Technology is a tool that can be distracting and destructive or uplifting and supportive. In this video, Jennifer talks about how we can use apps, websites, and blogs to help form and focus our faith.
Hi and welcome to Beyond the Pew. Today we’re gonna talk about how technology can actually bring us closer to God.
Good Morning Facebook
Now I have to be honest. The way that I tend to use technology does not bring me closer to God. I am one of those people that the first thing that I do in the morning is grab my phone, and I look at my notifications on Facebook, all my little hearts on Instagram, and I just scroll and after a while I found that I’ve just wasted an hour mindlessly just scrolling on Facebook and not really doing anything productive.
So we are just taking this journey together and discovering and finding ways that technology can—and it can—help us bring us closer to God and help us in our faith life. Now what I’ve discovered is that if we are not careful and if we just let technology kind of do its thing, technology’s not gonna bring us closer to God. It’s going to waste our time, and it’s going to pull us further away in our faith life, and we’re not gonna be dedicating time to prayer like we should.
Using Technology Intentionally
But if we are intentional about using technology in a way that encourages us to talk to God, to have a prayer life, to read our Bible, it can actually be really beneficial. So I just want to throw some apps out there and some other blogs that I’ve found useful as a fellow citizen of the world that has a hard time putting down her phone.
Download Your Bible
So one of those apps is Bible apps. There are tons of different Bible apps out there. I’ll let you just kind of go on your own Play Store or iTunes whatever and look up different Bible apps that suit you because there are tons out there. But Bible apps can be really useful. You don’t have to carry around a huge Bible around with you wherever you go. If you want to do that, that’s totally cool. But you can have all the access that a Bible has, just on the touch of your screen.
So some of these apps allow you to take notes. They allow you to highlight. They let you copy/paste. They let you share. Some will pop up as like a daily scripture verse, and you can use these to help with your own memorization or to share with a friend or just to remind you to open your actual physical Bible and to study it. Some have study guides, and there are concordances and will compared with different versions and languages and can really help you dive in depth of what the author is really trying to say.
There’s an App for That
There’s also iBreviary for morning prayer, night prayer, Liturgy of the hours, things like that. There’s a Laudate app, which I have, and on that app there’s a confession tool that allows you to kind of go through an examination of conscience and will let you remember the things that you want to remember to say in confession, and then you can just clear the whole thing after you’ve gone a confession. Very awesome, very cool way that technology can help bring us closer to God.
Another cool app that I discovered is there’s one called Questions to God, and this app actually generates common questions that people have to God. And just like random things like, why do you love me, or why did you make me, and then they don’t have answers to these questions, but the point is if you’re having trouble in your prayer life and you don’t know what to say to God, you can just pull up in this app and it like kind of generates a question for you. God why did you make me? Why did you love me, things like that and you can make that your prayer, and it just kind of helps with a conversation if you’re new and your prayer you’re new with talking to God, you’re not really sure where to start, that’s a good place to start.
Blogs for Catholics
There are several women’s blogs that I follow such as Blessed Is She and Heart of Mary, Women’s Fellowship that do daily blogs, daily readings. They’ll sometimes have like an image with some quotes from saints or scripture verses that really helped me and encouraged me.
There are some good men’s blogs out there too, the Catholic Gentleman is a good one. Some of these do daily readings and then a reflection just to kind of help us connect our daily lives with whatever the readings are.
Bringing Fruit in Our Lives
So like I said, there’s so many ways to allow technology to be good in our lives. If we’re not careful like I said and if we’re just using technology as we desire, it’s not going to bring us closer to God. But I really challenge you, as I’m challenging myself, to be intentional with the way that we use technology, so that it can help actually bring fruit in our spiritual life. God bless