How My Habits Work - And Can Change

Every year you make resolutions. What if you knew how to make them actually stick? What if your resolutions went beyond you and could change the world? This January, discover what the Bible and the latest research teach about the amazing power of simple habits. You can change your habits, and your habits can change your life. Well, good morning and Happy New Year. I am stoked to start this new series. Grab your message notes that look like this from the bulletins that you got when you came in.

My name is René, one of the pastors here. And I'm actually continuing a series that one of our other pastors, Mark Spurlock, began last weekend on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day on habits. And I gotta tell you, I was so motivated to do this series because I was captivated by a book that's a bestseller right now called The Power of Habit by a guy named Charles Duhigg. Now, this is not a religious book. This is not a Christian book. It's a secular book. It's kind of a business book. But as I read this, I kept thinking Twin Lakes Church has got to hear this stuff. Why? This is not a book club, right? It's because the research in this book illustrates a massively important concept that's all through the Bible about how God designed your life to work.

And if you understand these biblical principles, it is going to change your habits and in turn, literally change your destiny. So are you ready for this? Here's our key passage for this series. It's in your notes also on the screen. Galatians 6:7–9. Mark looked at this last weekend where it says, "Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." Say that with me. Say, "A man reaps what he sows." In other words, you harvest what you plant from your daily habits.

Now, why does Paul talk about this? Just in context, this is in the book of Galatians. And Galatians is a book of the Bible all about grace. It's all about how we don't have to earn God's love. God already loves you unconditionally. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there's nothing you can do to make God love you less. His love is unconditional. It is impervious to your good or bad deeds. And in fact, you are saved not by your good works. You are 100% saved by grace. Is anybody else happy about that? Because I am so happy about that.

But a lot of people, and if you've ever worked with young people, or if you've had maybe teenagers of your own, maybe you've thought these thoughts. A lot of people would hear that. You mean I'm saved by grace 100%? I don't earn my way to heaven? It has nothing to do with my deeds. People would say, "Well, if that's true, then why can't I live however I want to? Why can't I do whatever bad habits I want to do if it's all by God's grace?" Well, at the very end of this book, all about the grace of God, Paul says, "Well, here's why. You reap what you sow." On this earth, if you have bad habits in your life, you are going to reap destruction.

Now, you're never going to lose God's love. You're not going to lose God's free gift of salvation, but it is going to wreak havoc in your life. He goes on to describe this in very vivid terms. "Whoever sows," that is plants, "to please his flesh from the flesh will reap destruction. But whoever sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal or abundant," what? "Life. So," he says, "let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time," and say this last line with me, "we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." The point is your small daily habits add up, and they are going to lead to either death or life, either something negative or something positive in your life.

So the key question is, how do I purposely develop life-giving habits? And this is not easy. Exhibit A, this time of year, millions of people around America are trying super hard to stop bad habits and start good habits through their New Year's resolutions. An article in Time Magazine, though, this week says 60% of people who make New Year's resolutions will fail within just a couple of weeks. Now, why is that? These people are making these resolutions because they really, really, really want to change, and yet they're going to fail. Why? It is because they do not understand what we are going to be learning this morning about how God designed you to work.

The concept that we're going to be discussing is one of the most important things you could ever learn in your entire life—how my habits work and how they can change. And I want to start with a true story about one of the most influential men of the 20th century, and yet most people have never seen a picture of him. This person has either impacted your life or you know people who have been impacted by this person's life, and yet you probably have never seen his face. This is the true story of a man named Bill Wilson, known to many people simply as Bill W.

Bill Wilson was raised in a family of T-totallers. He was a T-totaller himself, never touched a drop of alcohol, and then he went into the army. He was sharp. He was very motivated, and so he got on the fast track to becoming an officer. And at an officer's party, he was handed a cocktail. It was a Bronx cocktail. I didn't know what that was, so I looked it up. That's a combination of gin, vermouth, and orange juice. And he took one sip and turned to the person next to him and said, I have just discovered the elixir of life. And for the next two decades, drinking became a major part of his existence.

By the mid-1930s, he was starting to spin completely out of control. All his money was gone. He had lost his job. His family was almost gone. And one cold winter day, like today, a friend dropped by his house, an old drinking buddy from the army, and Wilson pours him a drink, like always. But this time, the friend refuses, and he says, I've been dry for two months. Now, Bill Wilson had been wanting to quit drinking, too, because he'd seen how it had been taken over his life. And so he said, you've got to tell me how you did that. And his friend started talking about sin and how the Bible says that when we are enslaved to a sin, we are literally powerless to overcome it.

