I used to get so upset and offended when young people would use their phones for their Bible in church.
Not anymore.
Sometimes, hanging on to the fear of man will keep you from the biggest breakthrough.
Now I would rather have people judge me than give up the technology that has led me to
the closest walk with God I have had in my 32 years of being a Christian.
Let’s backtrack.
Daily time in the Bible and prayer was such a struggle for most of my years being a Christian.
29 years of struggle to be exact.
I can’t even count how many times I have tried to read my Bible through from cover to cover.
And then there are the hundreds of times I just tried to read a chapter a day.
I would always end up getting off the reading schedule, which resulted in frustration and then quitting.
No matter what I did, I could not maintain a consistent walk with God in my Bible reading.
Without a consistent time in God’s Word, I did not have a consistent walk with God.
But I yearned to know Him.
I had an idea of the kind of relationship that was possible,
but never thought that I would be able to experience it.
My young teenage daughter, Mikayla, had an iPad.
She had a Bible app called YouVersion.
Her walk with God is absolutely amazing. And consistent.
After I finally surrendered my beloved flip phone to an iPhone,
Mikayla began encouraging me to get this Bible app.
Finally, I did.
My life has never been the same.
Seriously.
That was June 2017.
Now, because of my lovely teenager, and because of the incredible technology of iPhones and apps,
I am on my third time reading the Bible!
Amazing!!!!!
***Side-note
Rejoice in your victories. Don’t compare. Yes, many have read their Bibles 10, 20, 30 times.
That does not negate my wonderful victory of reading it for the first time 29 years into my Christian life!
The devil wants us to compare. God wants us to rejoice.
I know God was rejoicing when I finished that last verse in Revelation.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Revelation 22:21
The first 29 years of my Christian life I could never stick to a reading plan.
I would try a verse a day, a chapter a day, and many times I tried to read the whole Bible.
I never became consistent with anything.
Over the years, God was creating a yearning in me to know Him more intimately.
In 2013, when I was diagnosed with Bipolar, Scripture became incredibly important, more than ever before.
After trying for a year to become stable using psychiatric drugs, I had to give up because I was allergic to everything.
BUT, I was still depressed.
This is when Scripture became my lifeline.
Over the next 3 years, I would use the Scripture I already knew to become stable with Bipolar.
Then in 2017 I got the YouVersion app.
I wanted desperately to became faithful in a daily walk with God in His word,
and I yearned to know Him on a more personal level.
This app was so good for my perfectionist nature and distracted mind.
It kept track of everything for me.
I didn’t have to create a plan, deal with bookmarks, recalculate when I got behind.
And finally, a foundation of faithful Bible reading was being built.
In that first 1 1/2 years on the app, I finally, for the first time, read my entire Bible.
I also did hundreds of different Bible studies on topics that I needed healing in.
All of it was organized perfectly.
I wasn’t keeping track of 10 different devotional books, notebooks, etc.
It was all there on my phone.
I could do studies on subjects that strengthened me, follow my yearly Bible plan, take notes,
highlight verses, make verse images all on my phone.
It was just what I needed to finally walk with God faithfully.
I never dreamed that I could be close to God, but my trials and this app made it a reality.
Almost everything I write begins on my phone while I am using the app to walk with God.
My walk with God for the past 3 years and 5 days (true) has been incredible.
My walk with the Lord has literally gone from ashes to beauty!
Should I have been faithful in my walk prior to tech?
Absolutely. I am accountable for all those years of wavering.
But God is so merciful.
He just wants to be with us and wants us to love Him.
He is the God of second, third, fourth….chances!
I am accountable for those lost years, but God never gave up pursuing more from me.
***Side-note #2
A friend pointed out how she uses her phone for her Bible time,
but one day used her printed Bible in her lap.
She was surprised at how curious her very young children were about what she was reading.
She made a very good point of how important it was that her young children saw her reading the Bible.
The children did not correlate the Bible with her phone.
The moral of the story here is balance. My children are ages 16-24.
They know what it means to see me in my chair in the morning with my phone. I am spending time with the Lord.
But if you are still establishing the importance of God’s Word in the hearts of young children,
incorporate a copy of the printed Bible into your routine for their sake.
But if your walk thrives by using tech, make sure you are taking care of your needs as well.
I suppose a lot of judgment could fly around about “needing” tech to walk with God.
Now that my walk is established, I would be fine if my phone was no longer available.
But I am so grateful that God kept pursuing me and brought into my life a way that I
could finally succeed in knowing Him more, loving Him more, and serving Him better.
Let’s cheer each other on.
Praise the Lord that He provides so many ways to get His word to us.
YouVersion literally changed my life. Let’s not judge each other.
If I show up to church with my Bible just so I can avoid judgment, but I am not reading God’s word, what a shame.
Like I wrote at the beginning of this post, sometimes hanging on to the fear of man will keep us from the biggest breakthrough.
Our relationship with God is more important than the fear of man or “looking” the part.
Tech is not evil. It is how we use it that decides its value to God’s work and our relationship with Him.
Just look at how tech (Zoom, Facebook live, YouTube) has been used during COVID to spread God’s work
all around the globe and to keep us connected with our own churches, Pastors, and church families.
This website, my blog, and even my last album would probably not exist if
it weren’t for me finally establishing a consistent walk with God and daily fellowship with Him in His Word.
The igniting of the fire that the Lord has put in my heart
correlates directly with my progressive walk with Him.
The closer I have become in my relationship with Him, the more on fire I have become to
redeem every minute for Him, to take risks and to be courageous to carry out His message.
The YouVersion Bible app and my iPhone, along with my trials have been the tools that have
brought me to a relationship that has made God my best Friend.
We must remember we are not worshiping paper and ink, or a phone.
God’s Word is not the ink on a page or a pixel on a computer screen. God’s Word is alive.
God’s Word is more powerful than any limits of media. Jesus Himself is the living Word of God.
He is not limited to books with pages or phone screens with text.
These are simply tools He has chosen to convey His words to us.
God’s Word on a phone screen is just as powerful as God’s Word in ink on paper,
and just as powerful as His word on a recording.
Get God’s Word intertwined with your
life and heart any way that you can!
Praise the Lord for these tools that facilitate our walk and ministry for Him!
You can download the free YouVersion Bible app for your phone HERE.
My song Sovereign from the video below can be heard HERE.
MEET Jennifer.
SEE all blog posts.
HEAR Jennifer’s music.
SUBSCRIBE