[Steve Myers] The other day, I was searching the internet for some information, and a little
ad popped up. And it showed a chair that was for sale. Now, that was pretty interesting
because a couple days before that, my wife and I were searching for deals on chairs.
We needed a new chair. And it struck me, "Well, how in the world did the internet know that
I was looking for a chair?" Has that ever happened to you where you search for something
and then, all of a sudden, here comes all this information of what you had on your mind?
Well, I found out that they do it through algorithms. It's a mathematical thing where
they can look at all kinds of different things and predict what you're looking for.
So if you look at certain news things, it'll bring up other news-related things. I mean,
they even do it on dating sites. Who you want to date, or who you might want to marry, or
what you want to read, or what you want to watch, all of those things. They calculate
through these algorithms on the internet. Now, here's an issue I think that is related
to this. These powerful algorithms reinforce the things that we're interested in. And so,
we see the things that we're familiar with. So what about things that are different? What
about things that are new? What about things that are unfamiliar?
Well, those are relegated to somewhere else. And so, what begins to happen is we've got
our own little, insulated internet world out here. But think about that in a spiritual
sense for just a moment? Is that something that God wants us to do in our lives? To have
our own little personal algorithm so that we're insulated, so that we're only seeing
the familiar, so that we're only reinforcing our very own interests? You see, I don't think
that's what God wants, especially when you think of it in a spiritual sense. There's
an interesting proverb that you're probably familiar with, Proverbs 3:5. It talks about
trusting the Lord with all your heart. Trust God. And what does God want for us? Well,
God says, "We're to put on the new man, we're to be a new creation in Christ. We're to think
differently than we normally would think." (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10)
So rather than being insulated, rather than confining ourselves to just our own interests,
our own ways, or our own thinking, He says we're supposed to get out of our comfort zone.
Forget the algorithms that this world presents to us and start to put on God's way of thinking.
Philippians 2 says we should put on the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5). That means we've
got to step out from where we used to be, from our old way of thinking, and to begin
thinking the way that God wants us to think. A good example of this is over in the Book
of Revelation. Revelation 21:5 is just a good reminder of some of the things that God does.
Does God just want us to be insulated?
Does He think only with the same old same old all the time? Well, in Revelation 21,
it says this, "Behold, I'm making all things new." God wants us to be new. He wants us
to be the new person, to think in a different way. So the next time you're searching on
the internet, and an ad pops up, don't just get caught up into what you're insulated within
this own little internet kind of a world. But maybe that could remind us, "Wait a second,
I've got to be different. I've got to step out of this comfort zone that I've created
for myself and begin to think more like Christ." Do that next time.
All right, we'll see you later. And hopefully, join us for another BT Daily.