Overcome Noise and Distraction

Do you struggle with excess distraction and overstimulation? Do you feel like your faith has grown shallow? We live in a culture of ever-increasing distraction, and the deeper our distraction, the more shallow our faith will become. So what can we do about it? 

In today’s episode, Justine discusses this distraction issue in our culture (because it’s worse than we think) and how it’s one of the greatest threats to us having a deep life of faith. She also provides some guidance on how to overcome the noise and overstimulation to invite space and margin in your day-to-day life to experience more of God.

Download the Go Deeper Guide:
https://justinecheri.ck.page/goingdeeperresourceguide    

Things Mentioned:

Listen to Dr. K’s podcast with Mel Robbins: https://www.melrobbins.com/podcasts/episode-180

The Lazy Genius Way: https://amzn.to/4foPnBV 

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You: https://amzn.to/4bZ0n5O

How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: https://amzn.to/4cRGUFr 

The Journeywomen Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/journeywomen/id1244331156 

Living Water by Southeast Worship: https://open.spotify.com/track/4TlUZhNFZgoyVRURu4gI3A?si=cdb6cc3b4a2f42db 

--

Access the show notes here: www.justinecheri.com/blog/season1/episode1  

Download the Dwell App: https://dwellapp.io/aff?ref=mmmxzjz 

Follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/justinecheri 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Do you struggle with excess distraction and overstimulation? Do you feel like your faith has grown shallow? We live in a culture of ever increasing distraction and the deeper our distraction, the more shallow our faith will become. So what can we do about it? In today's episode, I want to discuss this distraction issue in our culture because it's worse than we think and how it's one of the greatest threats to us having a deep life of faith.

