Changed360

Do you ever feel the draw of your phone as if it is nagging to be freed from your pocket? Few are the people that do not wrestle with this distraction in some way. I believe this is a battle I’ve fought all of my adult life, given that social media and smart phones were introduced in my early teens. I’ve often thought about how thankful I am that it wasn’t any earlier. I don’t think that complete elimination of smart phones is the answer. However, I do believe that as Christ followers we need to be careful how we handle our time and intentional with it as well. When we are distanced by our phones it doesn’t help us to cultivate relationships or enjoy God’s creation, and often distracts us from spending time with God in prayer or in his word. While there is no exact guide for how a Christ follower should use today’s phone, there is scripture we can look at to help us know if we are using them in a way that is pleasing to God. Mark 12: 28-31 says “Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered him ” The first of all the commandments is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment, and the second, like it is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Now, you may be thinking, how in the world could this possibly relate to my phone but bear with me. The first thing Jesus states is that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we allow our phones (or anything else) to keep us from God’s word, spending time in prayer, or distracting us from responsibilities and intentionality are we really loving him with all that we have? We must examine how we are stewarding the time God has given us. I don’t think this is a one time assessment but something to come back to over and over again. We are prone to gravitate towards easy, I know that from experience and picking up these phones is easy. Secondly, Jesus states that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Are our phones and social media helping us to be a better neighbor? In some ways they may be but in many ways they are not. We are so “connected” and see so much of many peoples lives but this is only a veneer in comparison to what real life relationships are intended to be. God intended for us to have relationships with fellow believers that goes beyond the surface. Social media/smart phones can be a good tool for cultivating connection but it will never compare to face to face conversation and time with others. We can almost certainly say that smart phones and social media are here to stay. But it is of great importance that we don’t neglect real life and most importantly our relationship with God because of these distractions. I feel what I am writing in my soul and I just want it to be a reminder to anyone (myself included) who reads this that we have to fight against the norm and cultivate relationships with the people God has blessed us with and again most importantly with God himself. I don’t want to miss out on deeper relationship with God because of these distractions.

Grow in grace.

– Faith