Habits

The very word itself carries with it a negative connotation. Something that you need to be broken from. Like chewing your fingernails, swearing, drinking, and the list goes on. 

Instead of breaking bad habits, maybe we should start making good habits. Like spending time with God each day, in his word or getting up on Sunday and going to church.

Most of us are probably a little uncomfortable with calling our time with God a habit. Because we are in a personal relationship and calling it a habit makes our devotion time another thing on our todo list and less personal. But maybe more of us need to be in the habit of spending time with God. Because habits are carried out consistently without thought to our feelings or emotional and physical state. Yes, my time with God is something I enjoy and look forward to most days, but when reading the Bible feels like reading a phone book and praying feels like a waste of words, I do it anyways. Because I have made that my habit. There are times in this journey with God where his presence is so real and refreshing, drawing you to himself and there are dry times when you don't feel a thing and you feel alone. That is why this is called a walk of faith. Because even in the basics of spending time with God, we have to believe that God exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11:6) because we can't always feel him. We have to trust that spending time in God's word will not return void, but is planting seeds in our hearts that will grow and produce fruit in us, especially when we have nothing except for God's promises to hold on to.

I think often times, we set such high expectations of ourselves and our time with God, that when those aren't met, it's hard to come back day after day and continue to spend that time with God. Which is why we need a habit to drive us back to God day after day, with or without feeling his presence in that time. Let's call it determination, discipline. Faithfulness to God as he is faithful to us. Whatever you call it, you must keep coming back and not give up. 

The devil's most basic goal is to keep us from God and His word. Because he knows that we get our strength from spending time with God and God's word is our primary weapon against him. When we fail to spend time with God, the devil has already gained a place in our lives. Which is why we need to get some good habits established.  So we can best fight the devil and stand our ground against his tactics to destroy us and stop God's plan for our lives.