Breaking Routine

Introduction

I don’t know what your routines are like but I believe that I can confidently say that we all have routines. Routines are something that we as humans live by. I want you to look at your life schedule for a moment and go over your daily routine. I mean even just look at your daily commute. You generally drive the same direction every single day. You take the same roads and same turns and pass by the same stores on your way to the same place everyday.

Some of you rebels out there are like no way. I like to live on the edge. I take a different way every single day. The truth is most of us find ourselves going the same way and it just becomes this mindless commute.

Explain your commute.

If I can be honest with you all this is happening and I am not really thinking about it. We kind of just go the same way, do the same thing and we essentially experience the same thing. It becomes so familiar and normal in our life that it becomes our routine.

Now routine can stem from different things it doesn’t just have to be commute. For some of you it may be the way you do homework or play video games when you come home. It may be the way you wake up everyday or on the weekends. It becomes normal and routine it jsut beomces what you do. Now what is interesting is if we do more of the same we should expect more of the same.

Now look maybe you have done some serious mathematical research on the way you do your commute or you get dressed so that it is the most efficient quickest way to do it. But maybe you are missing something.

Are there other things you could see if you changed the way that you did your routine. Are there other things you would see if someone said well I actually do it this way. The answer is simply yes.

Today it is this concept of routine I want to evaluate for our life.

Explain the routine of service

We like same, we like similar, w

e like predictability, we like to know what to expect. Same brings comfort and routine makes me comfortable. At the same time though routine will cause us to plateau. (Explain)

If we do the same thing we should expect the same results. Is it a bad thing that we have routines? No, but if we don’t change it up once in a while how will we ever know what we could possibily be missing?

Change your routine

This all started for me as I was driving home from Bellingham the other day. I was praying God and asking Him. Lord I feel so stale and stagnant. I want to see more spiritual breakthrough and I want this summer to not bring more routine and more of the same. Then God opened up this verse to me.

Matthew 14:22–23 NIV

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone,

At first I didn’t realize what the meaning in that moment was, but as I thought about it more I saw it. Jesus could have routinely went with the diciples in the boat across the lake, but He didn’t. He broke routine to go and be with His father. It empowered Him and restrenghened Him and He ended up doing something so unordinary as to walk on water.

If I was going to be doing the same things I had already been doing there would be no difference in my spiritual walk.

Explain different ways of communication with God that came to you.

We get stuck in spiritual routine

Today I want to focus not on our physical routines, but the routine that we have established in our spiritual walk.

Look here is truth I haven’t just observed in my own life but people have mentioned to me in passing. I remember specifically getting up in the mornings to read my word. Set my alarm at the same time everyday, would get up and read the next chapter or chapters of scripture. I did this for sometime over and over again.It became normal to me and it became something I just did. It became so normal and routine to me that I was actually not receiving anything spiritually. It came to a point where I was actually checking off a box to see if I had done my reading rather than doing the reading because I wanted God’s word to fill my heart and shape the direction of my day.

Explain front porch culture.

(Explain) why we are at a cultural disadvantage. We take a spiritual life that is designed to be shared and we go and hide in our rooms and in our phones and in our backyards.

Explain the biblical culture.

We look at these people and we ask how do you live like that? But if you brought someone from that time they would look at you and say how do you live like that?

To be honest it gives me a fresh perspective on the way we do life. We need that cultural mindset of doing spiritual life together. Too often we try to live our spiritual life individually and we don’t want to share our experiences with anyone and too often spiritual routines will bring us into spiritual ruts.

We get stuck and truthfully we need the body to help us get out of these ruts. For some of us we are sitting here saying well us together doesn’t feel the same as what I am used to, us together doesn’t feel predictable, us together doesn’t feel comfortable. But until we enter in together we are constantly doing the same thing spiritually that we have always done and I believe that we are missing so much of what God wants us to see or experience.

The character of God is unchanging and unmoving, but the way that God works with us is completely unpredictable.

Lamentations 3:22–23 NIV

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

We need people around us who are willing to say hey have you thought about changing the way you do routine? If we are surrounded by people who are constanty telling us we are great we are going to do the same things we have always done there won’t be change and there will not be breakthrough.

This all started for me as I was driving home from Bellingham the other day. I was praying God and asking him. Lord I feel so stale and stagnant. I want to see more spiritual breakthrough and I want this summer to not bring more routine and more of the same. Then God opened up this verse to me.

Matthew 14:22–23 NIV

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone,

At first I didn’t realize what the meaning in that moment was, but as I thought about it more I saw it. Jesus could have routinely went with the diciples in the boat across the lake, but He didn’t. He broke routine to go and be with His father. It empowered Him and restrenghened Him and He ended up doing something so unordinary as to walk on water.

If I was going to be doing the same things I had already been doing there would be no difference in my spiritual walk.

Explain different ways of communication with God that came to you.