And he said, I've received Jesus Christ into my life, and he has transformed my life. And Bill Wilson looked at him and thought, this guy is nuts. He said, he's as drunk on religion as he used to be drunk on booze, and he totally rejected his friend's advice. And he continued his downward spiral. He desperately checked himself into a prestigious New York clinic for alcoholism, and that didn't work. And he got to the point where he could hardly function. He was hallucinating. He had tremors. He had the shakes. He was in constant pain. He finally hit bottom.

And one night, completely alone in his room, finally realizing he was unable to help himself, he cried out. Now, this was a lifelong die-hard atheist crying out, all right, if there is a God, let him show himself because I am ready to do anything, anything. And what happened next in answer to that prayer has been retold thousands of times in millions of 12-step groups. Bill Wilson experienced the ecstasy of what he interpreted as the very presence of God, and the desire to drink was taken away from him entirely. He never had another drink the rest of his life.

But he said he realized that for most people, it wasn't going to happen that quickly. And so he decided to spend the rest of his life helping people change the habit that almost killed him. And the result was the 12-step program that we know as Alcoholics Anonymous. And the 12 Steps of Recovery are a huge part of our recovery groups here at Twin Lakes Church, too. Now, I want to make something clear. Wilson did not follow a scientific formula for AA. For example, you know why he said he made it 12 steps? He said it could have been 10, could have been 14. But he chose 12 because 12 is a major number in the Bible. He said there were 12 apostles. There were 12 tribes. So 12 must be meaningful to God. So he came up with a way to make it 12.

This is the kind of thinking that went into the 12 steps. It was very informed by Scripture. And it is a phenomenal example of our key concept for today, which is this. It is not easy to erase a bad habit. In fact, it is almost impossible to look at a bad habit and say, I'm going to change you. Because what happens is habits we know now, they literally change your brain. And I don't mean metaphorically. I mean literally, they form neurological, physical pathways in your brain that cannot be erased unless you have brain damage or something. And who wants that, right?

But the good news is this. It's relatively easy to start a new habit that crowds out the old. And this is the first thing Bill Wilson got exactly right. Because he asked that those beginning AA commit to attending 90 meetings in 90 days. And if a meeting wasn't available, then you can call on your sponsor. But do you see what he's doing there? He doesn't just say, stop drinking. He says, start this new substitute habit. And so what we're going to do for the rest of our time today is discuss, how do you start that new substitute habit? Because there are ways to do it that are crucial and that are biblical. And once you understand this concept, you're going to see it over and over and over and over again in the pages of Scripture. And it will change your life.

So for the next few minutes, just focus on this because this is life-changing material. So let's look first at how habits work as a review. And you're going to keep hearing this during this series. Last weekend, Mark talked about the habit loop that scientists have discovered. First, there's the cue. And the cue could be loneliness or hunger or anger or you're feeling tired or you're feeling bored or maybe just kind of the time of day or maybe somebody is picking on you and you feel low self-esteem. The cue, the trigger could be anything.

And there's the routine and response to the cue. You start drinking or you start aimlessly eating or you start browsing the internet aimlessly for hours on end. For some people, the response is raging or other compulsive behaviors. And then you get the reward from the routine, which is a buzz maybe or high or a sense of release or maybe it's just distraction from your anxieties or your loneliness or whatever. The reward could be anything.

Researchers first described this loop in a famous experiment with a monkey named Julio. And in case you're worried about what they did to the monkey, don't worry. They didn't do anything bad to the monkey. In fact, they gave the monkey what he wanted. Here's the experiment. Julio and then many, many other monkeys like him were given a TV in their little living space. And the TV was showing just all kinds of random things. But whenever the TV showed a colored shape, a red triangle, say, or a green square, then if the monkey pressed a lever, every time he saw the colored shape, he would get a reward.

It turns out monkeys love, love, love fruit juice. And so they would give him fruit juice every time he would touch the lever. Now, if you just touch the lever, he didn't get the fruit juice. It had to be in response to the cue, which was the color shape. So the cue was color shaped. The routine was pressed the lever. The reward was fruit juice. And what happened was Julio sat glued to his TV screen all day long just waiting for that magic cue. And they monitored his brainwaves. Every time he took a drink, his brainwave activity spiked, showing he was feeling very happy. The endorphins were flowing.

