Technology — Stephen Grant

1 Timothy 4 and the Christian’s Example

I'm going to ask you to turn back to the verses that we've just had brought to us in 1 Timothy 4, please, and verse number 12. 1 Timothy 4 and 12, please. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things.

Give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.

That's our reading, but I will be referring to quite a few other scriptures as we go through this subject this afternoon. So I want to speak to you about the issue of technology, and we will refer to these and other scriptures as we go.

Technology’s Benefits and Its Attention-Trapping Design

But I want to say a little by way of introduction, in fact, more than a little by way of introduction, just to kind of set the context of what I want to say. When I'm speaking about technology, let me just tell you that I've got an iPad in front of me and a phone to tell the time as well, and so therefore I use technology just to say that.

But when you use technology of this sort and other sorts, everything's Apple in my house, so it's all Apple this, Apple that, but when you use technology, you understand this, that it is designed to kind of keep you scrolling and clicking and all the rest of it.

And these algorithms are designed by very clever people and are very effective. And technology, no doubt, has given us a convenience and a freedom that would be hard to imagine even a decade ago. I remember my first mobile phone.

It was the size of a brick and it lasted for about 30 minutes charge. I remember the first phone my father had in his car, a car phone, and there was a big unit in the boot of the car and this car phone that had a cable, phones used to have cables, this hard cable thing and used to phone.

And we used to go out thinking it was free, so we would go out to phone our friends in my dad's car until he got the first bill in and he realized there was something not right because we'd been sitting out in his car for hours phoning people.

So technology has moved on greatly, obviously, with great many benefits. But we need to understand this, that the benefits of the digital revolution, or call it what you will, has also brought some challenges to us as believers.

And it would be foolish to ignore them. They're so significant. The mere presence of a smartphone in your pocket or your bag or a tablet or something like that can actually wreak havoc with your attention span and with your concentration.

Now that's just not me saying that. I was reading quite a few studies, not to do with Christianity, but to do in general with technology about this sort of thing. And some studies show that 33 of people feel anxious if they don't check their messages on their phone for a short time.

So here's a challenge. I can see most of you, but not all of you. And I can see most of your hands, but not all of your hands. And I'm going to see if you can stay off your phone for as long as I'm speaking to you and not check your messages.

That's a wee challenge. And I might just call you out if I see you checking your messages. There's another challenge. And don't pretend you're looking for a new hem or something either on your phone. The Marshmallow test is known to psychologists and people who are interested in this kind of thing.

It came from the Stanford University in the early 1970s. And it spoke about the issue of instant gratification. Instant gratification is one of the philosophies that underpins the algorithms that are within our technology.

Instant gratification and the need for it within the human spirit is actually something that they are plugged into. That Marshmallow test was famous. Little children were sat in front of a marshmallow.

I don't know if you like marshmallows. I do. And they were told that they were free to eat that marshmallow. And they could do it right now. But if they waited until the man went out the room and came back in, they could have too.

The truth of it is this. Almost all the children eat the marshmallow straight away. And that's a kind of silly thing, but it's not a silly thing. Because it demonstrates even in our youth what is present within us, which is that the desire for now, for instant gratification, very often overpowers any value in waiting.

And that has been shown to be the case. And phones are designed to cater for that very thing. And that's why you get notifications and pings and beeps and vibrations all going off. And the reason is just this.

It's just to tell you that there's something there. And the instant desire for gratification, you cannot help but look. I don't know if anyone's looked just yet. I don't know. But maybe you lasted a minute.

And that's good going. Because even though your head's been there, you haven't moved your hand. So the reality is this. That it's created what, again, psychologists call the attentional pathogenic culture.

Which is to say this. That we live in a culture now, an environment where sustained and long or even deep focus is increasingly difficult. Increasingly difficult. I was surprised by this, but I checked it out.

A small study of, and this is US studies, a small study of college students found that they could only now focus on any one task for how long? How long do you think? How long do you think? This was a kind of Sunday school of asking questions.

But the length is 65 seconds. Before your mind goes to something other than the task in front of you, it's 65 seconds in college. Now, you think that's ridiculous, but just think about it. How often is your mind straight by the time I open my Bible to now?

