20. How To Use Your Phone As An Intentional Tool Instead of a Substitute For God

Is your phone helping your faith… or quietly distracting you from it?

In this mid-Lenten solo episode, I share a personal conviction I experienced during Lent about the way technology, especially our smartphones, can subtly pull us away from prayer, presence, and deeper connection with God and others.

While phones and social media can absolutely be used for good, they can easily become sources of distraction, hurry, and noise that make it harder to hear the voice of God.

I reflect on how modern technology affects our attention, our peace, our relationships, and our spiritual lives, and offers practical ways to reclaim intentionality with our phones so they become tools rather than substitutes for God.

Drawing inspiration from the book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, this episode explores how distraction and constant connectivity can keep us spiritually hurried—and why silence and solitude are essential for hearing God’s voice.

In this episode, I share: 

 • How smartphones can become spiritual distractions
 • Why constant notifications make it harder to hear God’s voice
 • The enemy’s tactic of distraction and hurry
 • Why silence and solitude are essential for prayer
 • How the virtues of self-control and temperance help us use technology wisely

• Practical ways to use your phone more intentionally as a spiritual tool

A Lenten Invitation:

Consider a 24 hour or longer phone fast. Take an honest inventory of your phone habits this week and ask the Holy Spirit:

Is my phone drawing me closer to God—or distracting me from Him?