But then something interesting occurred. After only about a week, something happened. Watch this. The spike in brain activity began not when he took a drink of the fruit juice. Ah, delicious juice. It began way earlier at the cue stage when he first saw the rewards on the screen. He would start feeling the endorphins then, oh boy, oh boy, it's a colored shape. And then when he did the routine but did not get the full reward, when as an experiment, they withheld the fruit juice, Julio became very moody. And you do not want to be around a moody monkey, right? He'd start to sulk and he'd get angry, he'd get destructive in his cage because he didn't get the complete reward that he had been anticipating.

And they found the same exact thing with human beings. For example, there's a zillion examples, but gambling addicts start feeling the endorphins. They start feeling the high of winning long before they actually win anything. Long before they walk into a casino. Just thinking of gambling, just anticipating the reward, gets them excited. But when they don't actually finish it, when they don't get to gamble, they get sulky and grumpy and they become moody monkeys, right? Alcoholics, same thing. Shopaholics, pornaholics, whatever you want to talk about. Workaholics.

Now, here's the thing. They discovered that's when habits happen. When you start to anticipate the reward at the cue stage, that's when habits become almost impossible to erase. It's kind of like this. Quick show of hands, how many of you have ever been to an animal show like at SeaWorld or Six Flags, Animal Kingdom or a circus or something like that, right? Almost all of us. I am amazed at the sea lion shows that they have at places like this, where they have sea lions act out, and they hold like 20-minute scripts. It's incredible. Because here in Santa Cruz, we know sea lions. And we know they are the laziest, most self-centered tubs of lard God ever made. And you watch them at these places, they're working for a living, right? How do they do that? Well, it turns out that sea lions will do almost anything for just a couple of little sardines.

And that picture right there, that is the habit loop. Anytime you see any animal trained to do anything, they will do any routine if it's linked to their favorite reward. And we humans are wired the same exact way. So you just gotta ask yourself, what's my sardine, right? What rewards tend to motivate me? Now, just to help you out, researchers have found that for humans, basically, there's three kinds of rewards. I'm going to give you these real quick, stay on page one, because I want to talk about these in your life and in mine.

First, of course, there's pleasure, a sense of I feel better now. You get a high, you get a buzz or something. Then there's social rewards, a sense of I am liked, I'm accepted, I'm part of the group. And then there are achievement rewards, a feeling of I am making progress. And this is a huge one for me. At the end of the day, if I am feeling like I have made some progress, then I am happy. And if I didn't make progress, I am unhappy, and that's probably why I am a workaholic. But let's not stop talking about me. Let's get back to Bill W. and the 12 Steps.

The genius of Bill Wilson and his 12 Steps, I think, again, enlightened by principles, right out of God's word, is that he realized, now, keep looking at this bullet point, you're right here, the three kinds of rewards. He realized that for most alcoholics and drug addicts, you'd think, why are they drinking? Why are they using? Well, it's because of pleasure, right? He realized actually very few people drink and use solely because of pleasure. For many of them, the social rewards are a huge part of it. As they say, partiers like the party. Partiers like the party, not just the alcohol, not just the drugs.

And so he substituted the 12 Step group, the fellowship of that, for the fellowship of the party. Didn't just tell people not to go to the party, gave them a substitute, a new habit to develop. And the sense of reward and achievement that you don't have when your life is being flushed down the toilet by yourself and your drugs, he said, here's what I'm gonna do. There's 12 Steps that you work, so there's a sense of progress, and keep track of your sober days, and then at the end of 90 days, you get a pin. And at the end of a year, you get a pin or a chip, so that there's a sense of achievement, there's a sense of progress.

So there's a built-in social reward, a built-in achievement reward, but what about the pleasure reward? Because you're not getting the buzz of a high anymore. Brilliantly and biblically, he said there is a pleasure reward that comes from living soberly, righteously, and he called it serenity. The Bible calls it peace. He says this is something you do not have in your life when you are addicted to a self-destructive pattern. You might get a buzz, you might get a high, but you don't have that sense of wholeness, that sense of integrity, that relaxed sense of peace and serenity that you have when you're living a holy, sober, righteous life.

