It doesn't seem like it takes long to create a habit, but it does seem like it takes a while to break a habit. It seems as though our bodies have a predisposition toward making habits easily. Have you ever noticed how a certain routine, once practiced a few times, becomes difficult to give up? For me, running has become a habit. One would think that would be something that an individual should have an easy time giving up. However, if I don't run, I feel as though I haven't brushed my teeth. I feel dirty, sick, unhealthy and defeated.
A recent habit that has been changed for me is the location of our file cabinet at work. For eight years, our file cabinet was always in the same place. Now it has been changed to a new location. I was used to always walking a certain direction and getting what I needed. It has taken me about a week to stop walking toward the old location to where the file cabinet was held.
The following is a segmental transcript of John Ortberg in the Podcast: "All In: Healing...All My Soul" 11-15-2011 Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
http://www.mppc.org/series/all/john-ortberg/healing-all-my-soul#.TuK2zrqRpaw.facebook
"Habits are deeply entrenched patterns way below the surface...insidious, like a disease, that just leak out when I'm not even trying. Self serving words or tones, the way I cater to someone important, attractive or wealthy when I don't even like that in me. I don't know how to turn it off. I don't know how to shut it down. I do not understand what I do. For what I want, I do not do. What I hate, I do. I have desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. John states, "habits are relatively permanent pattern of behavior that allows you to navigate the world. Our capacity for habitual behavior is indispensible for human life. Habits are enormously freeing. They become as natural as breathing. You are mostly a collection of habits. Without understanding this, spiritual life can be a source of enormous frustration and defeat."
"When sin gets into the way we think, and want, and desire, and perceive, and feel, and choose, and walk, and speak, and act, and behave, and relate, when sin gets into our habits it is a trajedy of unspeakable proportions."
"A habit is a behavior pattern so engrained that we don't have to think about it and it becomes as natural as breathing. They become second nature."
"When Paul talks about nothing good in my sinful nature, he is not talking about one ghost fighting it out with another ghost some place. Sin, evil, wickedness, deception, anger, Racism, greed, ingratitude, pride have become second nature to us all. You can overcome a habit with willpower for a moment or two, but over the long hall your habits will always defeat your willpower.
Surender to your will. Die to yourself and your wants and ways. Arrange yourself in a way where you can aquire new habits. Study scriptures together. Pray together. Give, serve, confess, replace sinful habits with Jesus habits. Do not let sin reign in your body so that you obey it's evil desires...do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God. Enter into a new way. The way of Jesus so that you can be given by God the freedom from sin that your will can never give you. Offer the members of your body. Offer your mind to read scripture so you can think of different thoughts of love and joy and peace. Offer your hands to practice giving so you can be freed from habitual greed, offer your feet to go somewhere and serve in places where you see there are human beings that have bigger problems than I do. Offer your lips to practice gratitude or silence so you discover it's possible to live without complaining...so that gets into my body. Offer your ears to listen to God so that you get new habits. Jesus was a collection of habits. Jesus was a new way."
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right whatever is pure, whatever is right, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about these things." Phil 4:8
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