Bad habits will wreck your life. A grumpy disposition is a series of poorly controlled emotions parading as righteous indignation. Debt is an embarrassing lack of fiscal foresight and lateness a clear sign of poor priority procedures. If you are offended already, I don’t blame you. Those of you who have had a two year old or 2 in your life, know that feelings, money and time are usually subordinate to forces beyond your control. For those of you who are in this zone, and I was there 3 times, it does ease off eventually. But habits must be evaluated and re-evaluated over the course of our life. Christians are called to be holy in their behaviour—because God is holy (1Pet.1:15-16). There are a lot of bad habits to overcome between your original worldly disposition and being ‘perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt.5:48). They say that a new set of life-changing habits can be formed in just 90 days. Many a Christian has started their journey to perfection by setting in place various disciplines: Exercise regimes, diet control, Bible studies, church services, prayer devotions, time with brethren…to name but a few. And praise God for each and every one. Job was a very disciplined man. Spiritually he dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t.‘ God said of him: “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil” (Job 1:8). But when almost everything he deemed as an expression of God’s blessings towards his disciplined life were taken away, and when every spiritually disciplined act that he deemed an expression of worship to God ceased because of grief, sickness and despair, he was left disillusioned. His three friends poured out their accusations of hidden sin in a series of diatribes, but Job rightly hung on to his integrity—he had done nothing wrong. Except one thing! He had got it all right in the ‘hearing’ but had not ‘seen’ the whole picture for himself. Job had to learn: God is God! Yes, no matter the quality of the disciplines in your life, you must accept that God is God and that we are but to look to Him to become like Him.
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