You Picked Up Your Phone…Then What?
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor
Have you ever picked up your phone to check one thing—and resurfaced 27 minutes later wondering what just happened?
You opened it to check the weather. Or respond to a text. Or look up one quick detail. And somehow you ended up in an entirely different corner of the internet. News. Sports. Email. Social media. Back to text. Then something else.
No decision. No intention. Just drift.
We are the most distracted people in history—and we call it normal.
There is always something in front of us. Something to scroll. Something to watch. Something to fill the silence. And beneath all that noise, there’s very little space to ask deeper questions.
What’s actually going on in my heart?
Where have I drifted?
What have I been avoiding?
Lent interrupts that.
For centuries, this season of forty days plus Sundays leading up to Easter, has been a deliberate slowing down. A turning down of the volume. A refusal to let distraction have the final word. Lent creates space—not to feel worse about ourselves—but to tell the truth before God.
This Sunday in David’s Playlist, we come to Psalm 51—a prayer born in the moment when David could no longer distract himself from reality.
His sin was exposed. His self-justification collapsed. The noise stopped.
And in that stripped-down place, he prayed:
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.”
Psalm 51 shows us that worship doesn’t begin with music. It begins with repentance. With honesty. With the courage to let God search us when we’d rather scroll.
Lent is not about adding more religious activity to an already full life. It’s about subtracting distraction so we can hear what God might be saying.
That’s why the devotional booklet we’ve given out during this series matters. The Psalms aren’t just meant to be studied—they’re meant to be prayed. Lent invites us to slow down long enough for Scripture to examine us.
This Sunday morning, we’ll open Psalm 51 together and see how confession leads to cleansing—and how repentance leads back to joy.
And then Sunday evening, March 1 at 6:00 pm, we’ll gather for a Night of Prayer and Worship.
If Sunday morning is about hearing the prayer, Sunday night is about praying it.
An unhurried space.
A quieter room.
A chance to confess, to sing, to sit still before God, and to receive his mercy.
In a distracted world, repentance feels radical.
But on the other side of repentance is freedom.
Join us Sunday morning.
And come back at 6:00 pm as we slow down and seek God together.
Ellis