Life's Most Important Habit

Good morning. My name is René. I'm one of the pastors here. I want to welcome everybody here in the auditorium and everybody who's watching via video joining us over in venue. Everybody watching on cable and on the internet. I want to invite you to grab your message notes that look like this from your bulletins. And if you're online, you can also download these in the TLC app or on our website, TLC.org.

I am continuing this morning on a topic that can absolutely change the trajectory of your entire life, the subject of habits. And as we've been saying the last couple of weeks, I was motivated to do this series by the book The Power of Habits. It's by a man named Charles Doohyck. It's a bestseller right now. But I have been fascinated by this because this book just illustrates with modern research exactly what the Bible has already been saying for literally thousands of years about the power of habits to impact your life and the lives of all of those around you.

And just as an example, here's a story that Charles Doohyck kicks off one of the chapters with a young man named Travis Leach. This is a true story. Travis grew up just over in the Central Valley of California over in Lodi. How many of you have ever been to Lodi? Can I see that show of hands? How many of you are glad you're not stuck in Lodi right now? All right.

Well, Travis grew up in very difficult circumstances. When Travis was just nine years old, he saw his father overdose for the first time of many. His mother was already in prison for several years. He grew up with almost zero parental supervision. And to show you how little parental involvement he had in his life, some friends took him to Disneyland when he was a child. And he remembers that trip because that was the first time he was ever photographed by anyone. His parents never took any pictures of him growing up as a child until he went to Disneyland and a staff photographer took a picture of him there.

Travis dropped out of high school when he was only 16 years old and he started to work in a series of entry-level jobs, car washes, fast food places. But he would get fired after just a few weeks because he had zero self-discipline. He would come in late to work. He would come in having missed days with no excuse. He would lose his temper with clients who would just push his buttons just a little bit. And every single time he got fired, he would go home and look at himself in the mirror and pound on it and say, "Come on, get a hold of yourself." But nothing changed. He just kept spiraling down.

And then a friend told him, "Hey, they are opening a Starbucks just around the corner. You should go apply." And so he did, thinking it would just be another one of these series of jobs. That was six years ago. Today, Travis is the general manager of two thriving Starbucks locations in the Central Valley. He's responsible for an annual net revenue exceeding $2 million a year. He oversees 40 employees. He has zero personal debt. He's got a wonderful retirement program. He is on a fast track to really getting some place. And he says, "The most important thing that ever happened to me was Starbucks."

Now, why is that the case? Well, on day one, they enrolled him in the, at that time, newly revamped Starbucks employee training program. And in that program, Starbucks used to teach their new employees just kind of how to make lattes and how to work the register. And then they realized more and more the young people that we're getting as employees, like Travis, literally have never been trained in just basic life skills, especially not in the single most important habit in life. And Travis says, "Learning this changed his life."

In other words, Starbucks, of all places, is teaching a life habit that schools and parents, and yes, even churches, are failing to provide in too many cases today. You could call it life's most important habit. Research proves this. The Bible talks about this habit in old and new testaments literally hundreds of times. What do you imagine it might be?

Before I tell you a quick review, last weekend we saw how once it's ingrained in your brain, it's almost impossible to stop a bad habit. That's the bad news. But the good news is it is very possible to start a new substitute habit that crowds out the old one. And as we saw in scripture after scripture last week, this is how the Bible always talks about replacing bad behaviors with good behaviors, replacing old ways of thinking with new ways of thinking. It almost never says just to stop this old thing. It says start this new thing instead.

And we talked about keystone habits. These are habits that impact so many other behaviors. So you focus on one keystone habit at a time if you really want to change your life instead of trying to change a ton of stuff at once. Just change that one thing. And if it's a good keystone habit, it's going to affect so many other things.

Now, this morning, as I said, I want to talk about life's most important keystone habit. It's the habit Travis Leach learned from Starbucks employee training. It's a habit people should be learning in their churches. And even though when I tell you what it is, you'll say, oh, well, that was kind of a trick question. René, I knew that already. Most of us resist this habit for most of our lives. Now, again, just kind of in the back of your mind, what would you imagine that this habit is?

Now, before I tell you what it is, let me show you some research right before we dive into Scripture. In 2006, Australian researchers decided to do an experiment on a bunch of people who had all described themselves as couch potatoes. Now, how many of you, if you're really being honest, would say there's a little bit of couch potato in you? Just a little bit. A few hands, one up. How many of you would say the person next to you is definitely—no, just kidding. Don't raise your hand.

