Your God-given intuition is endangered. Here’s how to protect it.
For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)
So many AI conversations these days are pitting man v. machines. But that’s not quite accurate theologically. For the Christian, it’s not man v. machine, but God v. machine because we believe God is working through us (see Philippians 2:13).
While AI appears to be the supremely creative being on the planet today, it is not and never will be. Because only you and I have the Creator God dwelling in us—the One who made the human eye, the northern lights, and eight million species of animals.
That’s why we must resist the temptation to outsource our thinking to AI. Because when we do, we miss out on our most unique, creative, God-given ideas. And over time, we atrophy our intuition.
That, I fear, is one of the things most at risk of becoming extinct in our lifetime. Not gorillas, water, or oil, but God-given intuition which former Harvard professor Dr. Laura Huang defines as “compressed reasoning.” Intuition is the stuff of “aha moments” that helps us serve others through the ministry of excellence in our work.
But intuition dies if thinking dies.
Every time you wrestle with a hard problem yourself, you make a deposit into your intuition. Do that thousands of times and those deposits compound into the capacity to know things before you can explain why. I believe intuition is one of the primary ways the Spirit speaks to us in our work, which brings me to the fifth and final biblical guardrail in this series:
Guardrail #5: Don’t use AI as a substitute for thinking and intuition.
Here’s a super simple but critical practice for heeding this guardrail: Think before you prompt. Before you ask AI for help thinking through any problem, use your God-given brain and nothing else for a minimum of 10 minutes.
For example, when I'm writing these devotionals, I start by taking a walk and outlining them off the top of my head without looking at any notes or asking AI for ideas. This is almost always where my best ideas come from. It is only after that walk that I may use AI to help me research and fill in gaps.
Whatever your version of that walk looks like, think before you prompt today to protect your God-given intuition.
I pray this series has helped you establish some biblical guardrails for working with AI. Want help remembering these guardrails? Download this graphic and put it in your line of sight wherever you work.
