Phone and Control

Episode Notes:

This episode contains the following program: "A Self-Controlled Life"

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Dannah Gresh: What if I asked you to step outside for fifteen minutes . . . without your phone?

What would you feel? Panic? Relief? Stress?

Arlene Pellicane explains why it matters.

Arlene Pellicane: See, the phone tells us this is how we become like God, because it gives us so much knowledge, control over our lives, knowledge that we weren’t necessarily made to bear, that you can know everything—it’s too much. So those kinds of things make us realize when we’re outside, it puts back into proper perspective the sense of awe: “You are God, I am not.”

Dannah: Today we’ll talk perspective on phones and God.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Your phone can help you find your way in a new city, order takeout from your favorite restaurant, or even listen to your favorite podcast (thanks for choosing us today). But many of us are struggling to use our phones in a balanced way. 

Arlene Pellicane is an author and thought leader on what our mobile devices are doing to us. Our producer, Michelle, recently sat down with Arlene for some wise perspective on our phones. Pull up a chair and join their conversation. 

Michelle Hill: Help me understand what I need to do to not be so preoccupied with my phone. How do I put things in place?

Arlene: Your phone is there to help you meet your goals. Your phone is there to help you have better relationships. So asking yourself, “Is my phone doing that? Is checking it every half hour really helping me have better relationships? If I just checked twice a day, would it make such a big difference in my life to know this at two o’ clock in the afternoon versus four o’ clock in the afternoon?” You realize, “I guess it’s really not that big of a deal. It’s not like someone’s talking to me at 2:01, ‘Did you see that photo?’” You don’t have to watch stuff so instantly.

So I think asking yourself those bigger-picture goals: “What is my phone supposed to be doing for me, and is it doing a good job?” If you realize, “Wait a minute; my phone is really distracting me from being fully present . . .” Truly being fully present does mean you do get bored sometimes! Your family, your friends, your boss, they’re not thrilling twenty-four hours a day. There is some boredom in there, and that’s okay.

Even asking friends, family members, “Hey, do you feel like I’m listening to you when we’re together, or do you think I’m distracted by my phone?” Keep each other accountable to that, because this is a problem for all of us. Yet if the true goal of the phone is to help us to get along, to know each other better, then for most of us it’s kind of doing the opposite.

Michelle: What else can we be doing?

Arlene: I think pre-deciding is a great thing. When you know you have a swath of time, or maybe it’s a vacation time you’re looking at, or it’s just the daily grind you’re wanting to do, take out a piece of paper. Ask yourself, “What would the ideal day look like? What are things I want to do? Who is someone I want to reach out to?” Don’t make this crazy, but just get those big rocks in, what’s really important to you. Then realize, “Okay, I can see now that I really only have half an hour for goofing off on my phone.” 

Truly say, “Okay, from 7:00 at night to 7:30 I’m just going to goof off with my media, have my digital candy,” as I like to call it. “Then I’m going to get back on track and do these other things that I’ve already planned.”

Michelle: I was listening a couple of days to a podcast with a health coach. He was talking about getting outside without your phone so that you don’t have any notifications going, anything else going. My heart sort of started racing when I thought about getting outside . . .

Arlene: “I’m going to go out without my phone?!”

Michelle: I know! 

Arlene: “What if I want to take a photo of something?”

Michelle: Exactly! Or I want to do this, or I want to do that!

I know that you also are a proponent of taking a hike. Just get outside.

Arlene: Yes. It is true. Get outside. Think of nature, creation, declaring the glory of God. When you get out there you see the heavens and the earth, you see how small you are compared to the created world. You realize, “Wait a minute; the whole world doesn’t revolve around me?” The sense of awe comes back into your life, that He is God and I am not. That’s really healthy.

See, the phone tells us this is how we become like God, because it gives us so much knowledge, control over our lives, knowledge that we weren’t necessarily made to bear, that you can know everything. It’s too much. Those kinds of things make us realize when we’re outside, it puts back into proper perspective the sense of awe: “You are God, I am not.”

I was just listening to this neuroscientist from Stanford; his name is Dr. Andrew Huberman. He was talking about how the very first thing in the morning that he suggests is that you either take a walk or run or you bike. Studies have shown that the sooner you get out there and you get out in nature and you move forward, you start seeing things. Your amygdala calms down, like, “It’s going to be okay.”