UNKNOWN: 0:23

I'm

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

I want to provide some guidance on how to overcome the noise and overstimulation to invite space and margin in your day-to-day life to experience more of God. Thank you so much. Welcome to Going Deeper. For those who don't know me, I am a huge book lover. I just love books. I spend probably a majority of my spending money on books. I love podcasts. I love music, all the things. So just starting out each podcast with a recommendation I thought could be kind of fun. Recently, a friend who actually happens to be, who works for the Journeywoman podcast, her name's Kimberly. She's a close friend of mine. She recommended The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adashi and And it has been a really, really good read. I truly enjoyed that book. It was highly practical, not very spiritual at all, but there was a lot of good tangible tips that I was able to implement right away. And she also has a cookbook called The Lazy Genius Kitchen. And I've kind of started reading that as well. So the Lazy Genius Way, the Journeywoman podcast, just because I love you, Kimberly. And then also the song Living Water by Southeast Worship is, oh my goodness, so good. And I'll make sure to include all those recommendations in the show notes. And before we dive in today's topic, I just have a few CTAs housekeeping things for you. First, please help me spread the word and get this podcast showing up in people's recommended feeds by taking taking a few moments to rate, review, and share this episode with a friend. And then second, I created something called the Go Deeper Guide. Think of it as like a companion guide to this podcast. It's free. It's two pages where I've compiled a list of my favorite resources, including books, podcasts, and other links, as well as 15 ways to go deeper in your relationship with God this season. And you can download that using the link in the show notes. Okay, I wanted to share a little bit about like my heart behind this podcast. Some of you may know this, but I actually started a podcast in 2019 called stewards of grace. And after four years of sharing, I recorded my final episode at the beginning of last year. And I've really been wanting to get back into podcasting ever since then. But I have just felt the Lord kind of saying no and closing the door until now when I have rebranded and refreshed to going deeper. And And essentially, I just kind of want to tell you a little bit more about my heart because I did talk about this in the trailer, but I felt like I could just unpack just a little bit further here. I I love, I'm just naturally a little bit of a, somebody who goes against the grain. I'm constantly challenging the status quo of things. I don't know. Sometimes it can be a little bit of a critical spirit and we work against that. However, I just, I find myself always challenging. Second guessing and questioning, not second guessing, but questioning things that are happening in our culture, societal norms, you know, I don't know, it just kind of how I am. And trust me, this does not bleed into politics. This is not going to be a political podcast at all. There are plenty of biblically based political podcasts out there. And I do not want to be one of those. But I would love to tackle cultural topics from a Christian perspective. But I think that the way that I want to take this a step further than a lot of podcasts and what they're doing nowadays is I think that there can be this very basic, we're going to talk about cultural topics from a biblical perspective and basically ask the question, like, here's an example, is yoga biblical? Like, I mean, we're not talking about yoga here on this podcast anytime soon. And we're not going to ask that question, but kind of just, we like to ask those questions and say, like, let's take this cultural topic and break it down theologically. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think we absolutely should do that. And I think there is a time and place for that. And I plan to do that in this podcast. However, because the entire podcast The entire narrative of scripture is important. However, what I really hope to do is to just hold a gospel mirror up to the cultural narratives that we see today. Because while we want to be theologically accurate in unpacking these ideas, I also want to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and his message of hope to a lost and broken world. Because we cannot forget the good news of the gospel. It can be so easy to do that in our culture today. To be honest with you, much of my planning and preparing for this podcast sort of bleeds into today's topic of distraction, and this is why. My social feed, specifically Instagram, is filled with inspirational podcast clips. I mean, you have people like Jackie O'Perry and John Mark Homer who are dropping 90-second truth bombs, and And I cannot get enough of it. But even though the stuff they say is great, I'm not just watching one reel and moving on. I'm watching 35 and wasting an hour that could have been spent way differently. Also, the social media world, especially in the Christian creator space, feels like screaming into a microphone in a packed stadium where everyone else is also screaming into a microphone. At what point is it just noise? And that's actually a conversation that I've been having with quite a bit of friends and friends in the Christian creator space as well, who are feeling a lot of the same burden and asking a lot of the same questions. So for me, when discerning whether this was something that I wanted to do, I was kind of thinking, I don't know if I want to spend all of my time creating encouraging content for social media simply because there's a lot of conviction there. Social media and I don't always get along. Most of the time we don't get along. It's a tricky space that oftentimes brings about more anxiety than warranted. And so with that said, All these things that God is teaching me and the things that I want to share, I don't want to simply rely only on Instagram reels as a place that I share them. I did not just want to be another voice shouting into the abyss, creating noise. And I'm not trying to say that if you're on social media and you're sharing good stuff, please keep doing that if you feel the Lord is calling you to do that because he's going to use it regardless. But personally, as far as content goes, I've just been more impacted spiritually by podcasts than any other medium. And I hope that that can be the case for you and this new Going Deeper fam. So without rambling on any further, we're just going to dive into today's topic of distraction. Now, First of all, why am I choosing to talk about distraction for the first episode? Like what's so special about this topic that it won first pick in my round of 12 episodes for this season? I think it's because I believe it is one of the greatest hurdles facing Christians today and our ability to experience a deep life of faith, which is what this podcast is all about. And thinking about my own personal life and how this problem has manifested itself over the past 10 years, There are some things that come to mind and I want to share them with you. First of all, when I was in college, I wrestled so much with my faith that I oftentimes kept myself distracted from God with things like partying, drinking, and planning my future. And then after I graduated around... 