The day I put the phone down (and what I found instead)

Dear friend.

Here’s a question worth sitting with this week: what if the very device you reach for when you’re tired is actually the thing stopping you from resting?

Ofcom tells us the average person in the UK now spends over a day a week on screens. More than half of us think we’re addicted to our phones. And most of us already know it - we just don’t know how to stop.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Psalm 46:10. “Be still, and know that I am God.” It’s one of those verses we hear so often it can lose its edge. But the Hebrew behind “be still” is striking - it literally means cease striving. Stop pushing. Stop performing. Stop filling the silence.

That’s not emptiness. That’s actually fullness - because it’s creating space for God, who is already present, to make himself known in ways that our busy, buzzing minds simply can’t perceive when they’re full of notifications.

I’ve started practising a regular digital Sabbath - 24 hours, sunset to sunset, phone face-down. The first few hours are uncomfortable, honestly. But then something shifts.

It’s become one of the most spiritually nourishing things I do.

In today’s devotional, I talk about how 100,000 people transformed their prayer lives through a structured digital fast, what Jesus modelled for us, and a simple challenge you can try this very week.

👉 Watch it here:

You’re not missing anything by putting the phone down. You might just find you’ve been missing everything by keeping it on.

With you on the journey.

Rob