Lately my phone battery has been dying at moments when I needed it for work or crucial discussions. It’s not that it’s faulty per se, no, rather it’s because I didn’t charge it when I ought to.
I used to charge it overnight so that it would last for much of the following day. When, however, I didn’t get it charged overnight it dies during the day. There were many moments during the day when it could have been charged, and should have been charged, but many times it felt like those were the moments when I should be using the phone.
One time I was using its WiFi hotspot to do some online work on my laptop even though the phone battery was low. Not only did my phone die that evening, but it did not come back on for hours even after it was plugged in to charge. That was the moment I realised that I had gone too far.

Yeah, I’m probably the worst phone owner out there. I’m trying to improve though, and I will.
But the experience taught me something. My phone taught me a couple things about my life.

I need a consistent power supply

Just as my phone needs to be charged for it to work well, my life needs a consistent supply of God’s Word if I’m going to live effectively. Every day, with every word we speak, every thought we think, every move we make and every breath we breathe we are expending life. There’s a saying that the source of a thing is what sustains it. We become children of God by believing His Word in the Gospel, and it is His Word that sustains us.
Or like Peter put it

For through the living and eternal word of God you have been born again as the children of a Parent who is immortal, not mortal.

(1 Peter 1:23)

God’s Word is eternal and abides forever. If I want to live effectively, I need a supply of God’s Word to frame my mindset. If God wants to speak to me, it would primarily be through what is written in the Bible.

Remember, the tree in Psalm 1 is planted by the rivers of water. That’s a constant consistent supply. We all need that. Like hugging a transformer and staying fully charged. Yes there’s a death, but there’s life ’cause God’s Word gives life😉

We afford ourselves of this opportunity when we connect regularly with our local churches to be taught God’s Word, when we listen to it being taught elsewhere, when we discuss and study it with one another and when we study the Bible for ourselves. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand. All of these are very important for our growth spiritually.

If it is not charged well, it would die

If I am giving out more than the quota of God’s Word that I am taking in, I will burn out.

As children of God, the inclination of our God-renewed spirits is to reach out to others. We may reach out to people with God’s love and message through our words, our acts of service, our social media, but primarily, our lives. Many times God provides opportunities for this. But if I have not been feeding on His Word regularly, I may be a blessing to others but I would not be in the best frame that God wants me to be. In explaining His Word I may have faulty situational explanations opposed to His Word, defined by my emotions and not His context. In some cases, I might even not know or be aware of what He would have me do. In some other cases, I might even refuse to do what He would want me to do because I don’t feel like it.
Notice the common denominator in these examples: my feelings. When God’s Word is not my priority, I am going to be live based on how I feel. Feelings change, people. But God’s Word endures.

God wants me to be fruitful. Psalm 1:3 paints a very interesting picture. Here, check it out:

…they find joy in obeying the Law of the LORD, and they study it day and night.
They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do.

Psalm 1:2,3

The kind of person that is spiritually healthy and fruitful at all times is one who finds joy in obeying God’s law and studies it day and night. And do you know the fruit that God wants to produce in our lives?

But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.

Galatians 5:22, 23

I want to be loving, joyful, peaceful and at peace, patient, kind, good, faithful (trustworthy) and full of faith, humble and self-controlled, and I want to be like that all the time.

Love, for example, is a primary quality of God because He is love (1 John 4:8). And the Bible lets us know that love endures, it is kind even when it suffers long (1 Corinthians 13:4). Living just by feelings wouldn’t cut it. If I want my life to remain loving through all seasons, if I want to be fruitful in God’s measure no matter what happens, I need a consistent supply of God’s Word.

I’m not made to work 24/7

I’ve covered much of this particular lesson in my other article on REST so you can check that out too (thank you!). But I’ll summarize that here too.

Our phones were not made to work 24/7. They need moments to recharge so that when they are charged we can use them for all the tasks and fun stuff we desire.

We also weren’t made to work 24/7/365. God gave the Israelites a pattern of 6-days of work in a week with one day set aside to cease from work. While it’s not a law for non-Jews like me, the essence of it is very essential for every one of us.

Rest gives our bodies and minds an opportunity to recharge. To let go of the stress and work that have weighed it down so that we can later tackle it with revived energy, creativity, excitement and better coordination.

That meme or WhatsApp discussion won’t run away if you let your phone charge. The world won’t end if you take a day or a couple of hours to rest before heading back into the work you’ve been doing for hours. That rhythm of work and rest is essential to us all. When God rested on the seventh day, I’ll bet it’s not because He was tired.

I wrote a whole article about this subject that I really love, and I think you would too. Please check it out here when you have the time.

It is my responsibility

My phone is my possession and as such its well-being is in my charge. If its screen is broken, it’s my fault. If it is ruined beyond repair, I am responsible. The state of my phone and my other possessions says a lot about my attention to responsibility. If my phone battery is dying consistently when it could have been charged, then it means I have been lax concerning my responsibilities.

This makes me consider how I’ve been treating the people and systems placed in my charge. Do I only use them or am I deliberate about adding to them? Am I more concerned with what I can get rather than what I can give?

These opened up a lot I needed to work on, and much of that work is inside where no one else can see, except the Audience of One.
This leads in to something very important.

My life belongs to God

The phone may have been purchased by me, but does it make it mine? Who provided the money?