2018 when I recommitted my life to the Lord, I found myself distracted a lot by my circumstances. Nothing was going the way I had planned and I was constantly feeling discontent and unsettled about how things were going. In an attempt to sort of escape from all the things not going my way, I would keep myself distracted, staying busy, always doing something, always planning something, and of course, consuming copious amounts of YouTube videos. And then for the past five or so years, I just have continued to wrestle with this key question. of how am I supposed to live wholeheartedly for Christ, sold out for his kingdom and his ways when I can't even sustain 30 minutes of prayer time without growing bored or restless or distracted? You know, I've tried an 18-month-long social media fast, removed tons of useless apps off from my phone, set limits on my screen time, practiced minimalism to avoid becoming overwhelmed with clutter. I've grown mindful of the time I spend on watching Netflix versus the time I've spent with God in a given week or month. I mean, the list goes on, and it's only getting more and more challenging. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, the algorithm that reads our minds and shows us more and more funny parenting reels. YouTube, Netflix... Macs, Disney+, Peacock, sports, work, emails, hour-long calls with your aunt or mom about your crazy family, window shopping, online shopping, group texts. I could keep going on and on and on. And I know I'm not alone in this because this is all of our realities living in this post-technological age of constant communication and digital distraction. And the data is endless. In the research that I've done, The average person will spend nine years of their life on their phone and touch their phone over 2,600 times per day. 71% of us check our phones in the first 10 minutes of waking up, and 74% of us feel uneasy leaving our phones at home. And then Pew Research conducted a study and found that roughly 79% of Americans say that social media distracts them from issues that are truly important. Also, this same friend, Kimberly, was we ran into each other at a coffee shop and she was telling me all about this book she was reading called The Anxious Generation, which is now on my to be read list. But I was kind of looking into some of the things he was talking about in the book. And he talks about the correlation between the rising levels of anxiety among adolescents and then the rise in their device addiction and the correlation between the two. He also mentions that adults who did not grow up in this post technological boom, don't have the same rising levels of anxiety and depression, but we have still become more frazzled, scattered, and exhausted by our new technologies and their incessant interruptions and distractions. That is a quote directly from the book. And while I don't believe digital distraction is the only version of distraction keeping us at a distance from God, I do think it is the most prevalent. Now, by definition, Because we got to define our terms here. This is 2024. Distraction is a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else. It's all about attention and focus or our lack thereof. And I think the best way to dissect this further is to work backwards. So if distraction is a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else, what is the something else we are not paying our full attention to? So a few weeks back, I caught myself going through the motions. I... was living each day very reactionary I had intentionally knowingly redownloaded social media apps to my phone I was using idle time to scroll or binge watch a true crime series you know it's summer I'm a pregnant mom with toddlers with little to no help the days can feel really really long and I could just feel myself growing numb I knew what I was doing I was struggling physically and emotionally because being a mom is draining and hard and instead of seeking out soul rest I chose shows noise and stimulation. So one morning before my kids were up, I literally typed in in podcasts, Apple podcasts. Now don't judge me. I'm a chronic Googler. I will Google anything. And I wasn't Googling feeling numb, like my physical skin was numb, but I was hoping that a podcast episode would pop up that would kind of talk about this feeling of numbing out and just not having any major emotions, almost suppressing emotions. And normally while I regret the chronic Googling, this time around I truly sensed this was a divine intervention because one of the first podcasts that popped up actually blew my mind. It was... Mel Robbins, she was interviewing Dr. Alok Kanogia. He is the author of the book, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer. I'll make sure to link the episode in the show notes. Because this episode was full of so much gold. But one of the major concepts that I gleaned from Dr. K in this episode was his premise. And his premise is that we are so drawn to technology, especially picking up our phones and the distraction that brings with it because our brains are trying to protect us from negative emotions. So we have emotions such as boredom, idleness, grief, anxiety, whatever negative emotions we may be feeling in a day, our brains have figured out that the appeal of technology, our phones, gives us a relief from those negative emotions. And the reason it gives us our brain's relief is because it causes us to externalize our attention rather than internalize our attention. So if we have a negative feeling, we can simply choose to ignore it by distracting ourselves via technology. Like, you know, for example, you're having a hard day, you've had a really long day, you come home and you like the whole chaos of post work, doing dinner, getting the kids to bed and all that stuff. You finally sit down on the