Godward Habits - Women's Gathering 5/5/23
These are audio recordings from our Women’s Gathering on May 5, 2023 of a teaching by our Women’s Discipleship Coordinator, Andrea Hoglund, followed by a panel discussion by several Cities Women representing a variety of life stages: Joanna Polley, Linda Linder, Kirsten Franze, & Abi Kozak.
[Note: This was an interactive teaching session. Some of the discussion questions are included in brackets. Answers were discussed together at the women’s gathering on May 6, 2023.]
Discipleship is first and foremost a matter of the heart. Whether we realize it or not, our daily habits are daily forming our hearts, for good or for ill.
Habits can often be overlooked in our discipleship for at least two reasons. First, they can hide “under the radar.” Often habits are things we do so often, we don’t even realize we’re doing them, so we certainly don’t realize how they are affecting our hearts. Second, habits are ordinary. We often expect maturity in Christ to come fast and easy, like a McDonald’s drive-thru. No prep, no clean up, just “one order of godliness please, extra large.” But that’s not how growth in Christ works. It’s not a one-time order or the work of a minute. It’s the work of a lifetime. Godliness comes through ordinary habits, not in a hurry.
So what are habits? What makes a habit bad and what makes a habit good? And how are habits related to our hearts? That’s what we’ll dig into today.
What are habits?
[Discussion question: If someone asked you to define habits, what would you say?]
The Oxford dictionary says habits are “a settled or regular tendency or practice.” Habits are a “a usual manner of behavior,” “a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality.”
Habits are things that we regularly do, for sure, but that’s not all. They are also regular tendencies and dispositions. Habitual thoughts, feelings and responses.
So even people who don’t consider themselves “habit people” have habits. And people who are “habit people” may have habits they never thought of as “habits.”
What do you tend to do? What are your regular activities? And what are your regular responses? What’s normal for you?
How do you normally spend your free time? What is your normal tone of voice? What is your normal tone of voice in tough circumstances? How do you normally spend your money? What do you normally think about? What do you normally listen to? What do you normally look at? What do you normally talk about? How do you normally feel?
These are habits. These are your regular tendencies.
Habits and the Heart
Our regular tendencies – our habits – can reveal and ruin our heart, and they can also renew and reorient our heart. Proverbs 4 helps guide us toward Godward habits.
Proverbs 4:20-27:
“My son, be attentive to my words;
incline your ear to my sayings.
21 Let them not escape from your sight;
keep them within your heart.
22 For they are life to those who find them,
and healing to all their flesh.
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
24 Put away from you crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from you.
25 Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
26 Ponder the path of your feet;
then all your ways will be sure.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.”
How does Solomon connect “keeping our heart” with “habits” in this text?
Notice the “body language” in this passage. We pay attention to God’s word with our eyes and ears, which gives life and heals our flesh.
We ‘keep [our] heart with all vigilance’ (verse 23) with our tongue, our eyes and our feet. If we want to guard our hearts, it seems we need to be careful about what we say, what we see and what we do. These are regular activities from our daily lives. Our daily actions are going to guard our hearts – or not – depending on whether they line up with God’s word.
Habits Can Reveal and Ruin our Heart
Mouth
In verse 24 Solomon says our speech can be crooked. In order to find out if something is “crooked,” we need to compare it to something straight. For the Christian, the straight-edge that measures everything is God’s word and will. How does our speech measure up to God’s standard? Would Solomon call it crooked? How is our tone of voice? Do our words build up or tear down?
In Matt 12:34, Jesus says ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ Keeping our heart begins with knowing what’s in our heart, and that is often revealed in our habits. Crooked hearts are revealed in crooked habits. And crooked habits can ruin our hearts.
What are some habits that might reveal that our hearts are off track?
One habit we don’t often think about that reveals our hearts is the habit of response. How do we regularly respond to different circumstances?
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you’re trying to get your 4 year old out the door to pick up kids from school and you’re running late, and right then she tells you she pooped in her pants. (Purely hypothetical.) What’s your knee-jerk reaction in that moment? What response is ingrained in you? For a long time my response was angry words. Solomon would call it a crooked tongue. I wanted my daughter to know by my words that I was not pleased. I used angry words once, and again, and again, and that’s how it became a habit. It was my normal response. And it was both revealing and ruining my heart – I was already selfish and easily angered, and becoming more so with every repetition.
How do we respond to weariness? Maybe with some screen time? “Me” time?
How do we respond to discontentment? Maybe with online shopping?
How do we respond to discouragement? Maybe with complaining?
How do we respond to sin? Maybe with excuses?
Has it become a habit to respond in crooked ways without a second thought?
[Discussion question: What are some positive habits of response in our lives?]
Eyes
Solomon says our eyes can also reveal our heart. One of the most significant ways that our eyes are influencing our hearts today is through looking at screens.
I used to use my phone as my alarm clock. Without thinking about it, I would turn off my alarm in the morning and then immediately check my text messages. The first thing I set my eyes on every day was my phone. That practice – that habit – was shaping me! It was like worshiping a tiny screen every morning.
Compare that to the prayer Jesus prays every morning in The Chosen series: “I thank You, Adonai, for the rest You have given me through the night and for the breath that renews my body and spirit.” How might our hearts be shaped by that kind of morning habit? [Note: The Chosen series is not Scripture and takes artistic license, but it is still a good example of the power of habit.]
We are being habitually shaped by our screens. What do our phone habits reveal about our hearts? What about bigger screens? What are we regularly watching? How is it shaping us? Is it bringing ruin or renewal?
Godward Habits Renew our Heart through Repetition and Reorientation
Habits can reveal and even ruin our hearts, but the good news is, godward habits can help renew our hearts.