I know there are many people who are listening who are free spirits, who do not want to be manipulated. Part of how you are wired is, “Oh no, no, you cannot control me, and you cannot manipulate me.” If you are a that person, I think lean into that and say, “I will not be manipulated by a tech company. Stare down at this phone because it’s telling me I was just tagged in a photo. I’m onto you, and I’m not going to do that.”

A lot of it is turning off all your notifications, keeping it away from you. If you’re expecting a call and you know, “I have to pick someone up,” I get it. It’s in your pocket. But if you’re not in that situation, it could be potentially in another room of your house. It’s on; it’s just like a normal phone. Try to put physical distance in your environment, if you’re able to do that. Really try to think of ways, “How can I really make this be a tool?” It’s that whole idea of, “I will go online with purpose.” I can say what I’m going to do on my phone before I do it, versus, “Oh, let me pick up my phone and see all it does.” It’s like, “What am I here to do?”

Michelle: You talked about social media being a tool, our phone being a tool. How do you see that our phone is a tool that God is using?

Arlene: You can seek out godly material; you can listen to sermons; you can listen to podcasts. Even in learning new things; if you have to change the oil in your car and you want to learn how to do that, you can do that on your phone. It’s this idea of, yes, it can do all these good things. But we’re human, and our human nature is fallen. We don’t gravitate towards these things.

Dannah: Such good thoughts from Arlene Pellicane, the author of Calm, Cool, and Connected: Five Digital Habits for a More Balanced Life. It's a great resource for helping us put our phone in perspective. Also, it's a favorite book of mine! I got a big wake up call when that book challenged me with this question: was I spending more time talking to my husband at bedtime or more time on my phone? Ouch!

Arlene is so practical. I know you are going to find many helpful tips and ideas in her book. Again, the title is Calm, Cool, and Connected. To make it easy, visite ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and find today's episode. We'll be sure to include a link to where you can get a copy of that book. Arlene will be sure to encourage you to get outside, look up, and stand in awe of God.

Speaking of which, I was staying with Robert and Nancy Wolgemuth recently and noticed how he locked and loaded his morning quiet time with the Lord the night before. His motto: “Throne before phone.” As in throne of God. I like that! Michelle also sat down with Robert to discuss this whole idea.

Michelle: Robert, I have heard from several people within the Revive Our Hearts offices that you like to challenge them with “throne before the phone.”

Robert: That’s right.

Michelle: Where does that come from?

Robert: My late wife, Bobbie. We said goodbye to her in 2014. For two-and-a-half years I shepherded ovarian cancer with her until she stepped into heaven.

Well, for probably ten years leading up to her stepping into heaven, she taught a young mom’s Bible study. This idea, “throne before the phone,” came from Bobbie.

The idea of the power of the telephone, the power of the cell phone, is unmistakable. Part of it is that it’s a distraction from important things, or from essential things, or from relationships. You walk into a restaurant and you see a family of four, or six guys who are colleagues, and they’re on their phones. They’re not talking to each other. 

When I fell in love with Nancy (and I fell in love with her first), I thought, I’m going to send Nancy a verse or two in the morning that kind of jumps off the page to me. That was in March of 2015. I’m going to say (I’m not bragging; this is fact), I bet I haven’t missed five mornings since then of getting up and reading the Scripture and shooting her verses that jump off the page to me. I text them to her.

I had completely forgotten about this interview, so I’m not showing off because of this.

Michelle: What did you text her this morning?

Robert: This is today at 5:52 a.m.. This is from Psalm 65:4: “How blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to you, to dwell in your courts.” Then I couldn’t help myself; I had to do another one right behind it. “By awesome deeds you answer in righteousness, O God our salvation.”

I do an Old Testament and a New Testament. The New Testament was (this is amazing): “One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?’” (John 6:8–9).

So I sent that to Nancy. Sometimes I’ll put a comment on it. I did this morning. I said, “This is us! You and me in the hands of the Master, overwhelmed that He would take us in His hands and break us. I love you so.”

So, the phone has given me a chance to do that. The challenge is, be selective on how you use this. It’s a tool, it’s not a toy.

The truth is, I’m a news junkie. I confess it; I’m a news junkie. During the night, things happen all over the world. So when I sit down, Bible in my hand, coffee on the table next to me, I desperately want to see what happened last night. You’re nodding, but you don’t know how much I want to hear about the election, about what’s happening in Ukraine . . . That’s all important stuff.