How many things have you thought about as I'm speaking to you? It's just an illustration. A study of high school kids, 28 seconds. 28 seconds before you're thinking about what's on your phone. Office workers, whoever, I'm farmland here, so maybe not so many office workers, but workers, three minutes.

Okay, that's the most. Three minutes. And that has been created by our technology apparently. They've concluded that technology has created that within us in our mind and in our thinking, and it's created what they call this attentional pathogenic culture.

And the whole of culture now is designed to cater for that, accentuate and provide for it. Think about everything you do in life, and it seems that in order to improve it, it's got to get faster. That's a sign of improvement.

And easier, that's a sign of improvement. It's all driven for these two things, for this reason. We want it faster, and we want it easier, and we want it now. We want it now. Now, that does damage. Again, I've not yet got to the Bible.

This is all in terms of general scientific research, but I think it's important to know this. It helps us as Christians think about our technology because we understand it and what lies behind it. The damage done to us, and it does damage us, has been researched, and apparently there is damage done obviously to our relationships in the area of empathy.

Now, that is because if you are in close proximity to someone, then you are able to connect with that individual in a deeper way than if you're simply messaging all the time. So physical proximity enhances empathy, and the less physical proximity there is, the less empathy there is in our relationships.

You're able to say terrible things to people as long as you're not face-to-face with them. That's the idea. It's much easier, and you're easier to say terrible things about people if you never meet them.

It's kind of difficult if you're standing in front of someone and they say to you, yeah, such and such forwarded that message about me that you sent. That's really awkward. But of course, in our society, that never happens, does it?

It's all back-channeling and, you know, chats within chats and all that kind of stuff, back-channeling and chats, and someone's in this chat, six folk in a chat, and there's another three chats about that chat, and so it goes on.

Yeah, you girls are all smiling. You know about this stuff. This is reality. This is the world we live in. The damage to ourselves from technology has also been researched. Professor Errol Miller, who's a neuroscientist at MIT in Massachusetts, he produced a whole body of work in relation to this, and he called it the switch cost effect, which is this.

If you're multitasking on technology, and who doesn't? I mean, some of you boys or girls, you're gaming at one point. You're on social media at the same point. You've got a headset on and all the rest.

All this is going on at the same time. You girls have got maybe six apps open with different social media outlets, and you're taking pictures of yourself and sending it, and you're messaging, you're messaging here, there.

It's all going at the same time, and you're like thinking that you're really capable because you're multitasking. You're not, apparently. There's no such thing as multitasking, apparently. Apparently, your brain, I'm quoting because I don't know this stuff, your brain can only produce one or two thoughts.

My dad used to say that about me in a day, but actually this is at one point in time. He says your brain can only produce one or two thoughts in your conscious mind at the same moment. That's the capability of it.

So that, and I'm sorry teenagers, the researchers about you, but this applies to all of us, but the average teenager believes they can follow up to six forms of media at the same time. When neuroscientists, I'm quoting, studied this, they found that that's not what they were doing, but actually they were juggling in their head.

They didn't know it, subconsciously juggling, and what they're actually doing is switching and reconfiguring from moment to moment to task to task, and that comes with a cost. There's a cognitive cost for that.

The idea is just this, excuse me, imagine you, I'm quoting, imagine you're doing your homework. I don't know if you ever do homework. Imagine you're doing your homework, you receive a text, you look at it, it's only a glance, takes three seconds, you're back to your homework.

In that moment, according to the science, your brain has to reconfigure when it goes from one task to the other task. Your brain has to subconsciously remember what you were doing, what you thought about it, and get back into it again.

As a consequence, your performance drops. For example, one study took 136 students, got them to sit a test. Some of them had their phone switched off, but present. Others had their phones absent. Even the presence of a phone, even though it's switched on, subliminally draws your attention to it, and their performance was on average 20 worse because of the switch cost effect.

They were nearly finished with this stuff. So the French people worked this out as a nation. Now the French don't like us very much in the UK as a kind of national sort of thing, and we're not that keen on them either, to be frank, as a kind of national characteristic, but they got this right.

Ordinary workers, they passed legislation, it's called the legal right to disconnect in France, and their workers, they're a very unionised nation, their workers decided that social media, the pressure also of being contactable 24 -7 by their boss, was intolerable, and they pressured their government for change, and change took place.

