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.

Why did God make us so that habits are so hard to break?

But why? Why did the God of the universe set things up this way? Why did He make it where habits are so hard to break that we have to rely on prayer?

Michael Catt is the pastor behind such movies as Fireproof and Facing the Giants. He offers and explanation to this question, “Most of us never seek the Lord until we are forced to.[1] God desperately wants to enter into a relationship with us. He wants to walk with us, and talk with us, do life with us. But, much of the time we are happy to ignore Him. Until we are desperate. Until we have a problem that we can’t solve. Until it is our child who is sick. Until we have a habit we just can’t master.

Then, we cry out to God. We don’t just pray, we beg. We plead. We fast—not as some religious ritual, but as an act of desperation. God desperately wants us to be desperate for him.

Following God and growing in discipleship is a two-fisted endeavor. We work as if it all depended on us, we pray as if it all depended on God. Paul spoke of striving and straining and boxing and pushing and doing all he could, all the while knowing that all he could do was not enough. Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2.20) And he said, “straining toward what is ahead, I press on.” (Philippians 3.13 – 14)

Here is one of my favorite questions to include in my lessons:[2] Is Christian living active or passive?

I think it was Mark Driscoll who said he works all day to win people to Christ and when he lays down at night he “sleeps like a Calvinist.”[3]

This is the way: to strive and strain and get a friend and set goals and measure what matters and work through the dip and do it all knowing that if God does not show up, if Christ does not strengthen, if Christ does not live His life in me, it is all for naught.

Christianity is not passive. It is not, as some say, “Letting go and letting God.” At least, that is not all there is to it. There is much, much more. There is striving and straining and trying and pushing. Paul compared Christian living with a boxing match. It is intense. It is working with all you’ve got.

But, Christianity is not a self-help program. It is striving and straining but it is not merely striving and straining. It is striving and straining knowing that if God does not empower me, I will never break this habit. It will break me.

God allows unbreakable habits into our lives to drive us to desperately seek Him.

One of my favorite metaphors for Christian living is that of a moving sidewalk like they have in many large airports. These are not designed for you to stand passively and let the moving sidewalk carry you along. They’re designed so that you do the walking on the sidewalk. But, the sidewalk is moving, so that it carries you along much faster than you would moving under your own strength.

So it is with following God. We walk as fast as we can, knowing that underneath us is the power of God moving us along.

I close with a prayer that God will richly bless you as you desperately pray that He helps you to break a habit or make a habit to the glory of God.