Develop Great Habits, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Think about our culture. You are the way you are because it's your parents' fault. It's their fault.

You can go to a therapist and you can pay him $125 an hour and he'll tell you that. It's not your fault, it's your parents' fault. Or it's your company's fault. Or it's the government's fault. Notice I am not the way I am because of me, I am the way I am because of them.

You can't take your dirty dishes and put it in someone else's sink. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world.

Think of how many people go through something like this. I really would have liked to worship God, but I didn't get out of the LSU game until late last night and I drove all the way down and my goodness, you know, it was so, I mean, by the time I got to sleep, I got, or you know, the Saints have the noon kickoff. And I got to get there. And if I went to go, I'd have to go to the 8 o'clock service and I'd have to get up really early to do that. And I can get the CD anyway.

I mean, I'll just get the CD. Do you understand what you're saying? Seek God first. See, what habit have you developed?

I think the habit is that the first and most important thing to me is to do the things I really enjoy. And if those things come in conflict with worshiping God, then I'm going to do what I enjoy. God understands.

He does. But understand this. God gave us all things to enjoy.

And that even includes the Tigers and the Saints. He gave them to us to enjoy. He gave us all things to enjoy.

But remember this. He said, I am the Lord God and there'll be no other God or idol before me. You see, that's how it works in your life.

What is the message? Is God first? You see, it's not a matter when I come to my checkbook. It's not a matter of numbers, not grudgingly norm necessity.

And you'll never hear us talk about that. But the idea is it should always be. Remember, it's hilariously. God loves a cheerful giver. But the idea is it's got to be first. It can't be after everything else is done.

I'll decide. It's never an amount with God. It's always a priority with God. Am I first?

Seek God first. That's a habit to develop. You know, I think of a song. Psalm 42 says, as a deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God. And I just realized when we were singing this morning. You realize what you were singing to God? I hunger and thirst for you. You are the air I breathe. You know what you're singing?

You're first. So make sure that your life backs up your song. You see, it's one thing to sing, I hunger and thirst for you. It's another thing to really hunger and thirst for God.

Secondly, the next habit is take out the trash. Romans chapter 12. Paul's concluding this great book of Romans starting in chapter 12. And he says, therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your body as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is a spiritual service of worship.

In other words, what's he mean by that? Seek God first. That's the first priority. It's right there. That's the priority.

But notice what he says then. A second discipline. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, metamorphous, by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, and accept the one perfect.

This is called the principle of transformation. But notice what it requires. And that's why I say take out the trash. Do not be conformed to this world.

How do I do that? That's going to require some discipline. One is I'm going to have to stop listening to the world. That could create conflict. I mean, think of the principles or values of the world. And by the way, we all use them and we have in our past. I mean, one of the greatest things you ever hear a teenager ever say, everybody else is doing it.

Notice that's a principle of the world. If more people are doing it, that means it must be OK. Is that true? No. No. You've got to do whatever you can do to be popular.

That's a good value. Or is it? You see, don't be conformed, he says, to the world. Quit allowing the world's ideas, the world's images, the world's values to shape who you are.

That requires a certain amount of discipline or a habit on your part. Then he says right after it, he says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How in the world would you renew your mind? With other thoughts.

Where am I going to get other thoughts? God's word. Victorious Christians think great thoughts about God, about themselves. You see, I need to think of what God says. The world says this about marriage. God says this about marriage. The world says this about parenting. God says this about parenting.

You see how this works? And so he says you've got to be transformed. But notice what you've got to do. You've got to take out the trash. You've really got to do it. You've got to say, what in my life is holding me back?

Where is my confirmation? And by the way, you're not real good at seeing it necessarily. I don't want to offend anyone in here, and I hope I don't. But have you ever seen a newscast, and they'll have a news reporter in, some kind of action reporter, and they'll go to a house, and they'll find out that the people in the house have 100 cats. You ever see one of those? Well, they have 100 cats in the house. And the reporter always goes in, and he's got a scarf over his nose, and the cameraman's kind of staggering because of the way the house is like. And, you know, they're in there, and all these cats and all of this squall are everywhere. You ever wonder how that happens?

How'd that happen? I'm pretty sure you don't go buy 100 cats. I think you have, like, two cats. Then you have, like, six. You think, I think I can take care of six. I like cats. Then you have, like, 15. You say, well, this is going to be hard. I like cats.

I don't think I can take care of them, but I like them anyway. Then you have 30 and 40 and 50, and the people are living in there. See, that's a really bad idea. That's the way it is with the world with us. You're kind of in in the squalor, and you don't even notice it. That's why God says, my word is a light into the darkness. You see, God puts a light on it, and we're living in the squalor, and we don't even realize it. And I know this is a problem as a discipline for Christians. Christians are struggling right now with this habit, taking out the trash.

