Ten Habits That Are Helping Me in My Christian Life! (Habit #2)

Pursuing this thing called the Christian life isn’t a piece of cake. It challenges us to the very core of our being. Our priorities, our schedules, our habits get reorganized and recallibrated.

My first holy habit is spending time in God’s Word. Just reading it. Pondering it. Taking a few notes on what I’m seeing in the Bible.

A second holy habit will not surprise anyone. Prayer. Yes, prayer. I’m not good at praying. My problem is that I often look at prayer as a passive activity, a last resort, a failsafe when everything else (all my efforts) have failed.

What a pathetic view of talking to the Lord! We are to pray without ceasing. In the KJV that expression is used four times: We read in Acts 12:5 that the early church responded to Peter’s being put in jail by praying without ceasing for him. The Apostle Paul showed his love for the Roman believers when he says in Romans 1:9, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers . . .” Paul commands in I Thessalonians 5:17 that believers ought to “pray without ceasing.” And in 2 Timothy 1:3 Paul writes, “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day . . .”

My wife Linda thought as a little child that the verse read, “Pray without sea-sicking.” I do become a bit nauseous when I look at my poor prayer life. How about you? (to be continued)