You have a legal right in France to define working hours and not to be contacted by your employer outside of them. Huge companies have been fined large sums of money for doing that very thing, and it's now embedded in their culture.

When you're not at work, you're not at work. When you're at work, you're at work. When you're on, you're on. When you're off, you're off. That's not the case in the UK. Take me aside, I don't have a proper job, but take someone who's got a proper job, and you think about that, and you the same maybe here.

If you've got a boss, and you've got a phone, normally you're contactable all the time. It's changed, the working environment's changed, and it comes at a cost. What is the cost? One of the principal damaging effects of technology, i .e. screens, is on reading.

Screens, Reading, and Bible Comprehension

And comprehension. Apparently, they put people in front of screen-based text, and hard copy text, and studies showed that there was a different, your brain worked differently when it took information from a screen, than when it took information from a hard copy text.

So there's some research in this. Your brain actually processes it in a different way. And as a consequence, now students find it almost impossible to sit down with long, complex text, and without inordinately long breaks, pay attention, and process, comprehend, interpret, analyse, and so on, and learn information.

It's had a real challenge. Now as a Christian, that's a problem. Because our learning is done from text, the Bible. And if our technology is damaging our ability to read and to comprehend text, that's a serious problem with the ability to grow as a Christian.

That's going to have long-term effects. Because people won't be able to, nor have the desire to spend any length of time reading their Bible, never mind studying it. So that's a serious problem that lies ahead of us, in relation to technology.

And let's move away from all of that research. And there's much more research than I've referenced. You can, I mean, it's not hard to find. Strangely enough, you have to go on the internet to find it.

But it's all there. And the truth is, the work has been done, not in relation to Christianity, but in relation to society. And there are significant concerns about the impact of technology upon the ability of people in these areas.

Whether the Phone Is Master or Servant

So it comes down to this. I've got my phone here. It comes down to this, I think. When you think about your phone, I'm just using that as the principal piece of technology that we all interact with. Is my phone a master or a servant?

So my phone's always within my reach. It wakes me up in the morning if I want to listen to any music, and then that's off my phone. It keeps my calendar, my banking, my pictures, my life. It's my portal to whatever social media thing I'm going to look at, my news feed, you name it, it's all on my phone.

The question is just this, is this my master or is this my servant? Who serves who? Who's in control? Am I in control or is it in control? That's actually an easy, very, very easy question to answer practically.

By the end of me speaking, you'll have a good idea. Because if you haven't reached for your phone, or you haven't wanted to reach for your phone, or if you're not interested what's on your phone just at the minute, even for an hour, that's unusual.

Master or servant? How do we view our phone? That's the first thing. Secondly, one of the impacts of technology is this. There is a biblical principle, and it's in 2 Corinthians 3 verse 18, and it says this, and we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

The idea is just this, that you become like what or who you behold. If you're gazing at Christ through his word, you're going to become like Christ. You become like what you behold. So what you watch impacts who you are.

What you spend time gazing at will determine what you are. And when we spend an inordinate amount of time on our phones, and I'm no different from anyone else, as Brandon's been saying, and I'm the same, you know, I follow stuff from news and all the rest of it on my phone, I've got to check my bank, I'm on my phone, blah, blah, blah.

You know, it's not as if I'm speaking to young people here as if this only applies to young people, it applies to us all. But the challenge is this, is that my chief focus in a day? And of course, there's all sorts of issues about what you watch on your phone.

You know, I'm not going to get into that in too much detail, but you know, we'll come to it in a wee bit of detail as we go on. Never, I think, in the history of mankind have Christians carried in their pocket a gateway to pornography and immorality as we do nowadays.

It literally is centimetres from your finger at any point in time. And usually it can be what? How many pushes of a button away? Four? Three? Two? I don't know. So there is an inherent danger in that in terms of content, never even just mind the technology.

And so there is this, we need to understand this, that we become like what we behold. If you watch that stuff, that's a very big clue as to where you are spiritually and the sort of person you actually are.

Embodied Fellowship and Face-to-Face Relationships

The second thing is just this, that we forget what the theologians call the joy of embodiment, which means just this, that we forget about the benefits of physical proximity and interaction and think that this replaces it.