How do I know that? Because every single poll, George Barna, Gallup, say this. The lifestyles of evangelical Christians is virtually identical to the lifestyles of the lost.

Now, if that's true, what's going on? We have the Holy Spirit. We have the grace of God. We have the word of God. But we haven't cultivated the habit of taking out the trash.

We have allowed the world to conform us. There is a third habit. Put God first, priority, take out the trash, transformation.

Do the dishes. Genesis chapter 3. You know what's in Genesis 3.

It's the fall. The first sin. Adam and Eve. And in verse 8, they heard a sound of the Lord God walking in the garden of the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the Lord God called to the man and said, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.

He said, Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat? Now, we know the answer, don't we? Yes. The answer is yes, I ate.

Right? Now, here's where it begins. You've got to do the dishes. The man said, The woman whom you gave to me with me, she gave to me and I ate. Now, patiently the Lord God said to the woman, Why is this what you have done?

And the woman said, The serpent, he deceived me and I ate. Do the dishes simply means this. Whenever I got married, one of the things I was most thankful for, for all these years, is that my wife always did the dishes. We made dirty dishes, and then she made them. I can't remember days getting up the next day in her dirty dishes in a sink or on a counter. She always did the dishes. In fact, she always washed the clothes.

There's never big piles of clothes. Clothes are washed as they get dirty. Now, what's interesting about that is you have to take responsibility. You have to take responsibility. By the way, if you eat in your home, don't do dirty dishes.

So your responsibility is you've got to clean them, right? And so notice what happens in this case. God says, You sinned. Me?

No, no, no, no. The woman you gave me, you see, it's her fault. The woman said, No, no, no, no, not my responsibility.

Now, think about our culture. You are the way you are because it's your parents' fault. It's their fault.

You can go to a therapist and you can pay him $125 an hour and he'll tell you that. It's not your fault. It's your parents' fault. Or it's your company's fault. Or it's the government's fault. Notice I am not the way I am because of me.

I am the way I am because of them. You can't take your dirty dishes and put it in someone else's sink. You see, you can't. You've got to deal with your dishes. And by the way, eventually you deal anyway, don't you?

And Adam and Eve eventually did it. I mean, I don't care how many dirty dishes you create. Isn't there a time that you run out of paper plates and run out of forks and spoons and then someone does the dishes? Or you're basically the same thing with your clothes. You just keep piling them up and you're wearing a leisure suit from the 70's because you have nothing else left. But somebody has to do the clothes.

Somebody has to do the clothes. God says take responsibility. Cultivate the habit of confession.

Regular, honest confession. It's just like doing the dishes. You've got to cultivate it on a regular basis. You can't let it accumulate and you can't put your dishes in somebody else's sink. That's a habit you have to develop. The fourth habit, put it in writing.

Proverbs chapter 20. Put God first, that's the principle of priority. Take out the trash, that's the principle of transformation. Do the dishes, that's the principle of responsibility.

Solomon's going to give us the fourth habit. Put it in writing. Have a plan. Verse 5 of Proverbs 20, Solomon says, A plan in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out. Now I want to ask you something.

Have you ever made plans that you didn't follow through on? Oh, I think so, huh? Just think right now, in the next month, how much exercise equipment is going to be bought in America.

Now what's that tell you? Someone's got a plan, right? They're going to buy, just like last year.

And of course then by June they'll be at the garage sale. Because what happened? There was no plan. You see, if you say I really want to get fit, I really need to get fit so I'm going to buy exercise equipment. Does that make you fit? You actually have to do the exercise. You see, you actually have to do something. And so consequently what he says here is, A plan in the heart of a man is like deep water. It's way down there.

Oh, I need to exercise. How many of you ever heard this around your house? I think we're going to remodel and then you name a room.

And you've heard that for the last decades. My parents were going to remodel their basement. This was shortly after they built their house. And he said, you know, I can put a whole other house down here. I said, that'd be really neat, Dad.

He said, I'm going to redo the whole thing. I'm going to put a kitchen down here. I'm going to have a bathroom down here. We're going to have a TV. That's really neat.

My parents are in glory. And the basement just looks like the basement did the day after the contractor built the house. But I must have heard every single year that there's going to be something going on here.

It stayed down deep. He said, but a man of understanding draws it out, literally draws it out. You know what that means? You've got to do something about this. You've got to tell a friend about it. Give yourself a voice memo. Write it on a three by five. Keep a journal. Write out what you're actually going to do. Write it out. Make a plan. Then follow through on the plan.

Draw the plan out. Last week, I was teaching on the victorious Christians. Give great thanks to a great God. And I thought about that a lot during the week.

