Fridays with Phil

If you are what’s considered an average smartphone user then you check your phone 150 times per day. That’s every six and a half minutes.

We are wired, habitually and socially, to connect with others from all over the world at any moment in time through media forums like facebook, blogs and email. In fact, right now I am speaking to you through one of those.

I just wonder if this type of conversation, now normal, inhibits us connecting with others beyond surface level and with God in a deep way. Perhaps, we have discovered how to be partly tuned into everyone while becoming less connected or tuned into anyone.

We have all become experts in the act of multi-tasking, that is, doing lots of things at once, but how good are we at “uni-tasking”, doing one thing at once?

How do you go focussing on one thing or one person and keeping out all the other noise?

A good way to gauge this is to think of whether you allow your phone at the table when you sit down to a meal or if you allow alerts to interrupt quality time with family and friends. Maybe it’s time you put measures in place to try some uni-tasking.

While there’s no doubt that conversations with one another are important to connect us relationally, the way we converse with God is perhaps the most important conversation of them all. I know it is in my life.

My conversations with God are allowed to be raw and real as I expose my heart and feelings with Him. To talk with Him is to acknowledge His presence and power whilst revealing my need for Him and ultimately my trust in Him. It’s simply prayer.

If you’re not sure how to pray today, Jesus shows us one way to have a conversation with our Creator recorded in Matthew 6: 9-13 as “The Lord’s Prayer”. This prayer gives us a blueprint for one type of conversation we can have with God but it is not the only kind. The important thing is that you are communicating with God.

Prayer inspires my very real, present day, dependence on God’s grace. I depend on God for strength to rise above daily challenges, confrontations and tragedies.

I have found that I never leave these conversations without hope. If I invite Him to, somehow, God communicates to my spirit and soul things that encourage and strengthen me. It’s personal. It’s tangible.

If you’re a busy parent then don’t fret, you can talk to God while feeding or washing kids. A business person can talk to God in the middle of a board meeting or travelling to and from work. I have even spoken to God when signing important documents or while doctors are inflicting painful tests on my body.

Conversations with God can take place at anytime and anywhere.

I encourage you, in light of the number of conversations and frequency of conversations we are all engaged in, let’s not neglect the most important conversation of all.

Phil