couch and you're just like, whoo, like your brain doesn't even want to process all of the emotions that you could be feeling. Now, the temptation is so strong to want to just Say, you know what? I am going to spend the next two hours scrolling on TikTok. Like that sounds wonderful because I'm physically and mentally exhausted. Now I'm not trying to bash TikTok and say that you cannot do that. I'm just trying to say that that's what we want to do. Our brains are going to gravitate towards numbing out, especially numbing out via technology on our phones when we don't want to face the negative emotions or stressful feelings or even just the exhaustion that we have. And thinking about what Dr. K talked about in the podcast, he said in the early days, especially pre-technology, humans did a lot of rogue and idle tasks like churning butter or tying rope. And because of that, we had ample time for our brains to process. You know, we would go hunting with a buddy and have a two hour long walk back to camp. And our brains had the time to process, you know, whatever happened. We were in a sense forced to be bored and we were forced to face the discomfort of daily life because there weren't as many options for us to externalize our attention. We just had more opportunities and a greater capacity for silence and stillness and boredom, which is where the tension is. This is where our souls find rest, where God speaks the loudest in the silence and in the stillness. So going back to my question, what is the something else we are not paying our full attention to? Well, I think we could all give multiple answers to this question. You know, our families, our health, our finances, our church. The answer I want to focus on in this episode is we're not giving focus Because we don't make time to sit with ourselves, our souls, and God anymore. You know, 10 minutes of uninterrupted prayer feels like an eternity when 10 minutes of TikTok flies by in a blink, but why? When we choose to sit and pray or read our Bibles or practice something like fasting, what we're doing is we're practicing self-denial. We're denying our flesh the temporary satisfaction it wants by doing hard things. Because our brains, though, are part of our fleshly bodies, they're corrupted by sin. So they are going to try to protect us from seemingly negative emotions like discomfort, discipline, and self-denial. They are going to encourage us to pick up our phones and put on a movie when we want to. What we really need is to sit quietly and journal and pray about the angst that we feel after a challenging day. Now, this could end up being an entire topic for a different day, but that's why it's so important that we constantly renew our minds. Our brains are part of our sinful flesh. But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, 16, that we have the mind of Christ. So with distraction, our brains try to protect us from doing the hard things that we don't want to do, but should do to see genuine soul change. It's like this ultimate game of procrastination. So we have to be renewing our minds to what is true, renewing our minds to what is going on in our little world and being real and honest about the state of our souls so that we can actually counteract the things, the temptations that are coming our way and tell our brains like, no, no, no, no, no. Self-denial, discomfort, discipline, these are not things to run away from. If anything, we should embrace them Because that's when the Lord is going to do his best work. That's when our souls are going to be the most at rest, when we can sit in that tension, in the moment, in the stress, in the angst, in the anxiety, and we can resort to prayer instead of picking up our phones. Another quote in this one is straight gold from the book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You says, We run away like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, our masters, clicking, scrolling, tapping, liking, sharing, anything. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us. In fact, we want to complexify our lives. We don't have to. We want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it. Man, this is what we're up against, you guys. If we don't take the time daily and weekly to sit with our souls and God, to be around the body of believers to confess sin, to attend church, to serve, to worship on a walk, to pray for long extended periods of time. We don't take the time to do these things, but we waste time doing just about anything else. We are deeply distracted and our faith grows shallow. And this is where I think the distraction issue goes deeper than just a dopamine hit, at least for some of us. Because what if we don't sit quietly reading our Bibles because we've failed so many times at a routine in the past, so we've just given up on reading at all, and so we are distracting ourselves, not because we're just lazy and wanting to numb out, but because we're afraid to fail again? What if we don't discipline ourselves in prayer because we feel God has let us down in the past and hasn't answered our prayers, so why would he start listening now? What if we distract ourselves from working on our inner soul life because we feel guilt, shame, or condemnation about a sin struggle we don't feel we can ever break free from? I don't think it always has to go in the direction of you're deeply distracted and therefore you have a shallow faith. It can flow in reverse. You have a shallow faith for whatever reason and so you keep yourself distracted. You keep busy, focus on your work, focus on your future, do things you enjoy, live life. You've chosen in a sense to gain the world but lose your soul and while I know that that sounds heavy it's kind of the truth and I know it's the truth because I've been there. And if that's you, please stick around to the end because I do have some hopeful encouragement for you. Now, like I said at the beginning, I don't think technology is the only thing that is distracting us from focusing on our faith. If it didn't exist, we would naturally use other mechanisms to externalize our attention away from God. Work, gossiping with a friend or family member, busyness, just like in the story of Martha and Mary, or a constant state of doing or hurrying can distract us. Sometimes it's simply our own unhealthy way of thinking and not taking our thoughts captive, like complaining instead of being grateful. So all of that to say, all of the distractions that we're facing today, all of the opportunities that we have to externalize our attention away from God, what can we do about it? I'm sure you're familiar with the AA 12-step to overcoming