The people in this study ranged in age from 18 to 50 years old, so a very wide group demographically. And what they did was they put them into an intense exercise program for two months, weightlifting and resistance training and aerobics and running. And after two months, the researchers noticed something. Not only were these people in better shape, they smoked less if they had been smokers. They drank less if they had been drinkers. They ate less junk. They spent less time watching TV. They were less depressed. It impacted every other part of their lives very dramatically.

And so they wondered, is exercise the magic keystone habit that impacts every other thing? And they wanted to find out, so they designed another experiment. And this time, the same researchers signed up a group of people for a four-month intensive money management program where they taught them about getting out of debt and keeping a checking account and staying on budget. And at the end of four months, not only did their finances improve as they expected them to, but also they smoked less, drank less, ate less junk, spent less time watching TV, and were far less depressed, just like the exercise experiment.

So was it money management and exercise that were the magic keystone habits they wanted to know? So they tried a third experiment. This time, they enrolled another group of people in an academic improvement program, improving study habits. And at the end of two months, their study skills and their grades were much improved. And guess what else? They smoked less, drank less, ate less junk, spent less time watching TV, were far less depressed, and so on.

And what the researchers concluded was what study after study since then, year after year, has shown the most important keystone habit for success in life, self-discipline. It wasn't just that those people learned to exercise or learned to manage their money or learned better study habits. What they were learning was how to discipline themselves. And of course, the Bible talks about this so much, like in Proverbs 16:32, "He who rules his spirit is better than he who captures a city." Learning to rule yourself is better than learning to rule a municipality.

So my question to you is this. What habit are you introducing into your life right now that is helping you in your self-discipline? Because no matter how good you are in your self-discipline, you can always grow. Maybe it's just the daily habit of watching our daily video devos. And if you want to get on track with those, on page 3, it talks about how. Maybe for you, it's exercise. Maybe for you, it's like cleaning house and organizing your life. You can make anything into a truly spiritual discipline because it's developing the self-discipline muscle in your body.

Look at 1 Timothy 4:7. This is the older Apostle Paul talking to the younger Pastor Timothy. And he wants the young guy to be successful. And here's his advice. Let's read this simple verse out loud together. Let me hear you. Train yourself to be godly. The word train, that's the same word that we get our English word gymnasium from. He's like, go to the gym. The character, the godliness gym. Work out that muscle.

And this is very important, that word train, because follow me here. We can get the idea that being godly is just a result of sort of feeling spiritual and sort of mystically getting so blissed out that we just sort of change magically. And so we're just sort of waiting for it to happen passively. Or we can get the idea that some people are just born self-disciplined and some people aren't and I'm not. So there's nothing I can do about it. You know, Paul says train yourself to be godly. Like I said, so many verses on this. Titus 1:8, be what? Self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. 2 Peter 1:6, add to knowledge. In other words, the Christian life is not just about gathering a bunch of knowledge about the Bible. Add to knowledge self-control. And to self-control perseverance and to perseverance godliness. That's the end goal, is godliness.

Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. And we love all of those things, but somehow we want to kind of forget about this last one, self-control. Listen, look up here for just a second because I want to publicly repent of something in front of you today. At this church, I talk a lot about grace, the free gift of God. We are saved by grace. We live by grace. We're changed by grace. The distinctive element of true Christianity is the element of grace. And I will never change that. I don't think I talk too much about grace or maybe even not enough. But I have not talked enough about self-discipline.

And maybe I've given the impression, now I don't believe this, but maybe I've given the false impression that living by grace means you don't have to exercise any self-discipline. But that's not true. And I think we need to talk more about developing the skill of self-discipline in our lives. But, but there is a huge danger here because would you agree with me on this? Christians tend to go one of two extremes when it comes to self-control. We tend toward either on the one hand, legalism, right? Where we get all into performance-based religion and we think that God will love us more and bless us more based on our performance. And if we do well and memorize more Bible verses or go on more mission trips or go to more church services, that we're better than those other ungodly people.

Listen, legalism is the one thing that Jesus fought against more than any other thing in his lifetime because it is so destructive to yourself and others. It leads to self-righteousness and judgmentalism and hypocrisy and ultimately burnout and despair. But on the other hand, there's a whole group of other Christians who want to resist legalism and so they go too far the other direction into laziness. And they basically say, well, if I'm saved by grace, then cool, God will forgive me no matter what I'll do. So I'm just going to do whatever I feel like doing. And that's just as destructive as legalism.

