Transforming Habits: A Journey of Spiritual Growth
Devotional
Sermon Summary
Sermon Clips
"Habits are a gift God created habits, they are extenders of our kingdom and they basically offload our Behavior. Charles Duhigg writes about this that in the 90s scientists particularly at MIT really started studying habits quite closely. They follow what Duhigg calls a habit Loop this is true pretty much for all behaviors there will be a cue, and then there's the response my behavior my activity and then there'll be a reward attached to it and you find this all the time when there's habit formation." [00:02:21]
"Researchers found when they would put a mouse in a maze and there's a little chocolate or something at the end of it initially it would take the mouse a lot of work and a long time and the mouse's brain would be extremely active trying to solve this problem, and then eventually the mouse would learn to do it much quicker, more efficiently more effectively and what was especially interesting to the researchers is the mouse's brain activity would go way down." [00:02:56]
"Habits never really disappear, they're encoded into the structures of our brain. That's a huge Advantage for us because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that your brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits so if you have a bad one it's lurking there waiting for the right cues and Rewards." [00:04:18]
"Now the patterns of wrongdoing that govern human life outside the kingdom are usually quite weak even ridiculous, they are simply our habits, our largely automatic responses of thought feeling and action, typically we have acted wrongly before reflecting and it is this that give bad habits their power, for the most part they are as Paul new actual characteristics of our bodies in Social context." [00:06:03]
"Therefore it is primarily in the body and in Social context that the work must be done to replace wrong habits with automatic responses that flow with the kingdom of Jesus and sustain themselves from its power. Certainly they must first come the profound inward turnings of repentance and faith, but the replacement of habits remains absolutely essential to anyone who is to hear and do what Jesus said and thus build their house on the rock." [00:06:57]
"In other words when it comes to Habit we cannot extinguish a habit it doesn't help to resist the Habit we must replace the Habit when it comes to Habit it's not about resisting it is about replacing and the way that that works most simply is if you think about this habit circuit, there will be a cue that Q is going to be there the craving is going to be there there'll be that old reward of that response the cue stays the same the reward stays the same how do I change my response." [00:07:33]
"Duhigg says that the golden rule of habit formation is this don't try to extinguish an old habit try to replace it, so I'll give you just a quite superficial one but you can think about that whatever you'd want it to be what from when I was I don't know early on probably high school years I used to pick at my fingers and fingernails all the time they would look kind of embarrassing and if anybody looked at them the nails and then the skin around them would just look bad." [00:08:10]
"Awareness training, that is with this habit look during the day for times when you feel like you want to do that you are prompted to engage in this bad habit for me picking up my nails don't try to change any yet just look at when am I prompted to want to do that and what causes that prompt and for me it would be either boredom or stress." [00:09:04]
"And then the next question is and then when you engage in that habit of that behavior what's the reward you get and for me it would be just a little bit of relief a sensation of physical comfort, and so then the question became what is an alternative behavior that I could engage in that would bring me that reward but doesn't have that negative quality of picking up my nails." [00:09:29]
"And uh it was amazing and a very little time a habit that had been there for decades all of a sudden was gone, and then I could invite God into that and not simply just do that have it mechanically but as I'm doing that say words like, even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death I'm aware of fear or anxiety I will fear no evil for you are with me and allow that physical sensation to be a reminder of the fact that I'm never alone." [00:10:19]
"Think about some bad habit that you have, don't try to stop it don't try to break it don't try to resist it replace it, and you might just carry an index card with you for a couple of weeks and notice during the day when am I tempted to engage in this, what's the reward that it brings, what's an alternative response that I can give that can bring a different reward." [00:11:23]
"And then how do I invite God into this so that I can become a person who loves God and loves people at the level of my habits because love is habit for me." [00:11:46]
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"Researchers found when they would put a mouse in a maze and there's a little chocolate or something at the end of it initially it would take the mouse a lot of work and a long time and the mouse's brain would be extremely active trying to solve this problem, and then eventually the mouse would learn to do it much quicker, more efficiently more effectively and what was especially interesting to the researchers is the mouse's brain activity would go way down." [00:02:56]
"Habits never really disappear, they're encoded into the structures of our brain. That's a huge Advantage for us because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that your brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits so if you have a bad one it's lurking there waiting for the right cues and Rewards." [00:04:18]
"Now the patterns of wrongdoing that govern human life outside the kingdom are usually quite weak even ridiculous, they are simply our habits, our largely automatic responses of thought feeling and action, typically we have acted wrongly before reflecting and it is this that give bad habits their power, for the most part they are as Paul new actual characteristics of our bodies in Social context." [00:06:03]
"Therefore it is primarily in the body and in Social context that the work must be done to replace wrong habits with automatic responses that flow with the kingdom of Jesus and sustain themselves from its power. Certainly they must first come the profound inward turnings of repentance and faith, but the replacement of habits remains absolutely essential to anyone who is to hear and do what Jesus said and thus build their house on the rock." [00:06:57]
"In other words when it comes to Habit we cannot extinguish a habit it doesn't help to resist the Habit we must replace the Habit when it comes to Habit it's not about resisting it is about replacing and the way that that works most simply is if you think about this habit circuit, there will be a cue that Q is going to be there the craving is going to be there there'll be that old reward of that response the cue stays the same the reward stays the same how do I change my response." [00:07:33]
"Duhigg says that the golden rule of habit formation is this don't try to extinguish an old habit try to replace it, so I'll give you just a quite superficial one but you can think about that whatever you'd want it to be what from when I was I don't know early on probably high school years I used to pick at my fingers and fingernails all the time they would look kind of embarrassing and if anybody looked at them the nails and then the skin around them would just look bad." [00:08:10]
"Awareness training, that is with this habit look during the day for times when you feel like you want to do that you are prompted to engage in this bad habit for me picking up my nails don't try to change any yet just look at when am I prompted to want to do that and what causes that prompt and for me it would be either boredom or stress." [00:09:04]
"And then the next question is and then when you engage in that habit of that behavior what's the reward you get and for me it would be just a little bit of relief a sensation of physical comfort, and so then the question became what is an alternative behavior that I could engage in that would bring me that reward but doesn't have that negative quality of picking up my nails." [00:09:29]
"And uh it was amazing and a very little time a habit that had been there for decades all of a sudden was gone, and then I could invite God into that and not simply just do that have it mechanically but as I'm doing that say words like, even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death I'm aware of fear or anxiety I will fear no evil for you are with me and allow that physical sensation to be a reminder of the fact that I'm never alone." [00:10:19]
"Think about some bad habit that you have, don't try to stop it don't try to break it don't try to resist it replace it, and you might just carry an index card with you for a couple of weeks and notice during the day when am I tempted to engage in this, what's the reward that it brings, what's an alternative response that I can give that can bring a different reward." [00:11:23]
"And then how do I invite God into this so that I can become a person who loves God and loves people at the level of my habits because love is habit for me." [00:11:46]
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