Step Away From the Phone
Hi, my name is Amy, and I am a phone-a-holic. I’m in recovery, of course, but I’m still an addict. I likely always will be. There’s the withdrawal, the shakes, the muscle memory that keeps me reaching for my phone in my pocket when it isn’t there because I put it on the countertop during dinner. There’s a part of me that will always try to feed myself with whatever I can find behind that phone screen. They say old habits die hard, and I’m here to tell you that, in this case, they’re right. It’s really hard to let go of something that makes you feel so connected. It’s even harder when you don’t realize that something is actually disconnecting you from your actual life. From the people right in front of your face. From your own agency. From your soul. From Jesus.
My desperate desire for connection to my phone was so bad, I found myself searching for my phone on the way to take a shower. Yes, that’s right, I needed to take it with me . . . into the shower. Who does that? Somehow, I had gotten to a point where I couldn’t be left totally alone to connect with my own thoughts in the quiet of the shower.
See what I mean by addict?
Enough was enough. I was tired of bowing to my phone. Of needing it like I needed water, or air, or food (or apparently, a shower). I was done with letting this little rectangle tell me what I ought to think about. With letting this little device steal my agency, my time, and my creativity. In one handheld smartphone, I was looking for every kind of connection I could find.
But when I put it down at the end of the day? When I let my head hit the pillow and my phone was safely charging on the nightstand? Well, friend, I was still starving.
Starving for time with my family.
Starving for authentic and real-life community.
Starving for the kind of connection to God and the people He put in my path that would actually leave me satisfied for the long haul.
Maybe you’ve been there, too. Maybe you’ve been grabbing on to your phone for dear life, looking to connect with information, with news, with online shopping, with text messages, with emails, with lives on social media. And maybe, like me, you’re still starving. Maybe you need to be empowered to let go. To change. To make a switch to your spiritual diet.
If that’s you, then let me bless you with this hard-learned lesson from my own life: you won’t find what you’re looking for behind the screen of your smartphone. You can keep scrolling, keep texting, keep posting, and you’ll still be starving for the real, lasting connection you hope to find there.
What can we do to change that? Beyond just trying in our own strength to put down the phone and find what we’re looking for elsewhere, what can we do to ensure we’re not starving ourselves with each swipe? How can we feed ourselves with something that will satisfy that deep hunger for connection?
Well, a big part of that is identifying the lies we believe and how we can find true nourishment. After all, our minds are connected to our souls and our souls are connected to our bodies.
Our heads inform our hearts, and our hearts inform our hands. We can’t simply change a behavior; we have to change our hearts. And that, friend, is something only God can do.
Listen, do I think phones are evil? Of course not! Phones have the potential to do a lot of good. They let us communicate and connect in a temporal, convenient way. But do I think our phones could be starving our souls? Absolutely. Because each time we pick them up in an effort to feed our need to connect, we’re inadvertently cutting ourselves off from an actual connection to the stuff that will satisfy: our people, our community, and ultimately, our God.
The devil deals in the business of lies; it’s really his only weapon. One of the lies that he peddles to us about God is that we can’t trust Him to provide for us. We can’t trust that He will take care of us. That He will provide peace in our anxiety. That He will bring joy in our jails. That He will put hope in place of despair. We can’t believe God will actually love us as His beloved children.
And when we don’t believe God will provide and care for us as His beloved, we start grabbing for anything we can find to do it ourselves. So much of my need to stay connected to my phone really was because I believed I had to be in charge of everything. If I stopped, I wasn’t sure God would provide for me. In all kinds of ways—emotional, financial, spiritual, relational—I looked to my phone to provide what I didn’t trust God would.
I think we all do this in some way. We spend hours on Pinterest, trying to put together the perfect outfit or the best mantel so we can feel good about ourselves, but we still end up comparing and complaining at the end of the day. We deep dive into the news so we can stay informed and have some sense of control, but we emerge feeling stressed, doomed, and out of control. We play endless games just to take a break from life, but what we gain is an addiction to the short hits of dopamine that keep us coming back for more. We reach out and text everyone we know when we feel rejected, hoping that salvation will come through validation of any kind (as my pastor likes to say). We judge, like, and shame on our social media platform of choice, only to find it is our own hearts that are more judged, disliked, and shamed in the end. We’re looking to provide for ourselves with the smartest tool we have at our fingertips, but in doing so, we’re cutting ourselves off from the power of real, lasting connecting with a God who promises to provide all we need.
So, how do we change our steady diet? How do we overcome what may be a downright addiction to feeding ourselves with the connection we hope to find in our phones?
What we need to know is the same thing that Jesus needed to know very early on in His public ministry: you are beloved. When we believe we are God’s beloved, we can rest. We can rest from grabbing, from consuming, from entertaining in order to feel loved. We can put down the phone, once and for all.
Amy Seiffert is the author of Grace Looks Amazing on You and Starved, and is on the teaching team at Brookside Church. She is an affiliate Cru staff member and a regular YouVersion Bible teacher. She loves to travel and speak (and try new foods on all of her adventures!). Amy is married to her college sweetheart, Rob, and they live in Bowling Green, Ohio, with their three kids.
