We check our phones roughly 144 times a day. Let that sink in for a second. Not 14. Not 44. One hundred and forty-four. According to a 2023 review of mobile screen-time studies, that's the average for most smartphone users — and if you're anything like me, that estimate probably feels a little low on days when your group chat is popping off or your work Slack won't stop pinging.
Now here's the part that actually kept me up at night: the same research suggests the average person touches their phone over 2,600 times daily. Twenty-six hundred opportunities to look away from what matters most. And I don't know about you, but my prayer life has felt that pull. My attention has felt that pull.
I've been a Christian for over a decade, and I'd be lying if I said my faith has grown in a straight line. Some seasons I've felt close to God in a way that felt almost physical. Other seasons I've gone weeks without a meaningful prayer, telling myself I was "too busy" while somehow finding 90 minutes to binge a show about competitive dog grooming.
So I started paying attention to what actually worked. Not the platitudes. Not the "just pray more" advice that sounds nice but never tells you how. I'm talking about the spiritual habits that deepen your faith when everything in your environment is engineered to steal your focus.
Here's what I found.
The Habit Nobody Talks About: Boredom as a Spiritual Discipline
Let's be honest — most of us have forgotten how to be bored. The second we feel a flicker of restlessness, we reach for a screen. Standing in line? Phone. Waiting for coffee? Phone. Lying in bed at night? Phone, obviously.
I started experimenting with what I call intentional boredom. Twenty minutes a day where I do absolutely nothing stimulating. No podcast, no music, no scrolling. Just sitting. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I just sit there and let my brain untangle itself. It's uncomfortable at first — almost embarrassingly so.
Here's what most people miss: silence is where God tends to speak. Not always. Not on command. But when I've cut out the noise, I've noticed a quiet clarity that I used to attribute to "good moods" or coincidence. It wasn't either of those things.
Try it for one week. Twenty minutes. See what happens.
1. Fixed-Hour Prayer (Yes, Like the Monks Do)
I used to think scheduled prayer was unspiritual. "I pray whenever I feel led," I'd tell people, which was a fancy way of saying "I pray when it's convenient, which is roughly never."
Then I read about the ancient practice of fixed-hour prayer — praying at set times throughout the day, the way monks and nuns have done for centuries. It sounded rigid. Mechanical. But after three weeks of trying it, I realized something: feelings follow faithfulness, not the other way around.
I set two alarms now. One at 7 a.m., one at 9 p.m. When they go off, I stop what I'm doing and pray for five minutes. Sometimes it's profound. Sometimes it's me going, "Hey God, I'm tired, help." Both count. The point isn't the quality of each prayer — it's the rhythm.
2. Scripture Before Screens
This one changed my mornings more than any productivity hack ever has. The rule is simple: no phone until I've read a passage of Scripture.
I'm not talking about a 45-minute study session. I'm talking about opening a physical Bible (yes, an actual paper one — there's something about it) and reading one chapter. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
The reason this works isn't magic. It's about first-fruits attention. Whatever gets your first focused minutes of the day shapes your whole mental posture. If it's email and Instagram, you're reactive all day. If it's Scripture, you're anchored.
I've found that on the days I skip this, I'm noticeably more irritable by 10 a.m. My wife can tell. That's not a coincidence.
3. The Practice of Noticing (A.K.A. Gratitude That Isn't Cheesy)
I used to hate gratitude journals. They felt like forced positivity, and forced positivity has never worked on me. But there's a difference between "listing things you're grateful for" and the spiritual practice of noticing.
Here's how I do it now: every evening, I write down one specific moment from the day where I sensed God's presence or provision. Not "I'm grateful for my family." That's too vague. More like: "The way the light hit the trees on my walk and I felt a strange peace." Or: "A friend texted exactly when I needed it."
This is one of those spiritual habits that deepen your faith because it trains your brain to look for God in the ordinary, not just the dramatic. Over time, you start noticing Him everywhere. Which, if you think about it, is the whole point.
4. Fasting From Something That Isn't Food
Everyone talks about fasting from food. Cool. Great. But for those of us who are already distracted, the more useful fast might be from something that owns our attention.
I did a 30-day fast from YouTube last year. Not because YouTube is evil — it's not — but because I realized I was opening the app without thinking, the way you might scratch an itch. It had become a reflex, not a choice.
What I found in that month was uncomfortable and clarifying. The thing I reach for when I'm anxious is usually the thing I'm actually worshipping. Fasting from it didn't make me more holy overnight, but it made me honest. And honesty, it turns out, is where real faith starts.
5. Serving Someone Who Can't Do Anything For You
Here's a wild thought: the fastest way to feel close to God is to do something for someone who can't repay you.
I started volunteering at a food bank last spring. Not because I'm a saint — I'm genuinely not — but because I wanted to test whether the Bible's talk about serving the "least of these" actually did anything for my spiritual life. It did. It does.
There's something about being around people whose struggles are bigger than your feed that resets your whole perspective. I walk out of those shifts feeling like I prayed for two hours. Weird, but true.
The Real Reason This Matters
None of these habits are magic buttons. I want to be clear about that. I've had weeks where I did all five and still felt spiritually dry. Faith isn't a vending machine where you insert discipline and receive guaranteed warm feelings.
But here's what I've come to believe after years of trial and error: we become what we repeatedly do. In a world built to fragment your attention into a thousand pieces, choosing to re-center on God — again and again and again — is itself an act of faith.
You don't need to do all five of these. Pick one. Try it for two weeks. See what shifts.
And if you're reading this on your phone right now? Maybe that's your sign to put it down for twenty minutes and just sit with God. He's not scrolling past you.
