AI Dangers and Christian Discernment

What safeguards exist for Christians when confronting the many uses of Artificial Intelligence? Where are the boundaries and how should we think about all this information at our fingertips? That's what we're talking about on the podcast today. We hope you'll join us!

Our website: pgrpodcast.com

Here is a list of source links for topics we discussed on today’s episode.

Survey: 2/3 pastors use AI for sermon prep
Timestamp 4:14
https://www.christianpost.com/news/majority-of-pastors-using-ai-to-prepare-sermons-study.html

AI Worship song tops the charts
Timestamp 7:15
https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/the-top-christian-artist-on-itunes-is-ai-and-the-internet-has-some-thoughts/#:~:text=support%20HTML5%20audio.-,The%20Top%20Christian%20Artist%20on%20iTunes%20Is%20AI%20%E2%80%94%20and%20the,personal%20concerns%20with%20the%20music

High School Students Using AI
Timestamp 7:51
https://youtu.be/PCeHrNJ5BO8?si=VPCOcWmX9tNg_sTw

AI – “Speaking” websites with Claude
Timestamp 9:51
https://youtu.be/TWZ90EUyejk?si=pGy70V1A7-MJKM0M

Pastors/Panel using AI for sermon prep
Timestamp 10:29
https://youtu.be/CKqWrXfP3aU?si=7J_eRDeQ1p1yOTZ6

Author uses AI to write over 200 books and earn six figures
Timestamp 19:23
https://ground.news/daily-briefing/author-uses-ai-to-produce-200-romance-novels-in-a-year_ba19be

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

AI Generated Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi everybody, you're listening to the People Get Ready podcast. I'm Heather Duff, and in just a minute, we'll be jumping into a conversation with Barb Ho. We're talking about everyday issues from a Christian perspective while we eagerly wait for Jesus. You can check out the show notes for source links on statistics and videos we mention during the episode. P eople get ready. Let's go. Okay, so today we're going to be talking about the topic of AI, and I have been preparing this for a few weeks. I've been a little bit almost nervous talking about this. I think for three reasons, probably. One is that AI is changing so rapidly, it's almost like by the time we record this, it's going to look differently. Um, and secondly, there's so much to this that I really wanted to have a narrow focus and not get off on rabbit trails all over the place. And I think the third reason is I I have such a deep concern about this. Barb and I have been having conversations about this for, I don't know, a couple months probably. Um, and I I have some really deep concerns about how this is going to impact the church and impact pastors and congregations and even all of us, our our spiritual growth and what is this gonna do to society and to the church. So anyway, we're gonna just have a very narrow focus, I think. I hope, I plan. We'll see. We will.

unknown 1:21

Okay.

Speaker 1 1:22

We will. Um, last weekend I I used AI and I've been using it for a very specific thing for graphics. I work at a a camp and retreat center, and I I do social media and things like that. So I have started using AI to create some graphics and things like that. But two weeks ago, I thought, well, let me see what this can do. So I put in a prompt and I said, aside from graphics, and I described what my job description was and everything that I was responsible for. And I said to this is in chat GPT. I said, What else can you help me with? And in less than a minute, it came back with one to 12 bullet points, each in the 12 specific job areas of how it could help me. Wow. And the 12th one was all from the spiritual aspect. Like one through 11 were really more marketing things, strategies. And I've been working in marketing for probably 15, a good 15, 20 years. Um, and for a while I was self-employed. I was working with some best-selling authors, helping them market their books. And so I knew enough about marketing to know that this, I mean, it was really good advice. It was, I'm not gonna say spot on, but it was definitely valid. It was strategic, it was thoughtful. You know, it it broke it down into points and subpoints. And then it asked meaningful questions. And so I had a conversation with it. I mean, I'm just gonna like full transparency here. At one point, I had this thought, oh my goodness, my life has changed. Why? Because it was like, it was even asking me where where are you feeling most overwhelmed in your work? And so when I answered that question, it came back and told me why and then what to do about it. And I I had a little think about it, and it's like, you know, that's that's a really good point. Now, these were not things that were out of nowhere. You know, these were things that I've thought about and done before, but just to see it in this very strategic bullet point list was very helpful. So I I um I wanted to keep using it. I I mean I have to say, like, I I wanted to just keep throwing questions at it and seeing. As a matter of fact, I did, and then at one point it kind of stopped responding and I said, Are you getting tired? It said, uh, no, I I'm not tired, but thank you for asking.