And when you understand this habit loop, when you see that not only the best recovery programs, the best exercise programs, they all tend to have these three kinds of awards, you start to see this habit loop almost everywhere in scripture, because God designed you to function this way, because God wants you not to have to think about every single step you make, but to get autopilots built into your life that automatically steer you in the right direction.

I could give you a dozen examples from scripture, but here's just one, Philippians 4:6–9. And I want us to read this out loud together. It's on the screen and on the top of page two. Let me hear you. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything, tell God your needs, and don't forget to thank him for his answers. Now watch this. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.

Now, look up here for a second. Put your thinking caps on here, because I want you to talk back to me. Look at these verses. What is the cue in these verses? What's the trigger? It's worry. It's anxiety. It's anything that causes you to kind of ring your hands. So you substitute a new routine. You're cued to worry, but instead of worry, Paul says, do what? Pray about everything, tell God your needs, and don't forget to thank him. Be grateful. So that's the new routine for the old trigger of anxiety. And what's the reward? If you do these things, you will, what? Experience God's peace. In other words, serenity.

Listen, the Bible very rarely just tells you not to do something. It almost always substitutes a new routine for the old destructive routine, and promises a reward. And this is something I really want to emphasize, because in the kind of Christianity that I grew up in, which was awesome, I love my church, but for some reason or another, they were very uncomfortable with reward passages in the Bible, very uncomfortable. I think it was an overreaction to the health and wealth preaching, the prosperity gospel that was going around when I was a kid and it's coming around again.

But they were so against any idea of doing anything for any kind of rewards that they never talked about it, it seemed to be embarrassed, but the idea was sort of like, I'm gonna live a holy, righteous life because being miserable makes God happy or something. You know, they just ignore the, but rewards are all over the Bible. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right, and it will go well with you. Moses says to the children of Israel, talk about these things, the law of Moses, when you rise and when you sit and when you go out, why, so that it will go well with you and you will prosper in everything you do.

Rewards are all over the Bible, and of course, research proves that people who attend church, people who have faith, people who pray regularly, do tend to have better health, do tend to report better happiness levels. The rewards that scripture promises. So never shy away from telling yourself about the rewards that God promises for righteous living. Of course, that does not mean you're gonna get the Cadillac or the Mercedes or whatever it is that you want, but it means all things being equal, you'll have more peace of mind, more serenity in life.

So this is how habits work. Now the question is, how do I change my habits, right? You probably already know something in your life that you want to change, and if you don't, turn to the person that you came to church with and ask them, and I guarantee you, you'll come up with something, right? So some of you are going, okay, but how do I put all this to use and change my habits? Now there's three things I want to talk about that are key. The last one is the most important. But let's start out with this. Number one, in these three keys to habit change, identify your cues. Substitute a new routine and see the rewards.

Identify your cue, substitute a new routine, and then enjoy the rewards. Let me give you one example. The author of The Power of Habits, Charles Duhigg, says he noticed that while he was writing the book in the big magazine office where he worked, every single afternoon at three o'clock, he would get a cue, a trigger. He would crave a break, a cookie break. And so he would leave his desk where he was typing this book about habits, and he would do his habit. He would go up to the break room on the next floor, and he would buy one of those giant jumbo cookies, you know, that they sell that are the size of dinner plates, and he'd eat the whole thing in 20 minutes, and he'd socialize with his friends at work and they would laugh and gossip and have a good time, then he'd go back to his office.

Well, after a whole year of doing this, he'd gained several pounds thanks to this habit. So he decides he's going to put his own research in his own book that he is working on to use on analyzing this routine. So he does this analysis. What's the cue? The cue was three in the afternoon. He said, every, like within a minute or two. Now maybe it was low blood sugar or something else, but his body had learned three o'clock. And the routine was he goes up to the break room and gets a cookie. The reward, well, that's where he got stumped for a little bit, because what really was the reward? It wasn't really the cookie. He actually didn't even really like those cookies that much.

And so I thought, what actually is the reward? Well, what I love is I love to hang out with my coworkers and laugh and catch up. Socializing was the reward. And so what he did to change was this. When the cue, 3 p.m. happened, he still went up to the break room, as was his habit, only instead of a cookie, he ate fruit slices or carrots or nuts that he brought to work, substituted that routine, and then he gave himself the exact same reward, socializing. And he found that by keeping the cue and keeping the reward, but substituting a different routine, his old habit within just a few weeks was completely replaced by this new one.

