You Have Heard Your Father Say...

How do you break long standing habits? One habit I have had continually since childhood is the habit of biting my fingernails. My parents tried to break the habit a number of different ways. The one that really sticks in my mind is the dipping of the fingertips into hot pepper sauce. Good idea but obviously it did not work. Too easy to go and wash the hands. How about putting plastic bags over one’s hands? Perhaps, but a little bit impractical unless you are planning on being a hand model and also want to protect the lovely complexion. I have heard that it takes a certain number of weeks to break a habit. If I could just manage to resist the temptation to bite for ten weeks then the habit would be broken and I would never bite again! It seems to me that none of these things work to break habits because they rely on human power alone. Perhaps some of you are saying, “Hey it worked for me!” Congratulations! However, unfortunately we are not always talking about something as benign as biting the nails. Spiritually we can have a number of things in our lives that we struggle with and just can’t seem to conquer on our own. Recently, as I have been teaching through the Sermon on the Mount, the struggle to break free of long existing ways of thinking has been a prominent subject. Jesus says over and over again in his sermon, “You have heard that it was said….” Who said these things? It was their fathers before them who had interpreted the Law over and over again and now had arrived at a certain understanding of what it meant and what affect it should have on their lives. Then Jesus comes along and takes all of those interpretations and flips them on their heads. Take note however that he did not do away with them. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5:17 I really like the ERV’s translation of this passage where it says, “I have not come to destroy their teachings but to give full meaning to them.” The full meaning comes when the laws are written on the heart. They are no longer something we are trying to follow, but something we are living. Even in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 God was encouraging the Israelites to live them. The Jewish fathers missed the message of the Law and now Jesus comes along to show how to walk in God’s path. Jesus is fighting an uphill battle. He is teaching against hundreds of years of tradition and teaching. It is difficult to change old ways or habits. In the Kabiye translation of the above text it says, “You have heard it said to our fathers that….” The parallels here are almost uncanny. As I read the sermon, I continually hear the people saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, yes.” This was communicating to them! But the original question remains. How do you break bad or old habits? Teachings that are ingrained into the mind and heart are difficult to weed out so that new teachings can be planted in their place. So I want to ask you to pray. God has blessed the work here and there are eighteen churches planted. However, I can not say that these churches are all thriving. There is a need for the truths of God to be written on hearts. Pray for the truths of God to take root deep in the hearts of the people. Pray for the ways of their fathers before them to be replaced by the path of God and pray that the people can walk down that new path in full faith.