How to Develop Holy Habits
In high school, as I was starting to develop my own faith in God, I always relied on the "mountain top" experience to jumpstart my spiritual growth and compel my faith forward. Summer camps, winter camps, mission trips, and lock ins were like steroid shots in my constantly failing spiritual heart. I needed them to remind me of God's holiness and grace, to make me look at my own soul, to repent of my constant failings, and set my lofty spiritual goals when I would return back to the "real world."
Sadly, this method of keeping myself spiritually growing didn't work. When I came back from camp, I would find myself slipping back into my old ways and all I ended up developing was even greater shame for not being able to maintain the fervor I so easily developed separated and saturated in the mountains.
I wish I could go back in time and warn my high school self. This tactic doesn't work! This is not sustainable. So what does work? If the fire hose, mountain top strategy for spiritual growth is ultimately ineffective, then how can we as Christians grow in our faith on a day to day basis.I call them holy habits. After years of trying to use large scale events to catalyze my faith, I have come to learn that it is the slow and steady drip of holy habits lived out on a day to day basis that is most effective in growing the garden of faith in my life.
A holy habit does not necessarily mean having a thirty minute quiet time of bible reading and prayer or fasting every Thursday or journaling, although it could look like all of those things. A holy habit is an action done in accordance with your temperament on a consistent basis that draws you into a deeper faith in Christ.
With that in mind, below is not a list of holy habits, per se, but a guideline for how to best discover the holy habits that best help you grow deeper in your faith.
1. Know your learning style - One of the most common reasons I hear for why a Christian doesn't have a consistent devotional life is that they tried really hard, but struggled to really get anything out of it. Now, there are certainly times when things like unconfessed sin, a lack of discipline, or just a coldness of spirit is to blame for a failed devotional life. However, I think often times the reason people fail at having a consistent devotional life is because there learning style and temperament doesn't work best with our traditional understanding of what a devotional time looks like.
For me, I learn well by reading on my own, by writing and reflecting, so I've found the "read your Bible, pray, and journal by yourself" approach to devotional time extremely beneficial. But that's not how everyone learns. I know people who learn far better through discussion in a group, so a healthy devotional life for them may mean meeting regularly with another person or group of people to discuss the Scriptures, pray, and reflect. You may learn better through listening, so instead of reading consistently, it may mean listening to sermons or spiritual songs. You may learn better visually, so you may find success by looking at and reflecting on bible inspired art or film. To develop the holy habit of consistent devotional reflection, we need to make sure we know and understand our learning style and develop our holy habit in accordance with our temperament.
2. Plan when and how you wake up - You do not necessarily have to be a morning person for this to apply. If we are awoken without a plan and in just enough time to take care of the immediate concerns of the day, the likelihood of setting aside anytime during the day to focus on the eternal and find enough quiet to listen to what God is telling you severely diminishes. By planning out when you wake up and what you want to accomplish once you wake up, having a consistent holy habit of meeting with and listening to God becomes far more possible. This doesn't mean you have to wake up at 5 am (even though it is the best time to start your day), but just try to plan on setting your alarm thirty minutes before you normally wake up and think of doing one fifteen minute thing that helps you focus on who God is and what he's doing in your life.
3. Recognize daily needs - It is a lot easier to pray consistently, praise God frequently, if we make an effort to recognize the needs we have every day and our own inadequacy in meeting those needs. If you have a family, recognize the needs as a family and pray together thanking God for meeting them or asking God to provide.
4. Serve Sacrificially - When David went to purchase the threshing floor of Araunah, he would not accept it is a gift because it would not mean anything if it didn't cost him. One of the best ways to develop the holy habit of thankfulness, worship, and faith, is to serve consistently in a way that costs you something.
5. Invite Christian Community into your everyday life - Instead of sequestering Christian community into a weekly, controlled environment, the holy habits of accountability, forgiveness, confession, and encouragement, will begin to grow when we start inviting our Christian community into our everyday life. If there is a park you frequently take your kid to interact and meet people in the neighborhood, invite someone from your Christian community to join you. If you exercise or go to coffee in the morning before work, invite someone from your community to join you. Don't set aside time for Christian community, but incorporate it into the schedule you already have.
What are some other ways you develop holy habits in your life? What has worked in developing your faith?