Now, this is not just some kind of self-improvement message because you see this pattern all throughout the Bible. For example, see if you can spot it here in 1 Peter 3:9. Watch this. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. Do you see the cue, the reward, and the routine here? What's the cue? The cue is when you are what? Insulted. That's the cue. Somebody insults you. And what's the old routine? You insult them back. This is a very hard habit to stop because in our culture, we value the quick quippy comeback, right? We think it's so cool if somebody comes up with a cutting comeback.

The greatest example is Winston Churchill. My wife and I were watching a show about him just last night. He had that famous, he had so many stories of this, but famously a woman got into an elevator and spotted Winston Churchill. She hated him. And she said, "Sir Churchill, if I were your wife, I'd put poison in your tea." And he looked at her without missing a beat. And he said, "Magram, if you were my wife, I'd drink it." You hear that? You just go, "That's brilliant. I wish I was like that." Right? Bam! So that's a tough habit to break, if you can do it well. So Paul says, "Here's the thing. Here's the cue is the insult. What's the new routine here? What's the new routine?" You bless those who insult you. You think of something positive to say about them. What's the reward? So that you inherit a blessing. You will be rewarded, and it's true. Try it. Bless those who insult you, and you'll find that counter-intuitively, you'll have a bigger sense of control over the situation.

Instead of being all riled up, you'll develop a sense of peace and serenity. So let's get personal here. You know how the doctor told you the other day you should be exercising more, and he told you you should go for a walk 30 minutes a day? You know how I know the doctor told you that? Because he tells that to everybody, and a lot of us don't do it because it sounds terrible. What if, like Charles Duhigg, you realize one thing you love is to socialize? So you walk for 30 minutes with a friend. Now you're combining the reward you love socializing with a new habit, and you are going to develop that because that's the way God made you. You got that first key?

Now, again, this is not about trying harder. It's about getting into the groove of how God already designed you to work. Second key to changing your habits, don't try to change a bunch of habits at once. That's the most common mistake people make. Instead, focus on a single keystone habit. What's a keystone habit? A keystone habit is a habit that makes other habits flourish. Now let me just give you one example. Say 20 years ago, the accepted wisdom was if you wanted to get people to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle, they would give you literally a pamphlet of advice. Change your diet, eat this kind of food, and you gotta exercise in this, and don't use elevators, use the stairs, and go see a food counselor, and just a pile of advice.

But when they actually did research about how well all that advice worked, the results were abysmal. Because when people get 35 new things to do, it just increases exponentially the opportunities to fail. And so everybody just gave up. In 2009, this recently, research study funded by the National Institutes of Health accidentally made a paradigm-shattering discovery. Fascinating, fascinating study. They gathered 1,600 people who were obese, not just overweight, and they gave them one new habit to develop, only one. They said, "Keep a food diary of what you eat all day long, not daily. Just do this one day a week, and you pick the day!" Super simple habit, right? Go out, get a diary, keep track of what you eat one time a week.

What happened was this keystone habit started taking over people's lives. The researchers did not give people any other instructions about diet or anything. Well, most people started keeping food diaries every day instead of just one day a week because they kinda got into it. And then they started noticing patterns in their own lives, like I always snack at 3 p.m. every day, so I'm gonna substitute a healthy snack. And then a lot of people started using their diaries to forecast healthy meals, like instead of just recording what I eat, I'm gonna start determining what I eat. And all kinds of healthy behaviors came out of this one keystone habit, and by the end of the study, the people who had kept up with their weekly food diaries had lost 25% more weight than people in a control group.

And they realized the importance of just giving people one key thing to change. Now, I could show you so many ways that the Bible talks about this, and we are going to be talking about this next weekend. Come back, don't miss it, but I wanna give you just one example from Psalm 1, where it says, "Blessed," watch this, "is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night." Meditating on Scripture, that's the only thing here that's mentioned, what happens? Mark talked about this last weekend. "Fat person is like a tree planted by streams of water," watch this, "which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers." So prospering in all of life is linked to one keystone habit, which is what? Meditating on Scripture.