Speaker 3:53

Wow.

Speaker 1 3:54

But I think sometimes that happens. It kind of like, from what I understand, it gets stuck a little where it starts giving information that is sort of off topic.

Speaker 4:02

But I it's really impacting everything, Heather. It's it's impacting our church, it's impacting our families, it's impacting our society. And I was talking to someone yesterday who pointed out that two-thirds of the pastors use AI to help write their their sermons. It's having a huge influence into all our areas of life. So I'm really excited that you're gonna be sharing some stuff about it today because I I know that we need to hear about it.

Speaker 1 4:29

Yeah. And that's the thing, you can't just say we're not gonna use AI because if you're using a smartphone, AI is working on your behalf already. And a lot of the apps are using AI. If you're on social media, that's using AI. So really, I I stepped away from that session and I thought the church really needs to have a policy on this. Because, like you're saying, pastors are now using it for sermon prep. I got up the next morning. I just was, you know, distressed and praying and and just asking the Lord. Because I still, like even that next day, I thought I had this inclination that I wanted to use it and ask it more questions, but I really told myself, no, don't use it today. I wanted to take some time and just sort of think through the implications. And I'm not, I'm not saying that getting that plan was a a bad thing because it does have its uses, you know, and some of those things were valid steps to take for outreach that we're doing using social media, using different channels and things like that. But what my thought was this is such a tremendous temptation. I was thinking about pastors who are so busy, many of them are stretched thin. I don't know very many pastors that are not too busy. Most of them are truly too busy between family and church and all wearing a million different hats at church. And anytime that you're serving people, you don't just have sort of a clock-in, clock out job. I mean, it it takes an emotional toll. And then plus, pastors are on call 24-7. They're shepherds taking care of sheep, and it's it's all different hours. And so I thought to myself, this is going to be such a strong temptation for a busy pastor who has to get his sermon prepared for Sunday. And it's just so easy to go to Chat GPT, I'm sure there are others, and start asking questions and then generate a sermon on a topic. You can even say, give me a sermon on this topic with this scripture text in the style of a certain pastor. And it will, it will give you a sermon that is in that pastor's style. I mean, it's go ahead.

Speaker 6:47

Well, the hard thing about it is that you can't we can't totally stay away from it. It's not one of those evils that you just say, I'm not gonna have anything to do with it. The fact is it's in our life. I mean, we use it. We use it for for a lot of different things. But my my question is always, what parameters should I do? And how do I know if I'm using it wisely? And how do I know if I'm using it, you know, in a in a good way? And I I don't know what song it is, but I've heard that one of the b top worship songs last year was totally generated by AI. Um, and if that's true, I mean that's that's not good. I mean, for a worship song to be generated by a non-person, I I just think that's that's kind of dangerous. And so, you know, pastors and people, and you know, it's it's just it's in our life what kind of parameters to set and how to think about it and and how to know about it. I mean, just a lot of us don't even know about it. We're just a lot of us are ignorant about what it is or what it does and you know, everything.

Speaker 1 7:51

People are using it. And I was listening to one video and he was he had just done a conference with youth, junior high and high school, and he was teaching them about digital technology, and part of that was about AI. And so he had different sessions. So with the high schoolers, he was asking them if they use AI AI and if they do what they're doing with it. And they answered that they were using it for homework. Wow. And yes, and he said they kind of got sheepish after they started talking about it because they realized that some of their teachers were in the room while he was there and they had confessed to basically cheating. But they said, Yeah, they're using it for that. But when he talked to the junior high kids, he said that conversation was more about robots and things like that. So they were sort of at a you know a different level with it. But already in high school, and this is a generation that is already using it to do their school work. So, you know, like I said, I I've I've been thinking about what is the implication of this on the body of Christ. And I don't want to be picking on pastors because I, you know, I do want to talk about what this is gonna mean for you and me in our personal study time and looking things up, doing research and whatnot, you know, how how much AI should we use? It's just concerning. And then seeing these young people who are already using it, how are they going to know where that line is?

