Habits of Holiness

Found this over at Jay Adams blog and thought that I would share it with you.

I once heard J.I. Packer say, “The Holy Spirit works through habits of holiness.” I don’t remember the context, but I was so impressed with the wording that I wrote it on the opening page of Romans in my New Testament, which was all I had to write on at the time.

How right he was!

And the question is whether or not your habits—and don’t kid anyone, you live a large share of your life by habit—are holy or not.

What a great self-examining question that is!

You see the problem with habits is that they are often the CAUSE of our difficulties with God and others.

Habits are
Comfortable-like old shoes; they fit us well.
Automatic-you don’t have to tell yourself, “do It,” you just do it.
Unconscious-you begin to do something before you realize it.
Skillful-The plausible lie is out of your mouth before you know it.
Embedded-difficult to break.
Indeed, so difficult that by God’s grace they must be replaced with their biblical alternatives. That is, with “Habits of holiness”—WHAT A WONDERFUL PHRASE!

I mostly wanted to share this post because of the J.I. Packer quote, but you get the benefit of the whole thing.

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Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.

HARMLESS THOUGHTS

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