Habits Eat Willpower for Breakfast

Reading: Matthew 16:21-28

In Spiritual Fitness, as in all other aspects of human life, habits are everything. Habits are the things that you do on a consistent basis. When I say habit, some of you are already categorizing them, trying to separate good habits from bad habits. Maybe you recall someone telling you not to smoke while they lit a cigarette declaring, “It’s a bad habit.” 

When I say habits, I’m talking about the bigger picture. I’m referring to everything that you do on a consistent basis. Your work is a habit. Your Netflix binging is a habit. Your daily scroll through your feed is a habit. Think of habits less like the good or bad things you should or shouldn’t be doing and more like the rituals, or practices of your life. That’s how the ancient spiritual practitioners described what we call habits.

The daily rituals of your life are the number one driver in how you got to be who you are. For those who struggle with food, like I do, it’s easy to see the results of our rituals. In the many times in my life where I have weighed more than I wanted, it wasn’t difficult to see that my ritual of over-indulgence in food, to placate my anxiety or lack of self-worth, resulted in a body that wasn’t reflective of what I wanted. Do you think that at some point, or many points along the way, I looked in the mirror and was disappointed with what I saw? Absolutely. There’s this old school way of thinking that professes all we need to do to change ourselves is use willpower. In other words, if I don’t like who I am in the mirror, I simply “will myself” to change. Apparently, humans have this incredible ability to simply decide something new about themselves, and their whole world realigns itself to match this new thinking. News flash – A new decision is not a new destination. The pathway to a more purposeful and fulfilling life is not to prioritize your “self,” but to prioritize your “soul.”

Spiritual Fitness is the development and consistent practice of habits or rituals that prioritize the soul. It’s learning to arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God. I encourage you to spend 15 minutes today writing down the habits, or rituals of your life. Literally go through seven days and account for all 24 hours in each day. Yes, that includes sleep, because honestly most of us don’t experience deep contentment because we think that six hours of sleep is sufficient. It’s not. Once you have the week mapped out, I want you to use a simple principle to evaluate it – where do you feel a lack of contentment, joy, or confidence in your everyday life with God? Let me ask it another way – where do you feel rushed or hurried? Hurry is the enemy of a spiritually healthy life. It’s your job to identify and eliminate hurry. The arrangement of your days must reflect a rhythm of life that places God at the center. When you realize Instagram doesn’t bring you deep contentment with God, you don’t decide to scroll less. You replace that habit with a new one, like prayer, meditation, or gratitude reflection. Life change, or transformation, is simply a result of replacing old habits with new ones. Arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God, and you will experience life like you never have before.

Opportunity

Reading: Matthew 8:5-13

As a coach, I love watching other coaches. It always raises my game to watch a great coach interact with an athlete. There is a special bond that forms between coaches and athletes which is unlike most other relationships. Coaches must be able to connect with athletes on a deep level. They must work to build trust and comradery all while fostering a spirit of humility. It’s true, pride always comes before the fall. I’ve been enjoying a series on Amazon Prime called All or Nothing. The show follows an NFL team for an entire season giving viewers a behind the scenes look at professional football. And part of that access is to conversations between coaches and players. Last week I heard something that really stuck. A player was struggling with motivation. Have I got your attention now? It was late in the season and the games, practices, and meetings had begun to add up. The player was having an honest moment with his coach and being really vulnerable. It’s nice to know that even million-dollar athletes struggle with motivation. Then the coach said this – “Excuses will always be there, opportunity won’t.”

Now, don’t puff up and think this coach was being mean. Believe me, it’s exactly what the player needed to hear. And sometimes it’s exactly what we need to hear. Can I get an amen from anyone who thinks the year 2020 has been difficult? We have seen some really crazy stuff so far. Stuff that can catch you by surprise, throw you off track, or even make you have to reorient your life entirely. The challenge is maintaining your perspective in the midst of all the chaos. Because chaos, a.k.a. life, can sap your motivation. Rarely does your motivation leave instantaneously. No, it’s usually a slow process resulting from the daily grind. I’ve watched people lose their motivation and it’s tough. To be honest, I’ve lost my motivation plenty of times. The death of loved ones, the loss of a job, a mandatory quarantine, an unexpected illness or injury, all of these have affected my motivation at one time or another.

But here’s the great news! What takes weeks or sometimes months to burn out can take a moment to reignite. When I say reignite, I don’t mean a full-on fire. I’m talking about a spark. But a spark in the brain is all you need to get the motivation train back on track. Coach said, “Excuses will always be there, opportunity won’t.” Opportunity is the spark. Opportunity is the lens that allows you to look at life differently. And he’s right, it won’t always be there. Your kids won’t always be young, your office won’t always be at home, your work travel won’t always be canceled, your life on this earth will come to an end. Excuses will always be there, opportunity won’t.

Today you’ll read about a guy who had been struggling. Someone close to him had been afflicted with a terrible illness, and all his efforts to help had failed. So, he went to the one person he thought could do something. He wasn’t sure, but given his other options, it looked like his only opportunity. And that man’s life completely changed the day he called out to Jesus. Excuses will always be there, opportunity won’t. Carpe Diem!

Positive Tension

Reading: Hebrews 11:1-16

Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? Positive tension. At first glance, you might be thinking what could possibly be good about tension. After all, as a society we’ve designed a number of escape routes from tension. We medicate our tension with alcohol or prescription drugs. We binge a series on Netflix to take our minds off it. We even daydream about a new career or new marriage, free from the current tension of life. But what I hope to show you is that there is another side to tension - a positive side. And when we invite positive tension into our lives, it can take us places we never thought possible.

To help illustrate the difference between positive and negative tension, I’m going to assign each an adjective. Positive tension is “stretching,” and negative tension is “straining.” Can you already begin to see the difference? In the gym, we need tension. If we don’t put our bodies under some type of tension, we will see no results. Coaches try to hold athletes in positive tension during their workouts. We want to stretch the muscles, but not strain them. Athletes under positive tension see the bigger picture. They recognize the purpose in the tension and that it will lead to something greater in life. Positive tension is not an “in the moment” kind of thing. It’s a conscious connection between the current action and the desired outcome.

Negative tension is the opposite. I see this in athletes who push themselves beyond what they need to. Not that I’m some kind of mind reader, but there are signs that negative tension is driving the decision-making process. Oftentimes, that’s using more weight than they should (because they want to hit the “Rx” button), other times it’s just not listening to their body. I’m all for going hard, but when you lose perspective on why you decided to push it, then you’re at risk for negative tension, or straining. If you’ve ever strained a muscle, you know what I’m talking about. Strained muscles require recovery time and rehab. There’s a real difference between positive and negative tension - both in physical and spiritual fitness.

Stretching yourself spiritually is the key to growth. In the same way, you must have a conscious connection between what you’re doing and what your desired outcome is. As you read Hebrews, you’re going to encounter people who were in positive tension. And what you’ll see is that the one thing they held in common was their faith in God. Each of them believed that God was going to do what He promised. They couldn’t see it. It hadn’t happened yet. So, they held on in faith, creating positive tension in their spiritual lives. They weren’t straining or trying to figure out how to do it on their own. Instead, they were trusting that God would make a way, even when it seemed impossible. Faith is the catalyst to growing spiritually through positive tension. If you want to deal with the stress of life better, learn to exercise your faith in God.