And I thought, you know, I need to cultivate that in my life a little more. So I wrote down two things from last week. One, I wrote down, I want to develop the habit of regular prayer that is filled with thanksgiving. Now, I gave thanks, but I didn't really fill my prayer with thanksgiving.

I had a lot more petition than I had thanksgiving, a lot more asking. And so I said, I want to do that. And I wrote that down. And then I also wrote down, I want to develop the habit of telling people how much I appreciate them on a regular basis. Now, I've told people that occasionally in the past, but not nearly enough. Now, I wrote that down. That's a plan. And now I guess I'm accountable because I just told you.

You know, there are people that actually know now. There's a sense of accountability. Hopefully, we can draw this out. But you see, if I don't look at that, I'll forget about it because when I was preparing for that sermon last week, I thought, oh, you know, I need to do that more often.

And then it just was gone. Deep down in the water, way down, I just put the plan and never did anything with it. What Solomon is saying is you've got to draw it out. You've got to have a sense of a plan that's going to be some sense of accountability to it.

This is the whole idea of clarity. Put God first, priority. Take out the trash, transformation. Do the dishes, responsibility. Put it in writing, clarity. And the last one is found in Proverbs 24.

And this is the most convicting one. Do something now. If you're going to develop a good habit, you've got to do something now. This is the principle of inertia. You know what that principle is. A body at rest. That's right.

Just has a tendency to stay at rest, doesn't it? Notice what Solomon writes starting in verse 30 of Proverbs 24. He said, I pass by the field of a sluggard and by the vineyard of a man lacking sense.

Notice compared to that to when he's talking about understanding draws out the plan. He says, and behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles. Its surface was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down. You see, there wasn't a sign up that said, with neon lights going around, sluggard lives here. There was no sign like that.

But if you come to a place where a person is supposed to be working the land and you see that there are thorns and thistles, weeds everywhere, and the wall that's supposed to keep out the vermin is all broken down, you got an idea, this is a sluggard. You see, that's what Solomon said. He said, when I looked at it, I saw it. He said, so when I saw it, I reflected upon it, as Solomon always does. And I looked and he said, I received instruction from this. This visual image gave me instruction, a principle. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

That's inertia. He said, then your poverty will come as a robber and you'll want like an armed man. You want to get nothing out of life? I can tell you, do nothing.

Well, you want to get nothing, just do nothing. That's the way it works. That's the way the real world is. And Solomon said, I learned something from that.

If you're going to do something, you got to do it now. You see, lazy people leave a lot of evidence around. That's what he's saying. And lazy Christians are exactly the same way. Their lives show it. Their walls are broken down. There are thistles and thorns everywhere in their life. A little procrastination can do an awful lot of damage.

I mean, think about this in ways that we've done it. I mean, I'm always amazed at some kind of shopping mall and you'll hear a parent that propagates this principle. I'm going to discipline you later. Discipline's going to come later.

Meanwhile, in the store, chaos. You see, there's going to be no. The whole idea of discipline is that discipline has to have a sense of meaning in it. Don't be the kind of person who said, I need to develop better habits someday.

Because we don't even know when someday is coming or if we even have someday in our future. What God is saying is, look, you've got to develop better habits today. I'm going to begin to develop this habit today. And so there are five positive habits. Put God first. Take out the trash. Do the dishes.

Put it in writing and do something now. Good habits make great people. God supplies the grace. He provides the habit. His grace will fill your habit if your habit is positive. And so I'd like to ask you, write down in writing for yourself this week one bad habit that you've got to do away with. You've just got to do away with that habit. Keep that with you and begin to pray about that idea. This is a habit I've got to take out the trash. I've just got to deal with this. And then look over the list of the five and say, which one do I really need to cultivate first in my life?

And how can I do it? Because if you do, Paul said that discipline, spiritual discipline, good habits leads to godliness. And then he says to Timothy, and godliness holds promise for the present life and the life to come. Victorious Christians think great thoughts. Victorious Christians enjoy great moments. Victorious Christians give great thanks to a great god. And victorious Christians develop great habits.

Let's pray. Father, in a way it's sobering to know that I am spiritually where my habits have led me. That it's not a matter of enough of your grace, enough of your power, enough of your word, enough of your spirit.

You've provided that. It's up to me to provide the habit. Father, I pray that for some of us we need to advocate seeking you first. We have to make you first in our life.

Everything else comes from there. Some of us, Father, really need to deal with bad habits in our life. We need to take out that trash. Some of us, Father, need to take the responsibility for our lives, our shortcomings, and need to develop the habit of confession. Father, all of us, simply all of us, need to have a plan just like an athlete does. We need to discipline ourselves. It has to be something that we hold ourselves accountable to.

We have to do something now. Father, we know that these habits reflect not only what's best for us, but they reflect our great love for you. We thank you for your word in Christ's name.

Amen. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.