Make a Habit; Break a Habit, on Amazon.

I’d like to come to your church and teach your people to develop life-changing habits. Whether you want lose weight (I lost nearly 40 pounds) or develop the habit of having a quiet time, the principles in this book can change your life.

I’d like to do these seminars on a different basis than previous seminars. I’d recommend the following schedule:

• Sunday morning — preach and/or teach all adults in Sunday School.
• Sunday night — two hour session.

I’d like to do these seminars with a different cost structure. I’d ask you pay my expenses and, instead of an honorarium, buy (or ask your people to purchase) one copy of the book for each adult in attendance on Sunday morning. If each of your people will buy a book, no other honorarium is required.

Contact me at josh@joshhhunt.com or 575.650.4564 for details.

Only by prayer

There is an interesting story in Mark 9 that sheds light on this question. A man has a son who is possessed by an evil spirit. He brings the son to the disciples who are unable to cast out the demon. When the spirit saw Jesus, it threw the boy to the ground in convulsions. He rolled around, foaming at the mouth. It was an awful spectacle. Heartbreaking.

Jesus tenderly asks, “How long has he been this way?”

We learn something about Jesus in this question, by the way. He is not only interested in doing for us, he wants to relate to us. He wants to converse with us. He wants to talk.

After Jesus heals the boy, His disciples ask Jesus, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

Jesus said, “This kind can only come out by prayer.”[1] As A.T. Robertson said it, “They were powerless because they were prayerless.”[2]

It is interesting that Jesus use that little phrase, “this kind.” “This kind” suggests that there is more than one kind of demon. There are demons that are easy to cast out, and there are demons that are hard to cast out.

Similarly, there habits that are easy to break, and there are habits that are almost impossible to break. Some habits will not be broken, even if. . .

·         You get a friend to take the journey with you.

·         You have a really strong “why.”

·         You do all you can to avoid the temptation, knowing that if you avoid the temptation you can avoid the sin.

·         You have a clear, specific, measurable, motivational, goal.

·         You try really hard.

·         You set in place a system of reward.

·         You have a motivational measurement system.

·         You work through more than one dip.

Some habits will only be broken through prayer. I love this two-line story:

“Pastor, I think we should really pray about that.”

“Has it come to that?”

So often, prayer is a last resort. I haven’t put this chapter on prayer last because it is least important; I have put it last because I want these ideas ringing in your head when you put down this book.

Research has confirmed what Christians have long believed to be true: some habits will only be broken through prayer. This quote is interesting because of its source. This comes from a secular book on what science had learned about habits:

Researchers began finding that habit replacement worked pretty well for many people until the stresses of life— such as finding out your mom has cancer, or your marriage is coming apart— got too high, at which point alcoholics often fell off the wagon. Academics asked why, if habit replacement is so effective, it seemed to fail at such critical moments. And as they dug into alcoholics’ stories to answer that question, they learned that replacement habits only become durable new behaviors when they are accompanied by something else.

One group of researchers at the Alcohol Research Group in California, for instance, noticed a pattern in interviews. Over and over again, alcoholics said the same thing: Identifying cues and choosing new routines is important, but without another ingredient, the new habits never fully took hold.

The secret, the alcoholics said, was God.

Researchers hated that explanation.[3]