GOOD HABITS

I am reading a great book by Chip Ingram entitled Good to Great in God's Eyes. It is inspiring and motivational. Some of the chapter titles are:

Think Great Thoughts
Read Great Books
Pursue Great People
Dream Great Dreams
Develop Great Habits

Develop Great Habits is the last chapter in Chip's book, but I read it first. That is a bad habit that I have. Ha!

It takes about 21 days to establish a new habit and maybe even longer to break a bad habit. All of us do things habitually. We have patterns that we repeat over and over. New things and new ways crimp our style. We get stuck in the routine. The same ole becomes same ole.

Benjamin Franklin once said that if you take all your good habits and subtract all your bad habits, the results is your contribution to society.

Some habits can't be improved like reading your Bible, or praying, or regularly attending church, or treating others the way we desire to be treated.

But we all have bad habits.

I asked my staff in our last meeting to share with us one good habit and one bad habit. It was interesting and inspiring. We all felt good about the good habits and we all felt and need and motivation to break bad ones.

I share one habit that I have lived with for probably 30 plus years. I established a personal devotional habit of making sure that I had read 5 chapters in the Bible every day before I did any sermon preparation. Why do that? Because the temptation for ministers is to read the Bible to "get" a new sermon. That leads to a professional, prideful, non-relational walk with the Lord. That is dangerous.

Oh, I have some bad habits too.

Like, eating too fast, or watching too much football, or tending to put off doing things I don't like. I am working on all of those, well, except football. After all, it is football season, and Alabama is # 1.

Roll Tide!

Opps!