Dr. Mark Flattery
President, Network211
The Spiritual Cost of Global Individuality– Finding God’s Presence in the Digital Age
Description: Discover how technology and the pursuit of global individuality shape our identity, truth, and faith and how returning to God’s presence restores our true purpose.
🔍 Quick Answer
As people embrace the power of Global Individuality in today’s digital world, many unknowingly lose touch with the image of God within them. The solution is not withdrawal from technology but a spiritual realignment that brings people into the presence of God and invites Jesus into their daily lives.
Introduction: When the Digital World Redefines the Soul
As individuals engage the Global Individuality mindset that empowers them in the global marketplace, they risk paying a spiritual cost. The irony of taking control of one’s life and elevating one’s global individuality is that it causes a separate of being all that God created us to be in His image.
Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of pastors in the USA on the topic of “The Importance of Viewing the United States as a Mission Field.” In this talk, I addressed the spiritual cost of the USA being a digital nation and presented the antidote being the need to align ourselves with the presence of God.
US America is a Mission Field
The United States of America is a mission field. We are a nation of over 340 million people who come from seemingly all nations of the world to form cultural mosaic of immense diversity. The needs of USAmericans are many. The greatest need is that people from coast to coast need to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
The great desire of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is that everyone, everywhere will come into righteous relationship with Him. It is our duty, our responsibility, our honor, to “go and make disciples of all nations.” Yes, we are to go to Jerusalem AND in all Judea and Sameria, AND to the ends of the earth.” This includes the USA.
I am a third-generation Assemblies of God world missionary and a fourth-generation minister of the Gospel. I have served as a Missionary Kid in Belgium and then as an adult in Tanzania, Australia, and now online as we use the Internet as a tool of the Gospel. I bleed world missions. Yet, world missions does not begin outside our own borders. As Acts 1:8 stated we are to reach the world AND reach our neighborhoods. As my Dad taught me, life is rarely either/or. The wise man seeks to minister in the both/and.
The Technological Reality: When Screens Become Sanctuaries
1. People in the USA have capitulated to the Internet.
Individuals in our nation, even believers, are being discipled exponentially more by their screens rather than in our sanctuaries. It is estimated that there are over 8.2 billion people in the world. Over 5.8 billion of them are online. That is 70.7% of the world’s population is online. It is estimated that USAmericans spend over 10 hours a day online; 5.4 hours browsing and paying bills and over 5 hours streaming. We have become a nation of watchers, if not voyeurs.
2. There is a spiritual cost of the USA becoming a digital nation.
a. Loss of Creativity.
We are losing our creativity. I used to limit my sons’ time on screen and would buy them a book of their choice and gave them reading times before bedtime. I told them, “When you play a video game you are involved in someone else’s imagination. You need time in your imagination!” When we lost our creativity, we move farther and farther away from being who we were created to be and that is a unique individual created in the image of God.
b. Loss of Identity.
We are losing our identity. When we meet, we share our stories, our present realities and our histories. I will share with you who I am by stating my job, my family, my sports teams, and my hobbies. Often, people feel that their reality is not aligned with who they hope that they would be. The result is that they do not feel that they can control their own lives. They are in a dead-end job, the bills are piling up, the kids are sick, the marriage relationship is in jeopardy. Life is not what they hoped that it would be. So, they go online to escape.
Online, I can be in control. I can be whomever I want to be. I can be male or female, rich or poor, communicate in different languages, and be a winner at my favorite games. I can shoot people, I can be crash my car in races, I can be the most desirable person in my universe, and I can be the King of my own online nation. If something bad happens, then I just reset and start over. What joy is brings to my heart, escapism at its best! My dopamine levels go off the charts. It is said that millennials feel that they can be their best selves when they are online.
The problem is that when I long for virtual reality more than dealing with my physical reality, then I lose my identity. I am less than who God created me to be. I am adrift in a sea of falsehoods and lies. I do not know who I am. When I live in the quagmire of uncertainty then I lose my ability to relate properly to others, I lose my ability to deal with conflict, and I have no foundation of standards to build my life upon to overcome the storms of life.
c. Loss of Truth
We are losing our handle on truth. The Internet is a wellspring of information. At one time, it was said that information doubles every 25 years. In 1982, it was stated that information doubled every 13 months. Today, it is estimated that information doubles every 12 hours. Accessing information is not the problem. Discerning what is truth and how to apply truthful information is the new currency of the 21st century.
