We all want to develop spiritually and grow closer to the Lord, but it often doesn’t happen as quickly as it seems it should. Perhaps you’ve been a believer for years or even decades and it still doesn’t feel like you are a much more mature Christian than you were a few months after you were baptized. Why do we struggle so much with spiritual growth?

Lack of Time

The pressures of everyday life have a way of squeezing out things we don’t prioritize and set aside time for. In His parable about the sower, Jesus spoke about those who allow life to choke out their spiritual growth. “Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.” (Matt 13:22 NKJV)

It seems like every year our lives become more fast-paced and frantic. There is more and more to do and seemingly less time to do it in. It may seem like there is nothing we can do and that the best we can do is learn how to deal with it. However, I truly believe that attitude can be used by the devil to lead us away from God by telling us we are helpless and there is nothing we can do about it.

Reading the Bible, praying, and listening for the Spirit all require us spend quiet time with God. How can we find stretches of quiet and undistracted time to listen to what the Lord has to say to us? It is not enough to tell yourself that you’ll do it when you have spare time. Spare time has a way of getting filled up by other things. Growing spiritually is one of the most important, if not the most important thing for a Christian to do, and so it should be a priority.

The first step is to intentionally set aside time to spend with God. Designate a set amount of time per day at the same time each day to spend praying and reading your Bible. You could start with twenty to thirty minutes early in the morning before other members of the house begin waking up, or in the evening when others have gone to bed.

For many of us, we find that our electronic devices steal our time and attention for minutes or even hours every day. The next step toward improving our devotional lives is to stop allowing our devices to control us and take away our time. Simple things like removing distracting or needless apps or not carrying our phones with us everywhere can go a long way toward allowing us to regain control of our time.

Lack of Focus

Possibly one of the worst ways in which ever-present electronic devices has changed us is in rewiring our brains. Before smartphones became widespread we would fill our spare moments in the checkout line or waiting at DMV with thoughts about our lives and the people in them. Now we fill nearly every waking moment we are not actively engaged with a task with fragments of text, pictures, audio, and video. When we take in our news and entertainment in little bits strewn throughout the day it trains our brains to crave distraction.

To fully engage with the text of Scripture requires focus. There is no way we can grasp the rich meaning of Jesus’ teachings or the depth of Paul’s letters in between moments of scrolling through social media or reading the latest news. When your phone is sitting beside you, it has an almost magnetic attraction that often causes you to pick it up without even thinking about it. A notification dings and you can’t resist picking up your phone to see who messaged you. Then you need to put it down and focus your attention back on what you are reading. These constant interruptions make it much harder to glean what we need from the Word.

The simplest way to deal with this temptation is to make your phone inaccessible. Put it across the room, or even better, in another room. Silence all but the most important notifications. Consider putting your phone on Do Not Disturb during your devotional time.

Our devices can make it harder for us to pray even when they are not around. If our brains are trained to crave distraction, prayer seems boring. If we think about what prayer is, talking with the Creator of the universe and tapping into unlimited power, it’s exciting. But in the moment, it’s just us in a quiet room, talking to someone we can’t see. There is no stimulation, and so our minds are bored.

Devices shorten our attention span. Having quality devotional time, reading an upbuilding book, or even conversing with a friend, all require sustained attention. If our brains have been trained to crave short-form stimulation, we will have a much harder time sustaining our focus on one thing for more than a few seconds or minutes.

It is easy for our devices to pull us from one app to the next, then from one post or picture to the next. This leaves us feeling frantic and unmoored and it changes our brains in ways that are at first too subtle to see. Then one day we find that we either can’t focus as well as we once could or we even find it unpleasant to focus on one thing for a long time. Our devices are wonderful tools to help us communicate and access helpful information, but they threaten to change our brains in ways that make it harder for us to develop our relationship with God.

Lack of Discipline

We read stories about those in the past who rose well before the sun and spent an hour or more praying and reading their Bibles. In this modern, digital age, this sort of devotion seems impossible to us, or maybe even more than necessary. We know our need to draw closer to God, but we struggle to find the time or interest to actually do it. Why?

Distraction and not setting aside time are both large reasons why we fall short, but another reason is lack of discipline. Paul compared the Christian life to running a race. Only those who exhibit self control and discipline will win an imperishable crown (1 Cor 9:24-27). Discipline allows us to bring our bodies and our wills under subjection so that we can follow Christ in all things.

Regularly setting aside undistracted time for worship is not easy. It is often hard to find the time and distractions pull us away at every turn. Only by controlling ourselves and our desires can we build up habits that will make daily worship a part of our lives. Habits are not formed in just a day or a week; they are built over weeks, months, and years. At first it will seem difficult to focus on reading your Bible and praying, but after months of consistently and mindfully seeking God, it will slowly become an essential part of each day. Your daily devotional period will go from a chore to something that you look forward to. Don’t become discouraged if it is hard right away. Keep persevering and you can form a life-changing habit of daily worship.

Turn to Him

Simply increasing the time you spend in Bible reading and prayer will not of themselves bring you closer to God. But, if you consistently feed from His Word and listen to His voice, you will be changed. You can try to control your behavior and online habits with apps, trackers, and filters, but none of those are as effective as turning to God and asking for Him to change you and give you victory.

Bibliography/Further Reading

The Shallows by Nicolas Carr

12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke