Almost all of us now have a smartphone in our pockets, and all too often we allow them to distract us from our relationship with God instead of helping us.
It has been on my mind for sometime to highlight a few ways we might use our phones in our walk with God. The article will make a few iPhone App recommendations since these are ones I use, but there are many alternatives out there on the various App stores – so do look around and find the apps that work for you.
Reading God’s Word
Probably the area most familiar to us is the number of Bible applications that are available. These provide access to many translations of the bible both in English and foreign languages. The apps generally provide functionality to highlight passages and make notes against the text; some even come with access to a huge number of study resources for personal study and sermon preparation.
A few good examples are:
Listening to God’s Word
Our sermons at Corsham Baptist Church are made available online each week here. Rather than having to keep checking back each week for new sermons you can use a class of application called a Podcast App. These apps let you subscribe to our sermons and as soon as a new one is available it can download the latest message directly to your phone ready for your to listen to. There are many other great sermons and podcasts available on the internet too that you can subscribe to.
Example apps
Some interesting Christian Podcasts (use the app’s search feature to find these)
- Corsham Baptist Church Podcast
- Capitol Hill Baptist Church Sermons
- The Village Church Sermons
- The Evangelist’s Podcast
- Ask Pastor John
You can also find apps such as Audible that give you access to audio books including audio bibles. Christian Audio is another good source for getting hold of Christian Audio resources.
Prayer
Your phone can aid your prayer life. PrayerMate is a great application to help guide and plan your prayers. Organise your areas of prayer into various groups (e.g. Family Members, Mission, Friends & Colleagues, Countries, Personal growth as a Christian etc.) and also subscribe to prayer request feeds from various mission organisations and churches.
During your prayer time the app will pick an assortment of items each day to pray for – covering a broad range of prayer points and making sure you don’t forget the people you said you’d pray for etc.
Journalling
It can be helpful as a Christian to keep a Journal – and now with your phone you can do this digitally and have it with you everywhere you go! I’m by no means perfect at logging items but I do find the following helpful to record:
- Sermon notes
- Things I’ve prayed for – so I am reminded of answers to prayer
- Books I’ve read
- Bible/book quotes that have particularly impacted me
- Jotting down notes when God reveals something in a fresh way to me
A great app serving this purpose on the iPhone is DayOne. It lets you categorise entries so you can easily look through past prayer points for example. Also a great place to record photos and notes as a family journal too.
My hope and prayer is that something in this article has been helpful to you as you follow Jesus.
Adrian