, men's Bible studies. And then guess what you're gonna start getting a whole bunch of. So it with with with uh as simple as uh typing in a search, you can start to change that algorithm. Same thing is true with us. We open up the Bible and start searching through it. We're gonna start changing our algorithm, the things we read, the things we see, how we're supposed to act, what kind of men are we supposed to be, what kind of husbands are we supposed to be. That starts to change. And so we start to change because we're searching for different answers. So we begin to change our algorithm. Not only do we begin to change our algorithm, we can change that generational algorithm.

SPEAKER_02:

Another measurement I think they use besides where we stop is how long we're there. Right?

SPEAKER_01:

So How long did I spend on that?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, I've changed it. But if I stay there and I study that Bible for an hour, that's changed it even more. Of course, how intense I read it, of course, we know what that does. But then if I go to, as you said, your stops, what you put in, what you pick up, whatever you're doing, but the amount of time you spend on it, I think that has as big an influence because it's a big measurement. What does it do with us? That's what changes us. Picking up the Bible, give us the thought, but how long we stayed in that Bible. How often do we go back to that Bible? That's another way that measures it for them to. You keep going back to the same things. Yeah, but we go in there and we go into the Bible and we do read more and we do go into it more often. We go into prayer, we stay in prayer, we pray more often during the day. And the more that we do, the more it becomes back around and it becomes replacing old habits with these habits. And that's what we're gonna get more of. Like I said, you stopped on football or whatever you stopped on, and if you stay there a long time, you're gonna get more and more feeds from that football deal. But when we stay in that prayer with the Lord, and we stay in the Bible learning his word, and we speak to others, and we go to, you know, then we really get a better understanding. We'll get more feeds from the Lord, and we will have better communication with the Lord.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's it's something we'll crave. Um we say, well, I don't crave just growth of social media, but it's designed for that. It's designed for you to. I always I always joke with people, well, did you find the end of end of Facebook today? Did you find the end of TikTok? I sure tried. You know, you're never gonna find the end of it, but it's there to for us to crave more. What's the next click? What's the next scroll? What's gonna excite me on the next thing?

SPEAKER_02:

And what's in between them? Advertisements. So they're gonna sell you something, or they're trying to sell you something all the way.

SPEAKER_01:

And the hope is the same is true when you when you uh stop longer on the word and in prayer. I crave more. What's the next thing God's gonna feed me? What's the next feed that he's gonna tell me? What's the next thing I'm gonna catch my eye in the Bible? What's the next aha moment I'm gonna have through this Bible study that goes, man, I'm just like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they've been talking about revelations and some of the correlations going on in today's world to that, looks like, in their opinion. And so I went back to the book of Daniel. I said, I gotta read prophecy. I went back to the book of Daniel, and I think I'm in the 13th or 14th chapter now. And for like three or four nights, I just read more Daniel, read more book to Daniel. I gotta keep reading, and because it'll tie back into Revelations and all, but all the prophecies that's it's happened, and yeah, the more I done it, the more I wanted.

SPEAKER_01:

Like what's gonna happen next?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, it's a story.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And and and we and we have that ability to change our own algorithm.

SPEAKER_02:

I always said if you don't change the world, start with a person in the mirror, right? Okay, well, if that person in the mirror will change what he's watching and what he allows his family to watch on TV, what he's reading or looking at, whether it's books or social media or whatever you want to be. You don't say not to look there. I said watch what you're stopping on and how much time you spend on it. Don't stop where you shouldn't be. Stop what's important and how much time you spend there. You know, filter the things that you allow to come into your life and be a part of your life.

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01:

Cause it's simple on social media is click, click, click, and you filter it out whatever you need to, but sometimes l life is a little harder to filter out because it sneaks in. You don't recognize the snake comes in, you didn't realize it was the devil when it came in.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And and and the truly the only thing in this life we have control over is ourselves, our thoughts and our actions. Just like you said, if you want to change the world, it starts with the man in the mirror. The one looking back at you.

SPEAKER_02:

He's very much true. Think about your own self at some point in time before we let those words fly out. We not are to filter them a little bit. But the same way going into our mind. Let's filter what's going in. What are we feeding ourselves? What's your body? Don't you filter a little bit about what's going into it? Don't you feel better when you eat right?

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

Drink plenty of water, do the right things health-wise, I feel better. But if you eat junk food all the friggin' time, that's whatever you want to call it, however you describe it for yourself, you don't feel as alert. You don't feel you feel sluggish.

SPEAKER_01:

And you want more of it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And this other of this other you'll want more of it if you ain't careful.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

Wrong one.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. So I think the the challenge today is to view what you're what you're looking at. And we're not talking about just on social media, that too, but our life's no different. Where where do you find yourself? Where do you find yourself spending a lot of time? Not just stopping at necessarily, but spending some time. And is it somewhere that you want to change your algorithm? Is it somewhere that you want to change the outcome, the things that you're attracting, the things that you are a part of? And that truly does start with you. If if there are some areas in your life that you're looking at and go, that needs to change. I'm spending too much time here. I stopped here too long. I'm being a part of that and I shouldn't be. Then it's time to say, I'm going to change my algorithm. I'm going to change the way my life looks because if I change, those around me lives will change because I changed.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You influenced a lot more than you ever think.

SPEAKER_01:

Everybody's somebody's always watching.

SPEAKER_02:

Not just the Lord. All right, join me. We'll go, Lord, in word of prayer. Lord, as again, as we look into our own lives, Lord, would you please guide us, direct us, and help us to keep our minds pure and on you. Wherever we find your word, where we speak your word, Lord, help us every day to share it with others. And keep an open mind toward you, Lord. Lord, I ask you to be with each listener here with us and with each one of us as we go through this life. We come to you in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. In his holy name we ask these things. Amen.

SPEAKER_01:

Amen. Thanks so much for joining us on The Road Traveled, and we look forward to joining you and finding you down the road.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been listening to The Road Travel, where real faith meets real life. Remember, every step matters, even the hard ones. So keep walking your road with courage, conviction, and Christ leading the way. Until next time, your hosts, Aaron and Allen, say we'll see you down the road.