We live in a shallow, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking, and constantly distracted culture. Social media dominates our lives like a drifting fog around us, obscuring the truth about our surroundings. Our minds are constantly drawn away by phone and app notifications, while in urbanized environments, the landscape is peppered by incessant advertisements, signs, and messages displayed on every conceivable surface. The pace at which our minds take in information is far greater than is their ability to properly evaluate what they learn. And the fact that this has been the case for decades has not left our brains and bodies without a deep impression. As we’ve become increasingly saturated by the constant messages and pieces of information over the past 30 years, our brains have sought to adapt to this digital environment in ways that aren’t conducive to deep, critical, thinking.

On the contrary, the western mind has become increasingly porous, weak, thoughtless, and easily swayed. And this isn’t just the case with unbelievers. Just because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, doesn’t mean that the world can’t shape your mind in unhealthy ways. This is why Paul the apostle urges the Romans in Romans 12:2 to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The fact that he forbids the Romans from molding to the world’s patterns implies that it’s an imminent danger that Christians face. And one of the ways that we’re threatened in our digitized and distracted culture is by the constant input of random data into our minds through our phones, computers, TVs, and physical media.

What has our almost constant diversion to online media done to our thinking? As I said, it’s made it increasingly shallow, distracted, and incapable of reasoning through complex ideas, concepts, and arguments. And yet this is the very thing that’s required for us to come to any proper understanding of the truths of God’s Word, and to devote ourselves to prayer. It’s well-known among Bible-believing Christians that there’s a repeated precept found in the Psalms that says something like “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). And this doesn’t just mean to make our bodies be still, but to let our minds rest on the acknowledgement of God’s identity in the Being He’s revealed Himself to be.

Further, the Psalms teach us once and again that we should “on His law . . . meditate day and night” (Ps. 1:2; cf. Ps. 119:97). The Hebrew word translated “meditate” literally refers to the act of an animal chewing his cud, or masticating food over and over, until it’s broken down into its finest parts, and all its nutrients can be absorbed in the body. This is the way we should regularly treat Scripture. And this is impossible if we treat it as we treat most of the other messages delivered to us most of the day.

One of our greatest challenges as western believers is to re-train our minds to give attention to one long series of connected truths at a time, and analyze them to understand how they fit to make a larger message that applies to us. This is the essence of Bible study, and Bible study is simply a non-negotiable for you if you’re an average believer in the Lord Jesus. Moreover, even Bible study isn’t enough, since Scripture is so precious, profound, and multi-faceted that it requires constant meditation.

In addition to deep thinking on Scripture, full engagement and response to God’s Word also makes it necessary for us to devote ourselves to prayer. As the learning, application of, and response to, Scripture is like our spiritual eating, in like manner our praying is a type of spiritual breathing. Just as the Lord speaks to us with Scripture, so must we respond to His messages for us with constant, concentrated, and contracted prayer. And praying aright likewise necessitates that we diligently exercise our minds in deep, reasoned, thinking.

It isn’t a stretch to assert that devoted, spiritual, and Scripture-based prayer should often demand some of the most strenuous exercises of the mind possible. There are several reasons for this. First, when you pray, you’re directing your thoughts to the most holy God of all creation. As such, you’re demanding personal, and loving, interaction and attention from the One who caused all things to exist in the beginning, and who still upholds all atoms in the universe by His sovereign good pleasure. Since He is the One who gives you the ability to even think, then you ought to approach Him with the utmost reverence and awe. This means that, although praying will be imperfect in this life, we should always attempt to direct our thoughts to our God and Father with undistracted diligence and attention. When we’re seeking to bring a full series of messages to God, how could we dare to think about things that have nothing to do with what we’re talking to Him about?

The second reason that prayer demands intense mental strain is that we need to ask for things according to His will. That is, every request we ask of Him ought to be based on what He’s revealed to be the things that please Him. And since this is the case, we need to give good thought to the reasons why we’re asking for our requests. If you take a survey of the prayers in the Bible, those which are uttered by the most holy people often include detailed arguments for why the Lord should grant the prayers being offered. You especially find this with the Old Testament saints, such as Moses, David, Nehemiah, and the prophets.

Thirdly, prayer requires deep thought because of how often we’re called to pray. Most Christians are familiar with the popular New Testament verses on prayer, such as 1 Thessalonians 5’s “pray without ceasing,” and Ephesians 6’s “praying at all times in the Spirit”. It would be well-put to say that the Christian life is a life of prayer. The Christian musician Keith Green did well when he expressed this idea in the song “Make My Life a Prayer to You.” Since our earthly service is simply one long prayer, it ought to be filled with communication with God. And constant prayer simply makes sense for a child of God, since we have Him living inside of us, and acting for us wherever we are. Hence, we should be constantly relating our experiences to God’s will for us.

