The Importance of Habits

Significance of what’s normal

Proverbs 4:26–27 “Ponder the path of thy feet, And let all thy ways be established . .

We must take the time to think about what we want our actions to be - ponder the path of thy feet. Purposefully decide what you want the habits of your life to be and establish them into your life.

It was 8:00 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, and bedtime with our boys was not going well. Nothing was particularly wrong, but nothing was particularly right, either. It was more of what most nights were: two had fled the bath and begun a spontaneous wrestling match, Greco-Roman style (that is, naked), on the floor of their bedroom. The youngest had gotten involved by turning his board books into projectiles, apparently trying to break the match up by knocking one of the older two out. I had recently left my job at an international law firm and started my own business-law practice. Lauren was pregnant with our fourth boy, because clearly our house needed more Greco-Roman wrestlers. Life was then, as it still is now, fairly high paced.

On the way to the bathroom, I was debating whether I should get back to one of my clients, who was in the middle of an investment round, or first clean the kitchen. I was also wracking my brain trying to remember whose toothbrush was the Superman one and whose was the T. rex one, because if I got this wrong, there was going to be more gnashing of teeth than brushing. This was all interrupted when I almost slipped on some bathwater they had trailed onto the creaking floorboards of our hundred-year-old house in Richmond, Virginia. I barely avoided a wipeout by catching myself on a doorknob that almost shook loose, and that’s when the switch flips. I don’t “run out” of patience nearly so much as I decide that I’m out of patience.

The next ten minutes are a blur. I’m barking orders and moving bodies from one place to another. But it doesn’t actually speed anything up; it just makes us all tense. In such moments, I begin to feel like an impotent general shouting commands that, despite their volume, seem to have little effect on anything. Things like, “I don’t care, you are using this toothbrush!” And, “I pulled the book out of your hands because you weren’t listening to me.” Or, “No more drinks of water! We’re done with water.” Finally, I reach the moment I’ve been waiting for. I turn the lights out and shut the door.

But as I stood in the upstairs hallway, still damp with bathwater, I didn’t feel the usual relief of bedtime being over. I felt conflicted and embarrassed. I was thinking about how this was a normal night, which means their last image of me most days is of this wild taskmaster raging about how if they don’t get pj’s on this instant there will be dramatic physical consequences. I wondered if they sensed the irony when, before turning out the lights, I gave them a short bedtime prayer and told them that God loves them and I do too. I wondered what they think love means. I’m not sure why this night was the occasion for my epiphany, because it certainly wasn’t an unusual evening. In fact, it was typical, which is exactly what led to my epiphany: “This is our normal,” I murmured to myself. And that wasn’t a good thing.

One of the most significant things about a household is what’s considered normal. Our normal turns into memories and traditions. What we see as ordinary ends up shaping ourselves and our children’s life.

To an athlete, working out is considered normal, to a delivery driver, driving is considered normal, to a plumber, replacing a shut off valve is considered normal. What may be considered hard to some of us is considered normal to others. Those normal things we do, shape us to make us who we are.

So to govern our habits is to govern who we become. If we don’t like who we are, look deeper and change the habits we have. We want to be a great parent, change our habits. We want to be a great Christian, change our habits. If we don’t like who we are, we have to simply look at the underlying patters making us who we have become.

The author of this book tells us about his first experience with trying to change a habit during his children’s bedtime routine. He wanted to recite recite a liturgy each evening in hopes that he would not default to his impatient liturgy that he so often resorted to.

It went like this: Parent: Do you see my eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Can you see that I see your eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you? Child: Yes.Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Who else loves you like that? Child: God does. Parent: Even more than me? Child: Yes. Parent: Rest in that love.

It sounds sweet, but can you imagine doing this with young children. He recounts the first time he did this and how the kids were confused, they were suddenly very interested in what it meant that he could see their eyes. They took it as an invitation to poke his eyes. Suddenly eye contact was hilarious, and so on. Even for a few weeks it was still confusing.