You know, how many followers do you have? How many friends do you have? All this kind of stuff on social media. You and I know that's not, these are not real relationships. They're not. You know, friendship is something that can be conducted at a distance, but that's true.

But active, good, functional friendship requires proximity. And 2 John 12, John the apostle knew this. He said, though I have much to write to you, that was their method of communication. Basically, this translation says, I would rather not use paper and ink, he says.

Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face. There's nothing replaces that sort of interaction, face to face communication, close proximity of relationship, he says, so that our joy may be complete.

Careful Speech in a Culture of Constant Messaging

Third thing is this, through technology, we are growing very careless with our words, glibness and flippancy about everything are actually terrible vices in our society and culture. I know there's, you know, I like good laugh, et cetera, and there's space and time for all that kind of thing.

And a bit of banter and all that kind of thing. But there are times to get serious about serious things. Not everything's a joke. Not everything's just a laugh. Not everything's a meme. Not everything is to be ripped off something to, you know, to get a laugh.

There's an aspect of life that's serious and you need to get serious about serious things. There needs to be space for the serious as opposed to the flippant. So many times in scripture we're told to be so very careful with our words.

Proverbs 17 verse 27 says, whoever restrains his words has knowledge. And he who is a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Listen to Proverbs 10, 19. When words are many, transgression is lacking. I can't type that very fast on my phone.

I'm old. Thumbs don't go that way. You know, that's what it is. But some of you can, you guys can go fast. And I'm sort of thinking how many words are you actually communicating through all that, these messaging?

I figured this in life that someone who talks a lot runs out of true things to say. There's only so many true things to say in a day. If you've got a multitude of words, you're either going to exaggerate the truth or you're going to pervert the truth or you're just going to tell absolute lies.

There's only so much truth that can be told. And that's what this, that's what the Proverbs said. When words are many, transgression is not lacking. If you're on your phone messaging all day, you're not going to be saying stuff that's true all day.

Not a chance. You're going to exaggerate and pass on second, third-hand information, distort it, all the rest of it. It's just going to happen whether you like it or not. It's true. Master or servant.

Technology as Tool or Idol

As Brandon said, a tool or an idol. A tool or an idol. This is my phone. This isn't much a challenge to me as anyone else. A tool or an idol. A tool is something that you use. And as you use it, it meets a temporary need.

An idol is something you hold on to meet a deeper internal need and it replaces God. And so idols become a source of your identity, security, purpose, comfort. And technology can become an idol. You find your fulfillment, your joy, you find your all through your technology and not in God.

Addiction, Gaming, Gambling, and Shopping

Addiction. Yeah, the phone's addictive. It's designed to be addictive. The whole way these apps are designed and these social media things are designed is to keep you coming back and to keep you on for as long as possible.

That's the way they monetize the thing. That's how YouTube is monetized. There's no point in you watching a YouTube video from the creator's point of view for 10 seconds. They want you on for the 15, 20, one minute, three minute, because their returns go up.

And it's all to do with how long you're on as to the monetizing of the social media element. That's what TikTok's done on, all these things. So where the advertising revenue comes from, that's how it's all assessed.

You've got to be on for as long as they can keep you on. And you need to be engaging if possible as well with it. You know, forwarding, liking, sharing, all that kind of stuff. It's designed to be addictive.

And I'm not even touching gaming. Not just in your phone, but in your consoles of your game, all that kind of stuff. That's a whole other level. That's you actually being transported into another world.

I remember, you're going to hate me for this, some of you, but I remember my son, he had a gaming console. I think it was a PS3 or 4 or something like that. And he was on it a lot. He was on it too much for me.

So I told him, can't be on that as much. Over our way, it's all FIFA, it's all football. And they're playing games against folk online and all this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I just sold it. So he came home one day and there was a gap where his console used to be.

You'd have thought I'd cut his arm off. Yeah, things were a bit rocky in our relationship for a day or two, I've got to admit. But it was the best thing. It was the best thing. And yeah, he was mature enough eventually to realise the value of that and the fact that that had got a bit of a grip in his life that was too much.

Sometimes you actually need to take a thing like that and recognise, I'm actually not going to be able to have this and use it in a sensible, appropriate fashion as an occasional thing to do. This is actually going to dominate my life.