Speaker 9:11

Yeah. Well, and and one of the things I know we were talking about this a couple weeks ago is that if you don't use it, say you own a business and you're not using AI, well, other small businesses or businesses are going to be. And so, you know, you're gonna lose that competition, you're gonna lose that edge. I just see it affecting every part of our life. And yeah, you don't want to see it as this, you know, necessarily terrible, evil thing that you have to stay away from. But I think just to know, like you're you're saying, how do we as Christians discern how do we tread onto this with the the wisdom of scripture with walking rightly?

Speaker 1 9:46

Yeah. I just kind of touching briefly on what you said about how it's impacting business. I watched a video a few weeks ago and it was a website designer, and he was using what's called Claude AI and the new upgrade to uh create a website. Basically, all you have to do now is speak it. You just speak certain prompts and it will design a website for you. And he I watched him do within like, I don't know, it was something like uh ten minutes, he did five websites. Wow. Yeah, I mean it's incredible. So if you're a business person, like you're saying, it's going to be hard to stay in business if you don't adopt some s you know form of this AI. I did watch another video with a panel of I know there was one pastor, I want to say maybe two pastors were there, a worship pastor, and I think the other guy is in some kind of church media. And it was a panel of four of them, and they were talking about AI. And one of the pastors said that he uses AI for research, and he gave this story of how he kind of stumbled onto it, and he was reading in one of the gospels, and in that it said something like, In six days Jesus did a certain thing. And then a few verses after that it said, and six days later Jesus and then did a certain thing. And he said it just kind of struck him funny. So he went to, I don't know, Chat GPT maybe, or Grok, I can't remember. But he said, Why did Jesus say twice that in six days, whatever the situation was? And the AI came back that he was drawing a relationship to something that occurred with Moses. And forgive me because I I should have looked all these scriptures up before. But then he said to the AI, give me 12 bullet points, 12 like similarities between this situation with Jesus and Moses. And it did. And so then he, I guess, built a message out of that. And I thought, and and he's to him, he said it's no different than having a research assistant. I don't know. I thought I to me that just it seemed like not the point. You know, it's not we're not after knowledge, it's knowledge of God. And I think it's easy just to go to an AI and to ask AI a biblical question and to get a technically right answer, but the Lord wants us to seek Him. He said that verse where he says, Call unto me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things. It just seems that with AI, we can circumvent the Holy Spirit, we can circumvent seeking after God. The goal is not to have some tightly put together sermon that wows people, but I have an expectation that my pastor and myself that I'm waiting on the Lord for these things.

Speaker 12:45

That's the huge danger, is because hearing from God. I mean, it seems like with the whole AI and what you're describing, you take that element out of hearing from the Lord, and it's just you go to AI, you check into AI, and whether or not it's true or not, it's information. It's not necessarily transformation. It's not God working in your life to bring you into this place and to show you what he would have you to know. It just seems like a huge danger, I think.

Speaker 1 13:14

I'm sure for everyone listening to you, when you spend time in the Word of God and the Lord reveals something like that to you, that is treasure. And it is not treasure that comes easily. We do need to seek after. I mean, there needs to be some sort of passionate pursuit for the things of God, you know, and to wait on the Lord and to seek Him with our whole heart. And like you were just saying, it's not just ask for information and get it. And if your first inclination, if you you're studying the Word of God and you have a question about something, if our first inclination is to turn to some device and ask it a question, I feel like that's inserting something in my relationship with God that shouldn't be there.

Speaker 13:59

Absolutely. I I think that's absolutely I think that's one of the things, and I hadn't really thought about that is you're not seeking the Lord. You're not seeking the wisdom, you're not seeking the insight, you're not seeking the understanding, you're not seeking to hear from God. And that's what the Christian life is. You're replacing hearing and listening and seeking God with just the information that you can get, and it that's really dangerous.