addiction, right? If I haven't already made it clear, I don't think it's technology we have an addiction to. I think we're addicted to distraction. I think we're addicted to drowning out the noise of our stressful lives. It's a battle we're not even prepared to fight. It's a battle we don't know how to fight. So we just don't. We've just given into it because it is so overwhelming. It is so constant. It is so all-consuming that it feels like you either... don't have any technology at all, and you move out into the middle of nowhere and don't have a phone, or you exist in this world and you just have to suffer. And I don't think that's the case. So the first step in AA is the most important step, and I think it applies here. We have to admit that we have a problem, or at least admit that we could do better. But what we like to do as sinners is we like to dismiss and downplay sin. It's what we're masters at. We will 100% explain away our problem as not being a sin before acknowledging it as such. And I think many of us have downplayed our screen time or our need for constant noise and stimulation because it's pretty normal in society today. If everyone spends an average of three to four hours a day on their phones, we like to tell ourselves, well, at least it's not five or six. We can convince ourselves that three hours is on the low end. And we do this with just about any form of distraction or sin struggle. So admitting that something needs to change and accepting the fact that if you don't make a change, you're going to continue on this path is key because this world isn't going to get easier, isn't going to make it easier for you to follow Jesus at all anytime soon. In fact, it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get harder. So number two, I want you to take the time to answer the two questions in today's episode. The first one was, what is the something else you are not paying your full attention to? And the second is what is distracting you from not putting your full attention to that thing? And don't try to solve all your problems all at once. Start small. Start with the first thing that comes to mind or the most significant answer. So maybe you're not giving your full attention to prayer, but your average screen time is four to five hours a day. That seems to me like a really good place to start because the distraction isn't necessarily the problem. It's the fact that we're intentionally choosing to neglect making space for what ultimately matters. Watching a movie on Netflix, scrolling on Instagram for a bit, listening to music in the car, working on home project these aren't bad things but they become a problem when we know in the back of our minds that we're neglecting something in the process. Now, if you don't have the notes app open on your phone or a pen or paper in hand, you should grab one because I do have five practical tips that I stole directly from Dr. K himself from that podcast episode that you can implement today to really help you with specifically the technological distractions. So number one, remove all of the things that make it easy to access your phone so that you can write out the impulse of a one hour scroll. Basically what that means is If you have a million apps on your phone and you have Face ID set up and all of your favorite apps are right there in front of your face and it's extremely easy to open it up and click on TikTok, remove the ease of access because the key here is riding out the impulse to essentially resist the temptation because what we know is that as soon as we click on the app, we are doomed. We're doomed for the most part. It is very easy to get sucked in and very hard to stop being on a scroll or bend session. for whatever app it is for you, maybe it's a game, whatever it is that draws you to your phone, removing that temptation and making it, that's making it easy for you to scroll. So yeah, just remove the ability to get on it as easily. For me, some rules that I have is I don't keep social media apps on my phone. And to be honest with you, I don't keep any apps on my phone that are unnecessary. Like I don't even keep Amazon on my phone because I don't want to be tempted to constantly look for things and buy things that I don't need. Allowing myself the time to wait, think about it, go on my desktop. I also have a 15 minute safari limit on my phone. That way I'm not chronic Googling and I'm not reading some random article at 1130 at night that doesn't make any sense and I'm trying to go to bed. Because let's just face it, I am a hypochondriac. It's true. I am. Number two. If you use your phone a lot for work, set boundaries. So try to work as minimally on your phone as you can and only work on your desktop. Number three, only access social media on your desktop computer and just make that a hard and fast rule that yes, I can enjoy social media, I can stay connected with people, I can occasionally watch some reels or whatever, but I'm gonna do it on my desktop because for whatever reason, when you're on your computer, it's so much easier to pull away from it, at least it is for me. And then number four, keep the first and last hour of your day sacred, meaning technology-free. This one is tough, but well worth the discipline in the long run. And I want to give you a little example of how this looks for me in my life. Now, I do not always do this perfectly, so don't hold me to that. But for the most part, especially when I am being intentional and I am being mindful, is Because I just don't have a lot of temptation on my phone to scroll because I've made it hard to access anything that's going to cause me to scroll or binge or do whatever you want to call it, I can leave it by my bedside. And at night... To kind of keep this rule of not being on technology right before you go to bed, I always have a book that I'm reading, and that is when I enjoy reading a book. And then in the morning, same thing. I have the sleep activated on my phone, so... That doesn't like, it's all do not disturb and all that. And so I, you know, I'm pretty disciplined and good at this point about not getting on my phone, even audios, like text messages, like all that stuff. I just set it aside. I jumped straight into Paul David Tripp's New Morning Mercies devotional, which I love because it is so gospel centered. I like to journal in the morning, journal my prayers, get into the word. And I will read as well in the morning if I feel like it. So those are some ideas for you to keep the first and last hour of your day sacred and technology free. And then number five, finally, you have to do the work to conquer the enemy of boredom. So