Rhythms of Spiritual Growth -Are You Tethered to Your Phone?
Growing in our walk with Jesus doesn’t happen overnight. One wonderful retreat or conference or church service isn’t going to fix all the things in us that need to be fixed.
Walking with God and growing closer to Him is a journey. A process. Although mountaintop experiences are encouraging and can spur us along, it’s the daily rhythms, the consistent little movements in the right direction that produce real progress.
I teach private guitar and clarinet lessons. I always tell my students that they will do much better with a consistent 15 minutes of practice per day, each day, than if they forget about it all week and cram a couple hours in right before their lesson.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Whichever picture you prefer, it’s how life works.
What are the daily rhythms - the short bursts of “practice” - that help us the renew our minds so we’re not conformed to the pattern of the world? (Romans 12:1-2) Spiritual disciplines. I prefer the term “spiritual practices” because they are things we practice. “Discipline” sounds so rigid and legalistic, however that term is more often associated with the Christian practices we’re talking about. If you Google “spiritual practices”, you turn up a lot of non Christian spirituality.
There are quite a few “traditional” spiritual disciplines, which I’ve written about at other times. If you’d like to look at those, you can check out these blog posts on those topics. I also have a guide to the basic spiritual disciplines that you can download here.
Five Steps to Starting a Spiritual Discipline
Reading and Studying the Bible
Bible Memorizing and Meditating
One non-traditional spiritual discipline that I have particularly needed recently is that of unplugging. It’s not one that you will see on a typical list, but I’m finding it really helpful!
Spring, this year especially, is a very busy time for me. I’m over my head in details for planning our church’s women’s retreat, plus all the planning for our homeschool co op classes and membership for the fall. It would be very easy for me to stay tethered to my phone and/or laptop for the majority of the day. My brain gets an adrenalin buzz from hopping from one detail to the next, checking email, responding to texts, solving problems, and planning details.
I enjoy that for a while, but I end up feeling like my brain and my body are in different places. I walk around in my head and in the virtual world of texts, emails, and Google sheets, but I’m not actually present with my family or the world around me. If I’m ever going to neglect something important (turning off the stove top when I’m done, looking at my child in the eyes when he’s telling me about his day, etc), it’s when I’m stuck in my head.
Unplugging means to step away from the computer AND away from the phone for a little while. I always need to remind myself that nothing terrible is going to happen if I don’t check my phone/texts/emails/social media for a little while.
As I asked myself questions about my own media practices and phone addiction, I discovered that in some ways, it’s a control issue. If I KNOW what’s going on, then it gives me a modicum of control over it. (Which may or may not be true.) If I KNOW what the weather will be for my drive to my son’s college to pick him up, then I feel like I have more control over it. (Which I don’t.) Or if I track my teen kids while they’re driving, I will keep them from getting into an accident. (Also not true.) If I check my texts and emails for the people I need to respond to me about the projects I’m managing, I’ll somehow stay more on top of things. (Maybe true, but not really.) Or, someone might need me RIGHT NOW and if I’m not checking my texts right away, I won’t be able to help them! (This is probably pride or something along those lines - welcome to my dysfunction!)
It’s OK to not be available to the outside world all the time. It’s OK to take time to return a text or answer an email. Not everything needs to be done immediately.
What I did in this process is really the BUILD method I’ve talked about before. I was a aware (“Be aware”) of an issue in my life - I felt disconnected because I was living in my phone and computer. I used journaling to “Uncover the lie” - the ideas that my instant knowledge of different things gave me control over them. Also, there’s the lie that I could be desperately needed at any given moment and must be constantly available. I could spend time “Investigating the source” of how I ended up believing these lies. However, in this case, I suspect it’s not some habit I picked up from childhood, but rather just a product of my sinful nature and our current “instant information” cell phone culture. I then reminded myself that all those lies aren’t true. Instead, God is in control of the weather, all the things don’t need to be responded to immediately, I’m not constantly needed on an emergency basis, etc. Using the spiritual discipline of stepping away from my devices helps to reinforce the truth, break the addiction and “Do what it right” - live life in the present where I am, instead of always being somewhere else mentally.
For an overview of the BUILD method, you can download it here.
Do you find yourself always tethered to your phone and computer? How do you pull away?