The good news is that the Bible talks about a third way. And I want you to look at a fascinating verse that I think is really underappreciated. It's in Titus 2:11–12. This is our weekly memory verse this week. Look at this. Brilliant. "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all and teaching us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." Don't you love that? It's all the grace of God. God's grace bringing salvation and God's grace teaching me to live a self-controlled life.

Listen, the antithesis of grace is not self-discipline. The antithesis of grace is self-righteousness. Self-righteousness, believing I'm better than others or I can perform better to earn God's favor. That is a lie, but self-discipline is part of the Christian life and it is a godly habit to develop.

Now, before we get to page two in the second half of this message, I want to give you a living example of this. As you know, in this series, every single weekend so far, we have featured the true stories of people here at TLC who developed great habits in their lives or overcome bad habits. And I want to tell you a story via video that we, if you've been attending TLC for the last year or so, you have watched it unfold right here on this stage. And I'm talking about the interesting life transformation that is happening to one of our own pastors, Adrian Moreno. And I want you to watch this and then I'm going to have Adrian up and interview him. Look at the screen.

My name is Adrian. For the past 18 months, I've been committed to my health. So I've always been a big guy. I was chubby as a kid. I got bigger and bigger and life was getting harder. And I think I just thought that's who I am. I'm just a big, fat person and I'm never going to change. And that's who I was. It affected the way I felt about myself. It affected the way I thought people felt about me. And I think even what I thought God felt about me, just because I had no discipline and I never thought I could change. And I thought I was just going to be like this for the rest of my life.

So it started June 2015. I was on Twitter and somebody I follow posted about joining an online fitness group. I'd seen it before, but never clicked it. But for some reason, I decided to click it. It's called Fit by First. And that was the beginning. It wasn't easy. Every day I worked out. 30 days later, I finished. I didn't lose a ton of weight, not a ton of change. But I was used to working out every day and as I progressed, kind of spurred me on just to know that, man, I'm doing better. I'm getting better. I'm getting stronger. I'm getting healthier. That encouraged me and energized me to keep going.

And so now 18 months later, I'm not half the man I was, but I'm a third of the man I was. And it's great. I'm able to run around with my kids without getting tired. I'm able just to do more. So this journey hasn't been perfect. There have been cheat days. There have been days where I just didn't do what I was supposed to do. So my daily habit is making a decision for my health, either be it exercise or what I'm eating or the decisions I'm making. All this time of working out and eating right has built this habit in me. And it's taught me so many different things that it's not about perfection. It's about moving forward, taking a step at a time. I'm just going to do my best. And when I mess up, that's OK. I'm just going to try my best tomorrow.

And I think it's taught me something about my relationship with God. You know, I believe it calls us to love him. I think he also calls us to serve him and to be devoted to him. And I used to think that meant being perfect. And when I messed up, I was a failure in his eyes. But I think part of this journey has taught me that he isn't so concerned about me being perfect, but about this journey that I'm on with him, that I love him every day the best that I can and that the days that I mess up, that I just get back up and try again tomorrow. He loves me the same no matter what.

Hey, let's welcome Adrian Moreno back up. Encourage him. Great job, man. Really good. Awesome. So I'm sure a ton of people have been asking you, how'd you do it? What are you doing? How much weight have you lost? About 100 pounds. That's spectacular. And I love. Yeah, really good. And I love what you talked about, how it's impacted every other area of your life. And it's because you've learned that keys don't have a bit of self-discipline. But I want to get to the tension sometimes that we feel between self-discipline and grace. Because sometimes self-discipline can come off to some people as sort of, "Oh, you're slipping back into works righteousness or something." And I want to ask you, because you mentioned before in sermons you preached here that you really began your journey with Christ in a really legalistic church, and you had to break the back of that before you could learn more godly self-discipline. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, well, you know, so I've been on this journey for almost two years. And one of the biggest lessons I learned, at least on this health fitness thing, I heard on a podcast, or I don't remember where, but somebody said, one of the mistakes people make in a diet or anything like that is when they make a mistake, they feel like that slip up or that cheat or whatever derails everything. And so that's why resolutions end January 4th, because you went to Taco Bell and then you're like, "Well, I'll forget. I've ruined it all, so I'm going to go buy a bag of Cheetos and eat them all right after." And I would do that a lot. And they said, you know, the key is to when you make a mistake, to not think that you are a failure and this whole resolution has failed, but that you made a mistake and to move forward and to take that next step.

