God’s Rules Should Become Our Habits
Discover how the quiet power of daily habits can turn God’s commands from occasional efforts into the steady pattern that shapes a holy life.
“In imitation of the holy One who has called you — you also must be holy in all your habits of life” (1 Peter 1:15 Weymouth).
Often disparaged, habit is more valuable than we make it out to be. If habit is a pattern of behavior that has become typical within a person’s life, shouldn’t we want obedience to God to become such? When doing what is right has become an established norm, rather than something unusual, isn’t that a good thing?
To keep us within beneficial boundaries, God has given us some rules for our behavior. At the beginning of our lives in Christ, we may find some of these rules unpleasant to obey, but eventually it gets easier. As God’s rules become our habits, staying within His boundaries begins to be characteristic of our conduct: obedience becomes the norm rather than the exception in our lives.
Godly habits are powerful helpers in our daily walk. When the king outlawed prayer, think how much Daniel’s habits helped him to do what was right: “he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days” (Daniel 6:10). When obedience becomes dangerous, we desperately need the “momentum” imparted by habits of obedience, traits established long before the situation became an emergency.
Of course, sinful habits have their own momentum, and that’s one reason we should break those habits as quickly as possible. If doing certain wrong things has become “natural” to us, we need to get back to where they are un-natural and un-characteristic of us.
As we all know, forming a habit requires repetition. If it’s a good habit, it will take practice and patient training: repeatedly urging ourselves to do things that are hard until they finally become easy. As Hyman G. Rickover observed, “Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.”
Ultimately, it is our habits that determine our character. We all occasionally act in ways that are inconsistent with our character, but it is our habits — our typical behaviors — that define that character. Rules have their place, both God’s rules and our own, but until a rule becomes a habit, the results are going to be minimal. However, when God’s rules become our habits, powerful things begin to happen.
“Habits are safer than rules; you don’t have to watch them, and you don’t have to keep them either — they keep you” (Avery Johnson).
Gary Henry - WordPoints.com