I haven’t broken this many times, but I will not check the news before at least I send to Nancy a verse. I don’t make it so hard on myself, like I’m not going to check the news until I send . . . I have Nancy, I have my two daughters, and two close friends, two men friends. I’ve sent them texts for years, literally. I couldn’t do that without the phone; it’s an amazing tool. But it’s not a toy, and it can be an enormous distraction.

I believe that God gave the people who created this technology the creativity to do that. They probably didn’t give Him credit, but they couldn’t have done anything without Him. Just look at what He’s created.

Our expression is, “Isn’t God amazing?” When we see something like this, I look at my iPhone lying here on the table, and the first thought I have is, Isn’t God amazing?

Michelle: Now, how hard was this to put into a habit of looking to the Word of God before you read the news? You love the news. The news is ever-changing. Something’s always happening, something’s always new, something’s always bigger and better.

Robert: Constantly!

Michelle: The Word of God is unchanging. There’s nothing new to it. How hard was that, to put this unchanging Word in front of something that’s always changing, new?

Robert: Every life change begins with a single decision, and you have to declare that. If you have somebody you love that holds you accountable, tell them.

Michelle: Yes.

Robert: But I’m going to say, the answer to your question is, give me forty days. You can start a new habit if you do it for forty days. After forty days you forget what it was like before that forty-day period started. Sometimes it’s just shear guts. “I’m going to tough this out.” Okay, you fail on the third day; don’t throw your hands up in despair. Go back to day one, start all over again. But if you can do anything for forty days straight, you’re golden. It will become a habit that you won’t be able to stop if you wanted to.

It’s like a diet. Okay, you splurge; you get a big ice cream cone. Don’t throw your hands up in despair and say, “I’m worthless, I can’t keep a promise.” Take a deep breath and start all over again. If you’ve seen the bumper sticker “One day at a time,” have you seen that bumper sticker? Do you know whose bumper sticker that is? That’s AA. That’s Alcoholics Anonymous. They know exactly what we’re talking about here. You slip, and you say, “You know what? I’m going to go back and I’m going to start tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a new day; one day at a time.”

That’s the answer. Start a new habit, and give yourself some grace in case you slip. Don’t throw your hands up in despair. Go back and start again. You can do it. But forty days, if you do something that you want to start as a new habit, in forty days, you’re in.

Dannah: Forty days of throne before the phone. I’m in! Are you? 

That was Nancy's husband, Robert Wolgemuth. Don't you just love that man's voice . . . and his heart?

You know what this really comes down to? Self-control. When we keep compulsively checking our phones, we’re under the control of our device. I want to be under the control of the Holy Spirit! 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian sat down to talk about the foundation for self-control and why a lack of self-control leaves you vulnerable—whether it’s in the area of phone use, losing your temper, overspending . . . or almost anything else.

Here’s Mary reminding us that self-control begins with God’s Word. 

Mary Kassian: You need to have right thinking in order to have right living, and that is the foundation for self-control, for that control that reins in. It says "yes" to the things we should say "yes" to and "no" to the things we should say "no" to, on a daily basis, every choice we make.

So the alarm clock rings, and it's time to get up, saying "yes" to getting up, and saying "no" to sleeping away the day and perhaps giving up that time that we have in the morning to focus on God's Word and to be quiet and still before Him. That's what self-control is. It's having a sound mind in order to make wise, godly choices.

Nancy: And with that sound mind, then the ability to govern ourselves, to put restraint on, to curb unhealthy or fleshly desires and appetites. As we get into this, we see there are so many, many areas of our lives that are affected. But I think we want to talk for a moment about why it's so important.

If we don't have self-control . . . There's an interesting verse in Proverbs that paints such a vivid word picture.) "A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls." That maybe doesn't compute for us today because we don't have walls around our cities. But in the Old Testament era, it was real important to have walls around cities.

Mary: It was important, because if a city didn't have walls, an enemy could come marching right in and take over, take control. That image is so powerful. If we don't have self-control, if we don't have self-discipline, if we don't have godliness in our character to say "yes" to what we ought to say "yes" to and to say "no" to what we ought to say "no" to, then it's like we're opening ourselves up to enemy attack.

