Holy Habits

I have found myself currently in a season of “rest,” or contentment as I have come to experience it. I am truly enjoying where I am in life: happily married, with a sweet and happy toddler, enjoying my home, family, friends, and church. I love my job and the people I work with. Truly for the first time in my life I do not feel the need to pursue the “next thing.” I have always been driven by a calling to pursue whatever God has for me next. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I have arrived. Whew! I can breathe now, life is good. 

And it has been good! I have enjoyed the freedom to actually enjoy my life, and be truly content with where the Lord has placed me. As I find myself in the promised land, I am at rest, at peace, and worshipful. This is a good place to be!! 

In this place, I have continued to pursue spiritual disciplines of prayer and worship. In this sweet time with the Lord, He began to show me some things He wanted to work on. More specifically, even though I have grown in many areas of my life, there are some sharp edges and specks He would like to refine. 

It was almost as if the Lord was saying, “Hey Alex. You are doing great. This is a season in your life where you can be content exactly where you are at. OR. I could take you deeper. I could use this season to grow you even closer to me, closer to the person I have created you to be. You are uniquely positioned in this season to fully surrender the deepest parts of yourself, and if you are obedient, there will be victory in areas of your life you have struggled with for years.” 

What follows is my “Yes Lord. Have your way,” and the lessons He gave me. 

I have read two key books that are completely reframing the way I structure my life. The first book is a non Christian self-help book titled Atomic Habits by James Clear that has been extremely helpful in understanding how our habits shape our lives (thanks for the rec, Emma Hord!). The next book, Habits of the Household by Justin Early, took that concept and ran 1000000 times further with it as he explains how our habits are daily liturgies of worship that shape the culture of our families and communities (thanks for the rec, Lisa Smythe!) . Read in conjunction with each other, I felt ready to conquer the world! I could not recommend these two books enough. 

So these lessons I am about to share are not originally my own ideas, but lessons from these books and through prayer and processing that have sunk deep into my soul. I believe the Lord wants to transform my habits and systems to wholly sanctify the default me. To use how I structure my daily life to turn my eyes toward Him even when I am not thinking about it, or even thinking at all. 

1. What we do without thinking (habits) will either point us toward Christ or away from Him. 

How we structure our days have everything to do with what we believe. If I believe I am a tidy, organized person, then my daily habits of cleaning up after myself and doing dishes will reflect this belief. If I believe myself to be a healthy person, I will choose the fruit and make sure I move my body each day. If I believe I exist to be entertained, well, I will probably spend a lot of time scrolling down Instagram reels. If I believe that Jesus is the Redeemer of my life, then my days will reflect the love, praise, and thankfulness that truth requires. 

A revealing question I have been asking myself lately is this: What kind of person am I when I am on “default?” My default mode of being is what I do without thinking, and it directly reflects my deepest beliefs about myself and the world. For example, usually my default setting is to be lazy, comfortable, and take the easy way out. This reflects a wrongly-held belief that I am the center of the universe and my purpose is to fill my desire to be happy. This can manifest itself in some pretty unhealthy habits. I would rather sit on the couch with my takeout and watch a show, rather than go on a walk with my family and cook a healthy dinner. Now, obviously there is nothing wrong with couches or takeout or watching a show. But when it becomes my default mode of being, there is something out of place. If my default is to be lazy, one day I am going to wake up and literally be a lazy, selfish person. I will reflect this self-centered belief in how I care for my child, how I do my job, how I care for those around me (or don’t). Instead of my default mode pulling me closer to Christ and becoming more like Him (rightly held beliefs), it is actually making me more selfish and drawing me away from the holy, set apart life God has called me to. 
 
2. Because of this, our systems and habits determine the kind of people we are becoming.

Who has God called me to be? This is the second question that I have been ruminating over. If I believe myself to be a worshiper of God, set apart for His service, and called to serve His people, then how do my habits reflect these truths? This is boots on the ground Christianity. It is the application, the action of “I believe this, so I do this.” To quote from Atomic Habits, “Your habits are votes for the type of person you want to become.”  Done daily; small, minute habits will build compound interest overtime to snowball you into the person God calls you to be. This is why daily Scripture reading and prayer is crucial to the believer. Ten minutes of daily Bible study may not seem like much, but God is planting and watering and growing those tiny seeds in you and me that will not only transform us 5 years from now, but they will have eternal impact through Christ. So if I believe that I am called to be a worshiper of God for all of eternity, how am I forming my daily systems to allow myself to freely worship Him regardless of if I feel like it or not? For me, it looks like worship music in the car, playing guitar, writing in my prayer journal. Every day. For you it might look different, but I just wanted to give an example. 

3. Habits built on the foundation of God’s Word are a form of worship. They are also a weapon of defense in spiritual warfare. 

Speaking of daily worship, habits built in conjunction with the Holy Spirit are in themselves, a form of worship. And worship is the defense we have in spiritual warfare. This observation hit me in a time of prayer when I realized that as I was writing out my prayer, God was protecting me from sin. I could have chosen to do a thousand different things with my rare free time, a lot of them selfish or lazy or indulging. But because I have been careful to cultivate a habit of daily prayer, I began to long to do that in my first free space of the day. By default I grabbed my pen, and as a creature of habit, began writing. At first I wasn’t thinking, but then my heart caught up to my head and it hit me: I am being formed right now by my habits. And in it, God has the victory. He is redeeming my time by turning my eyes to Him, bringing me to awareness of His presence, and giving me tools to fight spiritual battles in me and around me. 

In the spirit of vulnerability, here are some yucky habits I am working on squashing and replacing with new habits:

1. Instead of scrolling through social media, I am replacing this with intentionally reaching out to encourage someone each day. 
2. Instead of defaulting to the couch, I am committing to moving my body each day.
3. Instead of overindulging on food, I am intentionally choosing to eat something healthy when I need a snack. 
4. Instead of dissociating from my family after a long day, I am pursuing them by thinking of an activity we can all do together, even if it's simply playing with toys in the living room. 
5. And instead of going to video games or Netflix first, I am choosing to spend time with the Lord in intentional prayer, Scripture, and worship each day. 

Over time, my prayer is that my habits will begin to directly reflect who I am in Christ, and in turn, who I am in Christ will inform my daily habits. I can sense this has huge implications for me personally, but I currently cannot fathom how this will influence my family, my community, or my church family. I do believe it’s crucial, and that God has called me to go deeper in Him so I can keep showing up for those around me. I want to be the person that can step up to bat and be relied on to smack that ball every time for the sake of my team. I want to be the person that is so emptied of myself that I can exist solely to serve others and bring Him glory. And I want to be the person that has spiritual eyes to see and discern spiritual realities because walking with the Lord has become my default mode of being. 

Scripture on building sanctifying habits:

Romans 12:2 ESV 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 ESV

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV 

To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Proverbs 22:6 ESV 

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Hebrews 5:14 ESV 

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

1 Corinthians 6:12 ESV 

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.

Romans 12:1-2 ESV 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.