Day 7: Hunger Is the Spark — What Prophet Emanuel Johnson Taught Us About Hearing from God

I’ve come to believe that hunger for God is the single most underestimated factor in the whole conversation about how to hear His voice — and Day 7 of our Hearing from God series at Blessed2Teach is where that conviction went from something I believed to something I watched demonstrated live. I asked Prophet Emanuel Johnson — Manny — to come and train us. He has been on the B2T Show many times. This time was different. This time he came not to be interviewed. He came to teach. And the first word out of his mouth was not a method. It was: hunger.

Then he said the sentence that set the tone for everything that followed: “You cannot serve a God you cannot hear from.” If that lands the way it should, keep reading — because what follows is Manny’s full teaching across all three segments, every Scripture he opened, and every practical step he gave.

Memory Verse: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” — John 10:27 ESV

This is Day 7 in our ongoing series — you can find the full series index at the Hearing from God series hub.

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Segment 1 — Hunger Is the Spark

Manny’s born-again moment happened in what he describes as a quaint, basic church. Nothing dramatic about the building. Everything dramatic about the moment. He says three things arrived at the same instant: unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, and unconditional forgiveness. All three. Together. He’d never experienced anything like it.

“That blew my mind,” he said. And it lit something in him that he didn’t have language for yet.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” — Romans 8:1 ESV

He felt that verse before he had the verse. No condemnation isn’t a feeling he worked up — it’s a legal reality about where he was suddenly standing, and his spirit registered it before his mind could explain it.

He went from zero to ten. A man who openly says “I don’t like to read books” read the Bible cover to cover — not out of discipline, out of appetite. That’s the picture from Psalm 42:1:

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” — Psalm 42:1 ESV

A deer doesn’t decide to pant. It pants because it needs water. I want you to see the difference between discipline and appetite — because I’ve watched it in my own walk, and the latter is something only God can create in a person.

Here is what I don’t want you to miss: the hunger came before the hearing. Hebrews 11:6 says He rewards those who seek Him. That reward is on the far side of seeking — and Manny came looking hard.

“Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” — Hebrews 11:6 ESV

The Seven Days He Asked For

Church was good. It wasn’t enough. He was hungry before service, hungry after service, hungry on the days there was no service. He says he didn’t fully understand what was happening to him — looking back, he recognizes it as the Holy Ghost moving in him before he had language for it.

Then a number came up in his heart: seven days. Not an audible voice — he just knew. So he asked his employer for the time off. They granted it. And then came the real question: what do you do with seven days you asked God for?

His answer is the most practical thing in the whole teaching. He gave God the hours he would have given his job. He was on the clock at 5:00 a.m. So he got up at 5:00 a.m. and sought the Lord. He didn’t build a program. He redirected time he was already giving away.

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” — Jeremiah 29:13 ESV

He’s careful about that phrase — “all your heart.” His question back to people who say they’ve sought God and heard nothing is always the same: with all your heart, or according to your own standards?

The Neighbor Who Yelled “Shut Up”

He didn’t pray in tongues — he didn’t know tongues existed yet. He just cried out. Tears. Loud. Hours at a stretch. “Lord, I want more of You.” He didn’t even fully know what he was asking for. He just knew he wanted more.

It got loud enough that a neighbor screamed “SHUT UP!” through the wall. And what did that do? It made him louder. He kept going. I love that. Embarrassment is one of the enemy’s most cost-effective tools — and Manny ran right through it.

“And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!'” — Mark 10:48 ESV

Bartimaeus got told to be quiet by an entire crowd, not one neighbor through a wall. He got louder — and he walked away seeing. Manny hadn’t read that story yet when it happened to him. He just did the same thing.

Thursday Morning — Day 4

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Same routine. Same crying out. Nothing dramatic. Then Thursday morning, before his alarm, God got him up first.

What happened next, Manny had no category for. He felt himself come out of his body. He stood in his living room and looked at his own body still sleeping. He wasn’t panicking. He says you don’t scream in that moment. He noticed he felt more alive outside his body than inside it — senses at a hundred out of a hundred, not 20/20.

