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Firmly Establish These Powerful Habits of Discipleship

 

  • The principle of replacement. If you start spending a half hour a day in prayer and the Word, what are you going to NOT do? We tend to think we will just cram it in. You won’t. Something has to go. What will it be? Think clearly about that or you will struggle with success.
     
  • Consider two good (and opposite) ways to form a habit. Depending on your personality, one of these may work better than the other. When you get in a cold swimming pool, do you dive in all at once or wade in slowly. You can start a quiet time in either way. You can start with seven minutes a day and work up. Or you can dive in full-force, committing to read the Bible in a year.
     
  • Whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. Ultimately, the quiet time itself is its own reward. But sometimes we need some scaffolding in place until the building can bear its own weight. Groups can do this nicely for each other. Perhaps you can reserve some time in your group for each person to share one insight from the Word. The reward, in this case, is having something to share each week.
     
  • Work through the dip. There will come a day when you will get discouraged. There will come a day when you want to quit. There might come a day when you do quit for a time. This is the dip. Expect it. Anticipate it. Plan for it. The dip is coming. Success in many arenas of life is learning to make it through the dip.
     
  • We measure what matters. The most successful plan I know for getting people to have a daily quiet time is the 2:7 Series, produced by the Navigators. It includes a one page summary where participants are encouraged to write down brief insights from their daily quiet time. You can see at a glance how many quiet times you had in the last seven days. You can measure how many quiet times you had.
     
  • Goals. Brian Tracy says, “Success is about goal-setting; the rest is just commentary.” Set a goal to read through the Bible in a year.
     
  • When all else fails … One of my favorite verses is, “To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me” Colossians 1:29 (NIV). This verse contains the secret to Christian living: trying hard and trusting with all your heart. Trust and obey. There are three words for “work” in the Greek, and all three of them are in this verse. Paul is teaching us that to live the Christian life, we must try as hard as we can with a profound awareness that unless God pours His power in me, my trying is worthless. I am completely dependent on God to do His work through me. But I try with all my might. When all else fails, pray that God will empower you.