And so I need to get rid of it. Or sometimes you need to do that. And if you won't get rid of it, maybe somebody needs to get rid of it for you. Gaming. Addiction. And sometimes, sadly, this phone allows you not only to be an addiction, but actually to service your addiction.

I hope none of you gamble full stop. And I hope none of you gamble on your phones. Gambling is not to be done by a Christian. That's another subject. Remember what they did at the foot of the cross? They gambled for his clothes.

It's a horrible thing. It's a destructive thing. It's something that gets people into addiction and wastes and ruins their life, empties their bank account and ruins their whole life. I've seen it. I've seen it close up.

And that phone facilitates that addiction in a way that has never been in society. People gambling on sports, on multiple aspects of sports through their phone. Shopping. Sometimes, glad my wife's not here.

Sometimes you can't get to our front door because the Amazon guy's like piling stuff up. He's almost visiting us for Christmas dinner now. I feel I know him so well. He knows all about my family. I know all about him.

We're in a one-to-one situation. And there's a lot of smiles because you know what I'm talking about. And of course, it's all going back. And of course, it's only for choice and all this kind of stuff.

The truth of it is just this, that in terms of shopping, whether it's male or female, it doesn't matter. Again, our phones actually enable us to service that addiction because that's what it can become.

Pornography and Spiritual Defilement

Social media, I'm not going to touch. It's too cringy. My kids tell me when I talk about social media because I'm so out of date. Social media, I'm not going to touch. But what I'm going to touch is this pornography.

Now, some of you older saints might be a wee bit uncomfortable about this, but bear with me, please. You've got to take it from me that this is, for some people in this audience, one of the greatest dangers to their spiritual growth that exists today.

You might say there can't possibly be a Christian who would ever be tempted to view or interact with material like that. Sadly, that's not true. It's just not true. If you look at the statistics of that industry, you will see it as the most profitable industry that uses the internet by far, by far.

The numbers are actually staggering. I saw, just as I was researching, I saw a study that was anonymous that was done to Christian pastors in North America and 25 of them admitted anonymously to not necessarily having a problem with it, but interacting with it at some stage.

25%. That's a sobering figure. The truth of it is just this, that pornography is freely available. It's available on your phone. The culture out there does not see it for what it is anymore. It has become culturally acceptable, and it is extremely damaging to you as a Christian.

It is fornication. I've had the sad experience of dealing with the aftermath of addiction to this stuff in my own country. One individual was addicted to it by the age of 13 and went from watching to enacting a very sad story.

I would just warn, particularly the young men here, I know it's a bit cringy, but please understand this, that watching pornography is participating in pornography. Your viewing stats are the reason the industry exists.

You are not simply passive observing. You're actively engaging in fornication. It will damage you. It will damage you spiritually. It will damage you relationally. It will damage a marriage if you go into it with this problem, and if it stays in your marriage, it will damage your relationship with your wife.

But more than even all of these things, bad though they are, it will damage your relationship with your Lord. Images will become imprinted upon your brain. When you're sitting breaking bread, they'll come to your mind.

They'll defile you. It's so visual what you get in your phone. Please be discerning. Please be like Joseph and run away from the stuff and stay away from the stuff, and if you've got an issue with it, you seek help, and you'll be surprised that you seek an older brother who's mature spiritually, and you seek their help if you've got a problem with this stuff.

You meet with them and you talk to them about it, and you find a way forward. You find an accountability relationship if that's what you need, but you take it seriously. If you've got a problem with this, don't you let that build into some really big issue in your life.

And confess it before the Lord. It's fornication. It's sin, and sadly, particularly for men, this is the key that unlocks that world. Used to be if you wanted to access material like that, you had to go and buy something at a shop somewhere, and there was a shame and a disgrace about it.

Patience, Delayed Gratification, and Christian Endurance

No shame and disgrace now in your home when no one sees you with a phone that you've got padlocked with security that no one ever sees. It's a sad world we live in. Addiction. Patience. Sadly, our phones have taken away patience, and this idea of delayed gratification and so on.

And you know, a lot of Christianity is built upon the issue of endurance and patience. Stickability. You know, the Lord never, in my experience, jumps to our tune. He has his own time, his own ways of working in our life, and very often the hardest thing, Psalm 40, is to wait patiently upon the Lord.

