Fasting from information is one way for us to come away when taking time off work is not possible and the demands of ministry and family can’t be avoided. When times of solitude are few and far between, we can still reduce the surrounding noise.

A Still and Quiet Mind is scheduled to be released on June 22; pre-order here.
REST YOUR THOUGHTS
I’m sitting outside in my favorite chair while I write. The sun warms my face while a strong breeze hits my body. The temperature is perfect. I can’t help but pause from my writing to enjoy the simple pleasure of being outside.
I live in a suburban neighborhood, and it’s surprising how much wildlife I notice when I stop to pay attention. A squirrel trounces by like it owns our yard. Two red-breasted robins fly past, a crow lands on our fence, and a yellow bird of unknown variety pecks for juicy morsels in the grass. A bumblebee lazily drinks from a vibrant flowering bush.
I’ve been stuck inside all winter, and suddenly—it’s spring. I close my eyes and enjoy the surround-sound chorus of caws and whistles. The pleasant cacophony of bird calls is much louder than I realized when I was focused on my work. Good words and good feelings fill my mind and my soul. Warmth. Peace. Stillness. Sunshine. Rest. Thank you, God, for this moment.
I’m thankful for the break. Life is busy these days. I often spend the entire day working on my computer, only to find myself drawn to my phone every time I take a break. I love my work. I’m also thankful for the convenience, connection, and entertainment I find each time I open my phone. Still, the constant intake of information, data, and opinions sometimes leaves my mind filled with restless, racing thoughts by the end of the day.
Knowing my mind’s tendency toward exhaustion, I purposefully look for moments when I can set my phone aside and step outside. I don’t need to travel far. A few minutes sitting in my backyard or a short meander to the neighborhood park is often enough to help me to clear my mind. It’s good to breathe the fresh air and allow myself to simply exist without doing work or consuming information. My mind is most at peace when I create purposeful space to pause in restful and beautiful outside places without the company of my phone.
I think these moments help me to put into practice Jesus’s invitation to set aside my worries, stress, and fear. I look at the birds and the flowers and all he has created and thank God for his goodness and care for me (see Matt. 6:25–30). This is rest for my mind. It’s how I pull my attention away from the exhaustion of worry and work and choose to meditate on the beauty and goodness of all God has created.
REST FROM CONSTANT DISTRACTION AND HURRY
Our minds need rest just as much as our hearts and souls do. This rest can be difficult to find because many of us live in a constant state of hurry and distraction. We throw ourselves into work and schedule ourselves to the brim. We avoid silence and solitude and use digital technology every moment we are forced to be alone.
While I am quick to embrace the many benefits of technology, statistics force us to reckon with the concerning impact that smart-phones, social media, and mindless consumption of information and entertainment can have on the state of our minds. High levels of smartphone usage increase people’s likelihood of anxiety and their perceived levels of stress.1 Experts have attributed alarming rises in teen suicide and depression in part to the introduction of social media and the smartphone.2 Unchecked technology usage can disrupt sleep and decrease our desire to seek out in-person community. Without adequate sleep and people to help us sort through our thoughts, the process of change can become more difficult.
It’s ironic that we often turn back to technology to alleviate our thought-related problems. Our phones have become “digital pacifiers” that help us to avoid difficult feelings and problematic thoughts.3 I realized this tendency in myself when the Screen Time app was released on my iPhone. I was surprised by how much my phone usage increased on days when I was anxious. Instead of pausing to know my thoughts or pray through my thinking, I would reach for my phone and scroll.
Richard Foster has called the distraction of constant technology “the primary spiritual problem in contemporary culture.”4 The multitasking encouraged by internet-enabled technologies has hijacked our attentional capacity.5 This makes it more difficult for us to focus for any length of time on spiritual disciplines. We have less space, desire, and ability to examine our thoughts in the solitude of our own minds. We have fewer moments of quiet and less ability to concentrate on bringing our thoughts to God in prayer for any length of time.
