People fall because they think too highly of their feet.  While we should be considering our feet’s limitations, we place our trust in their agility.  But are feet are not sentient beings. Why do we treat them as if they are trustworthy slaves?  If you don’t watch over them, they will do the very thing you don’t want them to do. The one who rarely stumbles or falls is the one who makes it a habit to remember limitations.

Likewise, if every driver considered the limitations of his car more often than he considers its agility, there would be far fewer accidents.  If every driver made it a habit to drive as if he is driving on slick roads, he would never end up in the ditch.  He would never “swap paint” with another.  Would never donate his bumper to public disgrace.

If every Christian made it a habit to remember that he can fail, and that the source of his strength is God alone, he would never stumble.

Agility in Christ demands habitual use of Bible reading, prayer and practice.  Lack the habitual use of any of these three, and the Christian is bound to suffer loss.

To our shame, when a person falls, or crashes his car, or suffers loss in Christ, some variation of the following phrase can be heard: “I am only human”.  It is to our shame because diligent and habitual behavior could have transformed us into something radically more.  We were lazy, we were derelict, we were willingly rebellious.  What we thought we would become has escaped us.  And the fault lies clearly in our own lap.

If that is the state of your yesterdays, it need not be the state of your affairs today.  And tomorrow can be all the more secure.  All you need to do is to transform yourself into a diligent and habitual person, and this by the renewal of your mind.

What belongs to yesterday, belongs to yesterday.  Today belongs to you.  Tomorrow belongs to the one who profits from what you do today.

Don’t bother yourself with a vow.  Simply start doing the things that are good.

Write a letter to yourself, and read it when it arrives again.  Make sure you write often, you are a very lonely person.  And why wouldn’t you write back, understanding your frailty?  Its not only good social etiquette, it’s also a deed of mercy.

Begin keeping a journal or diary, and please make sure to go back and read the days before.  Do you really think anyone else will care about what you have written?  So if you’re not going to read it, why write?

Let these things become a habit and there is no need for a vow, which can so easily be broken.  Remember your New Year’s resolutions?  Haven’t you figured it out yet?  Those who have to wait for a special day to make a vow, will never be capable of keeping it.

Leave your Bible in conspicuous places.  Write down certain passages and put them in every place your eyes might go.  (On the toilet seat, on the mirror, under the cap of your deodorant, paste it on your pillow sticky side up. Do these things nightly for the preparation of the person you will be tomorrow.  While you’re at it, you might throw a few bucks into 3M stocks.) Memorize passages and think them through.  Make it a habit to do these things, and the Living Word of the Living God will begin to live in you.

When it comes to prayer you will take note that you have a distinct, “I don wanna”.  So what.  If you force your feet habitually to go to the place of prayer.  If you habitually force your knees to bend when your feet have arrived.  If you will force the first few words from your mouth, as a habit it in that place.  You will learn to adore your time of prayer.

As for practice, every man does the things he learns to love.  As our habits are, so follows our love.  And what we love is a blatant proclamation of who we have become.

By His Grace