Our day starts with an alarm and ticks away with the tempo of alerts from text messages, social media, news outlets, ESPN updates and all sorts of pings keeping us alerted to all the need to know information in our day. With all the information coming at us at such a rapid pace, how plugged in are we to the spiritual notifications that are essential to our walk and life in Christ? In this article, Tracy Trivette challenges us to focus our attention in an increasingly distracting culture to the spiritual notifications that keep our hearts and minds set on Him and recommends some resources to help do that.

Spiritual Notification

Applications for Application

According to the most recent research, the average cell phone user will receive 75 notifications (known as "Push Notifications" or those you don't ask for, the ones that just appear and let you know things you never wanted to know or never need to know regarding the apps you installed on your device) a day.  The average American adult will receive, on average, an additional 53 text messages a day (the number for teens is staggering by the way). Then, consider that the average American office worker will receive around 121 email notifications in a normal work day. These statistics are of course averages and vary widely based on many factors, but also do not take into account many other things such as additional apps that many of us have on our phones, or notifications within those apps.  For instance, when this post drops on our Facebook page, those who follow CTS on Facebook will receive a notification letting them know that we posted an article. Notifications to left of me, alerts to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with news.

 

It is here that some would say that our answer to the problem would be to totally unplug from the world of technology and the wiles of the enemy in technology.  For most of us, that reality just isn't possible.  We are connected to technology.  It is how we communicate and connect with our world.  We must be wise stewards of all of our resources, and use well, for the glory of Christ, all that we have been given.  The question for us, is how do we connect well in a culture such as this?  How do we stay connected spiritually without being distracted?  The answer is simple, we walk in the Spirit.  What is the application of that walk?  Jesus said in John 14:26: "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."  For the disciples, this was a promise of practicality.  He would be a help and comfort to remind them, and piece together all the things that Jesus had said were about to be fulfilled.  Also, He would would bring to light all the teachings and threads of the Gospel that would go forth to every nation.  For us, He comes to make the Words of life and all teaching a complete picture, recalling all that Christ has said and taught us.  So now, as we walk by the Spirit He is teaching and showing us "the path of life".

 

In a day and age when that little red icon stays at the forefront of our screens, always calling for attention, how can we utilize it for the benefit of reclaiming our attention and time for spiritual focus?  How can we utilize technology to draw our attention back to this spiritual walk and work?  If the goal is for a daily walk, whereby the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and speaks, connecting the dots and mining truth that transforms, can we not use the resource of technology that we are already tied to so frequently to reclaim some of those minutes and hours to do this work? There are many great applications out today that are useful for this purpose, but here are a few that we recommend will be a welcome to your already growing notification list.