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A study on teens and junk food from the Pacific Health Education centre in Bakersfield CA highlighted the following problems: 80% of adolescent junk food eaters in the study were consuming more than the recommended amount of fat; 49% were taking in more than the recommended amount of cholesterol; and almost 33% were likely to develop high blood pressure and clogged arteries.

If the effects are so severe when little consideration is given to our physical bodies how much more detrimental are poor nourishment choices to our spiritual lives?  Our culture surrounds us with no end of advertisements promoting the attractive side of junk food choices.  This coupled with a tendency that young folks think they are invincible results in study data as depicted above.

Today, our culture has evolved to the point where we are surrounded by ‘screens’.  TV screens, computer screens, iPad screens, GPS screens, and iPhone screens.  We are screen driven, most of our jobs now depend on one sort of a screen or another.  Schooling technique now requires the use of screens from a young age!  Who could possibly complete a university program now without using screens?  Their role in our tech driven world is to provide us with information and entertainment and if not controlled they have the potential to damage our spiritual lives in the way that junk food has damaged countless physical lives.

We must not fall into the trap of thinking we are invincible to the influence of screens.  Psalm 4: 23 (NLT)  Says:  Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

In this tech driven world we will not escape ‘screens’.  They do have value, we do need them to accomplish many tasks, and they provide access to a volume of information that encyclopedias could never match.  But we need to guard our hearts.  One of the advantages of screens is the ability to use filters.  For example, if you are looking through real estate listings and you have a maximum price you can afford you can apply a filter to show you only those listings within your maximum.  The apostle Paul gives us a very valuable filter in Philippians 4:8 (KJV) that we can use as one way to guard our hearts:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

                                                                                                     Pastor Dave