“…whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows — and he heard things that cannot be told.” — 2 Corinthians 12:3–4 ESV

Paul had no framework for his own experience either. He refused to pretend otherwise. Manny told it the same honest way. A force he now recognizes as the power of the Holy Ghost took him up through the roof. He saw things yet to come. He saw the earth, his building, the roof he’d just come through. And he heard Jesus — not a form, a voice, clear and unmistakable:

“I have granted you what you have prayed for, what you have been crying out for. And I have called you to be a prophet.”

Then the sense it was time to return. His spirit agreed, and he felt a suction pull him back. He woke up. And from that morning forward, he says, God’s voice was clear. Let me say that plainly: the encounter did not make him a prophet because of the out-of-body experience. The encounter was God answering a week of hunger. The hunger came first.

Being Filled and Being Emptied at the Same Time

Here’s the part Manny volunteered that I think almost everyone misses. He said: “I didn’t realize during those days that I was crying out, I was also being emptied out.” He had a lot of the world in him that needed to come out first. Those seven days were his requirement — not a universal formula for everyone.

He was emphatic. “God may just tell you one thing, and boom.” Your season might be ten minutes. Your emptying might look nothing like his. And before that week — long before — God had already spoken to him at eighteen years old, before he was born again: “I will be with you. I will never leave you. You will never have to worry about being hungry on the streets. I will be with you all of your life.” He kept those words in his heart, the way Mary kept hers.

So I’ll ask the same question Manny asks: if you’re reading this thinking you’ve never heard God — are you sure? Or have you never counted what you already heard?

Your Assignment This Week: Find the hours you’re already spending on something else, and give God a piece of them — deliberately, at a set time. Manny gave God the hours he would have been at work. Give Him something that actually costs you in a similar way.

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Segment 2 — He Doesn’t Repeat Himself: How God Speaks Differently to Everyone

I’ve been married. Manny has been married to his wife for eighteen years. She hears from God — beautifully, consistently. She has never heard Him the way Manny does. When they first got together, she assumed his method was the method. So she started getting up early to cry out just like he had. And she got nothing. She told him it felt good — but zero results.

So Manny told her the truest thing in this entire night of teaching: “God doesn’t want you to duplicate me. He wants you to be you.” She sought the Lord her own way. God answered her: I will reveal Myself to you, My daughter, through My Word. She opens her Bible now, and God speaks. A prophet’s wife does not hear God the way the prophet does — and nothing is wrong with either of them.

Moses, Joshua, Saul, Gideon, and Samuel — a Biblical Pattern

When Manny opened the Bible here, the room went alive. Moses was told to go up the mountain for forty days — that was Moses’ assignment. God never gave that to Joshua. Joshua heard through the Urim. Different method entirely, and Joshua was wildly successful. Saul heard through Samuel — indirectly — and Manny’s response is one I’ve written down: “That’s okay. As long as you heed what He’s saying.”

Gideon asked for the fleece test twice, in opposite directions, and God didn’t get angry once. Manny’s read: God took a man full of fear and made him fearless with hope. Samuel heard God’s actual voice and credited it to Eli — three times — before an old priest taught him how to recognize what he was actually hearing.

“Speak, for your servant hears.” — 1 Samuel 3:10 ESV

Samuel didn’t say that until he was taught what he was hearing. Some of you are right there — already hearing, just with the wrong name on the voice.

And Moses at the burning bush — Manny noticed something I hadn’t. Moses saw the bush before he heard his name. The visual came first. God engaged his eyes, then spoke. Numbers 12:6 is God’s own defense of this variety:

“If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream.” — Numbers 12:6 ESV

God did not say only Moses hears Me. He said He speaks to prophets one way and to Moses another — and He said it as a defense of His own freedom to choose how He speaks. Elisha needed a musician before the hand of the LORD came upon him. Manny says instrumental worship moves him too. He was quick to add: that doesn’t work on everybody.

Pentecost — One Fire, Many Languages

Then Pentecost. A hundred and twenty people, one room, one rushing sound, one fire. Every one of them received. And every one of them spoke a different language. Same Spirit. Same moment. Different expression in every person present.

