By: Curtis Baker
Last week, as we talked about Paul’s admonitions in Romans 6 to be “slaves to God,” we discussed the role that habits play in our spiritual formation. Many today often believe that willpower will be enough to lead a person away from sin and into a life of goodness, but for anyone who has tried to change their behavior simply by willpower alone, they already know the failure that lies along that path. Behaviors are rooted in our bodies through habits. These habits have been learned from our environment around us, as well as from our choices which have solidified our behavior. Habits, in most cases, are stronger than will power. So how do we break away from our slavery to sin and form the good habits of obedience to God?
Unfortunately, an article of this size is far too small to answer this question adequately. But as we began to note last week, there are a series of practices that the church has deemed as valuable over the years that allows the sinful habits in our life to be broken. These actions are largely indirect actions that allow us to break the power of sin in our life. Here are just a few habits that might be general to all of us.
The first counter habit that we might form is a regular reading of God’s word. There are many reasons that reading God’s Word might be of value to us, but one fact that cannot be overlooked is reality that we take a lot junk into our brains during the week. Whether these things come in through our work environment, television, internet, or the many advertisements we are bombarded with, our minds are filled with things that pull us away from God rather than towards God. A daily reading of God’s Word is one of the ways that we fill our mind with what is good. If we do not take that action for ourselves, the bad that enters our mind can and will be all consuming. A 30 minute lesson from the preacher on Sunday morning is not enough to combat all that one encounters in the world. Read scripture. Memorize meaningful passages. This is not a call to be a scholar, but simply to fill your mind with God’s Word which is living and active and will do good work in your soul.
A second counter habit is to take sustained times alone for reflection and prayer. This can be as simple as a daily habit of 15 minutes, or something you do every once in a while for a sustained period of time–maybe an afternoon or a weekend, if your life permits it. Why is this so important? We live in a world that is over stimulated. Between television, radio, smart phones, work, and life among our friends and families, we have very little time to reflect on why we do the things that we do. Largely our lives are lived automatically, and therefore the habits of sin that are with us never get challenged or changed. Spending time alone to pray and reflect before God gives us the time and space to allow the habits of hurry to be broken. It is then that we can come to know why we do what we do, and what changes might need to be made in our behavior to break the power of sin over our lives. God promises if we will draw near to him, he will draw near to us. But he will not compete for our attention. We must seek him.
A third important counter habit is the act of fasting. This was once a popular practice among Jewish and Christian people, but has since fallen out of common practice, especially in protestant or evangelical traditions. Fasting allows us to separate from the things that normally sustain us in life, so that we can learn what is absolutely essential to learn–our life is not sustained by the things that we eat or the habits we enjoy. Our life is given and sustained by God. Fasting allows the power of physical things to be broken in our life. We learn that we do not need them for our happiness, though we are certainly free to enjoy them as a part of our life in God.
Well, there are plenty more that we could speak of here, but this is enough to make the point. You’ll notice about all three of these things that none of them are a direct assault against sin. But through indirect action, we train ourselves to turn toward God, so that sinful habits can be broken. This is what it means to be a slave to God, rather than a slave to sin. More next week!
(Don’t forget to join me for A Message From the Heart radio program Sunday evening at 8:00pm on KJAK 92.7FM, or streaming live at www.kjak.com)
(curtisbaker@hotmail.com)
Write to: P.O. Box 157, Slaton, TX 79364