Speaker 1 14:23

I'm reading a book by Christine Rosen. It's called Extinction of Experience. And in that, she talks a lot about how in so much of our communication, there is now a mediator between myself and the person that I am connecting with. So if it's social media, then there's some algorithm there that is maybe showing me some of their stuff, none of their stuff, all of their stuff. But anytime I'm I'm using a device, these experiences are what are called mediated experiences because there is a mediator between you and the thing that you're communicating with. You know, as Christians, we know that there's there should be no mediator between us and God except Jesus. And by inserting this AI, it is like we are now having a mediator in our experience. We we are much less biblically literate than we have been. And it seems that year after year we we are spending less time in the Bible as Christians. There's all all kinds of research pulls on this, and we don't spend time in the Bible. And years ago, I I think the big push was to do these Bible studies. And I did them, you know, I'd get the workbook and you know, you meet together with your ladies' group or whatever, and you work through these Bible studies. But after a while, I I stopped doing them because, for one thing, some of these people who wrote these books, they were kind of getting off the path of truth. But then also it's like mama bird chewing up the meal and then spitting it into my mouth. And as a Christian, this is discipleship. We need to be discipling people and how that they can get in the word, open up the Bible, and receive nourishment straight from the word of God. And and read the word, go to God in prayer. I mean, and there is a labor in that. There, there's a seeking after God, there's time in that. You know, there's nothing wrong with reading the Bible and having a question and saying, Lord, I don't understand, and then looking up some references, even asking, Lord, would you show me what this means? And maybe you don't get the answer right away, but God leads you there. I mean, that that's how we grow. And if we're just circumventing that whole process, we're not growing, we're not maturing.

Speaker 16:47

And I think nowadays you want to know instantly everything. And I'm I'm guilty of that. I can't tell you how many times I'll grab my phone and Google something, a thought will come to my mind, how many this or how many that, or I've done it today several times, and I'll get my phone out because I want to know immediately what it what that answer is. I think that's really what you're talking about. And we're becoming people who want to know instantly what we want to know. We don't want to wait. What's the whole thing of waiting on the Lord? You don't know. There's so many things in our relationships with Christ that we don't know. Some we might never know until we get to heaven. That's okay. It's just allowing the Lord to work in our lives and being open to not understanding everything. We're not gonna understand everything. And I think this AI is is adding to that in a negative way. I really agree with what you're saying, Heather. And I I think you had mentioned to me before, if you could just talk about this sometime, is the issue of being creative and also working to things that God has made us to be.

Speaker 1 17:48

If you think about down the road, what this is going to do with that, do to us, we're basically offloading our creativity onto a device. And we're offloading our work onto a device. Now, if you talk to some people where they think AI is going, basically the way they see it is that AI is gonna be the one making all the money for us, and then they're saying that people are going to get this like universal basic income so that we each get money for our needs, but we're not gonna have to work because AI is gonna be doing all the work. But what kind of a life is that? You know, that's that's not how God created man, and work is good for us, right?

Speaker 18:26

God God made us to work. I mean, work produces the Bible talks about that. It produces good things. We have to work because it takes time, it takes effort, it takes trust in God, it takes all those things. And replacing work from our lives is is not a good thing. Yeah. And I think the being creative too, you had talked about that, and that's it takes out the creativity in a lot of ways. And God has made us. We're made in the image of God, we're made to be creative just like He is. He's such a creative God.

Speaker 1 18:56

An artist does work from their mind, but art is also from the soul. You know, there there is an emotion and things that we can't even understand that go into art. I'm thinking of paintings and and things like that. Now, we can make a photocopy of that. We can technically reproduce that, and then AI can even take all the inputs from different art and come up with something else, but that's not really that's not art. There's this woman who wrote over 200 books last year with AI and made over six figures. Now, I'm a writer, wrote a novel, and it was a very arduous task. And I have a lot of stories that are partially written that I haven't finished. And I thought, well, you know, I could just upload what I do have and say come up with some kind of ending. But that's just so it's like when you cheat. You know, the win is so empty because you didn't earn it. I am using AI for things in my work that save me time, and some of that is for graphics, but I'm not a graphic artist, so I'm not offloading my creative work. You just have to wonder what is this going to do to humanity in in the next few years, and how is that going to impact the church?

Speaker 20:14

And how rapidly it's come into our lives. I mean, this this was not this this was quick, relatively speaking. All of a sudden we're hearing about AI, and it's progressing so fast that you just wonder where is it gonna be in another five years?