I saw a post on Facebook that showed C.S. Lewis predicted the evils of social media when he wrote the following in in book, The Screwtape Letters.”
“My dear Wormwood: Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration, and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. Ensure the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognizing there is a problem and is in with himself. Keep up the good work uncle Screwtape”
That’s powerful! Who knew that the Screwtape Letters, released first in a newspaper in 1941, would be on target with society in 2025! The problem is that C. S. Lewis did not write this, and this is not a quote from the book. I am guessing that someone ran this through ChatGPT and said, “make this statement sound like C.S. Lewis wrote it.”
Pilate’s question to Jesus, who is the very definition of truth, as recorded in John 18:38, remains the question of the ages, “What is truth?” Fake quotes. Fake authors. Deep fake videos. Fake, fake, fake. Our initial response to anything we encounter online must be skeptical. We cannot give ourselves over to the virtual world and feed our minds only with content that agrees with our beliefs systems. We must cling to God’s Word as truth, “test the spirits,” and seek Godly wisdom and responses to worldly content.
d. Loss of Community.
We are losing our ability to fit into community. The silent global crisis that is alive and well in the USA is that people are lonely. The irony of the 21st century is that the greatest communication tool in the history of the world, the very tool that connects the world as never before, is also the very instrument that disassociates individuals from each other and produces a proliferation of isolation, division, and loneliness. This is such a problem in the United Kingdom and in Japan that both nations created a government department called “The Department of Loneliness.” In the USA, people are better connected online that ever before, but they lack true friendships and have no one to turn to when life knocks them down.
The Call of the Church: Seek, Save, and Send
This is just a snapshot of the reality that USAmericans are in need of our Savior, Jesus Christ. America is a mission field. It is the call of the Assemblies of God US Missions to Seek, Save, and Send.
1. Seek: Our vision is to ensure that every individual in the United States experiences the transformative power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and becomes a disciple serving in a local church.
2. Save: Our mission is to develop and empower nationwide ministries and outreaches that are strategic in evangelism and discipleship. We endorse and enable U.S. missionaries to share the gospel and to partner with Assemblies of God districts and ministry networks to fulfill the Great Commission.
3. Send: We support, endorse, and empower our missionaries to deliver the gospel strategically, collaborating with the Assemblies of God districts, churches, and various ministry networks to achieve the Great Commission.
So, what is to be your response to the needs of the United States being a vast and spiritually needy mission field?
First, partner with AGUS Missions. Instead of reinventing the wheel and duplicating precious resources to reach your Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria, seek partnership with AGUSM. They have a wealth of resources provided by and led by Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered men and women of God who “understand the times and know what to do.”
Second, rather than chase the latest church growth fads, attend the hyped-up seminar by the current church guru, or attempt to copy and paste the success of others to your context, I submit that you focus on two foundation, tried-and-try, old fashion themes. Should we proceed without these two themes then we risk attempting to seek, save, and send America in our own efforts and capabilities. Instead, we must stabilize our approaches by being grounded by these two themes.
The themes are: “We must usher people into the presence of God” and “We must allow God to fill us with His presence.” To state in a plainer way, “We must get people into the presence of God and then we must get God into the presence of people.”
We Mut Get People into the Presence of God
Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (NIV).
When people are in the presence of God, they have no recourse but to see how they line up to Truth, Righteousness, and Holiness. We are poor wretched sinners in need of a Savior. The Holy Spirit then takes over, breaks through the barriers and facades of our hearts, and brings healing and transformation. Example, Network211.
In a nation where people have lost their creativity, they have lost their identity, they have lost their moral compass because their truth is no longer the true north, and they are lonely, they need to get into the presence of Almighty God. They must see themselves as they were created to be and feel the love, acceptance, forgiveness, and transformation of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
One outcome of this is that we must reclaim our sanctuaries as being the House of God. Visitors may come into a beautiful cathedral, someone’s living room, or even a broken-down warehouse. But we pray that when they enter, they will feel the presence of Almighty God and know that they are standing on holy ground. This is God’s house. The light of Truth must shine so brightly that it expels all darkness and yet draws in even the hardest of hearts.
A corollary is that when people encounter God’s children, who are a temple of the Holy Spirit, they must feel intuitively that God is present. As believers, we must live life in such a manner that people will know we are different because we bring the presence of God with us. We must examine our hearts to see if our actions, words, and even our social media posts, reflect the glory of God in us. May the words of I Corinthians 2:4,5 define us “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (NIV).
