Habits

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

1 Timothy 6:11-12

How you handle temptation now is how you handle temptation then.

While we do not control every aspect of our lives, we control how we respond to life. Our response to the situations we face is often shaped by our habits. The way we practice responding to temptation is how we will tend to respond to similar temptations. We all have ways we tend to act now that are different from how we used to act. While our past habits can influence our choices now, our present habits influence them more. As we go through life, our habits change as we change, and we become more like the new habits we form. As we respond to temptations in similar manners, we create new habits that form our new identity.

What you decide to not do matters as much as what you decide to do.

We all will have two sets of habits: the habit of things we tend to say yes to, and the habit of things we tend to say no to. Both of these sets of habits are important to our identity and growth in our Christian walk. The habit of not going to sleazy locations is as formative to your soul as going to church every Sunday. While many of our active habits are simply taken for granted: sleeping, eating, hygiene etc., most of our passive habits are ignored: what we don’t buy, what music we don’t listen to, what we don’t watch etc. The “thou shalt not’s” of Romans 13:9 are said in harmony with the putting on of Christ in Romans 13:14. We need both habits to properly form our lives—the habits of not doing bad things and the habits of doing good things.

Be married to the mission not the method.

Our mission in life is to bring glory to God. Our methods change as we develop along our spiritual walk. We study God’s word, share the gospel, and sing praises all for the mission of giving glory to God. our habits may change from doing Bible study on Wednesday night to Thursday night or from a Bible study to a worship practice, but as long as we keep the mission as our focus. When your habits are founded on the mission instead of the habits, we can adjust for changes in our methods without it disturbing our life. And as we reshape our habits to ensure they are always married to the mission, we create habits that will lead us through the temptations of tomorrow.