We jolt awake, grab our phone, silence the alarm, and there, laying in bed, phone in hand.
We face our first decision of the new day.
Do we shut off the screen or do we start scrolling?
I wanted to know how common this dilemma was among Christians so back in April of 2015
that conducted an online survey of 8,000 readers of DesiringGod.org.
My survey focused on smartphones and social media habits.
I asked a bunch of questions and received a lot of revealing results in return, a few
of which made it into my smartphone book.
But here were three stats that immediately stood out to me.
Of the 8,000 respondents, half admitted to scrolling through their phones within the
first minutes of waking up in the morning.
And this figure rose over 60% among those aged 18 to 29.
And when asked whether they were more likely to scroll through texts and email and social
media before or after their morning devotions, a staggering 73% admitted to me that they
normally did so before spending time with God in the morning, 73%.
And while scrolling social media may seem like a harmless indulgence, I think we all know
it's an unhealthy way to start the day.
It's like eating chocolate for breakfast.
So I want to ask you, Pastor John, in light of these stats, what's a better approach in
these moments just after we wake up in the morning?
I think there is a better course.
But to help everybody understand why I think that and what that better course is, it might
be helpful to start by analyzing why we are so prone to click on our phones before we
do almost anything else.
So I thought of six possible reasons why we do this.
And I got these reasons out of my head by analyzing John Piper's soul and his temptations.
I haven't done any survey.
So if people think this is narrow, they well, yeah, it is.
It comes out of me and if people are like me, then they might get help.
It seems to me that all of these six things I'm going to say are rooted in sin rather
than rooted in the desire to serve others and savor God.
And I put it like that because I do think the great commandment does set the agenda for
our mornings and our midday and our evening.
We are to love God with all of our hearts, so mind, strength, when we wake up in the morning.
And we are to prepare ourselves to love our neighbor, serve our neighbor as our selves.
And given how sinful John Piper is, and I presume others are like me, very few of us
wake up with our whole soul spring loaded to love God and love people.
This takes some refocusing, but it mildly, this this takes some focusing of our souls by
means of the word of God and prayer.
We have to remind ourselves about reality in the morning in order to begin to love God
and love people the way we ought.
So here are my six guesses for why so many of us are drawn almost addictively to consult
with our phones or devices when we wake up in the morning.
In the first three, I call candy motives and the second three, I call avoidance motives.
So first, I think we love to immediately take a bite of candy from our phones for our
novelty hunger.
Call this novelty candy.
We simply love to hear what's new in the world or among our friends.
What has happened since the last time we glanced at the world?
Most of us like to be the first one to know something and then we don't have to assume
the home will posture of being told something that's smart and savvy and on the ball people
already know unlike us who didn't know.
And so we want to be quick and have knowledge of what's new in the world and maybe we
can assume the role of being the informer rather than the poor benign people that need
to be informed about what happened.
And if they were smart enough, they would have been on their social media earlier.
So there's a big ego trip I think in our novelty hunger.
Second, I think we love to immediately take a bite out of our candy for ego hunger,
candy phone for ego hunger.
What have people said about us since the last time we checked?
Who has taken note of us?
Who has retweeted us or mentioned us or liked us or followed us?
In our fallen sinful condition, there is an inordinate enjoyment of the human ego being
attended to.
Some of us are weak enough, wounded enough, fragile enough, insecure enough that any little
mention of us just feels so good.
It's like somebody kissed us.
Third, I think we love to immediately take a bite out of our candy for our entertainment
hunger.
So this is entertainment candy.
There is on the internet, as we've all come to know, an endless stream of fascinating
weird, strange, wonderful, shocking, spell binding, cute pictures and quotes and videos
and stories and links and many of us have gotten to the point where we're almost addicted
to the need of something striking and bizarre and extraordinary and amazing.
So at least those three candy motives, I think, are at work as we wake up in the morning
and have these cravings that we satisfy with our phones.
Then there are these three avoidance motives.
In other words, these aren't positive desires for something.
These are facing things in life that we simply want to avoid for another five minutes.
First, I would call it the boredom avoidance.
We wake up in the morning, we find that the day in front of us simply looks boring.
It feels boring.
There's nothing exciting about coming in our day and little incentive to get out of bed.
And of course, the human soul hates a vacuum and if there's nothing significant and positive
and hopeful in front of us to fill the hope-shaped place in our souls, then we're going to use
our phones perhaps quickly to fill that hole and avoid having to step into all that boredom.