We Must Get God’s Presence into the People
Acts 2:4 “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tonguesas the Spirit enabled them” (NIV).
We are well aware that before His ascension, Christ commanded His disciples to wait until they received power from on high. The reason, in my opinion, was that if they did not receive the power of the Holy Spirit, then they would have attempted to fulfill the Great Commission by their own might and strategies. Christianity then would have been a sect of Judaism and void of the presence of God and power. But we note that there were two immediate outcomes when the disciples experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and God’s presence in their lives.
1. The first outcome was that they were empowered to witness.
They were given a boldness to share their faith in power with signs and wonders. This resulted in people experiencing the presence and power of Christ firsthand in their lives. As Pentecostals, we are well aware of the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. They were empowered to live as believers in Christian community.
There were two aspects of life on Christian community:
- They were empowered corporately to live in community.
- They were empowered individually to live in community.
a. They were empowered corporately to live in community. The 3,000 that were “added to their number that day” (Acts 2:41) were from all walks of life, rich and poor, slave and free, Jews and proselytes, male and female, blue collar and white collar. It was only by the presence and power of God that they were freed from all the trappings of their humanity and came together in unity as the family of God. They had a new identity, a new family, a new reason for being, and a new goal in life. The presence of God in them empowered them to fulfill the will of God for their lives. Only then did they truly become the persons that they were created to be.
The results were staggering. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).
You can have a dynamic leader who will pump up people to rally around a common cause but ultimately it will far short unless God is present. So, the takeaway for us in the 21st century is not that we must automatically imitate their behaviors and actions for they did not produce these results on their own. They were inspired and empowered by the presence of the Holy Spirit of God to overflowing in their hearts and minds. The takeaway for us in the 21st century is that we must do whatever it takes to “get the presence of God in us.” When we do then we are properly aligned with our Creator and position rightly to allow God to use us to proclaim the first century Gospel with contemporary methods and strategies.
My students at the Bible School in Arusha, Tanzania would beg me to just give them the best church growth strategy, and they would follow it. They believed that a large church was the best indicator of a healthy and successful church. So, I told them the common factor of the popular church growth models of that day was this. The leader of each one of them fell on his face before God, with members of his church, and sought God’s will for that specific situation and community and did not relent until God’s answer came. Presence precedes power.
b. They were empowered individually to live in community. As we journey through life, we must continually align our heart’s desires and our mind’s attention on Jesus. In the Old Testament, believers visited the Temple in Jerusalem for they knew that the presence of God was there. There was the outer court, the inner court, and the Holy of Holies. The High Priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies but only once a year and after following strict purification rites. Otherwise, he would face death. Being made holy before entering the Holy of Holies and into the presence of God was very serious.
After the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we see that our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the very place where God dwells. We have an outer court for our coworkers, an inner court for our acquaintances, a court of Women and of Israel for friends and family, a Holy Place for our spouse, and a Holy of Holies into the inner most being of our heart and mind. The question is whether we will allow the Holy Spirit in to bring healing, transformation, and wholeness into our personal Holy of Holies. An internal spiritual battle is waged when we neglect the presence of God in our most sacred space in our heart. When we do not focus on the presence of God in our personal lives then we begin to deteriorate spiritually though outwardly our friends will not be able to tell. We must throw back the curtains and open wide the windows and doors of our personal Holy of Holies and allow the Holy Spirit to daily do a Spring cleaning. When individuals are living in the presence and giftings of the Holy Spirit then the community is strengthened and aligned with the will of God.
Conclusion: A Call to Realign Our Digital Lives with God’s Presence
America is a mission field. Technology reveals deep needs: loss of creativity, identity, truth, and community. These reiterates that we were built for community, interaction with flesh and blood humanity. This MUST be the area where the Church thrives for the Church exists to be community, the family of God. As a Church and as Spirit-filled and Spirit-empowered believers, we must seek to get people into the presence of God, and we must get God into the presence of people. May those who God directs into our lives feel His awesome power and amazing love. May they feel compelled to respond and feel the love, acceptance, and unity of being in the family of God.
The task is before us. May God find us faithful. All is for the glory of God.
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🙌 Call to Action
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Together, we can live out the Great Commission in the Digital New World.