Holy Habits & Spiritual Formation

Max Lucado tells the story of a little boy who fell out of bed early one morning. When his mother asked him what happened, he answered, 'I don't know. I guess I stayed too close to where I got in.' Too often, it is easy to do the same in and with our faith and spiritual formation. There becomes an inner temptation that pressures us to stay where we got in and never move.  Quickly, without warning or awareness, we can become stagnant and immobile in our growth walk with God, self and others.  This often comes as a result of the 'time crunch' we find ourselves potentially falling prey to our schedules and Rolodex.  Living in Pearland with an active family that includes a wife and three boys, serving as  chaplain of one of two level one trauma hospitals in Houston, and pastoring a growing congregation in Victoria...can easily heighten an already typical Christian challenge.

 

So often I can feel as if I am in the daily and weekly crunch all by my virtual self, asking this proverbial question to a listening audience of one.  It can often seem like you are the only one with deadlines to meet, obligations to fulfill, children who want you undivided attention, a spouse who needs QT and a myriad of other strings and people pulling on you like a puppet master on a stage.  This can, no doubt, lead to feelings of despair, frustration, inadequacy and even fatigue.  As a Pastor and Chaplain, I am often confronted with this daily 'crunching' challenge.  How can I as a pastor give my all on a Sunday, serve in a growing congregation, minister to countless patients at a level one trauma hospital in Houston, be a supportive dad to a 4th-grader, a kinder student and a 2 year old who all have collective and individual needs, love and support my wife, and also prepare a lesson before Wednesday, and a fresh sermon before Sunday?  Umm....exactly.  In the midst of all of the aforementioned, I am also a vessel who needs to be filled by my Maker through private devotion and spiritual formation.  As with the little boy in Lucado's story, all of us must face the challenge of what the late E.K. Bailey terms going ‘farther in and deeper down’ in our growth walk with God.  This requires that we develop some 'Holy Habits' that become a part of our regular routine, in our pursuit of personal spiritual formation.

I choose to refrain from the more exhaustive approach here.  There are many tools in discovering how to read through the scripture in 60 days, etc.  I simply think that this may be a place to start, in cultivating habits that are holy and beneficial.

I call these the ABC's for building Holy Habits:

First, Accept the reality of your limitations. Helen Keller is noted to have said, "Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them, but do not let them master you."

Second, Build a library that is universal. One of my favorite scriptures is 2nd Timothy 2:15 which says, in the ESV, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

Third, Commit to renewing your spiritual focus.  Colossians 3:2 exhorts us to, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”  Dr. Ari Kiev of Cornell University observed that from the moment people decided to concentrate all their energies on a specific objective, they began to surmount the most difficult odds. He concluded, "The establishment of a goal is the key to successful living." 

Fourth, Devote to personal worship. First Corinthians 10:31 says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” William Barclay quotes William Temple, the renowned archbishop of Canterbury, as defining worship as quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God.

Musings from Osborne's "Sticky Church"

We've discovered lots of ways to reach people.  We've offered the high-powered programs and slick marketing of attractional churches, the cultural savvy of missional churches, and the relational intimacy of small churches.  But we've often become so focused on reaching people that we've forgotten the importance of keeping people.  Pg.13

Stickier churches are healthier churches.  They not only draw in spiritual window-shoppers and lead them to Christ; they also grow them to maturity.  Pg.13

Everything we do is aimed at helping the Christians we already have grow stronger in Christ.  But everything is done in such a way that their non-Christian friends will understand all that we're saying and doing.  Bottom line: We've tried to create a perfect storm for come-and-see evangelism while velcroing newcomers for long-term spiritual growth. Pg.20

...a sticky church offers the perfect environment for come-and-see evangelism, because while every service is designed to help Christians become better Christians, it is always done in a way that non-Christians can understand evyerthing that's said and takes place. Pg.32

Most of our discipleship programs are very linear.  Unfortunately, most spiritual growth is not. Pg.41

Most spiritual growth doesn't come as a result of a training program or a set curriculum.  It comes as a result of life putting us in what I like to call a need-to-know or need-to-grow situation. Pg.42

Another spiritually crippling falsehood that began to lose its grip on our congregation was what I call the Holy Place myth.  It's the idea that God's presence is somehow greater in some places than in others.  It's why some Christians will tell a joke at the office they'd never think of repeating at church.  It's why others don't think twice about lying on a loan application but still swear they live by the Ten Commandments.  The Holy Place myth fosters a false dichotomy between secular and the spiritual by leading us to believe that there are some places where God hangs out and lots of others he seldom frequents. Pg.50

...transparency is hardly the hallmark of most churches.  So much so that for most people, the stereotype of a church is a place with lots of plastic smiles.  Pg.54

One reason I want my messages to be memorable is that I want people to apply the important spiricual truths and doctrines of the faith.  I know that if I can change the way people think, it will change the way they live. Pg.63

While I understand the desire to remove the intimidation factor, something seems wrong with a world where we remove all the adults from the nursery.  Pg.69

Assigning people to groups by neighborhood sounds great on paper, but it seldom works well in real life...That's because one of the poorest predictors of a potential deep friendship is the neighborhood we live in.  In most cases, it doesn't indicate anything other than shared economic status.  A much stronger likelihood of future friendship exists when we build groups around share interests or a common station in life. Pg.79

It all starts with our mission.  We describe it this way: Making disciples in a healthy church environment. It's our way of expressing that when it comes to ministry, both task and health are equally important. Pg.101

An easy-out philosophy doesn't mean a lower commitment level.  It actually creates more opportunities for greater commitment.  Pg.111

As important as it is to know what to look for, it's equally important to know where to look.  Some fishing pools yield far more of a catch than others. Pg.128

When we at North Coast Church began our small group ministry, we fell into a common trap.  We overtrained.  Pg.134

Despite the rhetoric, most small group programs and methods don't work very well.  They haven't for a long time.  There's a huge gap between what we claim they do and what they actually accomplish. Pg.140

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make when it comes to either launching or reengineering a small group ministry is a failure to carefully align both vision and methods. Pg.149

Sticky Church, Larry Osborne, c2008