LEARNING DAILY

 

Isaiah 26:3, You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, whose thoughts are fixed on You! (New living Translation)

 

The last few weeks I have been taking a thought or two from the message preached at Community Bible Church where we attend. Dr. Ed newton, Lead Pastor, has begun a sermon series on trends or topics we face today. This weekend he discussed the amount of time people spend on technology – especially time spent on their cell phone looking at social media and everything else the phone is used for. One of his thoughts was a question about whether people are tech-savvy or in tech-slavery. He spent a great amount of his message on the distraction caused by the cell phone and what it has done to those who are so distracted. You will need to find the message at OnlineChurch.com if you are interested.

 

That short introduction regarding the message has led me to the thought I want to center on today. I have written about distractions before; yes, all of us have those things that we spend time with or doing that might be better spent in other things. Yes, we all have our excuses for not spending time in God’s Word or in prayer or using our gifts to serve Him. Perhaps, the distraction of technology, the time we spend on our smart phone, should be something we stop allowing to dominate our time.

 

The question Pastor Newton asked toward the end of his message was this. “What if we treated our Bible like our cell phone?” To consider an answer to that, let me ask a few questions regarding your thoughts about your phone. How much time do you spend on your phone during the day? While at work? I see employees in stores on their cell phones all the time; you do too. Would you go back to your house or apartment to get your cell phone? I remember driving back home after forgetting mine – and I drove back home (which was 20 miles home and 20 miles back) – just to get my phone. Do you take your phone to the dinner table or have to have it at the table when you go to a restaurant? Pastor asked a few more questions. Do you use your smart phone to give you directions? I get lost even then! Where do you go to find answers to your situation or circumstance? Do you spend time on your smart phone and suddenly realize you have been looking at it for an hour or more? I admit, this might not be my phone, but this happens all the time when I play solitaire on my computer. What about the time you spend shopping with your smart phone. Okay, enough; you get the idea, right!?

 

What would happen if you substituted your Bible for your phone in the above questions? The question becomes why our technology is more important than the Bible. Okay, I know you have a Bible app on your phone. So do I – but I seldom use it. That may be the closest we come to having our Bible with us. I know you cannot carry it around with you in the workplace. But do you see the point of the discussion. We cannot allow technology to become more to us than God’s Word. We cannot allow technology to be a distraction from reading/studying/ meditating on God’s Word or an excuse to be all God wants us to be.

 

It was a message that provoked one to give some serious thought about the technology’s influence on our society today. I think Pastor’s thought that we live in a state of perpetual distraction due to our technology is something we must not allow in our lives.