173: Is Your Phone Keeping You From Spending Time With God?

When I talk to women about living out their faith, they will often tell me that they live busy lives and find it hard to fit in time with God. I get it. Even though I’m an empty nester, I still have a busy life. Once my kids flew the nest, I quickly filled the time I used to spend with them and taking care of their needs.

It doesn’t matter if you are single, have a young family, work outside the home, or are retired. Life today is busy. That means we must be intentional about spending time with God. Our time with God is the foundation we need to be able to live out our faith. If we don’t spend time with him in his word or in prayer, how else will we know what it means to live out our faith?

In episode 173, I will share how one thing most of us have in common can keep us from spending time with God. Yes, this episode comes from my own experience. So if you feel like I’m stepping on your toes, know that this is for me, too.

I think we all can agree that we live in a world full of distractions. It is so easy to get sidetracked from doing the important things to either scroll on social media, binge-watch our favorite show, or catch up on the latest celebrity gossip.

I would say one of the biggest distractions we have is our phones. We live in a time when our phones are with us everywhere we go. If you’re like my family, we no longer have a landline. We just use our cell phones.

And, as someone remarked to me the other day, our lives are on our phones. And that is so true. Especially if you keep a calendar on your phone and use your phone to check email, pay bills, read the newspaper, and stay in touch with friends and family. Our phones perform most of the functions we need to help us live our lives.

When someone tells me they don’t know where to fit time with God into their schedule, I will ask them to track their time for a day or two to see where they are spending their time. This includes writing down when they get on their phone for any reason.

And almost without exception, they will come back and say, I spend too much time on my phone.

I know that is true of me a lot of the time. I’m trying my best to put my phone in its proper place until I spend time with God each day.

And almost without exception, they will come back and say, I spend too much time on my phone.

I know that is true of me a lot of the time. I’m trying my best to put my phone in its proper place until I spend time with God each day.

I’ve shared in past episodes some things I’ve done to set boundaries around my phone use. The key to good boundaries, though, is to use them consistently. It’s one thing to have a plan, and it’s a whole other thing to actually follow through with the plan and respect the boundaries you have put in place.

Friend, I believe setting boundaries around your phone use is the best way to ensure you can find time to spend with God each day. Yes, you may have little ones that distract you, or you may have other distractions. But I firmly believe that our phones just add to these other distractions.

Three Tips for Setting Boundaries On Your Phone

The first one is the most simple and easiest to implement, at least from my perspective. And that is to leave your phone on the charger or in the place where you keep it at night until you’ve had your time with God.

I keep mine on my nightstand to charge at night. When I’ve implemented this in the past, I will look at the home screen to make sure my mom or my kids hadn’t tried to contact me during the night or early morning for some reason and would leave it right there. I wouldn’t even open my phone to look at anything else.

So, I suggest just leaving your phone in a place away from where you are doing your quiet time and don’t get on it until you are done.

The second tip I have is to utilize your phone to set boundaries. The other night, when I looked at my phone to see how I could restrict my time on it, I looked at the focus app that is found on iPhones. I’m sure other brands may have a similar feature. As I said, I did not set anything up, and I’m still not 100% how to use the focus app effectively. But I did see where you can set times to only access certain apps during that time. So if you use a Bible app on your phone for your quiet time, you could set a focus time that would allow you to only use that app.

I think you can set up focus times for various activities. I know I saw settings for personal time and work time. I’m definitely going to dive into this app and see what I can figure out. I’ll be sharing in the new Live It Out Community group what I learn. I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can check out the group.

The third tip I have is to set time limits on different apps. I have done this with Facebook, Instagram, and my favorite game. It has done wonders to cut down on the time I spend on my phone. I decided if I need to post on social media, I can always do it on my computer. I’ve found I spend much less time on social media when I’m accessing it from my computer.

So, look in your phone’s settings to see what your most used apps are. And if you think they are keeping you from spending time with God or doing important things, then set a limit on them.

The goal of these three tips is to reduce reliance on your phone. As I’ve already mentioned, our phones are our lives. And if we want to grow in our relationship with God, spend more time in community with others, and live out our faith well, then we need to put our phones in their proper place in our lives.

I hope these tips will cause you to at least think about how your phone may be keeping you from spending time with God.