Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God a book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you. We are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people.

So thank you for generously investing in this important and eternal work.

So with Pastor John Busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites.

About once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark.

These are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history. We only have about 30 of them and here's one of them.

In episode 636 you gave us half a dozen reasons why we addictively grab our phones when we wake up in the morning and you said that you had a remedy a better course forward.

Please share that with us here today on the podcast.

It might be helpful just to mention just to name the six things that I said tend to draw me to my phone in the morning.

I said there's a novelty hunger. I said there's an ego hunger. I said there's entertainment hunger.

And then I said there's these three avoidances like boredom avoidance. I just don't want to enter a boring day.

There's responsibility avoidance and there's and there's hardship avoidance.

So there are pretty strong things that are keeping us in bed and keeping us on our devices.

There is a better way and here's what points to the need for it.

What if you are the first one to the news and it is horrible news?

Or what if you're search for some ego candy finds ego acid and people have hated you overnight?

And what if you spend five minutes getting yourself happily entertained in the morning rather than facing the responsibilities of the day immediately?

And you find at the end of those five minutes that they have drug you down into silly demeaning small-minded hollow immature frame of mind.

So was it worth it? And what if you take five minutes to avoid the boredom and responsibility and hardship of the day only to find?

At the end of those five minutes of avoidance you are spiritually, morally, emotionally less able to cope with reality in the day than you were before.

What was it worth it? So I think there is a better way to begin the day and it will require some decisions before the morning.

It never works to make last minute efforts to decide to do something different.

You need to decide 12 hours earlier what this crisis moment is going to look like.

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