Habits are formative because they are repetitive. Repetition is basically practice. And the more we practice something, the better – or worse – we get, depending on what we are practicing. Whether we realize it or not, we are being formed by repetition.
Habits influence our hearts through practice. Because we are embodied creatures, what we do does something to us. Like learning to type on a keyboard, habits form the muscle memory of our heart.
Bad habits move us away from God. But good habits renew our hearts according to God’s will. They shape us into women after God’s own heart.
Habits give us an orientation, a trajectory. They can be edenic or exilic. To be women after God’s own heart, we need habits that consistently reorient us Godward.
Notice the orientation language in Proverbs 4. Don’t let your tongue deviate from the right path. Keep your eyes directly forward. Don’t let your feet swerve to the right or the left – turn away from evil. In other words: turn toward God, Godward.
Habits are like paths worn into the ground, like the dirt path runners use down the center of Summit Avenue. Paths are worn by repetition. And paths take us somewhere. If our daily habits are just a little crooked – if they veer off just a little to the left or right – we’ll end up somewhere that we didn’t want to go. Our habits have a trajectory to them.
They can lead us astray, but they can also lead us straight. Good habits guard us in moments when we “feel dry” or don’t “feel” close to Jesus. Sin or suffering or social media can cause us to lose our orientation. Godward habits that are already ingrained in us are right there, like a path already laid in the dirt for us to follow, leading us straight to God.
One author, Tish Harrison Warren, tells about ending up in the ER gushing blood in the midst of a traumatic miscarriage and in her panic, all she could do was repeat a prayer memorized from the Book of Common Prayer that begins
“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who wake or watch or weep this night…”
She already had a habit of praying that prayer, and it kept her oriented Godward, when her heart was too crushed to pray her own prayers.
That’s the kind of heart formation that we’re aiming for. We want hearts that have such a habit of obedience, that we can’t be led astray by our ever-changing desires or circumstances.
[Discussion question: What are some habits you can think of that help renew and reorient our hearts?]
Inhabited Hearts
The reason we can talk about Godward habits at all is because we are inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 13:21 says that God equips us to do his will and works in us that which is pleasing to him.
He gives us things to do that shape our hearts in Godward ways, and he gives the grace of the Holy Spirit to do them. Paul says in Philippians 4:9,
“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me – practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.”
God is working and so are we. Inhabited by the Spirit, we can practice habits that train us to please God. And what pleases God is our hearts.
Think of a king’s bodyguard. His job isn’t to hold a sword. His job is to protect the king, and the sword is just the means to do that. If he is so focused on the sword that he fails to protect the king, he misses the whole point. But the sword is going to make it a lot easier to protect the king.
Habits are like the sword that can help protect our heart. It’s the heart that matters. And Godward habits make it a lot easier to protect our heart. Habits aren’t good just because they’re a habit. Completing twenty fasts, reading ten books of the Bible, or getting up at 5:30am for three consecutive weeks does not mean you are a godly woman! People who don’t know Jesus can do those things. The Pharisees were good at fasting.
What matters more than what we do is what it does to us. Are our habits helping us to treasure Christ more this week than last week? To rejoice in tribulation more in this trial than in the last trial? To surrender to God that situation that we kept trying to control? Two people can do exactly the same thing and it might be a good habit for one person and a bad habit for another. Or two people can have totally different habits, but their hearts might be equally shaped toward God.
I don’t have a list of Godward habits, other than to recommend the habits of grace from David Mathis’s book, Habits of Grace. But I do have four action points to help guide us in forming Godward habits.
Be Attentive
Think about your daily life, your habits, your responses and be honest with yourself. Ask God to help you evaluate whether they are leading you toward him or away from him. Invite others into that process. This would be a great life group discussion topic.
Be Like Jesus
In our last Cities Institute session, Pastor David Mathis walked us through several passages from Jesus life, showing his habits of dependence on the word of God, prayer and fellowship. Seek to learn from Jesus…that’s what a disciple does! Take some time in the Gospels and pay attention to Jesus’ habits recorded there. This would be another great life group activity.
Be Embodied
Like Solomon in Proverbs, keep your whole body and all your senses in mind when you think of habits: eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet. And be embodied in the church: talk about these things in community, and be shaped by the regular practice of gathering with the saints each week.
Be Obedient
What can shape our hearts toward God more than obeying his word?
The exhortations in the New Testament aren’t one-off actions, like sky-diving. They’re normal ways of living, like walking. Settled tendencies. They’re habits we practice! Here’s some things Paul tells us to practice:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16)
Be steadfast in prayer (Colossians 4:2)
Let your speech always be gracious (Colossians 4:6)
Sing and make melody to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19)
Do all things without grumbling or complaining (Philippians 2:14)
Be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32)
Forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32)
Give thanks to God always and for everything (Ephesians 5:20)
Count others more important than yourself (Philippians 2:3)
Don’t be anxious (Philippians 4:6)
Be patient in tribulation (Romans 12:12)
Humble yourself under God’s hand (1 Peter 5:6)
What if this kind of obedience was our habit, our regular tendency? What if these habits were embedded in our will and heart?
Here’s what Screwtape has to say about that in the Screwtape Letters:
“It is only in so far as they reach the [Heart] and are there embodied as habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.”
(C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters, ch 6)
According to Screwtape, if the virtues became habits of our heart, we would be a spiritual force to be reckoned with. “Get behind me, Satan. I am a woman who obeys God.” Isn’t that what we want?
Let’s finish with Hebrews 13:20-21 and then we’ll head into our panel discussion time.
Hebrews 13:20-21:
“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”