And, you know, growing up in that legalistic church, what you learn is that God every day is judging you and giving you a grade. And at the end of the day, you got a good grade or a bad grade. If you did all you're supposed to do and didn't do the things you weren't supposed to do, He'd bless you. And if you didn't, He'd curse you. I mean, I used to think that when I got a cold or when my leg hurt or anything, I thought, "Oh, I sinned and God is punishing me." And that's why I lived in that fear and in that shame and in that guilt. But what I've learned about grace and what even this journey has taught me is that I'm not defined by my mistakes. I'm not a failure because I make a mistake, but, you know, I fail. But God's grace is greater.

And the coolest thing about this fitness thing, I've had to work hard and rely on sort of myself a little bit. But when it comes to our relationship with God, it's this incredible mystery. Philippians, I think you talked about it last week, Chapter 2, you know, there's a verse that every legalistic church uses as their banner verse. It's like Philippians 2, I think 12 says, you know, "Work out your salvation in fear and reverence to God." And they're like, "See? So earn it. You got to go work hard." But they always forget to read the next verse, which says, "For God is the one that gives you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him." And so the key is to really understanding, even in self-discipline, is that the only way you can do anything is through the grace of God. The only way you can do to accomplish anything in this life is through the power, the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit that lives in us.

That's good stuff, man. That's good stuff. Any final kind of words of encouragement for anybody here? Yeah, you know, I've been a big guy for a long time. Anytime something came on TV about losing weight, I would turn to change the channel. Because I didn't want to hear about it. I want to hear about anybody losing weight because I don't want to think about it. And so, listen, if you're here today and maybe you're squirming a little bit and I was just like you, listen, I'm not up here to shame you. I'm not up here to say that, you know, you need to do exactly what I did. Listen, there are things that were under my control that I changed. And there's things that are out of our control, genetics and lots of different things, health problems. But just to know that, you know, whatever you decide to do, that you just take one step at a time and that you're not defined by anything. You're not defined by your weight. You're not defined by your past. You're defined by Jesus Christ. And he loves you no matter what.

Amen. Thanks so much, Adrian. Well spoken. Well said. In our few moments we have remaining, I just want to launch off of what Adrian was talking about, Grace, and ask what makes this whole message about self-discipline this morning a distinctly Christian message. What makes this different than something you're going to hear on Dr. Oz or something like that, right?

Well, this is really super, super important. A guy named Mike Moravin, professor at the University of Albany, did a really interesting experiment and it involved freshly baked cookies. Isn't it interesting how many of these research projects involve fresh cookies? I want to be a researcher. But what he did was he divided students into two groups. And the first group, he had an attractive assistant come in and explain this experiment. And she said, listen, this is an experiment in self-discipline to see if you have the discipline to resist eating warm, freshly baked cookies for five minutes. And then after the five minutes, we're going to give you some harder puzzles to solve on computers for about a half an hour. We hope you do well. Thank you so much for participating. Good luck.

The second group had the same assignment, but they had a Marine Corps drill instructor type guy walk in and he pointed to the cookies and he said, do not eat them. More puzzles coming. That is it. Slam the door. No explanation. After five minutes, neither group had touched one of the cookies. But when they moved into the second phase of experiments where they had more difficult challenges to solve on their computer screens, the first group that had the purpose of the experiment explained to them was eager to do well. And they all completed the puzzles in record time. The second group, almost nobody completed the puzzles. Some of them left the room complaining loudly. This is stupid. Many of them kicked over the chairs and lost their tempers.

And here is what the professor says. We found this again and again. When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they see the bigger picture, it's much less taxing. If they feel they're just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster. Do you understand that God gets human psychology because he created this? Created us. And this is one of the reasons the Bible, whenever it talks about self-discipline, it always puts it in the broader context of God's grace. God is not the drill instructor barking orders. Unfortunately, a lot of us raised in churches don't get taught this way.

And so let's wrap up by looking at how self-discipline is rooted in God's grace all through the Bible. But exhibit A is Paul's epistles. It's always built on a foundation of grace. He always follows this pattern. He talks about self-discipline in the later chapters of his letters. But in the earlier chapters, he always lays this foundation. First, he talks about your new identity in Christ. Like Ephesians 1, look at this beautiful verse. God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world, before the creation of the planet, before you were born, before you could prove yourself to God, before you could do one single thing right or one single thing wrong, he picked you to be on his team. So it can't possibly have anything to do with your performance. And you are holy and blameless in his sight already. You don't have to work at it. God already sees you as pure and perfect in Christ because of the finished work of Christ on the cross. The pressure is off.