“All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” — 1 Corinthians 12:11 ESV

As He wills. Not as you researched. And when God came to Elijah after the fire from heaven — He came as a whisper.

“…and after the fire the sound of a low whisper.” — 1 Kings 19:12 ESV

He does not repeat Himself just because it worked before. I’ve had to learn that in my own walk. And I watch a lot of people — believers who love God deeply — hamstrung because they’re chasing a method that isn’t theirs.

God Is Not Looking for a Group Relationship

Manny’s warning about the hearing-from-God bookshelf was sharp: many of those books are built entirely on what one person did, and the reader walks away thinking that’s the formula. “It’s not an ingredients,” he said. “God is not looking for a group relationship. He’s looking for a personal relationship.” He held up his thumb. No two fingerprints on earth are the same — that’s how specific God is about you. Stop asking what’s the method. Start asking: Lord, how do You want to speak to me?

This Week: Name the person whose walk with God you’ve been quietly trying to reproduce. Then ask God directly how He wants to speak to you — and stop borrowing the answer. Manny’s wife wasted real time praying like her husband before God told her to open her Bible instead.

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Segment 3 — Guard the Line: Distraction, Stillness, and the Word That Goes Public

The sentence of the night: “God’s voice is one. But the distractions are many.” Manny says the world is so saturated with noise that people assume God has gone quiet. He hasn’t. The line is open. Something else is on it. And the distractions are not going away — you have to take authority over them. His declarations were simple and I think they’re worth adopting:

• I am not going to let my phone be my master.
• I am not going to allow the internet to be my master.
• I am not going to allow mainstream media to be my master.

Then his challenge: turn the television off for one full day. Turn your phone off for a few hours — during the day, when it costs something, not at bedtime when you’re already asleep. Say: Lord, for these next few hours, I’m Yours. He says you would be surprised what happens. And when you shut the door and sit in the quiet, expect the flesh to get loud: sleepiness, errands you suddenly remember. That, Manny says, is how you know you’re on the right path. The distractions are proof of what’s at stake.

Starting at the Edge of the Mountain

Eight hours sounds impossible — good, because it’s not the assignment. Ten minutes. Then twenty. Then twenty-five. “God will meet you where you’re at.” Start at the edge of the mountain if you have to start there. And then the line that took the pressure off the room: “If you’re hungry, He has patience.” I’ve needed that one personally more than once.

Pray — Then Be Still

Manny corrected something in our prayer lives with one distinction. God often doesn’t want him praying for an hour and calling it done. God wants him to pray — and then be still. “If you’re just saying I’m praying for an hour a day — what is that to God? It has to be both ways. I’m talking, and He’s talking, and we’re fellowshipping. Now you’ve got something.”

When people tell him they’ve sought God and heard nothing, his question is always the same: have you sought Him with all your heart, or according to your own standards? He says there’s usually a pause right there.

Write It Down Even When You’re Unsure

This is practical and you can start it today. Write down what you think God is saying — even when you’re not certain it’s Him. Date it. Keep the record.

“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.” — Habakkuk 2:2 ESV

Two things happen. Time confirms or corrects you. And you slowly learn the sound of God’s voice from your own record — not someone else’s testimony.

Asking for Confirmation Isn’t Faithless

Manny still asks God for signs. After thirty years. “Lord, are You sure this is what You want me to do?” And God gives them. Gideon asked twice in opposite directions and God never got angry. If a prophet who has had open-eye visions for three decades still asks for confirmation, the rest of us can stop feeling faithless for wanting to be sure.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” — John 16:13 ESV

Guidance is His job. Let Him do it.

When the Word Goes Public

I want to say something about Manny’s public prophetic record, because I watched the clip myself. He gave a word in December 2023, repeated it in January 2024, spoke it on camera in February 2024: major pushback against the enemies of God starting at the Supreme Court, moving down, with an announcement coming between February and March of 2024. On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled 9–0 that Colorado could not remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause — closing the door on parallel efforts in Maine and Illinois. The dates on those clips cannot be moved. That’s his point. He also spoke about a shaking in the currencies of the world — gold, silver, and copper — that he is still watching unfold.

This is why guarding the line matters so much. When thousands of people are going to hear what you say next, you want to be sure you heard. Most people believe the United States is falling apart. Manny believes the plans are falling together into God’s design — and that God tells His people ahead of the media so we’re not reacting, we’re standing. That framing has changed how I read the news.

It’s Not the Big Ministry — It’s the Big Obedience

Here’s the heart posture Manny says opens the line more than any technique: “If you have a hunger to be blessed and to be a blessing, God will speak to you.” Not blessed only. Not poured out only. Both. And then the line I keep coming back to: “It’s not the big ministry. It’s the big obedience.”

His mother raised her children in the ways of the Lord. That was her assignment. Manny says she will stand among worldwide evangelists in eternity — because obedience to a God-given calling, however quiet it looks to the world, is what gets measured. He walked away from twenty-plus years in a medical center — steady salary, tithes paid, next month covered — to learn dependence on God the hard way. Obedience, not platform, is the metric.

Don’t let anyone’s testimony intimidate you. Let it encourage you. There’s a difference, and the enemy works hard to blur it. If you want to explore another series where we dig into what God’s word says about last-days events, the Blessed2Teach ministry page is a good starting point for understanding the full breadth of what we teach.

Never Go Dull

Manny has prayed the same prayer for three decades: “Lord, quicken my spirit. I don’t ever want to be dull.” He never wants to lose the connection. He never wants to grieve the Spirit to the point of departure. That’s what I take away from his whole testimony — he is still, thirty years later, guarding the thing he first got in a dark apartment before dawn as a brand-new believer who didn’t know what tongues were.

Hunger opened the door. Hunger keeps it open.

This Week’s Step: Pick one day and turn the television off completely. Turn your phone off for two waking hours — in another room — and say out loud: Lord, for these hours, I’m Yours. Pray. Then sit in the silence long enough to be uncomfortable. Write down anything that comes, even if you’re uncertain. Date it.

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Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for Manny Johnson, and for a hunger You put in a brand-new believer who didn’t know enough to be impressive and just cried out until You answered.

Thank You that You are not looking for a group relationship. Thank You that You made every one of us as distinct as a fingerprint, and that You speak to each of us in the way we can actually receive.

Forgive us for the hours we have handed over to noise while telling ourselves You had gone quiet. Give us the courage to shut the door, turn the screens off, and stay in the silence long enough for You to fill it.

Make us hungry, Lord. Not curious — hungry. Empty out whatever is crowding You out, even when the emptying is uncomfortable, and give us patience with the process the way You have patience with us.

And keep us from comparison. Let no one’s testimony ever intimidate us into thinking we are behind. Teach us our own way of hearing You and let us walk in it without apology.

Quicken our spirits. Don’t let us go dull.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

— Rick Rene, Founder of FaithNFreedom & B2T Ministries

Discuss Day 7 with the Community →

Questions About Hunger for God and Hearing His Voice

What is the Hearing from God series at Blessed2Teach?

The Hearing from God series is a multi-day biblical teaching series hosted by Rick Rene at Blessed2Teach and FaithNFreedom, bringing prophetic teachers together to explore how every believer — not just those in formal ministry — can recognize and respond to the voice of God. Day 7 features Prophet Emanuel Johnson, who taught from thirty years of personal testimony and from biblical examples spanning Moses, Joshua, Saul, Samuel, Gideon, Elijah, and the Day of Pentecost. The full series is indexed at the Hearing from God series hub on faithnfreedom.social. Rick Rene is the founder of FaithNFreedom and B2T Ministries.

What is the relationship between seeking God and hearing His voice?

Prophet Emanuel Johnson teaches from Jeremiah 29:13 that the promise — “You will seek me and find me” — is conditional on wholehearted seeking, not on achieving the right technique. The hunger for God comes before the hearing; the hearing is God’s response to the seeking. Hebrews 11:6 reinforces this: God rewards those who diligently seek Him. In Manny’s own testimony, it was seven days of crying out in hunger — not a program, not a course — that preceded the Thursday morning encounter in which he heard God’s voice unmistakably clearly. The seeking is not the method; it is the prerequisite.

Does God speak in different ways to different people — what does the Bible say?

