Don’t Make It a Habit

       I think the hardest thing about moving isn’t filling the boxes, or renting the truck or figuring out where everything goes, it’s all the change in habit.  Those simple routines we work ourselves into to simplify life.   Now instead of going into autopilot and following a familiar routine, we are forced make hundreds of little decision that normally would never enter our mind.  Everything seems harder than it should be.  Habits help make life easier.

           

            Easier however doesn’t always mean better.  Bad habits can give us less discomfort in the short term but set us up longer term failure.  Poor or vulgar language makes it “easy to say” but leaves others with negative long term impressions about us.  Fast and easy meals are nice but may bring regrets to your waistline.  The Bible tells us of another example.  In Hebrews 10:24-25 we read, “ and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” 

 Not assembling with the saints is bad habit that can develop too easily.  It starts by having too much to do on Wednesday to make it to services.  Then it woos us into think we just can’t get up and make it for Bible Class on Sunday morning.  Then Sunday nights are missed. Soon it has been several weeks since we even darkened the doors.  This habit not only has a negative effect on us but also on the church as well.

               Notice how this verse doesn’t concentrate on the negative personal reasons of a habit of missing services, though there are many.  Rather it looks at how that habit effects the responsibility the member has to encourage and lift up the brethren. The church is harmed when Christian reject that responsibility. The next few verses (26-31) have some the strongest condemnation of willful sin in the Bible. To God, forsaking the assembly isn’t just a bad habit; it is an attack on his Son and his sacrifice!