Speaker 1 20:30

Yeah, it really is. And it's it's only going to get exponentially faster.

Speaker 20:35

Well, are you gonna share some kind of guidelines, like some practical steps that we can take, or what what are your thoughts about that?

Speaker 1 20:43

Yeah, I wrote some scripture down. Well, uh my takeaway the day after I sp, you know, spent time doing all this, I really was distressed. And and I was going back and forth because I kept feeling the next day there were I had ideas of things that I could ask and ways that it could help me. But I really wanted to just take a time out and pray and seek the Lord. And there were just a couple scriptures that came to me, and one of them was first John 1 5, where it says, This is the message we've heard from him and announced to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. With this AI, there is definitely darkness. I mean, when you use it, it's fun, exciting, you know, because it it can do so many things. There it there really is a dark side of it because you just see how this could be misused. And the second one was Isaiah 9 6, where it says, For his name will be called wonderful counselor. I just spent time meditating on that that next day, and it's been the cry of my heart that God would be my counselor, that I would not turn to another for counsel. And he, I mean, there's that is his name, wonderful counselor. So I I don't know. I thought, you know, that's probably something that we could talk through of what we think the guidelines are. My concern is that I I don't want there to be some sort of mediator between me and God's word. And I don't want my inclination to be, oh, let me ask Chat GPT.

Speaker 22:20

And I think too, as even as you're sharing these things, the issue of ultimately trusting in God, it's it's a danger in replacing that. You don't have to trust the Lord. You just don't have to. I don't, I don't have to trust God to lead me. I don't have to trust God to give me the direction or the guidance or the insight or whatever. I just have to put information into this, whatever it is I'm putting it into. I think the whole thing with a Christian walk is more and more, you know, the whole process of sanctification is learning more and more to depend on God, to depend on Christ, to walk by the power of the Spirit, to look to Him, to hear from Him, to depend on Him. And I think AI on some level replaces that. And again, the thing that's hard for me with this is that it would be one thing if it was totally, you know, we could just get rid of everything. Like I remember, you know, they say the difference between losing weight and stopping smoking, right? Or two, two, two things that people try to do. They say, well, with smoking, you just stop doing it. With losing weight, you have to cut back in the food. And it's a lot harder to control something and keep doing it, you know? And I think in some ways, I think about that with this AI stuff, because you can't, I don't think, live a life without AI. I can't, I mean, going to a monastery someplace and just not having any devices, and that would be the only solution. I mean, we are going to have to use it on some level, but it's how to do it. And I think it's surrendering to the Lord. I think it's trusting in God. I think it's committing to the Lord, asking Him to show you, putting up safety. One of the things that I think about is how many times even in church do you depend on your device instead of reading the Bible? You we I think we've really replaced Bible reading on a lot of levels with our devices. And I know a lot of pastors will say now, take out your Bible or your device. And I don't think that's good. Why do you think, Heather, it's important to keep the Bible and not lean on a device for the scripture passages?

Speaker 1 24:24

Well, your device isn't just a Bible, it's a million other things. And you how many times have you picked up your phone to check the weather and the next thing you're on social media or you're scrolling through news because you got a notification? There's too many distractions. And then another thing that you are saying, we're gonna get to the point where we feel like we don't even need to open a Bible. If all we need to do is go to some AI and say, What does the Bible say about blah, blah, blah? Oh, the Bible says this. Oh, and then we're just gonna take that as an answer. We are going to get to the point of thinking, well, do I even need to open my Bible? Because I have this AI that can just give me the summary.

Speaker 25:02

Well, and I think one of the things that you were pointing out is how easy it will be in the future if people just depend on their devices and not not the written word, you know, not the Bible written word, how easy it would be for people, for someone or something to c to put words that are not in there.

Speaker 1 25:22

I was remembering too, last year I sent out some emails with some information that they needed. And several of them called and were asking questions. And I was kind of wondering, like, did they not get the email? And then someone finally sent me a screenshot because I did contact them. I said, Did you get our email? And they said, Yes. And I said, Well, can you forward that to me? And they forwarded a screenshot, and what was happening was AI was summarizing the information that I sent to T hey were depending on Yahoo AI summary, which it did not give them the correct information. So AI, it's not always correct. And so by relying on it for biblical questions, it's going to be wrong sometimes.