James wrote it this way:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

James 1:17

My life and every good thing in it is a gift from God. In taking care of it well, I am honouring Him. But when I do it deliberately for Him, life becomes a life of worship. The best way I can honour Him is to give it to Him. Like Paul put it,

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Romans 12:1

He also wrote it this way in his letter to the Corinthian church,

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 6:20

In honouring Him with my life, I am serving Him rightly. In taking care of my phone, for example, I am honouring it as a gift from Him. This gives me a sense of higher responsibility.

Many times we forget that God is actually concerned even with how we treat our secular things. Jesus told a couple of stories to illustrate just how important this is.

Remember the one about the talents? Jesus told a story in Matthew 25 about a man that was travelling but he gave a couple of talents to his workers. And, no, he didn’t magically give them the ability to sing or play the violin. A talent in those days was a unit of money some have estimated to about $5000. The servants were rewarded for using and gaining profit on the money he gave them. But the one servant that kept the one talent he was given was said to despise his master, and was punished for it.

Jesus wants us to be responsible with the things He has given to us. Our friendships, our family, our secular work and ministry work are all important to Him. We honour Him when we see it all as an offering to Him, choosing to honour Him in them all.

And it all starts from honouring Him with our lives.

Let me finish…

So if I were to sum up all I’m trying to say:

Keep your phone charged!
Have a consistent supply of God’s Word.
God’s Word makes us fruitful and effective
Your life is a gift, a responsibility bestowed on you by God. Make it an offering to Him.

Yeah, I think that about covers it. This particular article has a lot more to do with actions so I’d better get to work.

Thanks for reading!

What have you learnt or are learning? In what ways can we honour God in our lives? Please share below. Thank you!

A couple of weeks ago, I misplaced my phone. While it occurred at a very dry time financially for me, I saw some things that I’d like to share. Life, as they say, doesn’t stop for us to contemplate our navels, so I had to start the process of getting another.
The major factor here was getting a new SIM card.
I first had to get a sworn affidavit from the Ministry of Justice to attest that I had indeed misplaced my SIM card, a process that took quite a while. But oh little did I know that I was just getting started. I needed to take the affidavit along with my National ID card to the office of my service provider. And of all times, this was a period when MTN was hosting customers for a new batch of registration. Every time I went to their offices I met crowds so thick I couldn’t even get in the gates. Many had come as early as before 6am to beat these crowds. Over and over, I would get to the offices and not get in.
All of this for a card and microchip tinier than my smallest finger. No, really, I checked!
After days of trying, I was finally able to get it on a Friday morning (yes, I had to go there as early as 6am).
And while this was not the most convenient of times, it was the best time because, in completely unrelated events, that office was burnt by folks agitated by the reports of xenophobic attacks, just days after I finally got my SIM card.
I pursued that SIM because much of my work and friendships are based on contacts and communication, all dependent on the SIM card. Without that tiny card, I was unable to get a lot done. Not to mention the hundreds of valuable contacts that I lost with my old SIM. But with this new one, I’m rebuilding the contacts database and adding new ones, one number at a time.

Through it all, what was impressed on my mind was that I was like that SIM card to God.
Now God is Self-Existent, and He does not ‘need’ me for Him to Be or to do all He wants to. But I was lost and separated from Him. He found me and made me New. Now, not only is He working in and with me, He is working through me to reach out to many. Just like a SIM card.

We are, each and every one of us, valuable to God. His Salvation Plan was much sacrifice on His part. It wasn’t convenient in any way, but He came and died and rose for us. Even the timing of Jesus’ coming was not convenient. His parents were looking for a place to sleep as His mother was entering into labour, for one thing. But, like the Scriptures say, it was in the fullness of times. There were lost souls before He came, and there are lost souls after the time He came, but His one sacrifice is the one we all look to and, believing, are saved.
That was the one time in history where in the land of Israel the prevailing execution style (imposed by the Romans) was crucifixion, in fulilment of the prophecies that His hands and feet would be pierced (Psalm 22:16)
This was the one time that a civilisation, the Roman Empire, had such a reach through the then known world so that as the Gospel spread in it, seeds would be planted that would reach into every sector and would go to the ends of the world as travels, trade and exploration expanded.
This was the one time in history when the Jewish nation still existed as an entity in their land, where the Passover fulfilment of Christ’s sacrifice would be clearly understood by the nation He was brought into. Every type and shadow illustrated in the Law, such as the Temple, was still fresh and apparent in their eyes, and as the apostles interpreted them in parallels with Christ’s sacrifice, listeners and readers could attest to it. Even non-Biblical sources from that era have documented evidence of Jesus, His miracles, His death and the believers’ beliefs in His resurrection.
This one moment in history, the timing of the coming of God as Man, could not have been at a better time. His teachings and the changes He wrought in the lives of those that believe in Him have been instrumental in much of the world’s systems of morality, emancipation drives, social justice and educational advancement, through the ages.
The world still has problems. Humanity is still in the throes of mortality. But everyone who believes in Jesus and His redemptive sacrifice for our sakes has His Spirit in them, His very Life animating their thoughts and actions and helping them all He made them to be. Just like a SIM card in a phone.
And when He comes to call us to Himself, all who have His ‘SIM Card’ will answer His call. Mortality will be consumed by Immortality, and the ‘Becoming-like-Him’ process we’ve been gradually going through would come to its “full-fill-ment”, just as it’s always meant to be. And will be like Him and with Him forever as He makes all things new.

You are very valuable to God. He would go to the ends of the Earth, to Hell and back, for you.
And, guess what? That’s EXACTLY what He did.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
ROMANS 8:38-39

PS: I have since gotten a new phone too, so, happy ending!

Tag: phone

Charge Your Phone!