I discovered this for myself after my anxiety attack. Many of you have heard this story. It bears repeating though, in light of what we're learning today. I had this anxiety attack go to ER at Dominican and the doctor tells me, "No, you're not having a heart attack, it's an anxiety attack." And he tells me, "You gotta sleep better, you gotta get into an exercise routine, you gotta change your diet," and so on. And he's a Christian and he recognizes me from church. And he says, "You know what I'm gonna recommend to you as a prescription? Meditate on Scripture." All the other things sounded impossible to me, but that I thought I can do that.

So here's what I did at his recommendation. I got a small stack of three by five cards like this, put a rubber band around them, and I wrote on each three by five card one positive promise, a verse from Scripture, just in my own hand. And then what I did every night was I read one or more of those verses before I went to sleep and then I slept with this under my pillow at night, not because I thought it would leak into my brain through osmosis or something, but because I often wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety.

And so during that period, what I would do was I would reach back before I had a chance to think about all the things I was anxious about, grab that stack of cards, read a couple of verses, instead of letting that cue anxiety lead me to a bad habit, that cue led me to this. Put it back under my pillow again, woke up in the morning, the first thing before, all the thoughts crowd into your head that you're worried about, first thing I did was grab this, read a couple of verses, and then when I got dressed, I put it in my back pocket like a wallet. And then I would drive to work before I would walk into the building, because that was a trigger for anxiety for me. I took this out, read a verse, put it back in my back pocket.

At night, I would drive home in the driveway before I walked in the house, because that can be a trigger for anxiety. Took this out, read a verse. At night, before I went to bed, read a verse, put it under my pillow, repeat. What happened was, first of all, I was substituting a new routine for the old cue, and I was discovering that this was a keystone habit, because when I did this, I was doing so many other good things. I was practicing self-control, which washed over into so many other aspects of my life. I was sharpening my mind, because without even intending to, really, I was memorizing verses, so I was increasing my brain power.

Reading verses about God's sovereignty and the peace that God gives was helping me to be in conscious contact with God, helping me to recognize the serenity that He offers me, the peace of mind that I have in Christ. And so these verses were a keystone habit that changed so much else for me. And I just want to encourage you to try that as your keystone habit. I put some of the verses that I wrote down on my three by five cards, on page three of your notes right here. Now, these aren't all of them. Come with some of your own by reading the Bible on your own, or maybe you have other favorite verses. But here's just some that I used. Get a stack of three by five cards in a rubber band and try it yourself, or try some more high-tech way of doing it, and see if the peace of God doesn't guard your mind, too.

Now, this isn't the only possible keystone habit. Running became another keystone habit for me. Research has shown that for families eating dinner together every night is a keystone habit because of so many other good things that come out of that one habit. In fact, on page two of your bulletin notes, I put down some possible keystone habits for you. Do you see those there? Maybe for you, listening to worship music every day is a keystone habit. Many people have found that the practice of gratitude changes everything else in their lives. But does that make sense to you? What is a keystone habit for you? Choose that one thing, and only focus on that, and see how it affects so many other things.

So, let's wrap this up. How do you change your habits? Will you recognize that cue and create a new routine with a great reward, like serenity? You choose a single keystone habit to focus on instead of trying to change everything at once. And finally, the most important one of all, the one without which none of the rest of this would work. And that's this, you trust in God's power. I want to read you just a paragraph from the book, The Power of Habit, because I love it when secular scientists doing research who aren't religious at all discover in their research things that show the Bible to be true. And there's something right here in this brand new bestseller.

Listen to this. Researchers try to figure out why the 12 steps of AA work. Notice the pattern in interviews. Over and over, recovering alcoholics said the same thing. Yes, identifying cues and choosing new routines is important, but without another ingredient, the new habits never took hold. The secret, they said, was God. And researchers hated that explanation. Because God is not a testable hypothesis. But finally, in 2005, a group of scientists associated with UC Berkeley, right up the road here, looked at data to see if there really was any correlation between religious belief and how long people stayed sober. And indeed, a pattern emerged. Those who believed were far more likely to make it through stressful periods with their sobriety intact.

One researcher quoted the book says this, "I wouldn't have said this a year ago. That's how fast our understanding is changing. But belief seems critical." Now they said it's beyond our brief to determine whether or not God exists. But they said, "We can tell you this for sure. Believing he exists changes everything." Isn't that intriguing? What's more, it's being in a group of people who believe, as another researcher said. At this point, at some points, people look around and they think, "If it worked for that guy, it can work for me." A community creates belief. And this is exactly what the Bible says in so many places that we are going to look at next weekend.

