7 Days to Phone FreedomSample

Agency

As you may have realized over the course of this challenge, the problem with your phone is that it’s designed to keep your attention. The apps you click and scroll without thinking are designed to perform like a slot machine in a windowless casino.

You open the app, pull down on the screen, and get a dopamine hit. You may not have received anything tangible or even satisfying from your time on the app, but you keep coming back for more. The novelty and possibility of each swipe-up make you feel alive even though you haven’t moved from the couch.

Like that slot machine player, you can forget that there is a whole world outside. You aren’t chained to your phone or the cheap rewards it promises. Yet, you feel and act as if you’ve lost your agency.

Your agency is your ability or power to act and produce a particular effect. Concerning your phone, you have the agency to put it away. You have the agency to set boundaries (and keep them). You have the agency to pay attention to your friend instead of checking your notifications.

Where does your agency come from? From God!

As Paul reminds us in Romans 6:6, by trusting in Christ and the forgiveness of sins He accomplished on the cross, our old self—the one ruled by sin—is also crucified. When that old self dies, we are no longer slaves to sin. Though we still wrestle with sin, we have the power to “not let sin reign!” We have agency to live according to the Life that lives within us!

When you remember your agency, you remember who God has called you to be and what He’s called you to do. God made you to glorify Him uniquely! You have been called to serve a specific place and people at this exact time. When you live with the agency God has given you, you’re operating in full authority as a son or daughter of God, as an Agent of Change.

Praise be to God!

Here’s what you can do today:

Reflect. Consider your agency. Think through your day and list the things that only you can do. When is your phone a necessary tool for your life? When is your tool a distraction from the work God has given you?

Exercise Your Agency. Based on your reflection above, make a boundary for your phone today and keep it. Then, give your wholehearted attention to the things that only you can do!