Jump to content


Photo

Habituation: Friend or Foe?


  • Please log in to reply
5 replies to this topic

#1 Thinker

Thinker

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 219 posts
  • Location:Maine
  • Interests:Humor, Writing, Counseling, Bible Study,Discipling and Revival
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Pastor

  • I attend a non-Alliance church
  • Webbs Mills Free Baptist Church

Posted 15 October 2015 - 01:15 PM

There are good habits and bad ones. It's a good habit to brush your teeth each day; it's a bad habit to bite your fingernails. A good habit helps you get things done. Bad habits are hard to break. Interestingly, it requires discipline to develop good habits; it requires no discipline to develop bad habits. These are the things of everyday life. However, when we move into the spiritual realm, habituation can more often be a foe rather than a friend. Let me explain what I mean. We develop the habit of going to church, having private devotions, giving to God, sharing our faith, etc. The first danger is that we can be proud of being disciplined enough to establish these good habits. The second danger is that we can pursue these habits with little or no thought. We may have started out doing these things with our hearts and minds engaged. So far, so good! Somehow, we often become so regular in the routine that we just do it without our hearts and minds involved. When you first started to drive, you were fully involved. After a lot of driving, you just drive with little thought. For example, when you enter your vehicle, do you stop and think of turning the key, putting it in gear, and giving it gas or do you just do these things? That usually works in driving but in our spiritual lives it can be deadening! We lose the joy, the wonder, the thrill of a close fellowship with Jesus and through Him, with the Father. Our Christian walk becomes dull and mechanical. We allow the substance to leak, leaving a shell of how we began. Perhaps this is what led to the Laodicean lukewarmness, that Jesus addressed in Revelation 3:17: "....thou sayest, I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:.." This was addressed to a church, but churches are made up of Christians. Could this have been a result of a collective lapse into a routine, without their hearts still involved? Is it time for us to pray as did William P. Mackay, in his hymn, "Revive Us Again?" Think on this prayer: "Revive us again -- fill each heart with Thy love; may each soul be rekindled with fire from above." Selah! Is your experience of Jesus "ho, hum," or vibrant? If it's not vibrant, let Him bring you back to the boiling point. Thinker (Ron)
  • Julie Daube, ADVRider and Meema like this

#2 bob wire

bob wire

    Member

  • Members
  • PipPip
  • 18 posts
  • Location:colorado
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Layperson

  • I attend a non-Alliance church
  • parker Bible church

Posted 15 October 2015 - 05:55 PM

my Christian walk has become dull mechanical[from Tozer pursuit of God]the man is saved but he is not hungry nor thirsty  after God,   I want to taste to touch with my heart to see with my inner eyes the wonder of God.Iam ashamed of my lack of desire O God I want to want you  I long to be filled  with longing to be thirsty. I pray that I might  know you indeed, be exalted above all ... my Lord bring me back to the  boiling point to know that I know the living God.  bob


  • Meema likes this

#3 Tony Davison

Tony Davison

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 68 posts
  • Location:Clinton Ontario Canada
  • Interests:Retired Electrician by trade full time christian by Gods choice.
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Layperson

  • I attend a non-Alliance church

Posted 16 October 2015 - 01:52 AM

Amen Bob Wire we all need this letting control of our life to THE hands that are more capable. 


  • Thinker and Meema like this

#4 Thinker

Thinker

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 219 posts
  • Location:Maine
  • Interests:Humor, Writing, Counseling, Bible Study,Discipling and Revival
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Pastor

  • I attend a non-Alliance church
  • Webbs Mills Free Baptist Church

Posted 16 October 2015 - 06:03 AM

Bob, I don't know if I can make my point in print. If we were talking face to face, I could emphasize what I am about to write. First, there is a promise in Jeremiah 29:13: "And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart." It sounds like you have begun to do that. Second, you are pouring your heart out to GOD, longing to be "all the way" with Him. He is listening; He is not deaf! You, in turn, listen to Him speak to your heart in the pages of Scripture and do what He tells you. Talk to Him out of your heart, tell Him your concerns, express your love for Him and worship Him. Then, be aware of Him and trust Him. Consistently doing this from the heart will bring results. Thinker (Ron)

#5 Charles Miles

Charles Miles

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 536 posts
  • Location:West Point, MS
  • Interests:Medicine
    Fruits of the spirit
    Learning more about the Kingdom of God and how to live in it here on earth
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Layperson

  • I attend a non-Alliance church
  • First Presbyterian Church EPC

Posted 16 October 2015 - 02:08 PM

As Thinker said above, "habits can be either good or bad", and I agree. If we define a "habit" as a learned response, then we can see some things that we do need to develop as "learned responses" to situations. In my own personal walk with the Lord, I can see how far I have come by my tongue and my control of it. Sadly, I have not yet come into complete control of that organ! When confronted with an insult, verbal slash, or unkind statement(use your imagination for any of these), in the past I have responded with sarcasm, hurtful words, or other items of speech not related to the Kingdom....But now I have improved. Not yet where I want to be, but just improved a bit. My goal is to reach a point where my responses are words of love, words of support, kind words that improve situations and not escalate them. I guess what I am trying to say is, I want to develop a habit of love and have my responses come from a habit of loving my fellow man. If you "turn over" a pail of clean water, you expect water to spill out....not dirt. If you "turn over" a child of God, one should expect love to spill out....not hate.

I am a work in progress,

Charlie
  • Kevin Blankenship and Thinker like this

#6 ADVRider

ADVRider

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 229 posts
  • Location:Heaven and Earth
  • Interests:Outdoors; exploring; friends.
  • Gender:Male
  • I am a Layperson

  • I attend a non-Alliance church
  • Boulder Street

Posted 21 October 2015 - 08:16 AM

I think sometimes, believers are unintentionally taught or conditioned to think that the habituation of Christian disciplines are the equal to a relationship with God. Or they are the sum and substance of their Christianity. In my observation, this varies greatly depending on denomination or tradition. Some give little or no emphasis to the "deeper life" and all is "high and dry." And there is the other side as well, where even scripture is minimized or subjugated to experience.

 

I've dialogued with people who were so proud of their "knowledge" of the Bible, but they didn't realize their knowledge was their God. Likewise, for some in the other camp, equally unknown, was that "experience" was everything.

 

So certainly, we have to be aware of the possibility that we can become habituated in a way that can leave God Himself out of the picture and we substitute something of ourselves in place of Him.


  • Charles Miles, Thinker and Meema like this