Connect with Carrie on Instagram @livingwholeandholy

If you are interested in being a guest on The Living Whole and Holy Podcast, contact Carrie at livingwholeandholy@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Living Whole and Holy podcast, where the Catholic faith and intentional living come together. I'm your host, Carrie Jane, a recent Catholic convert and Catholic coach, here to guide you toward a life that's rooted in Christ, centered in his love, and aligned with God's call. Whether you're a convert, revert, cradle Catholic, or simply exploring the faith, you're in the right place. Join me each week to hear inspiring conversations, including conversion and reversion stories, timeless wisdom from the church, and practical Catholic coaching tools that help you deepen your faith and intimacy with Christ, cultivate Christ-centered habits, and be transformed for the renewing of your mind. If you're ready to discover and align to the beauty and richness of a fully integrated Catholic life, you've found your home. I'm so excited you're here. Let's get started. I was not planning on recording another solo episode because I've got some wonderful interviews lined up for you that I can't wait to share. But the Lord really convicted me to come in and talk about the phone, especially since it's Lent. And the Lord has just been convicting me in ways that I was using my phone in unintentional and disordered ways. And I just wanted to come on this week and share about how to use your phone as an intentional tool rather than a substitute for God. And I know there is a lot of talk lately about how much the phone is influencing our lives and technology is influencing our lives and AI and all these updates that are happening and how technology is just moving at the speed of light. And we are in the middle of Lent. And during Lent, God really does call us to penance. He calls us to look at the ways we are living our lives in a disordered manner and how we might be living unintentionally and where we're hurting ourselves and our relationship with God and our relationship with others. And I feel like the phone, the smartphone, can be a way that we learn to not prioritize our time with God, not prioritize our time with others. And it can be a form of distraction. And for myself, I did not use social media for three years. I completely went off of it, still had my smartphone, but if I got off social media three years ago after doing a three-month fast, meaning I just completely did not sign on. And I never thought that I would ever necessarily stop using it. But at that time in my life, I did feel like I didn't need to be using it. And then when I started my podcast and my coaching business, I wanted a way to be able to promote my podcast, announce new episodes, and promote my coaching business. So lo and behold, with a lot of resistance, I ended up getting back on social media. And during this Lent, I started to get convicted about the ways that I was using it and how I how I was using it unintentionally and how it wasn't serving my relationship with God and others. So I wanted to just come on and briefly talk about the ways that our phone can distract us from our relationship with God and just some intentional ways that you can use it as a tool. And, you know, if you want to completely abandon your smartphone, I would say pray about it with God. I'm not going to tell you to do that. I'm just going to show you how you can use it with more intention because I do think technology and especially social media can be used for good and it can be used to promote God. I also think it's a really great way to connect with other like-minded people and in my case, connecting with other Catholics and also learning from other Catholics. It just becomes a problem when it becomes a distraction, when it becomes something that we use to multitask, when it becomes a substitute for prayer. So that's why I was really convicted. And God was like, you need to go on and talk about this. So I listened and you will get some wonderful interviews in the next few weeks. But I wanted to come on and just briefly talk about this with you guys this week. So the main thing with technology when used the wrong way is that it can be very distracting and it can really hinder our relationship with God and with other people. We were never meant to process the amount of information we are today. You know, we have text messages that just seem to be never-ending. We have emails that pile up. And there's just this culture around urgency where we feel the need to get back to people right away. In the past, we didn't carry phones around with us. We would have to go home, call somebody, and get excited about that little blinking light on the answering machine that, oh, somebody called us. But now we are connected to people 24-7. And that can be a problem. I mean, it can be a good thing, but it can be a problem if it starts to impact our behaviors and our habits and our relationship with God. Technology is not going anywhere. And I'm not going to suggest you getting a flip phone or for you to abandon things like social media or texting altogether. Although, if God is calling you to, you know, to get rid of your social media and get a flip phone more power to you, pray about it. But I really think that all of these things can be used for our good and can be used with intention. There is a wonderful book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and it's by John Mark Comer. And there's a quote that I wanted to share with you about distraction and about Satan. And Satan's biggest tactic is to distract us so that we can't hear God's voice. So I wanted to share this quote. It's on page 20 of the book, and it says, Satan doesn't show up as a demon with a pitchfork and gravelly smoker voice, or as Will Farrell with an electric guitar and fire on Saturday Night Live. He's far more intelligent than we give him credit for. Today you're far more likely to run into the enemy in the form of an alert on your phone while you're reading your Bible, or a multi-day Netflix binge, or a full-on dopamine addiction to Instagram, or a Saturday morning at the office, or another soccer game on a Sunday, or commitment after commitment after commitment in a life of speed. And then he further goes on to say the famous psychologist Carl Jung had this little saying: hurry is not the devil, hurry is the devil. And I think that's the thing with our phones, with technology, Netflix, texting, having too many things on our plate is we get into hurry. And when we hurry, we don't slow down. And when we don't slow down, we don't hear we don't hear the voice of God. Hurry, distraction, and doom scrolling don't add any peace to our lives. They only keep our minds preoccupied and can lead to greater instances of anxiety, depression, and comparison. The inventors of these devices know that they have addictive qualities. They know they cause us to live off of dopamine hits. They don't even allow their children to use these devices because they know how addictive they are. But Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers us a peace that the world and our devices never will. So Lent is still upon us. And if you have never taken a 24-hour break from your phone, I would really highly recommend you do that. You can even incorporate it into the Friday fast. Um on Fridays from Meat and we do two smaller meals and one regular meal. This will be a perfect way to incorporate that. If you've never taken a break from your phone. And if you can't fully take a break from things like texting or email, take a break from social media. But if you can take a break from the whole thing and turn it off and just let people know in advance that you're not going to be available, I'd highly recommend it. And just see how it influences your relationship with God. And like that quote was saying, you know, the main ways that our technology can influence our relationships with God and other people is distraction. And it also distracts us from prayer and spending time with God. And when we have our phones out and we're with other people, studies have shown that we are actually paying less attention to them because our minds are constantly thinking, well, what if I get a text? So it's just really good to take a break, if you can, from the phone. And if you do take that 24-hour break, I would suggest going for a walk without your phone and just not listening to anything, just simply going for a walk, noticing what you see in nature. Maybe