But you know, if we never ever practice that in our life, you know, if you want to get something, you don't necessarily need to load yourself up with debt to get it now. Why not try working and saving until you can get it in a year's time?

But in our culture, that's unacceptable because you get free credit, you get credit here and credit there and all that kind of stuff. Instant gratification is the way forward for our culture. But there's something, there's something about saving and then purchasing, you may think it's old-fashioned, but there's something about that that's good.

It's good. We don't always need to be paying stuff off, you know, just in the smaller things of life. I know there are big things like properties and vehicles and all that, and I understand all of that, but you know, just, it's not our instant thought, get it now, pay for it later, all the time.

Things come too easy in that sense. Patience. But even patience as a person. I tell the story, I remember when I first met my wife, I was 17. This isn't going to be one of your stories, this isn't going to go on for ages.

I first met my wife when I was 17 and she was 17 and I'd never met her before and I met her, this is a good story for you young guys, I met her at a prayer meeting. It's true, it's actually true. And I went away to university and a new known in the city I went to, there was a small assembly in the centre of the city and there was a kind couple there that I didn't know before.

They asked me to come for some food before the midweek prayer meeting, which was smart on their part. So I went to their house for a meal and there in the house was this person who's now my wife and she was staying with them to study in the city.

I was staying elsewhere in digs to stay to study in the city and we got, we met each other. I instantly knew that she was going to be my wife. It took a lot longer to come to that realisation, but I was certain pretty soon.

And when she and I kind of got together, we used to meet up in the town, in the city, as you call it. And say for example, we agreed to meet at five o 'clock, just for example. So I would be there at five o 'clock.

So five past five, ten past five, quarter past five, I'm pacing up and down and I was waiting, but not patiently. I'm still waiting, but not patiently. Twenty past five. Yeah, I waited, but not patiently.

That was a common experience. That was one of my learning curves about relationships. They need to wait. Now I have learned, I still have to wait, but I've now learnt how to wait patiently. You know, I don't go into the car and hit the horn now.

That was a bad idea. I just got into the car and I sit passively and patiently. But the idea of endurance in terms of our character and personality is so important and sadly our technology doesn't help us in this.

It doesn't help us in this. Okay, one more thing and then some positive stuff just before I finish. Technology removes the value of silence. That just went off at the right time. The value of silence.

Silence, Solitude, and Spiritual Development

We live in a very noisy environment. So you walk along, I sometimes walk through airports, everyone's got these big earphones on, you know, headphones on, eyes down, something's going the whole time. You know that, they just do that so no one speaks to them.

But anyway, you got headphones on and so it's music the whole time. So it's not music, it's podcast. So if it's not that, it's watching something. It's flicking through some of your phone. The truth of it is just this, if you think about your life, there's very few moments of silence.

Yet evidently in the Bible, silence is important for spiritual growth. The need for solitude is so vital when there is no noise. You won't study your Bibles with music playing and stuff like that. You'll go through the motions but you won't be engaging with God with a background.

Stuff cannot. The need for silence is vital. I remember when I was just married, we lived in this tiny wee house and we thought it was a palace but looking back now it's pretty much a tiny wee house. And we had one living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, one bathroom and no shower, just a bath.

We had a man called Archie Carew to come and stay with us who was a preacher because when you're young you just, yeah, come and stay with us, no problem. There was no shower. So anyway, he managed, he was very kind and gracious but there was nowhere for me to study.

So there was a cupboard under our stairs that I decided to make into a study and you had to slide in one way and there was no windows or ventilation but there was one thing in there, believe it or not, especially when the children came along, which was silence.

There is the need for silence. Now that's a challenge for you young families, I get that. I've been there but it's not a challenge that you simply say, well I've got young families, I'll never find silence.

You'll find it. If you look for it you'll find it and you'll need it. You may get it in your car, you may get it outside, you may get it in your home. If you're only Christian, your home is a challenge but you need to find it.

I can remember the sweetest and the most challenging and the most real experiences with my God have been in silent times, just me and him, me and my knees before him, the Bible opened and a head bowed in silence.

These are the times that God speaks to you in reality, the need for silence. If you're going to, this is just advice, if you're going to spend time in prayer, don't have your phone beside you sitting there, it'll distract you.