Review

Love you all, praying for you.

I just love God’s Word.  It’s practical truth for life.  Do you know what’s a good thing to do on occasion? review.  God says to examine yourself.  It’s good to review what God told you.  It’s good to review where you stand financially.  It’s good to review your relationship with your spouse. Maybe a getaway to just assess where you are.  What’s going well, what could we improve, what should we keep doing, stop doing, or do a little differently…  Another thing that’s good to review – your habits.  Habits are powerful.  Chosen well they can bring great benefit, untended they can keep you from God’s best.  Have you ever noticed, the funny thing about habits, they’re only hard until you learn them.  After that you don’t even think about it, the habit does the work.  Just make sure your habits are wise, and that you have sufficient habits for success.  Bad habits are as powerful as good ones.  They will take you somewhere – they’ll take you far – in one direction or another.  Habits always help you if they are good habits.  They ease the load, like the turbo boost on a car or space ship – once it kicks in – you don’t work as hard, it takes over.  What if you could just be humble – until your habit is formed?  You don’t have to be humble in this thing for the rest of your life – just until the habit is formed, and before you think about it again, you’ll be realizing the reward that it brings.  You might even like it – once you learn it.  One of the hardest things about establishing a habit, it’s new.  But harder than that – it most likely needs to replace something.  You sometimes have to undue an old habit, to form a new one.  That’s hard.  God says leave your simple ways and you will live.  When it comes to habits, you may have to leave one to get one.  To walk in his way, you have to leave the old way behind.  There is always pain involved when replacing habits.  But its temporary, and always worth it.  Choosing to not do something, that you did before, or have always done, in order to do something you’ve never done before, takes belief and resolve.  Belief that it’s worth it, and resolve until the old way is gone, and the new way is what comes naturally.  Take a quick example.  Let’s say that you sense your schedule has been a little off.  You’ve been staying up late, and getting up late.  Once you recognize that.  You have a choice – is this God prompting me to change?  Ask Him, if He confirms, then do it, whatever it takes.  In this example, the only two options, go to bed earlier, or get up earlier.  So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  (Side note: just to clear this up forever - the chicken came first – God created the animals male and female, He didn’t create eggs, He created the chicken.)  But moving on… in this case – If you just go to bed early, you won’t sleep, you slept in late, or took a 3 hour nap – you’re not tired, going to bed early tonight won’t fix it.  Eventually, you have set your alarm at the time God told you, and get up when it goes off.  The first day might be hard, you’ll be tired, no way around it.  But if you won’t get up at the alarm, you will probably stay up late again, and the cycle continues.  You have to undue the old way, to walk in the new way.  But every habit that God tells you to change, if you change it – the blessing that follows will be well worth the real but temporary pain of change.  Then once the new habit is formed – things become easy.  You have the wind at your back, instead of against you.  Praying that you will be willing to exchange and bad habits for good ones, and any new habits that God has for your good.  Habits can make you or break you.  They work when you don’t feel like it.  Habits are a gift from God, don’t let the devil steal them.  Learn to rejoice in the mundane, learn to love the daily, and God will bring you to the wonderful.  Habits package the things you have to do, which give you time and greater ability for the things you love to do, the things God has for you!  Praying that you will grow in His grace in the habits He has chosen for you!  Praying that you’ll review the PRISM Topic – Habits, to review Godly wisdom from others, and the wisdom of God from His Word.  The devil always wants to steal habits, if he can trap you in a bad one, he doesn’t have to work as hard… your habit keeps you in the toilet bowl – that circle always brings you down.  Praying that you won’t let him trap you in habits that aren’t God’s best.  Praying that you’ll choose the habits that make wisdom your practice.  So God can always bring you to the next good thing He has planned for you. 
 
Love you all,
dad