Finally, truly biblical prayer demands intense thinking because praying often requires us to spend long stretches of time in prayer. The believer who has never spent long, extended, periods of time in prayer is either a spiritual infant, or has some biological issue preventing him from doing so. The fact is, praying for all we should be, in the way we should be, at the time we should be, will usually be best done for an extended time. We see such praying in the example of our Lord, as Scripture says that He would use the wee hours of the morning to get away from His disciples and crowds, and pray to God alone. Also, Luke recounts that He “would often slip away into the wilderness to pray” (Lk. 5:16). Further, for major decisions, such as the selection of His apostles, we’re told that “He spent the entire night in prayer” (Lk. 6:12). Given these examples, the busyness of life, and the large number of prayer concerns we have, it usually makes sense for most believers to devote either a large chunk of time at the start, or at the end, of the day to pray for most of their major concerns. But again, this takes a good amount of time, and time seems to be at a premium. But you always make time for the things you love.

The Twin Devotions of Meditation and Prayer

Combining meditation and prayer together, we have a high calling and a tiring privilege to engage ourselves in. Rather than pathetically giving way to the constant distractions of our phones and computers, we need to be able to control our thinking as much as possible, and use it to learn the Lord’s will for us. Our spiritual learning requires not only Scripture study, but also devoted prayer for the minute details of our lives. And such careful thinking will require us to sometimes ignore the constant beeps, rings, lights, and images that so often confront our attention.

The battle that we face against distracted thinking makes a strong argument for setting apart a good amount of time in the beginning or end of our day for Scripture meditation and prayer. As has long been argued, giving attention to learning God’s Word at the start of the day can be used as a primer for the kind of thinking we should be doing the rest of the day. In other words, if we start our days thinking about the truths of God’s Word, then that will encourage us to do so throughout the day. Further, if we can so study Scripture at the start to remember its general truths and meaning, then we can recall what we learned during the day, and meditate on it.

Sacrifice Required to Understand God’s Ways and Will

The bottom line is that learning Scripture and praying as we ought will require way more concentration, attention, diligence, and thinking than most other things we do in our everyday lives. In our media-distracted, confused, and unthinking digital environments, its essential that we pour our minds into studying, memorizing, and applying God’s Word, and to praying without ceasing. It’s only as we do this that we’ll allow the Holy Spirit to renew our thinking, beliefs, affections, and desires, so we’ll be more conformed into the image of Jesus. And it’s only as we guard our minds from the distractions and trivialities of the Internet that we’ll be able to focus on the things that actually matter for our service of others, and our growth in Christlikeness. We must increasingly strive to obey the apostolic instruction to “set your minds on things above, not things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2).

In forthcoming articles, I plan to offer practical counsel on how to effectively manage your use of the Internet devices that are so integrally connected to your daily habits. The goal will be to avoid letting them control your thinking, and instead use them to enable you to think and act in accordance with the teachings of Scripture, and God’s will for you.

But one more thing — if you aren’t obeying the teachings of Jesus and the apostles in Scripture, and simply go along with the thinking of the world manifested by the basic messages of the Internet, then I must warn you that your soul’s in danger. If your thinking isn’t fundamentally about the greatness, goodness, glory, and grace of the Lord Jesus, then you’re still enslaved by the thinking of the world that’s controlled by the devil.

If you’re in this condition, then you must know that you stand under God’s anger and judgment, and are in danger of eternal punishment at the end of your life. You’re guilty of offending your Creator, and stand condemned by His perfect standard. But listen! The good news is that God the Father sent His Son to become the man Jesus of Nazareth, to live the perfect life, and to die in the place of sinners like you. Then, God raised Him from the dead (which was proved by the eyewitnesses of the apostles), took Him into heaven, and gave Him control over the universe. He’s promised to come again, and to judge everyone perfectly, and reward them for how they’ve lived this life. If you end your life as a rebel against the Lord Jesus, then you will be punished for your crimes. But God is calling you now to give up your rebellion, and trust in Jesus to provide you with God’s full forgiveness and peace, based solely on His death for our sins and His presence in heaven. I urge you to repent and entrust your soul to Jesus as your God and Savior today, since you don’t know how long you have left to live. God promises you forgiveness, peace, and eternal life, if you’ll do this. Please be reconciled to God! If you’d like to talk to me privately about how you can have your sins forgiveness through faith in Jesus, then please feel free to email me at chris.g.vandusen@gmail.com, or reach out to me through Facebook messenger at Christopher (Chris) VanDusen.