A few days ago, one of my favorite authors from one of my favorite publishers released a book I’ve been waiting for since I first heard about it. The book is 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke, and it’s published by Crossway. You can watch the promo video for the book above.

I loved the book and will post a review sometime in the future. For now, here are 12 quotes to whet your appetite.

“We now check our smartphones every 4.3 minutes of our waking lives.” (p. 16)

“What we need are new life disciplines birthed from a new set of life priorities and empowered by our new life freedom in Jesus Christ. So I cannot tell you to put your phone away, to give it up, or to take it up again after a season of burnout. My aim is to explore why you would consider such actions in the first place.” (p. 21)

 “Conversations about our smartphones often do not raise new questions; they return us to perennial questions every generation has been forced to ask.” (p. 24)

“This means that whatever happens on my smartphone, especially under the guise of anonymity, is the true exposé of my heart, reflected in full-color pixels back into my eyes.” (p. 27)

“We find ourselves in the middle of this garden-to-city unfolding of history, and God is governing the entire process in several ways. Between the guardrails of natural law, as well as the guardrails of the abundance and scarcity of certain raw materials in the earth, and carried forward through his image bearers, each wired for innovation, the trajectory of technological progress—from the garden to the city—was set in motion.” (p. 30)

“To be without the constant availability of distraction is solitary confinement, a punishment to be most dreaded. That is why in those moments when we realize we have forgotten our phone, lost it, or let the battery run out, we taste the captivity of a prison cell, and it can be frightening.” (p. 45)

“For those with eyes to see, Christ’s return is so imminent, it potently declutters our lives of everything that is superficial and renders all of our vain distractions irrelevant.” (p. 50)

“The modern-day mantra we hear so often—‘I will follow Christ, but don’t bother me with organized religion’—is symptomatic of the disembodied assumptions of the digital age. In reality, the Christian life could not be more embodied.” (p. 62)

“Those who feed on little nibbles of immediate approval from man will eternally starve. But those who aim their entire lives toward the glory and approval of God will find, in Christ, eternal approval. The stakes are that high.” (p. 77)

“Our souls have been raised to new life in order to brag of Christ, and as we speak, our joy expands and overflows, and we become creators and artists. Art is spontaneous. Art is doxology. Art is the reflection of God’s beauty into the world. This is why we exist!” (p. 96)

“The smartphone is causing a social reversal: the desire to be alone in public and never alone in seclusion. We can be shielded in public and surrounded in isolation, meaning we can escape the awkward” (p. 124)

“We pay more attention to our phones than we do to the third person of the Trinity, but he cares for us more than we care for ourselves. Perhaps you believe you would benefit spiritually by stepping away from your phone for a season. Or perhaps you feel led to rethink better boundaries in your digital life. Or you may be fed up with your love-hate-deactivate-delete-reactivate relationship with social media, and you are ready to rid yourself of your smartphone altogether. I cannot tell you what to do, but I can encourage you to heed the conviction of the Spirit, who will help you make the next step of obedience.” (p. 197)

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