My Utmost for His Highest - May 12th - Make a Habit of Having no Habits

For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. - 2 Peter 1:8

    When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but it is only a stage; if we stop there we shall get the strut of the spiritual prig. The right thing to do with habits is to lose them in the life of the Lord, until every habit is so practiced that there is no conscious habit at all. Our spiritual life continually resolves into introspection because there are some qualities we have not added as yet. Ultimately the relationship is to be a completely simple one.

    Your god may be your little Christian habit, the habit of prayer at stated times, or the habit of Bible reading. Watch how your Father will upset those times if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes--I can't do that just now, I am praying; it is my hour with God. No, it is your hour with your habit. There is a quality that is lacking in you. Recognize the defect and then look for the opportunity of exercising yourself along the line of the quality to be added.

    Love means that there is no habit visible, you have come to the place where the habit is lost, and by practice you do the thing unconsciously. If you are consciously holy, there are certain things you imagine you cannot do, certain relationships in which you are far from simple; that means there is something to be added. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there anywhere where you are not at home with God? Let God press through in that particular circumstance until you gain Him, and life becomes the simple life of a child.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

2 days ago Chambers talked about getting into the habit or maybe the practice of finding out daily what God says and coming to God about everything and today I think when he mentions losing habits it is thinking about our spiritual disciplines and how we need to make sure our habits don't keep us from our faith or our community with God. The focus is not on doing the habit but on the reason the habit is in place, to meet God and this may mean serving others. Be careful though that we don't get obsessed with the habit that we are forgetting the work of God in our lives. Jesus was at home with God anywhere and this is the idea - to be intertwined with the things of God that there are no habits, but rather this is how we live.