It’s hard to break bad habits. Biting your nails. Doomscrolling. Smoking. Anger. Vices that you know you should probably quit but don’t have any plans to do so, anytime soon. Some of these are things you picked up during a time of stress and never put back down. Others you started thinking they would be temporary, but they have stuck around.
No matter what it is, we all have things in our lives that we know we shouldn’t do. And yet we continue. God has given us a higher calling. Hopefully, this calling can be an inspiration for us to do the hard work of changing our minds and our habits.
Paul in Ephesians 4:25-28 says,
25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
It is so easy to fire off an anonymous attack on your neighbor. We get into online arguments. We trash one neighbor to the other neighbor. All of this in lieu of actually confronting the problems that we have. God has given humanity the full breadth of emotions for us to experience the full breadth of life. But just like habits that start because we thought they might solve a problem, we can twist our emotions into a sinful place.
God always provides a path to repentance for all of us. If you lie too much start telling the truth. If you struggle with anger learn to forgive. If you steal, steal no longer. We are called to a lifechanging grace. Sometimes, that means we let the grace change our lives.