So you clearly don't have to practice self-discipline to earn God's favor. He already sees you as blameless. Listen, he wants you to practice self-discipline for your own good because your life will go better if you do not to earn heaven or something. Now watch this. In love, he predestined us for adoption. You're like an orphan child who gets adopted by a gazillionaire. In him we have redemption through his blood. That means you're set free from slavery, the forgiveness of sins. All your sins are already covered in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. Amen.

Somebody said the operating principle of religion is I obey and therefore I'm accepted. But the operating principle of the gospel is I am accepted and therefore I obey. You see how important that is? Do you remember Jasmine's faith story last week, how she overcame her alcohol addiction? One of the things she said was this. I realized I'm no longer a slave to my addictions. I'm a child of God. And that is so key. You are royalty. And so your change is based on your new identity that you don't have to earn. You already have it. And then second, Paul always talks about your destiny. Your destiny. And I want to put a verse on screen that's not in your notes. Look at Philippians 1:6. He says, "I'm confident of this. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus." You not only have a new identity, you have a promised destiny.

Listen, some of you are so discouraged today because you've tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to change in some way in your life and you just feel like a big failure. I want you to know God doesn't see you that way because you're not. He promises that he will continue to develop Christ-like character in you. And ultimately, that's the reason that God wants us to develop any kind of self-discipline. Whether it's exercise or weight loss or anything else, it's ultimately for the development of Christ-like character in you. And God started that good work in you. He's not giving up on you. So don't give up on yourself. He will be faithful even when you're not faithful.

And not only do you have a great identity and a great destiny, you've got a great community of grace. You're not alone. We're all in this together. Ephesians 2:22, "And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit." You are not alone. This is why we do church together. This is why after every service, we have the Stephen ministers up front to pray with you. They are there to help you in your journey.

So look at this. Only after Paul follows this pattern in his epistles, talks about your identity, your destiny, your community, only then, building on this foundation, does he get to the self-discipline activity and explains, now, because all that is true, here's the kind of life you should live, like in Colossians 3:12, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved." You're already loved. You're already chosen. You're already holy in God's sight. So clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. You're not earning anything.

In fact, ironically, it's not by focusing on yourself and your failures and the things you need to get disciplined in your life that you get self-discipline. It's by focusing on something much greater than that, on God and on His grace that He's lavished on you and on the purpose that He has for you. That's actually how you overcome your self-discipline problems.

Since it's Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I want to close with part of a sermon that Dr. King preached on this. You know, he was a Baptist pastor, and that part kind of gets left out sometimes. But I found a sermon, one of the last sermons that he preached, called "Conquering Self-Centeredness," where he talks about what we're talking about this morning, what a problem self-centeredness is for us human beings, how we're naturally self-centered from the time we're little babies. So how are we going to conquer that? And then he wraps up this way. How then do we conquer self-centeredness? Well, you don't solve the problem by trying to trample over yourself. That doesn't solve the problem. Instead, you move away from self and you find yourself in something outside of yourself. He says, "That is the genius of our faith." It teaches that we are not at the center of this universe. We're only at the center to the extent that we give ourselves and our allegiance to God Almighty. And that does something to each of us. We can see when we have faith in God that we have nothing to boast about. You are what you are because of the grace of the Almighty God. And when you see that point, you cannot be arrogant. But you walk through life with a humility that takes away the self-centeredness.

Amen. See, here's the big idea today. Christian self-discipline is actually not about self-focus counterintuitively. Christian self-discipline is about self-forgetfulness because you're losing an obsession with yourself in the wonder of God's grace to you. More on that next weekend. Let's pray together. Bow your heads with me.

Lord, thank you so much for freeing us from ourselves. Thank you that the grace of God is here to bring salvation and to teach us to say no to ungodliness and yes to self-controlled holy lives. You save us not just to beam us to heaven, but to show your glory in us as you transform us. And so God, I just pray that each one of us would cooperate with your process of transformation first by just giving ourselves over to you, by realizing what we have lavished on us by your grace because of the finished work of Christ on the cross. And then continuing the transformation by focusing not on ourselves, but by forgetting ourselves and seeing beyond us to you and your glory. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.