When I have a speaking engagement on the calendar, I always start studying a month in advance. It’s not a perfect system, but most days I go over my notes, read the Scripture I plan to cover, and try to prepare. In October, a conference featuring the Lord’s prayer and a retreat focused on spiritual disciplines seem to be on two very different tracks. Still, I’ve been surprised at how often the content overlaps.
The middle school boys in my Sunday school class are getting the same message tucked into our study of Nehemiah. Even to my own ears, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, stuck in the same groove and repeating myself:
Book reviews, devotionals, teaching women, and teaching the kids at my church—these are the three themes that keep showing up. And I guess I’m not sorry. Here’s why…
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Stay close to the Word of God.
We are grace-dependent creatures.
Our habits matter.
Book reviews, devotionals, teaching women, and teaching the kids at my church—these are the three themes that keep showing up. And I guess I’m not sorry. Here’s why:
All of Scripture points to Jesus. Even the Old Testament bears witness to his coming and his great salvation. We, however, are often oblivious, “raiding the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”1 The writer of Hebrews offers a solution:
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”2
As we stay close to the truth, we acknowledge our own limits and celebrate God’s limitlessness. There is freedom in our habits of holiness.
I heard the truth of this pouring down from an upstairs bedroom recently as our youngest son, home for a visit, was practicing his trumpet. If you’re thinking Haydn or Vivaldi or even Chuck Mangione, think again. It was all scales, arpeggios, and weirdly spaced intervals.
Those exercises sounded restrictive (and boring!). Routine can feel sometimes as if we’re corseting ourselves into a breathless way of being in the world when just the opposite is happening.
What if the Scripture verses you are reading today with little understanding and no felt response suddenly come alive to you in the spiritual desert that’s coming in six months—but you don’t know about it yet?
What if the besetting sin that keeps you coming back to God every day for forgiveness was not given to reinforce feelings of failure but has been custom-designed to keep you connected to the God who waits on high to have compassion on you?
Thanks be to God for meeting us in the daily, mundane practices that create space for grace.
May we lean into the freedom of faithful dependence, the liberty of grace-driven effort.
Routine can feel sometimes as if we’re corseting ourselves into a breathless way of being in the world when just the opposite is happening.
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I think it comes down to the difference between reading the letter of the Word and experiencing the Spirit of the Word. We read and reread the words as we study and seek to be fortified with the truth but, as you said, the moment comes when we actually experience the living Word and the scales fall off our eyes. Then, when we start to breathe again, we understand the true significance of it takes practice to make perfect.
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Yes, I think it’s brilliant to call our habits of faith spiritual “practices” because we certainly do need the practice. And most of the time for me, anyway, it’s “practice makes progress” more than “practice makes perfect.”
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“Routine can feel sometimes as if we’re corseting ourselves into a breathless way of being in the world when just the opposite is happening. ”
And
“Thanks be to God for meeting us in the daily, mundane practices that create space for grace.
May we lean into the freedom of faithful dependence, the liberty of grace-driven effort.”
Absolutely love this!
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Thanks, Rosie. Sometimes I wonder if I’m writing to myself, if maybe I’m the only one who feels “corseted” by the routines of life. It’s good to know there’s someone else reading and saying, “Thank you, Lord, for the mundane!”
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Oh yeah, I feel it. So much so sometimes I give a little literal shake to try and get them to fall off!
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Those are great themes! It is interesting how they often come through different parts of the Bible and different reading sources and experiences all around the same time.
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And I’m sure the Lord knows how much I need to hear them—over and over again!
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This statement stood out to me: “There is freedom in our habits of holiness.” Those who don’t know Jesus would probably question its validity, but it’s true. We enjoy freedom from fear and anxiety because our faith is habitually strengthened through Bible study and prayer. We enjoy freedom from despair as we exercise our faith, knowing God is always working for our good (Romans 8:28)–even through challenging circumstances. And we enjoy freedom from futility as we serve God, because we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he’s already prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10). Habits of holiness do indeed bring freedom from MUCH that agitates those who have no faith in God.
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That’s an amazing picture of the freedom we enjoy, Nancy! There’s a whole post in this thought!
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The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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Sad, but true!
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Michele, I love the way you put this: “the freedom of faithful dependence, the liberty of grace-driven effort.” Routines can be boring but they are so life-giving!
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And even in our “effort,” we are in partnership with the Spirit who is always moving us toward the goal of full maturity. (And it can’t happen soon enough for me!)
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