In response to our hurry and distraction, God extends an invitation. As I look through Scripture, I imagine him speaking these words to you and to me: Come away to a restful place (see Mark 6:31). Slow down and savor the beauty and goodness in the world I have created. Let me show you how it reveals who I am (see Matt. 6:25–30).
COME AWAY AND GET SOME REST
When Jesus saw his disciples overcome by weariness from their work, he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). Come away. It’s a needed invitation. To come away is to separate yourself from something. In the disciples’ case, they needed separation from the hustle of ministry. They moved away from people to an isolated place where they could be alone. They changed their location and context to better accommodate their need for rest and communion with God.
What about in your case? Consider what hurries and distracts you. What exhausts your mind? What puts your thoughts into hyperdrive? What blocks your self-reflection or comes between you and time spent praying your thoughts to God? What might you need to come away from?
For me, the answer is clear. My work hurries me. A constant intake of information distracts me. I read the news while eating lunch, listen to audiobooks while doing chores, and read books or watch TV in my spare moments. Text messages, video chats, meetings, and work projects fill my day. There is nothing wrong with all these activities. They are good gifts that often help me to make the best use of my time and mental energy. At the same time, too many of these activities without a break leads to information overload. My mind fills with restless thoughts that can distract me from looking at myself and connecting to God.
Incessant mental chatter.* This may be the type of thought I struggle with the most. The speed of my thoughts tends to correlate with the amount of mental work I do in any given season. My mental load follows me to bed, where I continue creating grocery lists, rewriting sentences, pondering work problems, considering how I will respond to a text, and reviewing my to-do list in my mind. To break this cycle, I need to purposefully step away from work at various points throughout the day. I need to come away.
For me, coming away looks like purposeful times of solitude away from other people. It looks like starting my morning with God through Scripture and prayer. It also looks like purposeful times when I distance myself from information overload.
I first completed a digital detox after reading Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism.6 A few years later, I was introduced to the concept of reading deprivation in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way.7 I have come to think of reading deprivation in terms of fasting from information. For a week in the summer of 2020, I stepped away from all unnecessary information. I spent a lot of time sitting outside journaling. I had more time to pray. Sometimes I didn’t think much and just rested my mind. Other times, I searched my thoughts deeply. I learned things about myself I had not previously known. The true content of my thoughts and state of my heart became clearer.
Fasting from information is one way for us to come away when taking time off work is not possible and the demands of ministry and family can’t be avoided. When times of solitude are few and far between, we can still reduce the surrounding noise.
I encourage you to try this type of fast at least once as you engage this process of changing your thoughts. You can do this by picking a time frame during which you will fast from all unnecessary intake of information. The time could be fifteen minutes, an hour, a day, or up to a week. During this time, you will avoid TV, music, books (except the Bible), social media, podcasts, video games, news, and all other forms of media and information intake.
Julia Cameron points out that stepping away from information in this way often frees up peoples’ time.8 Consider using some of this newly created extra space for the journaling, mental reflection, and prayer-based strategies we have already discussed. Then use the remainder of your extra time to slow down and practice activities that allow your mind to rest.
Pick up forgotten hobbies. Finish projects around the house. Set an hour aside for a walk or hike. Sit outside. Bake cookies and eat them slowly. Plant a tree. Play with your kids. Turn your attention toward savoring the beauty and goodness of all God has created. I’ll give you some ideas of how you might do this in the next section. Let these times of reflective meditation on God’s creation remind you of who God is and all he has done for you.
To pre-orders: https://www.amazon.com/Still-Quiet-Mind-Strategies-Changing/dp/1629959219/

