A DIGITAL FAST
This Lent, as we begin our series Fully Human: Genesis 1–3 and the Renewed Life Christ Offers, we’re engaging in a digital fast together as a church. If Genesis shows us what we were made for, attentive communion with God, one another, and the world, our digital habits often pull us in the opposite direction.
By limiting screens and digital distractions, we create space for prayer, Scripture, and renewed attention to Christ and to one another. Fasting in this way helps us slow down, pay attention and become more fully human in the way God intended.
We invite you to join us as we walk together toward Easter, making room to experience more deeply the renewed life Christ offers.
Why a Digital Fast?
Lent is a significant season in the Christian calendar. Beginning on Ash Wednesday and leading us toward Easter, it is a time when the Church intentionally slows down to prepare our hearts and minds as we fix our eyes on Jesus through practices like prayer, repentance, and fasting. While Lent lasts forty-six days, the Church speaks of it as forty days of formation, setting Sundays apart as weekly reminders of resurrection hope.
While Lent is most closely associated with historic liturgical churches, many Protestant traditions, including Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and Reformed churches, as well as a growing number of evangelical congregations, observe Lent as a season of intentional preparation for Easter.
This year, Emmaus is entering the season of Lent by preaching through Genesis 1–3, focusing on how God created us to live fully human. We are also entering Lent through a digital fast, a period of intentionally stepping back from our use of digital devices. We’ve also provided journals for you to use throughout the fast.
We’re doing a digital fast because our phones, feeds, and screens are not neutral but shape our attention, our desires, and our relationships. When they dominate our lives, they can fragment our attention, disembody our presence, and diminish our capacity for the fruits of the Spirit, slowly forming us into people who are less attentive, less relational, and less fully human. This fast is not about rejecting technology, but about making space to recover a more attentive and present way of life before God and with one another.
Practiced with one another, this digital fast can help us relearn rhythms of rest and trust. It can calm anxious habits, reveal hidden attachments, and reorient us toward love of God and neighbor. Our hope is not simply reduced screen time, but renewed attentiveness—a people learning again how to receive, to listen, and to walk together in the renewed life Christ offers in a distracted and distracting world.
Why Do We Fast During Lent?
Fasting is a meaningful Christian practice throughout the year, but Lent invites us into it with particular intention. As we journey toward Easter, fasting becomes a way of preparing our hearts and creating space to notice our hunger for God, our dependence on him, and the ways our desires so easily drift.
Fasting, then, is not about earning God’s favor or proving our love for God. It is a way of loosening our grip on the things we so often look to for escape, comfort or security in place of Christ, so that we can more fully receive his sustaining grace. In fasting, we practice saying with the psalmist:
“My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:2)
How to Participate in the Digital Fast
We encourage you to prayerfully consider participating in one of the following two fasting options during the season of Lent: a full digital fast or a modified digital fast. No matter which option you choose, we believe this practice can be life-giving as we seek to abide in Christ.
Because the digital world is so vast, this fast is not meant to be exhaustive or overly rigid. Instead, it invites us to practice discernment by learning to distinguish between what is useful and what is distracting, and to make intentional choices that create space for life with God.
Option 1: Full Digital Fast
This option involves eliminating screens for personal use and entertainment and embracing digital devices primarily as tools for utility and necessary communication.
What this looks like in practice:
1. Audit your smartphone apps
Begin by reviewing the apps on your phone and asking the question: Is this distracting (or designed to distract), or is this something useful and necessary? If it’s the former, remove the app or take a break from it for the season of lent.
2. Eliminate screens and devices for entertainment
Commit to stepping away from digital entertainment for the duration of the fast. In addition to our phones and computers this could also mean:
Gaming devices
Streaming services
Cable television
3. Create clear work boundaries
Limit digital technology to work-related apps during work hours and on work devices. As part of this fast, commit to no work outside of work hours whenever possible.
Option 2: Modified Digital Fast
This option offers flexibility while still inviting intentional change. It is designed for those whose work, family responsibilities, or current season of life make a full fast unrealistic, or for those who are simply not ready for that level of commitment yet. Even a smaller, thoughtful step can help us move toward greater attentiveness to God and to the people around us.
What this looks like in practice:
1. Audit your smartphone apps
Review the apps on your phone and again ask:
Is this distracting, or is this something useful?
Rather than removing all distracting apps, consider:
Limiting certain apps to specific days of the week or specific time limits each day
Choosing a small number of apps to keep while removing others
We strongly encourage selecting at least a few time-consuming or distracting apps to abstain from for the season of Lent.
2. Set limits on digital entertainment
Create intentional boundaries around digital entertainment on any device. This might include:
Fasting from TV or streaming services for a set number of days each week
Choosing specific evenings to remain screen-free
3. Create clear work boundaries
As with the full fast, limit digital technology to work apps during work hours and on work devices, and commit to no work outside of work hours whenever possible.
