Phone and faith
How to pray instead of scrolling
Most of us don't decide to scroll. The phone is in your hand before you've thought about it, and twenty minutes later you surface feeling a bit worse and not sure where the time went. Trying to stop by willpower alone tends to last about a day, so this guide is about something else: using the very moment you reach for the phone as a reminder to pray.
None of it needs a big change. These are small swaps, and you can pick the ones that suit you.
Why we reach for it
It's worth noticing what's going on when your hand goes to your pocket, because the reason is often the clue to the prayer. Sometimes you're bored, waiting for the kettle or sitting in a car park. Sometimes there's something you're avoiding, like the email you don't want to answer or the conversation you should have. Sometimes you're lonely, or anxious, or just tired at the end of a long day and want something that asks nothing of you.
The phone is very good at filling those gaps for a minute. The trouble is it rarely meets the need underneath. If you're anxious, a feed usually makes it worse. If you're lonely, other people's lives can make it worse too.
Paul has a line about anxiety that fits that moment well:
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
He doesn't say the worry will vanish. He says to bring it to God, and that God's peace will stand guard over your heart. A feed has never managed that for anyone.
A one-line prayer at the moment you reach
This is the simplest swap and the one I'd start with. When you notice you've picked up the phone without meaning to, say one line to God before you do anything else. It can be silent and it can be very short.
A few you could use:
- Lord, I'm bored. Be with me in this.
- Father, I'm avoiding something. Help me face it.
- Turn my eyes away from worthless things; revive me with Your word. (Psalm 119:37)
- Jesus, I'm tired. Give me rest.
- God, have mercy on me (the tax collector's prayer in Luke 18:13)
You might still open the app afterwards, and that's all right. The point is that the reach has become a moment with God, and over time the habit starts to carry the prayer with it. Paul tells the Thessalonians to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and I don't think he meant hours on your knees. Short prayers through the day are one way of living it.
Pray for the person whose post you're looking at
If you do open the app, here's another small thing that changes how it feels. When you see someone's post, pray for them, by name, in a sentence. The friend with the new baby, the colleague who's just lost their dad, the person from church who's clearly having a hard week. Even the people who annoy you.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
Social media is full of people rejoicing and weeping, and most of the time we just scroll past both. Stopping to pray for one person turns a feed into a prayer list, and it's hard to keep scrolling mindlessly when you're thinking about someone you know.
It helps to keep an actual list as well. If there are people you've promised to pray for, write their names down somewhere you'll see them. Mutter has a prayer list that does this, and it can bring those people up before the apps you choose, starting with whoever you prayed for longest ago.
A morning before the phone
For a lot of people the hardest scroll is the first one, in bed, before you've even sat up. Whatever you see there sets the tone for the morning: news, work messages, other people's opinions.
Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a solitary place to pray.
Jesus had crowds waiting for Him, and He still started with His Father. You don't need to get up in the dark. But try giving God the first few minutes of the day before the phone gets them. A morning prayer read slowly, a psalm, or simply telling God what the day holds is enough. If you'd like something to read, there's a short morning prayer for each day of the year on this site, and Spurgeon's Morning and Evening has a reading for every morning and night.
The practical part matters more than people expect. If the phone is your alarm and it's next to your pillow, the first scroll is almost guaranteed. A cheap alarm clock and a charger in the kitchen or the hallway will do more for your mornings than any amount of resolve.
Put something in front of the apps
Since the reach happens without thinking, it helps to put something in the way, so there's a moment to choose. Here are some options, and you can mix them.
- Put a prayer in front of the apps. Mutter's App Guard does this: you choose the apps (through Apple's Screen Time), and before they open you see a short prayer or verse, or someone from your prayer list. You say Amen and the app opens as normal. You can set the times it's on. There are other Christian apps that do something similar, and we've written an honest comparison of them.
- Turn on grayscale. On iPhone, go to Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Color Filters, and choose Grayscale. A gray screen is a lot less inviting.
- Keep the phone out of the bedroom, or at least across the room.
- Move the apps that pull you in off the first screen, or delete them and use the website, which is clunkier.
- Use Downtime in Screen Time for the evening, so most apps switch off an hour or so before bed.
- Turn off notifications from anything that isn't a person.
None of these fix the heart on their own. What they do is slow you down enough to remember what you actually wanted to do, which is often to pray.
When you fail
You will, and probably often. There'll be evenings when you look up and an hour has gone, and mornings when the phone wins before you're awake. The danger then is giving up, or deciding you're the kind of person who can't do this.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.
God isn't surprised by you. When you notice you've lost an hour, that noticing is itself a good place to pray from. Tell Him plainly, ask for help, and put the phone down. Then start again at the next reach, not next Monday.
It also helps to tell someone. A friend who asks how it's going, and whom you pray for in return, is worth more than any streak.
Questions
Is it wrong to use my phone at all when I could be praying?
No. Phones are useful and plenty of what's on them is good. This is about the mindless reach, the scrolling you didn't choose and don't enjoy. Turning some of those moments into prayer is something to enjoy, and there's no rule about how many.
What if I don't know what to say?
Start with how you feel, in one sentence. “I’m bored”, “I’m worried about tomorrow” or “I don’t know why I picked this up” are all honest prayers. You can also borrow words: the Lord's Prayer, a line from a psalm, or one of the old prayers people have prayed for centuries.
Does praying before opening an app actually work?
It won't make you a different person overnight. But it changes what the habit is attached to. If every reach becomes a short prayer, you end up praying many times a day, and some of those times you'll find you don't want the app after all.