But that’s how it feels when you start a new habit, its awkward, and a bit uncomfortable . .. until it’s not. And suddenly what you’ve done, now becomes what you do. A few weeks into this routine, suddenly one of his kids asked him, dad, can we have our blessing now. And that lead to a brief word about God’s remarkable love for us. After four years of doing a nighttime blessing with his kids there’s still board books being thrown, naked wrestling matches, and water in the hallway, but the thing that has is him. He’s found his knee jerk reaction isn’t to yell, and start barking orders. Who he is has changed from what he was. That is the power of habits in our life. If we purposefully choose our habits, they will make us into who who we want to be.

Our heart follows our habits

A few months ago we were driving back from La Grande and my wife and I had some good conversation. We talked almost the whole way back. It was a good two hour conversation. It felt good to have that connection and to talk about a myriad of topics. But the whole time I was talking, I was also doing an activity that 22 years ago when I first got my liscence, would have had me freaked out. I was driving on the highway. I was going 70-75 miles per hour, I was keeping the vehicle centered in between two white dotted lines. I was adjust my speed for the cars around me. I was changing lanes. I was slowing down for curves. If you asked me about the driving part, I wouldn’t be able to tell you much. Because that was all on autopilot. My habits enabled me to carry out a much more important task (talking to my wife) while still doing another task that would have taken all my mental focus 22 years ago.

Modern science has discovered that our habits are buried deep in our brains, the basal ganglia. Our basal ganglia runs our habits on autopilot which frees up our higher order thinking for other things. Habits are a gift from God to us.

The neurological downside is that the same feature that allows us to perform a good habit without thinking about it, makes it hard to change a bad habit even when thinking about it. Ask my wife what bad habits I have, and #1 on her list is that I bite my nails. I started doing it when I was a kid, and I’m 39 and still can’t stop biting my nails. I want to, but without even thinking about it, I find myself biting my nails again. If you’re sitting behind us in church and you see my wife look over at me, she’ll try to hide it, but she is making faces at me trying to get me to stop.

I can’t think my way out of a pattern that I didn’t think myself into.

I practiced myself into a bad habit. and the only way I can break that, is by practicing myself out of it.

Habits are spiritually formative. Because when our heads go one way, but our habits go another, guess which way our heart follows? yeah, our heart follows our habits.

Romans 7:18–19 “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

Paul wanted to do the right thing, the will was present with him. But HOW to perform that which is good, I find not. His practice wasn’t lining up with his thinking.

Christianity isn’t about knowing what to do, but actually doing it. Be not hearers of the word, but doers also.

Philippians 4:9 “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

It’s not enough to read the Bible and come to church and hear and learn and recieve and see. All those are incomplete wif I don’t follow through with my actions. Jesus doesn’t want us to just learn about Him, He wants us to live like Him.

Our households are are not simply products of what we teach and say, they are much more products of what we practice and do.

And really there’s always a gap between what we know we need to do and what we actually do. The next 10 weeks are designed to shrink that gap so that our head and our heart are more closely aligned.

My head thinks, I want to be more patient with my kids | my habit is to reprimand them for every spill | my new habit is to say “that’s ok, lets clean it up together.” after the cleanup, we feel more patient with our kids because we are practicing being more patient.

My head thinks, I want to give my kids my full attention | my habit is to check the notifications on my phone which makes me mad, anxious, and worried. consequently, the morning has me distracted and absent as I get the kids out. | new habit, only check my phone after the kids are dropped off at school changes the

My head thinks, I want to not get so angry at my kids when I discipline them | my old habits is to yell and get mad when they misbehave. | my new habit of pausing to pray before I discipline helps me to realize I am a broken and needy child of God just like my child.

Purposefully placing good habits in my life, helps me be more like Christ. It helps bridge the gap between who I am and who I want to be.

Placing good habits in our families doesn’t mean they will give their heart to God but it makes it easier for them to do so.

Tell me if this sounds like the world: unceasing screentime, unending busyness, unrivaled consumerism, unrelenting loneliness, unmitigated addictions, unparalleled distractions. How many of us would say that sounds like the world? Now how many of us would say, I see some of those things in my own home? Here’s the thing, if we don’t decide what godly habits to place in our life, we end up letting the world decide for us. And those qualities are the end result of passively allowing the world to decide what habits we are going to have in our household.