you could prioritize an in-person meeting with a friend instead of having a back and forth text conversation. Maybe you could read a book, read your Bible, or memorize a common prayer. I remember memorizing the St. Michael prayer took me forever, but I'm like, no, I need to memorize that one because I need to be able to have that at my disposal. It's amazing what we can do when our brains are not distracted. After you've taken your 24-hour break, I invite you to use your phone as a tool. An opportunity to ask Jesus to help you embody the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is self-control, and to practice the virtue of temperance. These are really great opportunities because by being disciplined and having dominion over how you use your phone, that's when it can become a tool and not a weapon. Just like a knife can be used to kill somebody, or it can be used to make a beautiful meal, your phone can be the same. And self-control and temperance is not the same thing as willpower. Willpower will only get you so far. And willpower makes you rely on yourself. But praying to use your phone with intention and praying for the fruit of the spirit of self-control and the and the virtue of temperance will take you so much further. So you can have discipline with your phone by building awareness. Start seeing how many times are you using it? I think there's a stat, and I don't know what it is, but I think we pick up our phone hundreds of times during the day. But when you start becoming aware, that's when you can make the changes. And for me, I've set some guardrails and some boundaries around my phone to help my relationship with it with God and with other people. So with myself, I talk to you guys about giving God your first fruits, not your leftovers. So for me, that means no phone first thing in the morning, especially right when I wake up. That's when I do my prayer time. That's when I start my prayer with the morning offering. I do my guardian angel prayer. And I usually do my reading and a reflection and spend some time with prayer and God. If I open up my phone and get on social media or check an email or a text, my mind is not on God, it's on the world. So always start your day with God. And then my rule for myself is after eight o'clock. No phone, no social media, nothing. That's also when I spend time in prayer. That's when I do my rosary. So give God your first fruits and not your leftovers. What also has worked well for me is just limiting the amount of times I can get on social media. So for me, it's four times, and it's definitely not the first or last thing that I do. It's something I do mid-morning and then in the afternoon and then in the late afternoon. So I'd say three to four times a day is when I go on and check different things, and that's it. I don't allow myself to just grab my phone and hop on on a whim when I want to scroll. And another thing that's really important to do is when you're with other people, put the phones away. My husband and I have had to work on this several times. And we put our phones in a drawer when we're together because we realize we can be present. We're not getting those dings and we're giving each other our full attention and not giving our attention to our phone or someone who's gotten in touch with us. If we don't get back to somebody right away, it's okay. Unless something is really urgent, unless you have a parent who is ill or you're a doctor, nothing is life and death. And you can practice that temperance of waiting and letting other people know that you may not get back to them right away, and that's okay. You will get back to them. And I just feel like all of this is just an invitation to slow down, to not multitask. That's one of the things about the smartphone that's very tempting is we have access to many apps. We have access to the internet. So we could be texting somebody, looking something up on the internet, checking social media, or even when we're sitting down to doing work, we have all these tabs open on our computer. Shut the tabs down. We don't need to look at tabs when we're doing other things. Studies show that we actually don't get more done when we multitask, and it really diverts your attention. So focus on one thing at a time. And in terms of silence and solitude, this is the antidote to the enemy's tactic of distraction. The enemy knows we cannot hear God's voice when there is noise, when there's chaos, when there are there's information coming at us at warp speed. So we have to intentionally carve out silence and solitude. He is waiting to speak to you, but his voice is loudest when you take time to be still and silent. And I'm gonna leave you with a story from this past weekend of my confession. So I went to confession, and one of the things that I confess to the priest is, you know, I have been giving more time to my phone than I would than I would like, less time to God and more time to my phone. And this can't be happening. I need to make some shifts and changes. And I need to confess it that in a way I've made my phone God. And he said very kindly, he said, Can I ask what's on your lock screen? And at first I didn't know what he meant. And he said, Oh, the picture on your phone. And I said, Oh, I have a picture of my husband and I. And then after I said that, I'm like, oh man, I'm sure he has a picture of Jesus or Mother Mary. And I said, Should I change it to Jesus? It's just a picture of me and my husband. And he said, No. He said, What I want you to do is when you pick up your phone and you see that picture, I want you to think of what you're grateful for about that picture. So if it's a picture of you and your husband, I want you to feel gratitude for your relationship with him. I want you to feel gratitude for how you two have built a life together with God. And then ask yourself, do I really need to continue on the phone? Or can I give God my time? I was like, oh, that's so good. That is so good. Such great spiritual direction. So I just invite you this week to really take an inventory about your phone use and if God is calling you to do a 24-hour fast, maybe a three-day fast, a week fast, whatever is most distracting for you. Is it social media, is it your texting, is it your emails, maybe it's all of it. But I really encourage you to have dominion over your phone rather than your phone having dominion over you. Because when you learn to use your phone as an intentional tool and not a substitute for God, you will hear God's voice more. Your relationships will be richer, and you will notice more beauty around you because you're not going to be attached to this thing and all the all of the bright, shiny things that are on it. And I will tell you, I love my phone in terms of how it can help my relationship with God. So I do love the Halo app. I love that I, if I need to look up a prayer, I can do that. And that's what I would encourage you to do is how can you use your phone to strengthen your relationship with God? Is it putting on the Halo app? Is it maybe going on YouTube and starting a novena? Is it just simply recognizing that you can decide how much you want to use it or not use it? That is going to make all the difference in the world. So that's my invitation to you this week. And use this opportunity during Lent. Before Lent passes us by, just take an honest inventory about how you're using your phone and see if there's a way that you can use it more as a spiritual tool. I hope this episode brought you inspiration and ways that you can be more intentional and have these holy habits in your life. And next week you're going to have an amazing conversion story. I can't wait to share it with you. So I will see you all next week. Until then, God bless. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Living Whole and Holy podcast. If you're ready to dive deeper into life coaching from a Catholic perspective, I have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching. This is an amazing opportunity for you to work with someone who will empower you and support you to dream again with God, find more alignment, peace, and confidence in your life, and be the greatest version of who God is calling you to be. I would be so honored to support you on this journey. Send me a DM on Instagram at LivingHole and Holy for a free one on one call to learn more. If this episode blessed you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend. And remember, instead of doing what makes you happy, do what makes you holy. Until next time, God bless.