Posted September 01, 2026
Apple didn’t invent the mobile phone when it released the first iPhone nineteen years ago. The first handheld mobile phone was introduced thirty-four years earlier; the first camera phone came twenty-six years after that.
But when Steve Jobs held up his invention in 2007, everything changed. As Nilay Patel wrote in The Verge, “The whole world has reorganized itself around this breakthrough internet communications device.”
Tim Cook succeeded Jobs in 2011 and steps down as head of Apple today, leaving the company in good hands. The iPhone 17 was the world’s best-selling smartphone in the second quarter of 2026, followed by the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the iPhone 17 Pro.
Mobile phones facilitate sharing the gospel with people who could not otherwise hear the good news. The YouVersion Bible App has been downloaded to more than one billion devices. They greatly empower the sharing of our ministry’s content around the world as well. However, mobile phones also facilitate sex trafficking, drug dealing, cyberstalking, extortion and blackmail, fraud, and organized crime in prisons.
It’s the same device being used by some for great good and others for great evil. This is how it is with much of the material world: The same majestic tree that frames the blue sky for a hiker can topple over and crush him. Diamonds are beautiful when they grace wedding rings but tragic when produced by forced labor. Gravity is our friend when we walk but our enemy when we fall.
How can we use creation to honor the Creator and bless our fellow creatures? I cannot think of a more comprehensive question. Or one that can leverage more fully the material for the spiritual and the temporal for the eternal today.
Author and editor Katy Carl recently published an article whose headline caught my eye: “So You’ve Converted—What Now?” She addresses one of the most perplexing realities we face after trusting in Christ: the fact that we still face and sometimes fall to temptation.
Carl cites St. Thomas Aquinas, who said every act of will is preceded by an act of intellect. However, she observes, “often moral change must precede the intellectual. Wish as we may to change our thoughts, we may not be able to do so until we make the act of will to give up the actions that are getting in the way of our ability to see higher things” (her italics).
As she notes, this “act of will” itself requires the act of intellect that chooses it. We say, in effect, “Changing my moral behavior would be better than not changing it.” We decide that we want to stop doing what we should stop doing or start doing what we should start doing. Then we can ask the Holy Spirit to empower us to follow through on our decision, to help us choose what we want most over what we happen to want now.
Here’s my question: What if we honestly don’t want to change our moral behavior? Like St. Augustine, our heart might be praying, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” In this case, we can ask for the faith to have faith, the will to have the will to choose wisely. We can say with the father of the demoniac son, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
As our Father helps us decide that we want to choose his will and then empowers our choice, we are able to use every moment for eternal purpose. We turn temptations into prayers for strength that lead to spiritual victory. We use material things for spiritual ends. We live to love our Lord and our neighbor.
And even the very hardest places of life can be redeemed by our Father in ways that sustain us in suffering and lead others to the Source of our peace.
A good friend of mine is the very definition of a pastor-scholar. He has led his urban congregation for many years in ways that are making a profound impact on his city and beyond. He is a theologian, a statesman, and a caring shepherd.
My friend is several years younger than me. He is also a widower.
His beautiful wife died last year after a routine medical procedure, shocking all of us who knew them. My friend continues to love Jesus and love people through his grief. He has been transparent about his suffering and honest about his journey with an authenticity that demonstrates the relevance and reality of his faith to all who know him.
After our most recent conversation, I found myself thinking about his pain. To a skeptic, the death of my friend’s wife and the suffering he and his family have endured as a result could count as significant evidence against the existence of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful deity. Otherwise, why would such good people as my friend and his family suffer as they do?
I suspect my friend would say just the opposite, that his suffering demonstrates the necessity of faith in such an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful deity. When we are up against the hardest places of life, it is then that we most need the God we trust and serve.
When I asked him for permission to share his story in this way, he replied: “If God is going to work all things together for good, we have to trust all things to him.”
What “things” will you trust to your Father today?
“When you feel abandoned by God yet continue to trust him in spite of your feelings, you worship him in the deepest way.” —Rick Warren
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