Your Unlimited Life (9 page)

At nineteen, I was in a drug rehabilitation center. I had quit smoking pot, snorting coke, and sticking needles in my arm. One day I asked myself, “Why am I doing this?” My thinking about cigarettes and drugs changed. I no longer needed them to feel good or to look good. I was really tired of yellow fingernails and green teeth! It’s a bummer, because kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray! I was trying to find someone to kiss me, you know, so I needed to clean up.

When my thinking about cigarettes changed, I quit smoking in one day. No patches. No pills. No packs of gum.

So what’s the key to breaking habits and having your unlimited life?
Capturing every thought and bringing it into obedience to Christ.
If you will train yourself to capture thoughts and bring them into agreement with God’s Word, you can kick cigarettes or any other bad habit.

The stronghold is in your thinking, and when those thoughts from the world, from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil have a strong hold on you, that’s the area that has to be renewed. Your unlimited life is not far away, it’s a matter of capturing and replacing thoughts. The next chapter will teach you how this is not an impossible feat but a matter of basic daily steps.

4

REPLACING NEGATIVE HABITS

While driving to church years ago, my son Caleb said, “Dad, they ought to let ten-year-olds drive.” I said, “Boy, that would be a wild thing.” He said, “At least twelve-year-olds. I can drive better than a lot of people I know.” He was probably right!

Caleb was learning and growing, and inside of him was a desire to get bigger and better and do more. As adults, our desires may be buried under fears and failures, but there is still a desire to be like your Father. The Bible says we were predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. There is a desire in all of us for continual growth and transformation. I want to change. I want to be like Jesus, who submitted to the will of the Father and even when they hung Him on a tree, He obeyed God.

The spirit of the natural man wants to argue and fight. I have counseled couples who were ready to divorce because of fighting and screaming over the color of towels in the bathroom. We’ve all heard the jokes of people arguing over which way the toilet paper is supposed to hang, rolled out or rolled in. Simple solution: Just get two rolls and do one each way!

Many people come to our church and I know we tell them the truth, but some don’t come back because they don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to change their habits.

A habit is a thought or a way of thinking that causes us to function in the same routines all of our adult life. It is a repeated thought or behavior that becomes so automatic that it is difficult to stop. It can become an addiction, a custom or a tradition.

Most of our habits, whether good or bad, were picked up by watching the habits of those around us. If kids grow up where Mom and Dad take showers, comb their hair, and dress properly, most likely they will do the same thing.

The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6,
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
When he is young, he may depart from it for a while, but he will come back to the teachings of his early childhood.

T
IME
-R
ELEASED
B
ELIEFS

Have you done things for a season in your life that were contrary to the habits of your parents, but then somewhere around thirty or thirty-five, you realized how much like your parents you had become? When children grow up, they won’t depart from what they were taught. I call their habits “time-released beliefs.”

Usually, when you start to do something that becomes a habit, it’s not easy at first, but you do it repeatedly until it becomes easy. The first cigarette doesn’t taste good, although you try to act cool. You turn green, cough, and vomit. But many people keep at it until it becomes a habit. Other people get in the habit of watching soap operas.

For more than thirty years, I’ve gone to a little restaurant in the Seattle area that makes good ribs. You can only go there about once every six months, because it takes that long to get the fat and cholesterol out of your system! You can tell they are good ribs because the floor is so greasy you just slide in there! So I slide in and get a pound of pork ribs -- the small ends that fall off the bone -- and some white bread!

Every time I go there, they’ve got a TV on and they’re watching, “As My Stomach Turns,” or some soap opera. Those guys love me. They say, “Praise the Lord, Pastor. It’s been a long time since you’ve been here. How’s the church doing? Has the Lord been good to you? Good to see you. You’re going to have the usual? Small end? Praise the Lord!”

Now how can you be praising God, working in your business, and watching “All My Hopelessness,” “The Terrible Hospital,” and “As My Stomach Turns”? They know the characters on the shows as well as they know me. It’s a habit. It’s a stronghold.

Christians can have negative, worldly habits just like non-Christians. It’s a way of thinking and acting that you repeat until it becomes a part of your life. Often times it has become such an integral part of our lives we will not even take note of it when we are reflecting on things we need to change.

You can develop habits with sex, money, food, and many other things. Habits are formed by repeated thoughts and actions. They have nothing to do with good or bad, right or wrong. If you think something and do it repeatedly, it will become a habit.

Your spirit, soul, and body are designed to grasp things and hang onto them. God’s idea is that we get the Word of God in us, hang onto it, and not let it go. But if we pump the world into us, the same thing will happen.

God’s plan was that He would fill Adam so full of the truth that he would hang onto it and live that truth forever. That was His plan for all mankind.

T
HE
“P
ROCESS
”
OF
B
REAKING
H
ABITS

One great thing about being a born-again person is that you can break old habits. You can stop the process. You can turn the repeated thoughts and behavior around. You do not have to be stuck in your old ways any more. Your unlimited life doesn’t have to be a dream but can become a reality.

How long does it take to turn negative habits around? I believe a minimum of forty days. God gave us a mark at forty. Moses was forty days on the mountain. Jesus was forty days in the wilderness. I believe it will take you forty days to get anything going, but even then, you can backslide in a hurry. Generally, it takes two or three years to make something a part of your life. Forty days will get you started. Then, after two or three years, it will become a part of your life.

Most people just want a touch to break a habit. You can get that too, but that’s just step one. After you fall to the floor from the power of God, you’ve got to get up. Getting you on the floor is not hard, but it’s what happens when you get up that we’re focussed on in this book.

H
OW
L
ONG
D
ID
Y
OU
P
RACTICE
T
HAT
B
AD
H
ABIT
?

We spend years doing certain things, and then we want them changed overnight. We follow the devil twenty-seven years, come to God, and say, “Straighten me out, Lord.” We spend years with bad eating habits and we want everything to be different in thirty days or less and that’s just not real. A long-term follow-through is needed.

Most of our habits are picked up by watching the habits of those around us. We hear an accent and pretty soon we are talking like the people we are around. When I go overseas, I talk differently according to the country I am in. This is the reason we’ve got to be careful who we hang out with. Soon we’ll smell like them, sound like them, and be like them.

RENEWAL TRUTH

I am a companion of those
who keep Goda’s Word.
(Psalm119:63)

If you are having a problem with finances, look at whom you are hanging out with. If you are having a problem with your health, look at whom you are hanging out with. If you have a problem with your temper, whom are you hanging out with?

R
EPLACING
N
EGATIVE
H
ABITS
W
ITH
P
OSITIVE
O
NES

Habits are not so much stopped as they are
replaced
. It’s not just a matter of stopping the negative; it’s a matter of developing something positive to replace the negative.

Foolish parents say to their children, “Don’t do that.” Wise parents say, “Come over here and do this.” When you say, “Don’t do that,” a child’s immediate response is “Why?” They are instantly then drawn even more towards that which they are not allowed to do. Wise parents
replace
the thought and the action.

When a child is near breakable objects, instead of saying, “Don’t touch that,” say, “Look at this stuffed animal. Let’s play with it.” Replace what you don’t want them to have with something they can have.

If I preach all day on what you shouldn’t do, all you will do when you go out of church is think about everything you shouldn’t do. This is why we preach more on righteousness, encouraging you towards it rather than on sin.