Bad Habits? Got any? They can take you down roads of calamity and ruin! I’m sure we could all pull out a string of many colors from our pocket if we consider things like worry, fear, envious and negative thoughts, etc, etc. Just bad habits, but sin, nevertheless! Things that could could so easily be dismissed by saying “It’s just the way I am.”
Habits are good if used to serve others, bad if used to serve ‘self’. They’re born out of selfishness and once established they become a very difficult thing to break free from. God knows it and out of His divine, unconditional love for us, doesn’t expect perfection from His children, anymore than we expect perfection from ours. He is understanding of our heart and sees deeply into the motive. He knows our character and our heart’s desire to truly please Him and in His compassion wants to free us from the bondage of guilt, even when we fail. When we fall into sin, He grants grace and forgiveness every time we ask. When we come yet again, as a whipped puppy before Him, it’s like He holds a record card in His hand with a blank page and every single time He says, “I see no record of your wrong. Go and sin no more!! John 8: 10, 11 “Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” Only Christ indwelling us can free us from the selfish sin and bad habits that enslave us.
For the journey, His grace and favor are vast and abundant enough to keep us walking in His light and Truth in spite of bad habits. With God’s help we keep pressing on towards the goal, in the knowledge of the Righteousness of Christ, forgetting those things which are behind as Paul recorded in Philippians 3: 13 – 15 from his prison cell…
“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;…”
Hope and Healing In Hard Places 