Episode #285 Do You Own Your Habits, or Do They Own You? – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

It starts small. Something you can't stop buying. Checking your phone. Scrolling social media. Online shopping. Binge watching shows. Checking your appearance in mirrors. People pleasing. Seeking the next achievement or constantly organizing. But over time, these things can start owning more of you than you realize. Today we're talking about undisciplined compulsions, and if it feels like I'm stepping on your toes, I want you to know I'm stepping on my toes too. I did not see this topic coming.

I'm rereading Richard Foster's book, the Celebration of Discipline. And I'm in this section on simplicity where he drops this quote, “How do you discern an addiction? Very simply, you watch for undisciplined compulsions.”

He talks about reordering our lives around one thing, the main thing, seeking God first and his kingdom. He exhorts us to look at the things that are undisciplined, where we can't help it. Where our body, or our mind, our appetites, our emotions, have this compulsive desire that must be met. And how when those things happen, they can end up ruling over us. The things that you own can actually own you.

I'm maybe a year or so into removing my love and daily use of coffee. And part of that is just because my body stopped responding to it favorably. I started feeling anxious in my body, even though I knew I wasn't anxious in my mind or my heart. And I started realizing that my caffeine intake was messing with my gut health. And there were some health reasons that prompted me to stop drinking my many cup a day coffees. But part of that struggle was also realizing that if I didn't have enough caffeine, I started getting headaches. And so I had this addiction in my body that said, you must have coffee today. You cannot function without it. You're gonna have physical pain. And I also realized I had this mental compulsion toward it. Oh, I'll think better. I'll show up better if I have this supplementary caffeine boost. And I didn't want to have that dependency.

Now I'm not coming after your morning cup of coffee. I'm not coming to say you must start or stop any specific action. But I'm sharing this as an example because these undisciplined compulsions can show up in so many areas of our lives. I'm simply offering a topic for each of us, me included, to talk with God about. In Foster's book, he talks about learning “to enjoy things without owning them. Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we can control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.”

And that jumped out at me too because I can buy things that are recommended on social media with the best of them. I can look for the latest whatever, and those can also be undisciplined compulsions, instead of me directing my own actions.

In 1 Corinthians 6:12 it says, “all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.”

In this vein, it has me thinking about what things might be dominating me. What appetites or interests are exerting control in my life in ways that I don't want them to. I think Fosters insight about owning things and seeking more pleasure because we own them, is really insightful about our day and age in the world. And Jesus even speaks to this in Luke 12:15. He says, “take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

And this is a discipline because we get to exert our free will in these areas of our lives, and we get to yield these things to God. To ask him what he might want to heal or renew or transform in us.

When God is our treasure, we're freed from the compulsive attachments to lesser things, and we can often use them without being used by them. It's all putting things in proper order, right?

Even things that are good and helpful for us. Good habits. Exercise, eating well, cleaning our homes, and organizing our schedules, managing day-to-day life stuff can exert control over us if we let it. They can become undisciplined or maybe even overly disciplined compulsions that rule us. That burden us. Instead of resources and tools and habits that are useful to us.

And I don't know if that applies to you and if it does what those things are, but God does. And so let's take that conversation over to him to see what he might want to share with each one of us.

And here's a question for you:

God, what compulsive behaviors do you want to bring to my attention? And then follow that conversation with him wherever he leads.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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