Three “Feasting” Practices
Lent is not only about fasting, but about feasting as well. Christian fasting is never an end in itself. We fast not because created things are bad, but because our desires are often disordered and our attention divided. By setting aside certain comforts and habits, we make room to receive what truly gives life, Christ’s presence, Christ’s Word and the relationships he has given us.
In other words, fasting creates space but feasting is what fills it.
As you fast from digital noise, we invite you to practice these three ways of feasting during the season of Lent.
1. Prayer- The Daily Examen
One of the gifts of a digital fast is that it gives us back small moments to notice God, ourselves, and others.
The Prayer of Examen is a simple, daily practice of attentiveness. It is not about fixing yourself or evaluating your performance but about becoming aware of God’s presence and your response to it in the ordinary movements of your day.
We encourage you to begin and end each day with these questions, prayerfully journaling what comes to heart and mind.
Morning Examen
As the day begins:
What are three things I’m thankful for this morning?
What is one true thing about God or about who I am in Christ that can ground me today?
What is one small thing within my control that can help me show up well today?
Evening Examen
As the day comes to a close:
What are three things I’m thankful for from today?
Where did I notice God’s presence, help, or invitation today?
What is one thing I can entrust to God’s care tonight?
**Questions adapted from “The Next Right Thing” by Emily P. Freeman
2. Scripture- The Gospel of Luke
Throughout the season of Lent, we invite you to return regularly to Scripture as we learn again what it means to live fully human from Genesis 1-3. For this digital fast, we encourage you to read slowly through the Gospel of Luke. With twenty-four chapters, Luke draws our attention to Jesus’ humanity—his prayerful dependence on the Father, compassion for the overlooked, and fellowship with sinners. In Jesus, we see God’s original intention for human life lived fully and faithfully.
Reading about half a chapter a day will take you through Luke once over the forty-six days of Lent; reading a chapter a day allows you to read through it twice. Choose a pace that allows you to notice Jesus, his words, his posture toward others, and the way he responds to interruption, suffering, and need.
You may choose to:
Journal what you notice about Jesus each day
Journal a personal prayer that rises from what you read
Carry one word or phrase from the passage with you throughout the day, returning to it in moments of transition or distraction
3. Generosity
Lent invites us not only into self-denial, but into generosity (historically “almsgiving”). Generosity is a way of allowing the attention created by fasting to turn outward in love for our neighbors.
Rather than prescribing a single approach, we invite you to consider prayerfully what generosity might look like for you during this season.
You might consider:
Redirecting money you would have spent on digital entertainment, impulse purchases, or convenience toward generosity
Giving toward Emmaus’ benevolence fund or international missions fund. Or consider a local organization serving those in need. ReWritten.org is one such organization.
Practicing relational generosity by buying a meal, meeting a practical need, or offering help without recognition. This may simply be the gift of time and asking curious questions in a desire to better understand and love someone God has placed in your life.
Generosity is not about guilt or earning God’s favor. It is a response to God’s generosity toward us, learning to love outwardly as we are being renewed inwardly.
Practicing the Digital Fast in Your Household
Practicing a digital fast with others in your household, whether children, a spouse, or roommates, can be a meaningful opportunity for discipleship and shared formation. The goal is not strict rules or perfect consistency, but shared attentiveness: learning together to make more space in our lives for God and for one another.
You might consider:
Praying a portion or the entirety of the Examen together at the end of the day.
Reading a passage from the Gospel of Luke together, over a meal or before bed, pausing to notice what Jesus does, who he pays attention to, or what questions the passage raises.
Talk openly about why you’re fasting and what you’re discovering about how screens can sometimes distract us from God and from one another, and about how this practice helps us grow in love, attention, and trust. Make room for conversation by asking thoughtful, age-appropriate (for kids) and context-appropriate questions, listening well, learning from one another and guiding one another along the way.
How to Prepare
Consider these suggestions as you prepare:
Find a few people who are also fasting and establish a regular rhythm of check-ins.
Keep this question in mind: What do I want to learn about myself and God during these forty days?
Change your phone settings to grayscale. It will make the phone less visually enticing.
You might also consider using a tool like Brick (getbrick.app), a simple device designed to help create intentional distance from your phone.
Turn off notifications on your phone.
Consider using an alarm clock instead of your phone to wake up.
If necessary, talk with your work teams and supervisor about your hope to disengage from work and technology during non-working hours.
Consider not bringing your phone into your bedroom or to meals. If possible, instead of carrying it with you throughout the day, leave it in one place—like an old-school telephone.
**This guide was adapted in part from the Digital Fasting Guide by Reality Church, San Francisco.