 I'm grateful to be in the studio and grateful for the time to talk to our WTO enlisters and thank you for listening out there we pray that these segments before the sermon are helpful to you and today I wanted to introduce you to a conference that we're going to put on at the end of May, May 29th through the 31st 2015 and it's our call for discernment conference entitled A Call to Arms and the conference will be discussing how to protect your children and family from media's menacing dark side and unless you've had your head in the sand for the past several years you've been just as impressed or staggered as I've been with the spread or advancement of technology and not just the advancement of technology but how technology has really infiltrated our homes and if you're a parent I know that this is probably concerned you just like it has me with how much that influences our kids how much that influences our home life our family how much it may influence our parenting and so we want to put this conference on to inform parents on how they can give them the tools and resources maybe that they can use to protect their children protect their family from the negative influence of media and technology and for that conference we're very very grateful to the Lord to have guest speaker Trace Embry with us. Trace Embry is a nationally syndicated radio host of licensed to parent and also the founder of a residential counseling program for troubled teens called Shepherds Hill Academy has a lot of experience in this area has seen a lot of things and can very expertly we're grateful for that speak to these issues and we're very very excited about hearing what Trace has to say so that we can better protect our families we're also grateful to have Trace in the studio with us to talk with us today how you doing Trace I'm doing wonderful brother great it's great to have you here with us and we're really looking forward to the conference I was thinking for our listeners out there who maybe want some more information about the conference I thought to ask you a question and just let you talk about this for a moment but one of the things I think that's most prominent in our news and maybe even in the understanding or the concern of our parents is the influence that social media has had on our kids social media has had on our families there's so much in the news about sexting and the I mean with smartphones and putting pictures out on social media that we shouldn't be putting out there and maybe conversations that we have on social media that we would never have face to face with another person or maybe you can speak to that for a moment what kind of influence do you see social media having on our kids and our families well it's huge it's what the the local park or the drug story used to be you know a couple generations ago you hang out the drug story hang out the park hang out you know the ball field now kids are hanging out virtually online one third of public school high school girls are sexting which is sending provocative images across the airways I think most of your listeners probably know exactly what that is but but Facebook has brought the people who are far from us closer to us and has really distanced those who were closer to us but taking them far farther from us and you know it used to be when you come home from school after a sporting event or maybe after class and the rest of the evening you know maybe especially after supper you'd hang out with your adult family you know your mom your dad and you'd be getting adult influence and adult conversation but today these kids can take the you know the popular kids the the geeks the perverts the the the bullies home with them so they're taking their classmates home with them and they're having dialogue with their 300 you know facebook friends which again that's another term that we use it's a godly term with the devil's dictionary are they really friends no one tells the truth on facebook not even the adults you know they brag about what their kids have done and what the kids are doing and who their kids really are and in the next parent field that they have to keep up the genesis and they embellish their kids accomplishments and it's one big uh you know phony fest and uh so you know it's it's a it's a virtual world that we're living in and it perpetuates uh the whole postmodern worldview which basically says you create your own truth your own reality so you know facebook should be a tool for good all digital technologies should be a tool for expanding the kingdom of god for uh promoting the good things of mankind and it can be but because of our sin nature which become our sin nature on steroids we've turned it into a weapon against us and against the church um as opposed to the tool that should should actually be yeah do you see i know that knowing that you also run shepherd's hill academy a residential counseling program there for troubled teens uh do you see teens coming into the program uh that have just been overcome by this they i've heard that it in many cases starts small maybe even to a parent appears innocent but then there's a progressive nature to it maybe talk about that for a moment trace well you know it starts early on and and this is really incumbent upon the parents to really get educated because you know uh 90 percent of kids under two years old have a have a digital history already and uh they're they're operating these these these bill rally would say machines uh and it's rewiring brain circuitry and it's it's really causing major developmental delays uh in our kids and uh it's it's causing a myriad of other problems attention deficit and you know things like that that doctors then complicate the problem by by dispensing medications for the different disorders and maladies that they claim that are out there 70 percent of the kids that come here to shepherd's hill and bush the walls of medications are leaving medication free now you have to ask yourself why and we'll discuss that at the conference but this is uh indicative of a cultural problem you know if you go to some cultures around the world they have different tastes and appetites for things precisely because the culture is influencing them to have those appetites or appetites can be trained in some cultures they love their neighbors and others they eat them and so uh in this in this nation we're a nation of of we're a highly sexualized nation a nation that has been uh uh turned entertainment into the new god music in particular i mean one of the number one tv shows them on on tv right now is american what american idol and all addiction really is is what the scriptures is called idolatry it's basically saying this is something i have to have i need it or i think i need it and that's what we've done with our our little gadgets our digital technology we've turned these things into a little little idol and god is not going to compete with that and uh but he'll let us he'll let us worship those things until uh the logical outworking happens and uh you know they're going to we'll end up destroying ourselves with these things i see that with the kids that come to the shepherd's hill all the time every one of them are addicted to digital technology and i don't think there's a an exception to the if there is it's very few exceptions uh that come through shepherd's hill yeah well thank you so much we really look forward to hearing more information uh at the conference frankly we need information about this i think parents by and large today are uh dramatically unaware so we look forward to the conference we pray that you listening out there will uh go to protect the family dot net protect the family dot net and register for this conference a call to arms protecting our children and families from medias menacing dark side this is a ministry of cornerstone baptist church right here in orlando florida you can get more information at the website cornerstoneorlando.org or call our church offices at 407 971 7685 and trace if parents out there wanting more information uh want to begin learning how to protect their families where can they find more uh resources more information from you and your ministry sure uh but before i give that out i'd like to your listeners to to know this is not a conference that's going to be uh encouraging people to discard their technology technology is here to stay we're going to have to learn how to navigate it and use it as a tool rather than a weapon so i don't want anyone to think that we're anti technology i'm pro technology i'm just not pro destroy ourselves with it but they can find more information at license2parent.org license2parent.org they can hear our 30 minute weekly radio broadcast our daily one minutes packed full of great golden nuggets uh for parenting in the 21st century and if they want to know anything about the residential program and more there's also resources that's at licensed i'm sorry if they want to know something about our uh residential program shepherd till academy uh helpmytroubledteen.org just go to helpmytroubledteen.org and they can find out anything you want to find out right there uh thank you so much trace and again the conference may 29th through the 31st register today at protectthefamily.net god bless you