when you have an idle moment or you're doing rogue tasks, instead of grabbing your phone or looking for ways to become stimulated or distracted, maybe pace, walk, pray, allow your brain time to embrace the silence and process things on your heart and mind. What this is going to do is help you build up your endurance and your capacity for silence and stillness, which we've talked about is key to just paying attention to your soul life and to your sanctification. So for me, I've grown incredibly mindful of when I'm moving into this place, like where I feel like numbing out or just simply scrolling for scrolling sake. And I've intentionally tried to sit idle and not do anything. Like, for example, I had to do a glucola test, which as you moms know, you drink syrup that's 50 grams and then you have to sit in the doctor's office for an entire hour and do nothing. And I brought a book. And essentially, I read the book as much as I could before I got bored. And then I really tried to challenge myself to just sit there. Because even Dr. K says, just sit and stare at a wall. Because what you're doing is building up your capacity and your endurance for nothingness. And having that capacity and endurance is absolutely vital, not only in this world, but just in our ability to not do anything. and allow our minds and our hearts and our souls to just completely be at rest and not be stimulated by any outside factors. Take any of those opportunities where you could even read a book and instead just sit there and do nothing and stretch that capacity for nothingness. Okay, so also if you want some more like tangible ways to go deeper in your relationship with God this season, don't forget to download my free guide in the show notes. And as promised, for the person who feels like they are wrestling more with God than they are with having the discipline to conquer distraction, this is my encouragement for you. God is never tired out by your failure. In fact, he delights in the person who fails and then immediately runs to him for grace and restoration. They say that familiarity breeds apathy, and I'd be willing to bet that you grew up in the church, which means you've heard the whole grace pitch a million times, but have you ever, I mean, truly understood it or let it be something you fully experience in your life? We are so quick to give ourselves grace when we snap at a coworker, but we're not so quick to accept God's grace when we've spent months or years running away from him. And so we convince ourselves that God is disappointed or ashamed of us, so we don't turn to him. We turn to other things. We distract ourselves. But God never gets tired of you. Romans 5 20 says, the law came along to multiply the trespass, but where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more. So that as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ. Don't let Satan ever convince you that God is grown tired of your sin and your failure because he's not. Where sin abounds, grace abounds so much more. Number two, God delights in those who depend on and have faith in him, and he honors that faith and dependency. Because he wants to show up. He wants to make himself known in your life. He wants to move in your life for your good and his glory. But it requires that we have faith in him to be who he says he is. It requires that we have faith that he is going to show up, that he's going to make himself known, that he's going to move. If our hearts have grown cold to his promises, or if the world or the enemy has convinced us that he doesn't care or that he's not listening, we lack faith. And when we look at the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels, what do we see? He moves and He works miracles and He saves by faith. People who look to Him and say, I need you and I trust you. People who are completely desperate and dependent on Him who say, you are who you say you are and I know you will do what you say you are going to do. That is faith and that is how God moves. And so God delights in those who depend on and have faith in Him, so don't lose that. Finally, If you are struggling with guilt or shame or feelings of condemnation, that is not from God. It's from Satan. Satan would love nothing more than for you to sit in your guilt and shame so long as it keeps you from going to God for his grace and mercy. He wants you to stay distracted. He wants you to keep scrolling. He wants you to continue to numb out. He wants you to... Consider all of the ways that you have gone wrong, all of the sin that you have in your past. He wants you to dwell on all of that, and he wants you to distance yourself from God by distracting yourself. So don't let shame keep you from a life of deep faith. Romans 8 says, for now, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, none. If you're saved, when God looks at you, he does not see your failure. He doesn't see the hour you just spent numbing out on TikTok or yesterday's sin or the future sin you're going to commit tomorrow. He sees the righteousness of Christ. But back to the faith topic, you have to believe that in order to live it out. You have to believe that God's grace abounds, that you have infinite second chances. You have to believe that God's grace is sufficient. So whether you want to deepen your faith but struggle with distraction or you're wrestling with and you keep yourself distracted from having to grow spiritually, I hope this episode was encouraging and helpful for you. This is not some self-help recommendation to do better, work harder. This is a call to put up arms by the grace and power of Jesus against the enemy and the world and the culture, all of the things that are screaming at us. We have to just admit that this problem, this problem of distraction, this problem of technological noise, It's never going to go away unless we intentionally do something about it. But there is freedom on the other side. I promise. I think it can be really defeating to feel like it's constant, it's overstimulating, it's overwhelming, it's all-consuming, and we don't know how to move forward. But it's baby steps. Put into practice the things that I mentioned and move closer to and make more room for and margin for the things of God. Okay. That's all I have for today. If you guys got something from this or if something resonated with you, please take time to leave a review, copy the episode link, share it with a friend. It means the world to me. And if you have any lingering thoughts or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via email. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll catch up with you again in next week's episode.