But for now, I think this point is summarized so well in Philippians 2:12. Look at our last verse today. "Work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper sense of awe and responsibility, for it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose." You do have a responsibility to choose to sow good seeds, but the harvest to do that and the power to even sow those seeds doesn't come from you. It's all about God's power at work within you.

Let me land this plane. If you are here today and you are here out of need, and maybe you've already started your recovery by looking to a higher power as you define him, let me just challenge you. Just being here today in a group of believers is so important, keep coming back. But most importantly, if you specifically look to the God who really is, if you specifically look to the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you will find real life change happening for you, like maybe you've never ever seen before.

This verse says, "God will give you the will and the power to achieve his purpose in your life." And what's his purpose? What's God's purpose in saving you? If God saved you by his grace just to get you to heaven, then you'd be beamed up instantly. God's purpose in showing grace to you is to transform you. So your transformation is God's will. That's his purpose for you. And that means when you want to change, he is behind you 100%. I just want to encourage you, if you feel like this is some place where you're headed, to come join us Monday nights and Thursday nights at our recovery groups. They're at seven o'clock over in Munski Hall.

This week we're starting by showing a movie, the story of Bill W. So it's a perfect time to start as we begin the 12-step process again this week. I hope you come. It's anonymous and everybody there would be happy to see you. If you have a need after the service, specifically related to the habit, the Spirit, the Stephen ministers are going to be up front here to pray with you afterwards. Please don't let the service go by without coming up and asking for prayer for your habits.

But I want to leave you on a note of hope. I want to show you a little two and a half minute video testimony of a young woman here at Twin Lakes Church to show you that this is not just Sunday school or 12-step propaganda. It's real. Now the program she's in is designed to create major long-term habit replacement. But this same transformation can happen in your life as it has in hers when you turn your life over to the Lord. Watch the screen.

My name's Jasmine and I have overcome an addiction of alcoholism. And at the age of 14, I started drinking and that led me to know where I ended up getting sexually abused, multiple car accidents, DUI, when I found out that alcohol was actually in controlling my life. And when I was putting my family at risk and in danger, that's when I realized that I could no longer be drinking and no longer continue the life that I was living. So I had enough and I decided to sign up with Teen Challenge, which is a minimum of 13 months.

And with Teen Challenge, we're actually limited with technology, which means we don't get a cell phone and we don't get internet access. As well as our contact with our family members are also limited, which we get to talk to them once a week and go on passes once a month for our relationship with God to grow and to keep them one-on-one with God so we're not distracted by anything around us. Teen Challenge has helped me with positive, healthy habits by increasing my relationship with God, by guiding me with His word, by teaching a new identity that I'm a child of God and no longer a slave to my addiction.

On a daily basis, I do my devotions. I stay communicating with God through prayer and His word. As well as staying involved with my home church, which is Twin Lakes, with the Hub, the Kids Ministry, as well as being a student intern for Teen Challenge and helping out the new students who come into the program and just encouraging them and motivating them helps me build healthy habits to stay out of my old self. I would encourage anyone who's struggling with any type of addiction to seek help because you definitely can't do it on your own. Without the support that I have from Teen Challenge, my sister's a staff member and everyone involved with Teen Challenge, I definitely know that I couldn't have made it because of the solid foundation that I have built with Christ and because I know where my identity stands, I'm able to use these tools in my everyday life.

Jasmine's sitting right down there. Good job, Jasmine. God is glorified as lives are transformed. Let's pray together, would you bow your head with me? Just with our heads bowed, I want to give you a chance to apply this message and I want you to think of an area where you want to change and just give that to God right now or ask him what that might be. And if you're serious about this, say something like this, Lord, I confess I haven't been able to change this in my own power, but I ask you for your power now and I believe that with God, all things are possible and I may not change overnight and I will have setbacks, but God help me to start planting good seeds now and I will reap a harvest. And I do this not in my own power, but your power which I receive from you by your grace. And maybe for the first time, say to God, I believe that since Jesus died on the cross to make a relationship with the Lord possible, he will never abandon me in my process of character transformation. Thank you, God, so much for that. In Jesus name I pray, amen.