Then there is the responsibility of avoidance.
We have a role, father, mother, boss, whatever.
There are burdens that are coming to us in the day that are fairly weighty.
The buck stops with us.
Many decisions have to be made about our children, house, the car, the finances, dozens of
other things.
Life is full of weighty responsibilities and we feel inadequate for them and we're lying
there in bed, feeling fearful and maybe even resentful that people put so much pressure
on us and we just are not attracted to this day at all and we would very happily avoid
it for another five or ten minutes and there's the phone to help us do it.
And the third avoidance incentive is hardship avoidance.
You may be in a season of life where what you meet when you get out of bed is not just
boredom and not just responsibility but you meet mega relational conflict or issues of
disease or disability in the home or friends who are against you or pain in your own body
and your joints that you can barely get out of bed because it hurts so bad in the morning
and it's just easier to lie there a little longer and the phone adds to the escape.
So those Tony are at least six of the things I thought of that are functioning probably
in my incentive when I'm inclined to go there first before something else and there are
pretty strong things that are keeping us in bed and keeping us on our devices but there
is a better way and here's what points to the need for it.
What if you are the first one to the news and it is horrible news or what if your search
for some ego candy finds ego acid and people have hated you overnight and what if you spend
five minutes getting yourself happily entertained in the morning rather than facing the responsibilities
of the day immediately and you find at the end of those five minutes that they have drug you
down into silly demeaning small-minded hollow immature frame of mind was it worth it and what if
you take five minutes to avoid the boredom and responsibility and hardship of the day only to
find at the end of those five minutes of avoidance you are spiritually morally emotionally less able
to cope with reality in the day than you were before what was it worth it so I think there is a
better way to begin the day and it will require some decisions before the morning it never works to
make last minute efforts to decide to do something different you need to decide 12 hours earlier what
this crisis moment is going to look like it will take some planning it will take some alarm clock
thinking and setting what we want in in the morning routine is to be filled with the Holy Spirit we
want something that gives us a zeal for the glory of Christ for the day's work we want to be
strengthened to face whatever the day may bring we want something that gives us joyful courage to
resolve to count others better than ourselves and pursue true greatness like Jesus said by becoming
the servant of all that that's the real agenda in the morning very few of us wake up strengthened to
do all those glorious things that we get to join Jesus in doing so the new course for the morning
I think is laid out in the Psalms and here's here's a key verse Psalm 53 O Lord in the morning you
hear my voice in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and I watch so let the first
thing out of your mouth in the morning while you're still on the pillow let the first thing be a cry
to God I love you Lord I need you Lord help me Lord that is the first cry out of my mouth in the
morning I need you again today then prepare a sacrifice and watch I think that sacrifice is my
body and my attention devoted to him I watch for the Lord to show up and do what what what am I
watching for and someone 43 puts it like this verse 8 let me hear in the morning of your steadfast
love for in you I trust make me know the way I should go for to you I lift up my soul so I'm
looking I'm on the lookout for the steadfast love of God and I'm on the lookout for it in
his word and then Psalm 90 verse 14 tells me how to think about praying for it when it comes
satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love don't just look for it and see it and
here it comes but ask the Lord oh satisfy me with this steadfast love that I may rejoice and be
glad in you all our days so we we watch in God's inspired word for revelations of his steadfast love
and his guidance for our lives and a profound sense of satisfaction in our souls that he is beautiful
and that he cares for us someone 19 my eyes are awake before the watches of the night
that I may meditate on your promise some 139 17 how precious to me are your thoughts oh God I awake
and I am still with you so I suggest that before you go to bed tonight you make some choices
and some plans and that you free yourself from the candy addictions and the habits of avoidance
that have been ruining the strengthening potential for the beginning of the day
amen let the first words out of our mouth while still on our pillow be a cry to God I need you
again today Lord thank you Pastor John for this reminder for this better way forward and
Pastor John is back with us next time as we look at Isaiah 65 17 curious text about the new creation
for behold I create new heavens and the new earth declares the Lord and the former thing shall not
be remembered or come to mind interesting the former thing shall not be remembered or come to mind
so are we mind wiped in the new creation is the hard drive of our recollections of this life
you've raced Thursday we will ask Pastor John of your host Tony Raky we'll see you then