Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. – 2 Peter 1:10
Quite a few years back, my family was living in a small apartment. It was a little tight, but that was fine as long as it was just my wife, my son, and myself. Then my daughter came along, and as she got a little older we needed a room for her. So we decided to move into a three-bedroom apartment a few miles away.
Several months after our move, I was coming home from church one night and was talking to my wife as I drove, not really thinking about what I was doing. The next thing I knew, I was pulling into our old apartment. I thought, What am I doing here? How did that happen? I had not lived there for months, but that was where I automatically went. It was just the result of having driven there repeatedly for a couple years, developing that habit.
Habits can be bad or habits can be good. Driving to the wrong home is obviously not good, but I do have some good habits! For example, when someone holds the door for me, I automatically say thank you. It just flows from my mouth without me even thinking about it. Of course, I was not born telling people thank you for doing me favors, but after years of practicing good manners, it is a natural response now.
As Christians, we can have bad habits or good habits. The bad ones, when you really think about it, are usually just a repeated lack of effort. The longer we go without fixing that habit, the harder it seems to change it. Maybe we felt too tired to read and pray one day, and that turns into two days, and then three. Pretty soon we have made a routine without daily devotion time, and our spiritual growth will suffer. Or it might be that the Lord prompted us to testify in church or at work, but we ignored Him because it would push us out of our comfort zone. Comfort zones seem to shrink even smaller when we stay inside them too long, and after a while the Lord may stop prompting.
Good spiritual habits, however, are the result of diligence. We will not wake up one day and all of a sudden our habits will be changed; we have to put some time and energy into creating the habits we want. It will take work and discipline. And it will be worth every effort! Having good habits, like reading the Bible and praying daily, is what will keep us grounded in the Gospel and growing spiritually. Sharing our testimony is what helps us overcome the trials of life. The devil will tell us these things do not matter, but they do. In fact, he tells us they do not matter because they do.
Whether good or bad, it is a consistent pattern, built up over time, which creates a habit. Let’s think about what behaviors we are practicing, and make a conscious effort to make habits the Lord wants us to have.