Numbers 12:6 records God’s own declaration that He makes Himself known through visions and dreams — and the context is God defending His freedom to speak to Moses in a way that differs from how He speaks to other prophets. Across Scripture, the range is wide: Moses received forty days on the mountain; Joshua received the Urim; Saul received Samuel the prophet; Samuel himself heard God’s voice and mistook it for Eli’s; Elisha needed a musician; Elijah received a still small whisper. At Pentecost, one room of people received the same Holy Spirit and expressed it in different languages simultaneously. The consistent biblical pattern is one God, many channels, each calibrated to the individual.

How to know if God is speaking to you or if it’s your own mind?

Prophet Emanuel Johnson’s primary filter is the written Word of God: nothing God says to a person will contradict Scripture. His secondary test is the record — he teaches people to write down what they believe they heard, date it, and watch what time does to it. A word that consistently aligns with Scripture and that comes to pass as described is evidence of God’s voice; a word that does not has corrected itself in your journal. He uses Habakkuk 2:2 as the biblical basis for the writing discipline. He also points to Gideon’s double confirmation as permission: asking God for signs is not faithlessness — it is stewarding what you’ve heard.

What does confirmation from God look like — is it biblical to ask for a sign?

Yes, unambiguously. Manny Johnson still asks God for confirmation after thirty years of prophetic ministry and documented public prophecy. Gideon asked twice — dry fleece on wet ground, then wet fleece on dry ground — and God answered both requests without anger or rebuke. John 16:13 places guidance explicitly under the Holy Spirit’s jurisdiction: “He will guide you into all the truth.” Seeking confirmation is not resistance to faith; it is inviting the Guide to do His job. Manny’s word about the Supreme Court — given publicly in December 2023, February 2024, confirmed March 4, 2024 — is an example of what a public prophetic word with a verifiable record looks like when the confirmation comes.

What is quiet time with God and how do I build it if I’m a beginner?

Quiet time with God, as Manny Johnson teaches it, is a deliberate, fixed-time, two-directional appointment — not a vague intention to pray “when I get around to it.” He redirected the exact hours he gave his employer: 5:00 a.m. was his work start time, so 5:00 a.m. became his God time. For a beginner, he recommends starting with ten minutes at a set time — not during sleep hours, but during waking hours when it costs something. Then building to twenty, then twenty-five. God meets you where your appetite genuinely is. The two-directional element is critical: pray, then be still. Sitting in the silence long enough to be uncomfortable is where the fellowship actually begins.

How to know God’s will for a specific decision or next step in life?

Prophet Emanuel Johnson’s counsel on knowing God’s will combines two practices: asking God directly how He wants to speak to you (rather than borrowing someone else’s method), and building a written record that develops your ability to distinguish God’s voice over time. He also teaches that obedience to the last clear thing God said is often the path to hearing the next thing. His own major decision — leaving twenty-plus years at a medical center for full-time ministry — was preceded not by certainty but by obedience to a hunger God had placed in him. He also points to asking for confirmation as part of the process: the Spirit’s job is guidance, and asking for that guidance is appropriate stewardship.

What is spiritual dryness and what causes it from a biblical perspective?

Spiritual dryness, in the framework of this teaching, is less about God’s absence and more about bandwidth. Manny Johnson is direct: God has not gone quiet, and the line is open. What has changed for most people is the competition for the same mental and emotional space that God’s voice occupies. Phones, internet, and media fill the hours and the attention that would otherwise be available to hear. The result feels like dryness but is actually congestion. His remedy is not a spiritual program — it is a declaration of authority over competing inputs and a deliberate, waking-hour carving out of undistracted time. If the congestion is cleared, the signal is still there.

What does obedience to God mean when you’re not in full-time ministry?

Manny Johnson’s statement — “It’s not the big ministry, it’s the big obedience” — is aimed directly at the assumption that God’s measurement system favors platform size. His mother was not in public ministry. Her calling was to raise her children in the ways of the Lord. She did it faithfully, and he says she will stand alongside worldwide evangelists in eternity. The calling is the assignment God gives — not the one with the largest audience. For someone not in formal ministry, obedience to God might mean how they parent, how they work, how they love a neighbor, or how they steward a gift that has never been on a stage. The size of the obedience is what God measures, not the size of the audience watching it.

