I Do Not Touch Anything In Case I Ruin It

You use about four things on that phone.

You know which four. You can do those without thinking, and you do them every day, and everything else on it is a place you do not go.

And it is not that you are not curious. You have looked at the rest of it and wondered. What you do not have is any confidence that if you went in there and something changed, you would be able to get back to where you started.

That is the real fear and I want to name it accurately, because people usually name it wrong. You are not afraid of technology. You are afraid of a one way door. You are afraid of pressing something, watching the screen become unfamiliar, and having no way home.

And nobody has ever told you the one fact that would settle it, because the people who would tell you learned it so young that they do not know it is a fact.

So here it is.

Almost nothing you can press is permanent. Almost everything goes back. The way back is nearly always the same small motion, over and over, until the screen looks like it did.

That is not encouragement. That is how the thing is built.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down

There is a line in the psalms about a man losing his footing, and the second half of it is the part that matters here.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. (Psalm 37:24, King James Version)

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down.

Notice that the falling is allowed to happen. The verse does not say he will not fall. It says he falls and he is not finished by it, and the reason given is that there is a hand underneath.

Utterly cast down means past recovery. Gone. Nothing to be done. And the promise is precisely that this does not happen, not that stumbling never does.

Now hold that beside the thing in your hand, because the parallel is exact and it is not a stretch. You have been living as though one wrong press would be the unrecoverable kind. There is a hand under you in the large matters of your life, and there is a way back in the small ones, and in neither case does a stumble finish you.

You are held up in the falling, and there has never once been a stumble that put you past recovery. Psalm 37:24 grants the fall and denies the being cast down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for somebody afraid to press a thing in their own front room.

What is actually reversible

Let me be concrete, because a general reassurance does not move anybody and I am not going to offer one.

If you open something and the screen looks different, going back is one motion and you can repeat it until you recognize where you are. If you switch something on, the same switch turns it off. If a thing appears that you did not want, there is a way to make it go, and it is usually the same way every time.

What is not easily reversible is a short list and it is worth knowing plainly: deleting something you have not got another copy of, sending money, and giving somebody your details. Those are the doors that shut behind you. That is the whole list you need to hold.

Everything else is looking, and looking has a way back.

So the rule is small enough to keep in your head: if it is not deleting, paying or telling, you can go and look at it. And I am not going to tell you which buttons to press, on purpose. What is on your screen this year will move next year, and an instruction that names a button becomes a lie in about eighteen months. The rule outlives the screen.

You are able to look at something and come back from it, and it has never once been the kind of door that shuts behind you. The written word promises a hand under a man rather than a life without stumbles, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies somebody enough to look.

Open one thing, look, and close it

So here is the whole assignment, and it is under five minutes.

Open one thing on your phone that you have never opened. Look at it. Close it.

Not to learn it. Not to work out what it does. You are going to open something unfamiliar, let your eyes go over it, and then leave, and the leaving is the point of the exercise. You are proving the way back exists by using it.

Pick something dull. Something you have seen and never touched.

And if you cannot find your way out immediately, keep making the going back motion until the screen is familiar again. It will be. That is the thing you are proving.

Psalm 37:24 says the LORD upholdeth him with his hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with somebody doing a small brave thing that nobody else would recognize as brave.

You are able to go in and come back out, and heaven has never once required you to understand it to be safe in it. Psalm 37:24 puts a hand underneath the one who falls, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a person opening something for the first time.