We are weak, and we are vulnerable, and we lack the strength that we need in order to proceed through life and make good decisions. 6:47

Nancy: When I think about the need for self-control, I tend to think about it in areas of words that start with "T." One is, discipline in my thoughts, what I think about. I don't know if men do this so much, I can't speak for them, but I know as women, and me, I just have this seed of a resentful thought or an anxious thought, and then I mull it over and over.

I don't put the brakes on. I don't bring that thought into captivity, to the obedience of Christ. Then I find it snowballs. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Then I find it comes out in some really unhealthy or unkind way, because I didn't rein in my thoughts. So our thoughts are an area where we need self-control.

Mary: And that issue of reining in is so tied to the meaning of sophron. It's putting on the brakes, reining in, it's like having the ability to stop that train from going down the hill and getting involved in a big crash. We crash in our lives because we haven't had that in our emotions, our feelings . . .

Nancy: . . . in our marriages, in relationships, in the workplace. It has to do with our temperament, our emotions. We say, "I'm just a more emotional person." That's alright, until our emotions get out of control, and then we say, "Oh, it's just that time of the month, or it's this season of my life, or I can't help the way I feel." We're not taking responsibility to rein in our emotions, which is the fruit of not reining in the way we think.

So we've got thoughts; we've got temperament. Then, I find if those areas of my life aren't reined in, invariably it will come out in mytongue—the way we talk. How many of us have said words, or have been the victim of others saying words to us that are just in the heat of the moment in a marriage or with a roommate? You get hurt; you just lash out. What happened there?

Mary: You can't take those words back. Once you've spoken it, it is spoken, and as much as you apologize and ask forgiveness, it is there, something that you said.

Nancy: I heard a woman Bible teacher recently speaking about James 3 and about control of the tongue. And she told a story from decades ago where she said something really hurtful to a relative of hers. She tried to make it right; she's tried to apologize, but there's been a breach in that relationship ever since.

As she was teaching this, she just broke down. You could tell it was still so fresh with her, the regret that she said that one thing that has wrecked a relationship.

Now, thank God, there's grace, and by His grace relationships can be healed. But how much better to have the check on the tongue, the brakes, the filter to stop it before the words come out and cause all kinds of havoc and damage!

Mary: Because it does. And in so many marriages it's not the big out-of-control things, it's those little things that are out of control: the words, the sharp words, the criticism, the negativity, the nagging—all sorts of things with the tongue.

That's why we talked about slander in one of our sessions earlier. Slander is an illustration that we don't revere God. It's also an indication that we don't have self-control.

Nancy: Here's another "T" word where self-control is needed, and that's in relation to our time.

Mary: Mmm. Ouch.

Nancy: God gives every one of us twenty-four hours a day, yet most of us today are feeling breathless and busy and overwhelmed. It may be that we're doing things God didn't give us to do in this season of life, that we've taken on too much. We didn't have the self-control to say, "No, this isn't the season for that," but it can also be that frittering away of time.

We may not have the self-control to get to bed at night, turn off the television, put down the blogs, or to get up in the morning and get started in my day. So time is an area where we need self-control.

Mary: I find that that's one of my largest areas of need, in terms of my time. God gives us a certain amount of time, and it's so precious! If we fritter it away, it's gone, and we can never regain that time.

Nancy: And that doesn't mean that we never have time to play or time to do something that is recreational or relaxing, but it means we're intentional. We're not doing those things when we should be doing something else. We're not procrastinating a hard job. There's self-control. We know what we're supposed to do, when we're supposed to do it, and that's what we do.

Mary: Exactly.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian have been talking about self-control. Those T's are so helpful, don't you think? 

Did you catch those? There are:

• Time
• Tongue
• Temperment
• Thoughts

Is there one that maybe you need to stop and ask the Lord to give you self-control in? Let me encourage you to take that step right now. 

You’ve signed up for the True Woman conference haven’t you? I’m so excited for this time together with you and Mary Kassian and Nancy and other great speakers. Oh, we’ll learn a lot. Remember, it’s September 22–24 in Indianapolis. Bring your friends, remind them to sign up. 

They can register by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode.

Next week we are going to talk about women who lived courageously for God. Do you have a lot of courage? Or are you fresh out? Join me next week either way for some insightful thoughts.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause, Blake Bratton, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, Erin Davis, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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