What is a prophetic word and how does a real prophet hold himself accountable?

A prophetic word, as Prophet Emanuel Johnson demonstrates, is a specific, dateable, publicly spoken declaration about what God is doing — and the prophet holds himself accountable by keeping the timestamps visible. Manny gave a word in December 2023, repeated it in January 2024, and spoke it on camera in February 2024 about a major Supreme Court-level pushback against the enemies of God. On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously 9–0 that Colorado could not remove Donald Trump from the ballot, closing parallel efforts in Maine and Illinois. He played the original dated clip for the group — not to claim credit, but because nobody can move the dates. Accountability to the record is how prophetic ministry guards its own integrity.

What does the Bible teach about prophetic dreams and visions as a way God speaks?

Scripture is explicit: Numbers 12:6 records God Himself saying He speaks to prophets through visions and speaks to them in dreams. The New Testament continues the pattern — Joel 2’s promise of sons and daughters prophesying, old men dreaming dreams, young men seeing visions, quoted by Peter in Acts 2 as the explanation for Pentecost. Manny Johnson’s Thursday morning encounter includes a vision-state experience in which he saw things yet to come and heard a clear prophetic call. He does not build a technical doctrine out of the mechanics, but he references Paul’s account in 2 Corinthians 12:3–4 — “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows” — as biblical evidence that such encounters are part of God’s vocabulary with His people and have been since the earliest writings of Scripture.

Can fasting and seeking God be about something other than food?

Yes — and Manny Johnson’s seven-day fast is an example of a fast from occupation rather than food. He redirected the hours he would have given his employer to seeking God instead. Same start time — 5:00 a.m. — same intentionality, same cost to his schedule. The underlying principle of fasting is creating space by removing something that currently occupies it. In his case, the thing removed was his professional role and its accompanying schedule. The emptying he experienced during those seven days was not just the absence of distractions — it was the departure of things inside him that needed to leave. He is careful to say that the seven days were specific to his situation; the amount of the world in a person at any given time is the variable that shapes what the fast costs and how long it takes.

What does the out-of-body experience mean for an ordinary Christian — is it something to seek?

Manny Johnson does not present his out-of-body experience as a goal to pursue or replicate. He presents it as what God chose to do as an answer to a week of genuine, wholehearted hunger — a hunger that preceded the encounter, not a method that produced it. He references Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:3–4, who also describes being caught up and explicitly refuses to claim certainty about whether he was in his body or out of it. Both accounts share the same honest restraint: this is what happened, I cannot fully explain the mechanics, and I did not engineer it. The application Manny draws is not that believers should seek such experiences but that God’s vocabulary is wider than most people allow for — and that hunger, not technique, is what opens the conversation.

What does being still before God involve — is it the same as meditation?

Being still before God, as Manny teaches it, is the second half of a two-way conversation — not a separate practice from prayer but the completion of it. After you pray, you go quiet and you wait. That waiting is not emptying the mind as a discipline in itself; it is specifically attending to God, expecting Him to respond. The flesh will object — sleepiness, wandering thoughts, recalled errands. Manny says that resistance is evidence you’re on the right path. The distractions are proof of what’s at stake. Biblical anchors include Psalm 46:10 by implication and the pattern of Samuel who had to learn to sit still and say “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” before he could receive. The stillness is not passive — it is the posture of one who has spoken and is now expecting an answer.

What is the distractions problem in hearing from God — how serious is it really?

Manny Johnson calls it the defining problem of hearing from God in the modern era: God’s voice is one, and the distractions are many. He does not frame it as a minor inconvenience. He says America — and much of the world — is so bombarded with competing input that believers have concluded God has gone quiet. He insists that is a mistaken conclusion. The line is open. What is different is the signal-to-noise ratio on the receiving end. And the distractions are not going to resolve themselves — they are persistent, they are by design, and they will not voluntarily give back the ground they occupy. Taking authority over them requires deliberate action: phones off, screens off, during waking hours, with the explicit declaration that those hours belong to God.