The Four Good Habits to Resemble the Lord
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April 22, 2012 |
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 Those who have good habits can be loved and recognized by others anywhere—at home, in school, and in workplace. A habit is something developed that you do often or regularly for a long time. It becomes something you do naturally in your life. Having good habits is very important in leading a successful Christian life. In this edition, we will look into four good habits that help us achieve the beautiful heart of the Lord.
First of all, The Habit of Concentrating
To lead a proper Christian life, it's important to focus your heart and mind only on what God wants and what pleases Him. Of course, you need to concentrate on services and prayer. It's just like going to school regularly while you have idle thoughts and do not concentrate on you classes. It will keep you from getting good scores and grades.
Likewise, you can't achieve the beautiful heart of the Lord if you don't concentrate even if you attend meetings where you can read the Bible, give services, pray, and arm yourself with the Word diligently. Therefore, you have to check if you doze off or have idle thoughts during services and prayer meetings. Those who offer service and pray with no concentration cannot but miss many parts of sermons or use meaningless repetition in prayer.
If we make a habit of concentrating, we can briefly summarize sermons after listening to them and remind ourselves of what we prayed to God about in the name of the Lord. If you have a habit of dozing off or falling into idle thoughts during services and prayer meetings you must find the causes and remove them. Otherwise, worldly things come into your heart while you are not noticing it and they flash through your mind unnecessarily. Moreover, they can cause you to love the world when you are going through difficult times.
Secondly, The Habit of Examining Yourself
In order to achieve the beautiful heart of the Lord, it's good to examine the characteristics of sin and forms of evil as well as our own words and deeds. You study them while reading the Bible or listening to the message because you want to discover what God hates such as hot-tempers, hard-feelings, a lying heart, judgment, adulterous mind, and betrayal. You study, discover and root them out.
If you discovered your hard-feelings regarding your superior's advice, you must not just think about the external situation. You also have to discover and realize your sinful natures one by one. You must scrutinize such feelings when they occur and realize how they were revealed. This is because sinful natures are not revealed in just a single form. But God doesn't want you to lose heart when you discover your sinful nature while examining yourself.
Those who have a habit of studying themselves discover their shortcoming in light of God's Word, so they come to have confidence thinking they can do it because the Word of God encourages them. In this way, if you make a habit of examining your shortcomings in your words and deeds and even hearts and minds through the truth, then you can change quickly by the help of the Holy Spirit.
The Third, Habit of Keeping Something in Your Heart
We have to keep things in our hearts to achieve the beautiful heart of the Lord. Even though we read the Bible, listen to the messages, receive a lot of grace, and gain realization, if we don't keep them in our hearts, we cannot change ourselves completely. If we have a habit of examining our hearts, it's not difficult to keep things in the heart.
If you have a bad habit such as forgetting things easily, you need to put effort into continuously reminding yourself and thinking about them deeply. Namely, you have to put what you realized while reading and listening to the Word of God in your heart and try hard to practice it. There is the God-given method to keep His Word in hearts and make a habit of acting according to it in Deuteronomy chapter 6.
"These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
(Deuteronomy 6:6-9)
The Fourth, Habit of Praying Fervently
'To pray fervently' is to ask God in prayer according to God's will while being filled with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and praying with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul in the name of Jesus Christ. Even Jesus prayed fervently although He is the Son of God who came to the earth in flesh to fulfill His duty as the Savior. "And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; … He knelt down and began to pray, … And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground." (Luke 22:39-44)
Then, how much more fervently we should pray to achieve His beautiful heart! When you can't pray fervently because you feel drowsy or have idle thoughts, you must not think 'I am not in the mood to pray today…' but you must overcome it thinking 'It might cause great loss in achieving the Lord's heart.' Then, you will be able to get it over by praying ever more fervently. When you try hard like this, the Holy Spirit will help you and God will give strength and grace to you so that you can become sanctified quickly.
"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)
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