Did you set any New Year’s resolutions for yourself this year? Perhaps you committed to a diet, to a workout plan, or to regular devotional times.
Are you as devoted as much now to your resolution as you were four weeks ago?
Perhaps you’ve dropped the ball and become frustrated with yourself. Or you decided not to even make resolutions this year because you have failed to keep them in past years. So why not just give up on making resolutions forever? Because a good and wholesome character is the outcome of consistently and healthfully formed habits. Author James Clear encourages us, “Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you wish to become.” Educational expert Sean Covey doubles down, “We become what we repeatedly do.”
In short, resolutions are worth it, but they often fail because we approach them backward. We want to lose ten pounds, have a robust prayer life, or become a stronger leader. We look to the end goal and not the path it will take to get there. Habits are that path. Before David took the throne as king, God spent decades grooming him, training him up, building his inner character through struggles in the pasture, the caves, and the battlefields where he wrote the Psalms we identify with today. Joseph was humbled in the pit and the palace before being exulted as administrator of Egypt.
Experts on habit formation say that it takes 66 days to form a habit. So, if you started on January 1, you are nearly half-way to forming a habit. Congratulations! If you haven’t felt motivated to start forming a new habit: chin up, take your first step today!
Experts on habits tell us that one of the keys to creating sustained habits is not merely doing the habit, but becoming the type of person who endures by doing the habit. In Atomic Habits, James Clear encourages showing up to the gym every day for one week without even working out to develop the mindset of being the type of person who goes to the gym. This isn’t surprising to a Christian. Christ never asks us to act in a way that he himself has not lived out. We are to live holy lives because we are saints. We are to share the gospel, because we are ambassadors. We are to produce fruit because we are the branches.
Habits take root in our heart as we form a clear vision of who we want to become. Someone who wants to be more healthy will eat more healthily, someone who sees themselves as generous will be more generous, someone who thinks of themselves as spiritually needy will spend time in the Bible and in prayer.
Who do you want to be at the end of 2024? More humble in spirit? A faithful bondservant? More joyful in suffering? More intimate with God? What habits can you start forming now to mold you into that kind of person by the end of 2024?
It’s been fun watching my co-lead pastor, Greg Lavine, take up the hobby of running to become a full-on runner in the past few years. So many of his habits are formed by a new set of practices: what he eats, his daily workout routines, even his clothes.
Paul asks for us to think of ourselves as spiritual runners in 1 Corinthians 9:24, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” Let your habits be marked by determination and devotion to achieve your end goal.
If you’re feeling discouraged or frustrated about keeping a New Year’s resolution, take heart: God does not leave us to form new habits by our own strength, but rather through the Holy Spirit working to do and to will in us. Paul further addresses how to obtain true transformation: “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4: 22-24). Paul is saying here that an unwavering habit focuses on inner transformation through our mind, where we begin to think in new and right ways. As we put on the new self, may we enjoy the journey of forming new God-glorifying habits through his holy presence as he creates us more in his image.
Fellow runners, let’s put our eyes upward and run toward the finish line.
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Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash