Make a Habit of Having No Habits [Excerpt]

Here's an excerpt from the devotional

book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

MAKE A HABIT OF HAVING NO HABITS

For if these things are yours and abound, they make you
to be not idle nor unfruitful. -2 Peter 1:8

When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times
when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but

it is only a stage; if we stop there we shall get the strut of the
spiritual prig. The right thing to do with habits is to lose them in
the life of the Lord, until every habit is so practised that there is
no conscious habit at all. Our spiritual life continually resolves
into introspection because there are some qualities we have not added
as yet. Ultimately the relationship is to be a completely simple one.

Your god may be your little Christian habit, the habit of prayer at
stated times, or the habit of Bible reading. Watch how your Father
will upset those times if you begin to worship your habit instead of
what the habit symbolizes - I can't do that just now, I am praying;
it is my hour with God. No, it is your hour with your habit. There is
a quality that is lacking in you. Recognize the defect and then look
for the opportunity of exercising yourself along the line of the
quality to be added.


Love means that there is no habit visible, you have come to the place
where the habit is lost, and by practice you do the thing
unconsciously. If you are consciously holy, there are certain things
you imagine you cannot do, certain relationships in which you are far
from simple; that means there is something to be added. The only
supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at
home with God anywhere. Is there anywhere where you are not at home
with God? Let God press through in that particular circumstance until
you gain Him, and life becomes the simple life of a child.