I think I was
12-years-old. It was early summer, just
after school was over for the year. I made the monumental decision that I was
going to be a professional basketball player.
That summer was going to be the beginning of my training. Every morning
I planned to rise early and head out onto my parents’ driveway where our
basketball goal awaited and I was going to work on improving my skills. The first day went exactly as I had planned.
I was up early and I put myself through a demanding workout. It was the only day that did. My dreams
didn’t include the amount of work it would take to reach them. I had big plans, but my dream was well ahead
of my willingness and ability to be disciplined. My plan for the summer didn’t
even last two days!
I was never very
disciplined as a child or a teenager, and it has been an on and off struggle as
an adult as well. But one thing that has worked well for me is just
establishing a routine over a short period of time and, if I can manage to do
that, a habit can be formed that will be long lasting. For example, 20 years ago, I broke the tibia
in my left leg that resulted in the gradual decline of my already damaged left
knee. A physical therapist advised me that I needed to start doing exercises to
compensate for its worsening condition.
Over a few months, I got into the habit of working out three times a
week at her facility. That turned into a habit that is now 20 years
running. Another habit that formed
around that time is this devotional. It began in the early days of the Internet
as an email devotion during the school year. Twenty years later, I am still
writing. Finally, and I don’t remember when I started this, for many years I
have been reading through the Bible at breakfast. I start in Genesis and work my way to the end
of Revelation and then start all over again.
I don’t even know how long it takes; I just do it. But I know that habit has taken me through
the Bible dozens of times.
As I thought
about this the other day, what I realized was I didn’t start out on any of
these habits with any grand expectations.
I did not plan to develop an exercise habit of more than 20 years. I
didn’t expect to still be writing these devotions after two decades. In fact,
I’m not sure I planned it to go for more than a few months. And I didn’t start
my practice of Bible reading at breakfast seeing it as my way of reading the
whole Bible. I just started. And even
after I got started, I was far from perfect in keeping these disciplines.
One of the quickest
killers of habits before they start is beginning with grandiose plans. I’m
going to get up at 6:30 every morning and go for a two-mile run. I’m going to
journal every day. I’m going to start reading my Bible and/or praying for an
hour daily. And like my plans to begin training for a professional basketball
career, we fail miserably because we have never even taken the small steps
required to develop a habit. We have rarely ever ran; never consistently
journaled, and never read the Scriptures or prayed for longer than a few
minutes. By making our goals so lofty,
we sabotage any hopes of developing an enduring habit because when we fail the
first time, we tend to give up. This is the reason so many would-be dieters,
exercisers, etc. fail in their attempts. What we need to understand about
discipline and developing habits is the start is usually very modest. It is just a thing we start to do because we
want to. There are few expectations and
no lofty plans. And when we mess up, it
is not that big of a deal. We just start
again.
The race of the
Christian life of which Paul speaks is a life-long one. It is not a sprint
where if you make one mistake you are out of the running. It is a marathon where time is on your side
and mistakes are less costly. So the pressure is not great. One just needs to
begin running it, putting one foot in front of the other. That’s it. And if that is done, fairly soon, we will
develop a stride that will take us to the finish. It won’t be a perfect start;
it doesn’t have to be. The habits of the
Christian life can be formed just by starting out attempting to do some of the
things that are needed to complete the long journey—reading, praying,
practicing obedience in small ways. As we do these things, not only do we do
better at them, but they also begin to become ingrained as habits in our lives.
Today, if you
are struggling with developing spiritual habits in your life, the time to begin
is now. Whether it is reading the Scriptures, praying, etc., just start doing
it in a small way without great expectations, but with determination to continue
one more day. Then days can turn into weeks, which can turn into months, and
then even years. You won’t be perfect in
your attempts or necessarily in your consistency, but you don’t have to be. Habits never begin with perfection, nor are
they always kept perfectly. They begin
with the determination to start and keep going even when you fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment