(Music) Spiritual warfare is very real in our lives and the battle for our morning devotions is a never-ending struggle for many of us, one that we often lose. I know I lose... many times and our attention is under relentless attack for vain things and for personal approval and for desires that lure us online immediately in the morning.

So how do we preserve those mornings? That is the topic today. Jackie Hill Perry is our guest. That intro was from her new album, Crescendo. Check it out. But the following is from her Twitter feed. "As soon as you wake, there is a war to keep you from the word of God.

Fight!" Exclamation point, end quote. Yes, fight. So what's at stake, Jackie, and how do we fight? How do we win this war? This one is hard because I feel like this is a daily constant war for me. I think when I got married and when I had children, the war got harder.

And that's not to say that in singleness is not, but I feel like I had more meaningful distractions. And what I mean by that is when I was single, I kind of just, you know, I just had work, you know, I just woke up kind of when I wanted to wake up because I was self-employed.

You know, I could spend the time of the world for like an hour if I chose to. Now it's if I need to, if I want to spend uninterrupted time with God, I need to wake up before my children do. And so stuff like that. So I think the war is, man, do I make time for God or do I try to fit God into the time that I feel like I already don't have?

And so when I wake up, it's a daily decision. And I think one of my mistakes is, I know this personally, is that I sleep with my phone. I know for a fact, if I got rid of my phone, my distractions would be not as close or nearby. And so I think what's at stake ultimately is my love of the Lord.

I was thinking about this yesterday at church when our pastor, he caught on to Beatitudes and he talked about how, you know, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And he was, he was rooting his text and our love for God and our love for the word.

And the thought that came to my mind is if I'm not delighting in the word of God, then most likely I'm not delighting in God himself. And so I think that's ultimately is at stake is my affections. What are my affections in? If my affections are in my sleep, then I'm going to treasure sleep over the word.

If my affections are in my emails, then I'm going to treasure my emails over the word. If my affections are in my time, then my time is going to be preeminent over the preeminent one. And so I think identifying what really is my joy, is it God? Is it my stuff?

Is it my peace or what I think is peace? Because I'm able to sit up and watch Netflix when I could be reading Psalms. I think identifying those things that are really legitimately good things and opportunities for leisure that I've made an idol in many ways. And so, yeah, what's at stake is me and Jesus being good.

What's the impulse online that you feel? How does it manifest in your life? I think it's, I love information. And so before I go to bed, one of my things before I go to bed is I tend to just Wikipedia random things. So it's like... Okay, give us an example.

So for example, there was this show, I think it's called Genius on National Geographic, and it was about Picasso. I was like, "Huh, I wonder, I just want to know his name. I want to know where he's from. I want to know when he started painting." And then I realized he had 13 names in his name.

And so I just go on this rabbit trail where I'm Wikipedian facts about, Wikipedian, whatever. I'm on Wikipedia learning about people. So when I wake up, that information, that desire for information is still there. It just tends to lean towards wanting information from secular sources. And so what does Twitter have to say today?

What's the news? Oh, LeBron got signed to LA. I wonder how much he made. Like my mind is just wondering about everything that happened while I was asleep instead of waking up to wonder about the glory of God and his scriptures. And so I think that's something that I need to consistently, have to consistently kill, is this desire to esteem the new information over the lasting information.

This is good. So what else can we learn from Jackie Hill Perry about social media in this fight in the mornings? Man, you wrote a great book about it. But I think it's our hearts. I actually asked a friend of mine from church. She is nearing her forties. And I wanted to know, I said, like in your, when, like in the eighties and stuff like that, when you were around, I know that distractions haven't necessarily, distractions aren't a new thing.

They just transform and they, you know, do that. I was like, so what was the distraction for you guys? She was like TV. She was like, there was this, there was this influx of sitcoms and VHS tapes and all of this type of stuff that we were just consuming on a daily basis.

And I was like, huh. And so I think ultimately we have to learn how to navigate this world that we're in with distractions as a whole, and just see that like, man, this will, this will subtly take our attention away from God if we let it. But I think as we, as we learn to love God more, it really becomes easier to resist.

I think it's as simple as that. So true. Yeah. I'm thinking of the parable of the four soils. I mean, the desire for riches has always been a distraction to the gospel. I mean, since the dawn of time, even before the media age. That's real true. Jackie, this has been a short, but wonderful week with you.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Tony. All right. Talk to you later. All right. Bye-bye. That was Jackie Hill Perry. You really should be following her on Twitter and Instagram. You won't be disappointed. What a gift she is. Check out her new album as well, Crescendo. She's got a new book coming out later this year.

Check that out. And at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn, you can explore all 1200 plus of our episodes. Now you can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app.

Well, John Piper returns on Friday, and we're going to hear from him on the most used promises from God that he uses regularly in his life. That should be interesting. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then. you