when i think about God and my smart phone

So this analogy has been swirling in my head recently. I have been helping with youth group for about 8 months and recently the truth of salvation compared to sanctification has been smacking me in the face a bit.

I have wondered, worried, prayed, relinquished, re-worried, released my place in the lives of these teens. I look at them and wonder where there spiritual life is 'at' and this is the thought i have.

We treat Jesus like an APP... maybe you don't but I do. Jesus is an app we add to our smartphone life, of the hundreds of thousands of spiritual app options we choose Jesus because we believe in Him we believe Him. We believe the salvation message. And then we add him to the gamut of life apps. Maybe we even put Him in a spiritual cubby with our Bible or verse of the day app. 

Here's the thing. Jesus is maybe more like an operating system. He wants to come in and completely take over every aspect of our phone life... Every app, every data usage minute is coursing through his control. 

And maybe the old operating system, the one that is based in selfish existentialism is still there, and sometimes, or a lot of the time, this phantom operating system that is dead and conquered and replaced by a more perfect operating system still tries to come back and run apps, and accept programs and data --- as it used to do.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.^[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Cor 5:17

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.  Romans 7:4-6

Sometimes I look for the old operating system, as if it has something to offer... and that's where this analogy fall apart completely. Because we are incapable of understanding His Grace. When we fail him and lose sight of him, question him, counter him, disobey him, and forget how to love him- He is still there, saying, 'I still love you- not more or less, I can not love more or less, I love you.'

if we are faithless, he remains faithful—

for he cannot deny himself. 2 Tim 2:13

Do you now believe? ³² Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. ³³ I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world John 16:31-33

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given to them,that they may be one even as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. ²⁴ Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵ O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:20-26