Speaker 26:15

And the perspective it's giving, you just don't know what that perspective is coming from. And I think one thing that you pointed out to me when because I've done that. I've I've asked spiritual questions on on Google. I've definitely done that. And you said, if they don't give the references of who it's from, don't trust it. And that that's a really helpful point. When it just gives the AI and it and it discusses it and it doesn't give a a reference, you don't really know where that's coming from.

Speaker 1 26:42

The world is only going to get darker and darker. The deception is going to keep growing. This is such a temptation. And I think that's why I was just feeling such a darkness the next day, because AI, it it's very sycophantic. It it flatters you. Like when I when I put in what my job description was, the answer was, well, first of all, you're basically running a whole department, blah, blah, one person. That's really impressive. You know, and it compliments you. It and it makes you feel like you're just awesome and it's there to help you. It's such a a temptation. I I'm not just keying in on pastors, but I think it's as go the pastors, goes the church. And that's why I think that it's just so important that churches really need to have a policy about how to deal with this.

Speaker 27:34

I think the whole issue of discernment. I think the bottom line of it is, you know, the Bible talks tells us to be innocent as doves and wise as serpents, right? So we're supposed to be aware of these things. You know, God doesn't want us to walk in fear. He doesn't want us to be afraid, he wants us to wal walk in joy and peace and and and all those good things that he has in store for us. But that can only happen when we are walking in discernment. And the only way we can walk in discernment is when we have that relationship that we've been talking about these last few weeks of prayer and time with God. If you're not spending time in prayer and in the word, you are not going to be discerning. You just aren't. And the enemy is at work. And we have to stay in a place where we are connected to God. We have to stay in prayer. We have to stay in his word. We just do. And, you know, when you when you talk about the word of God, and I know we're going to be getting into this, Heather, you're going to be sharing a lot of this in the future, you know, how to really get into study. It's not just knowing Bible verses, it's the principles of the of the Bible. And, you know, as you study the word more, you know verses, but the principles of scripture starts to take a hold of your life. And so things just don't make sense. And so you'll come across something like this, like maybe it's an AI thing or something. And there's just something in you that's just like, like with you with that, that stuff, you're just like, I don't know, there's just something about this that's just not right. Well, that's the Holy Spirit. That's discernment. And that's because you're connected to the Lord, you're connected to God, you're connected to the word and to prayer. But if we separate from scripture, if we separate from prayer, we lose that discernment. And the enemy can work and the world can work and our flesh can work, and we can fall right into those traps that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 29:26

Yeah, Hebrews 5 talks about discernment. Basically, he's saying you should be teaching others by now, but I'm having to give you baby food, basically, because you haven't matured. And solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil. And that's something that takes time and it takes work, you know? And like we were saying, you you you can't it's if if you are putting either either for your personal study time or if you are doing sermon prep or any teaching or whatever you're doing, if you are circumventing, spending time and getting that through the Holy Spirit, the word of God and prayer, then you're shortchanging yourself and all those people that you're you're leading.

Speaker 30:13

Right. As you well know, I was married to a pastor 40 plus years. When he worked on his message, the first several days was just him and his Bible. That's what it was. He just was study the word. He would he would take a passage and he would just study it, and it began to to bring life into what he was thinking about and what god was teaching him about. And it was, it was the word became real to him, and and the Holy Spirit would minister into his life. And, you know, he could only share what God ministered to him about. God would minister into his life, and then based on what God was ministering to him about, he would give it to the body of Christ. If pastors and not just pastors, teachers, Sunday school teachers, ministers, and and people that are ministering in different dimensions, and just Christians in general, if we're not receiving that from the Lord, what are we giving out, really? What are we giving out? I mean, we give what we get. And when we get it from the Holy Spirit, when we get it from God, we get it from his word, we get it from prayer, that's what we give out. And if we think that we can replace that with just going to some AI thing, it's just not gonna happen. And we're gonna lose out, and the body of Christ is gonna lose out.

