Have you ever tried to break an old habit and struggle to find willpower or consistency?
If we’re not careful, much of our efforts are tied to just that–effort.
Now, we all realize that effort is essential and even vital. However, effort alone is not sufficient.
What do I mean?
Consider a habit or change you want in your life or a habit you don’t want. How do you go about making that change? Depending upon your personality, you write it down, ask for accountability, or even make a spreadsheet tracking the change. Indeed, we employ many variations to begin or cease from habits or lifestyles that we deem as helpful or determinantal to our flourishing.
In reality, very few of us actually keep to those habits or avoid the ones we deem unacceptable.
Why is that? What I mean is, why is it so difficult to initiate and continue change?
Many practical explanations are provided. Many. To be sure, these are not necessarily unhealthy, but are they dealing with the real issue?
What’s the real issue?
Identity.
Most of the time, we keep habits that are part and parcel of who we are.
What do I mean?
Take the husband who says he wants to spend more time with his family but can’t seem to break away from work. He self-diagnoses as a workaholic. Moreover, he knows something is off inside, but he’s unwilling to admit it.
What does he know that he’s not willing to admit?
His identity is rooted in something he receives from his work, and asking him to stop is like asking him not to be alive.
What do I mean?
As soon as he thinks about leaving work early to spend time with his kids and wife or taking that much-needed vacation, myriad questions pop into his mind. For instance…
- What will my employees or boss think about me?
- How will this impact my customer, who expects me to answer every call and respond to every email?
- How will this impact my bonus at the end of the year?
- How will this impact my promotion potential?
All these questions and more are bound to an identity this person has in his work.
What will change him, truly?
A new affection. That’s right, a new affection. This man must replace his affection(s) for relational affirmation, fear of failure, money status, and power potential with a new and greater affection.
How?
Thomas Chalmers, a 19th-century minister, penned a sermon titled, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. In this sermon, Chalmers points out that the empty result of pursuing a bad habit is insufficient. He says,
We shall never be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits by a naked demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain to think of stopping one of these pursuits in any way else but by stimulating another.
Therefore, just saying, “Stop, because there’s a dead-end ahead,” is not as helpful, says Chalmers, as is first understanding the pleasure satisfied by the person with an aberrant affection. He argues,
In attempting to bring a worldly man intent and busied with the prosecution of his objects to a dead stand, we have not merely to encounter the charm which he annexes to these objects- but we have to encounter the pleasure which he feels in the very prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that we dissipate the charm by a moral and eloquent, and affecting exposure of its illusiveness.
Instead, Chalmers states that being armed with this understanding of pleasure sought from the unusual affection helps provide insight into presenting a new and better affection. To this point, he writes,
We must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its influences and to engage him in some other prosecution as full of interest, hope, and congenial activity as the former.
He summarizes his point with this illustration:
It begins with a man looking at all the pleasures of this world…
- Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked towards it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society.
The man compares the present world with the end of life, and it’s something he avoids…
- Beyond the verge of the godly planet he was situated, he could decry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown.
- Would he bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and beauty that were before him upon the earth and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it?
- Would he leave its peopled dwelling places and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of nonentity?
- If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he for it abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him?
- Would not he cling to the regions of sense, life, and society?
- Would he not be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world and take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?
The man is confronted with a new world that addresses all his previous desires but brings more delight…
- But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy of the blest had floated by, and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories and its sounds of sweeter melody;
- And he saw that a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread among all the families. He could discern peace, piety, and benevolence, which put a moral gladness into every bosom and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other and the beneficent Father of them all.
- Can you see that what was before the wilderness would become the land of invitation, and now the world would be the wilderness?
In other words, Chalmers argues that presenting a more solid affection is the only way to replace the previous unhealthy affection.
Therefore, the only way to have new affections is to have a new identity (salvation) and cultivate the truth of salvation (sanctification).
How Does This Apply To Us Today?
- If we’re not careful, our identity can be found in…
- What we do (position).
- What we enjoy (pleasure).
- What we control (power).
- What others say of us (prestige).
- Our desires can quickly become disordered in maintaining those identities.
- Therefore, it’s not just changing desires or affections but changing or remembering who we are in Christ.
Understanding our new nature in Christ opens us up to new affections that flow from the springs of His goodness, mercy, truth, love, and more.
In Christ, we have a new name…despite:
- What others say of us…
- What position we hold or do not hold…
- What desires are satisfied…
- What authority we have, and where we have it…
- How much money we have…
Let’s meditate on being in the beloved this week. Consider the cross, the love, and the new life in Christ.
Amen.
We press on.
— August 8, 2024