* The strategies in this chapter can be helpful for any type of thoughts, but they may be especially helpful for the category of racing thoughts and incessant mental chatter that was listed in the introduction.

See Sei Yon Sohn et al., “Prevalence of Problematic Smartphone Usage and Associated Mental Health Outcomes amongst Children and Young People: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis and GRADE of the Evidence,” BMC Psychiatry 19, no. 356 (November 2019), https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186 /s12888-019-2350-x.
See Jean M. Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.theatlantic .com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/.
See interview with Tristan Harris in The Social Dilemma, directed by Jeff Orlowski (Los Gatos, CA: Netflix, 2020), https://www.netflix .com/title/81254224.
Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, special anniversary ed. (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018), preface, Kindle (emphasis in original).
See Joseph Firth et al., “The ‘Online Brain’: How the Internet May Be Changing Our Cognition,” World Psychiatry 18, no. 2 (June 2019): 119–29.
Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019).
See Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, 25th anniversary ed. (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2016), chap. 4, Kindle.

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Things can just seem to go from bad to worse. Many of us have had days like that. While we may not go through things quite as bad and heavy-duty as David did, we all still need to respond as he did. What we find in verse 6 is something we must remember and apply: “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” That must be what all believers today rely upon – not our own strength or plans or ideas or schemes. When our world falls apart all around us, there is only one safe haven we can turn to.

Simply looking at the morning newspaper headlines is enough to discourage most folks. We read of fatal accidents, of shootings, of house fires, of kidnappings, of child abuse, of business collapses, of wars and hostilities, and so on. And Christians of course are not immune from suffering, hardships, trials and heartache. Such is life in a very fallen world.
Have you ever wept until you could cry no more? Do some days seem to be one disaster after another? Are you seemingly in the midst of one continuous calamity? Does it seem like everything is going wrong and there is no end in sight? Does it sometimes seem like the bottom has dropped out, and you cannot handle another tragedy or calamity?
The Bible of course records stories like this – most notably Job. Imagine all the things he went through in one fell swoop. Most folks would not be able to survive such carnage and disaster. Yet Job remained strong in his faith despite hell breaking out all around him.
In my morning reading I read about another Old Testament example of this. It concerns David. As you know, he had a real rough go of things. He was told he would be king, but all he seemed to do was try to escape the wrath of King Saul and various enemies. He seemed to be much more like a forsaken refugee hiding in one place after another than God’s chosen leader.
Just before he was finally anointed King of Judah (see 2 Samuel 2) and then of Israel (see 2 Samuel 5), he had one of the roughest and most difficult periods of his life. We read about the climax in 1 Samuel 30:1-6:
Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
Wow, talk about having a really bad day! Dale Ralph Davis reminds us of a very apt passage from Amos 5:18-19 in this regard:
Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!Why would you have the day of the Lord?It is darkness, and not light,as if a man fled from a lion,and a bear met him,or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,and a serpent bit him.
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The worship of the saints compels men to leave their impotent idols or else face God’s swift wrath. Our worship defies the glory of man as we insist on lifting high the name above all names. But this worship must be done in true faith. You cannot worship God with your lips while treasuring up evil in your heart. This worship will be potent only insofar as it springs from evangelical faith. Faith that Christ has cleansed you. Faith that Christ is King. Faith that all the idols & idolaters will soon vanish, and only those who worship in spirit and in truth shall remain. 

When Abram first came into the land of Canaan we see him building altar after altar to Jehovah. This is both a sign of God’s kindness, and a warning of His wrath upon those who won’t receive this kindness. Some are offended when later on in history God commands Israel to go on a Holy War against the Canaanites. Before God set the hosts of Israel into those battles to conquer the Promised Land, He first marched a prophetic witness to these nations in the form of Abram’s worship. Many Canaanites were, in fact, converted and brought under the care of Abram’s community.
There is important instruction for us here. God fights culture wars with worship. When God’s people worship, they declare the downfall of pagan idols. Abram set up altars to the Living God. In so doing he summoned all the worshippers of sun, moon, wood, and stone to forsake their feeble gods and find glory in the presence of God Most High.
Our worship each Lord’s Day is an act of prophetic ministry. The worship of the saints compels men to leave their impotent idols or else face God’s swift wrath.
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