Speaker 1 31:28

Yeah. And I guess that was where my concern was coming from because pastors are busy, they're stretched thin. And here this thing presents itself that it's gonna save you a lot of time. I could see at first you would come to it very innocently, probably, and just asking for some research questions or whatever. But uh focus has to be prayer and the word of God.

Speaker 31:49

And I think just members of the body of Christ, too. It is definitely pastors, but I think for the people that are listening, this is just as important in their lives. They need to be discerning. They might they might not be teaching the word like their pastor is, but man, they're facing situations every day. They're dealing with their kids, they're dealing with their coworkers, they're dealing with all these different things. And if discernment is not taking hold of their lives, they're gonna be walking in their own understanding. And this AI thing is just gonna take hold of them too. I mean, we when I was mentioning to a couple people, a couple of my friends, and they were I was saying, Oh, we're gonna be, you know, talking about AI coming up in the future, and they were saying, Yeah, I just don't know what to do. I mean, I I don't know how to think about it. My thought is from some of the stuff that you've been saying and some of the stuff that we've been talking about, the key is just staying in the word, staying in prayer, and surrendering it to the Lord and trusting God to work and to bring discernment.

Speaker 1 32:48

Yes, God first. I mean, there's no shortcut to spiritual maturity. That's right.

Speaker 32:53

Amen. Not not to be afraid, but to be aware. We need to be aware of what's going on. The fact of the matter is the enemy is working. He is working, and in this world is a dark place without Christ. The key is to stay connected with God, to put God first, to stay solid in your time with him. You know, that includes your altar time when, like we talked about, your time in scripture, your time in prayer, and trusting in him to work in your life and through you. You know, he's gonna give you the wisdom.

Speaker 1 33:25

I think you shared this on a previous podcast, maybe not, but was it your scripture for this year? Seek first his kingdom.

Speaker 33:34

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you because the Lord's been really telling me, I have so many things I want to do for him. I want to get done for the kingdom. And and so I keep a lot of times I can go and running in different directions. And the Lord has been really speaking to my heart and saying, Seek me, Barb. As you seek me, I will work these things through you. I will use you in these different areas. But it's not you running after these areas, it's you seeking after me. And and I think that that really holds true, Heather. I'm glad you brought that up because with this whole thing, how do we get discerning? And okay, some of the people don't aren't even sure what AI is. How do we do it? Well, you seek God, you seek the Lord, and He's gonna give you all these things. He's gonna give you the wisdom, he's gonna give you the discernment, he's gonna give you the understanding, he's gonna bring red flags up in you when something is not right, because that's part of his relationship with you. That's what the Holy Spirit does inside of us, and God is gonna work. And so we need to stay connected with him and not look to these devices for that for our answers. Seek him first. That's right. That's good. Amen. Let's let's let's pray. Father, I thank you so much, God. I thank you, Lord, that we can trust you. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you are in control of our lives, Father. I thank you, Lord, that you don't just set us into this world and just say, go do it. But Father, you've given us the Holy Spirit who guides and leads and directs. And Lord, you guide our steps, you guide our thoughts, you guide our minds, you guide our directions, Lord. And Father, you know what we're facing as as Christians, as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as moms and dads and coworkers and students, Father, you know what we're facing in this world, Lord. How technology is just becoming more and more and more apart. And Father, we we want to have the right thoughts, Lord. We don't want to depend on our own understanding, God. We want to trust in you. Lord, I pray that you would give us the wisdom that we need. I pray, Father, that we would stay connected with you on such a level, God, that the enemy would just turn his back. Lord, you say in your word to resist the devil and he will flee. And Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that we would stay connected with you. I pray that our times in your word would be deep, God, that our study, our understanding, Father, would deepen of your word. And Lord, I pray in Jesus' name that our times in prayer, Father, would be deeper than ever, that we would again grow deep and broad in our times of prayer, Father, in our understanding of who you are, Lord. I pray, Father, that you would give us the wisdom, give us the discernment, give us the understanding, God. Give us the grace, Father, to know what to do and to how to do it. We just thank you for this, Father. I thank you for who you are. I thank you for your working power. We commit all of this into your hands. And again, Lord, we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Speaker 1 36:37

Amen.