The Habit That Helps Most | Help, I Have Bad Habits (Class 1)

- Hello, my name is Charles and I wanna take a moment to welcome you to class number one, the habit that helps most. And this is a part of our digital discipleship collection called help, I have bad habits because here's the truth. If you want to change your life, you have got to change your habits. I wanna start off with a question. Now you gotta be honest, don't lie to me, ain't no reason to lie. Why would you lie? That's ridiculous, okay. Honest question, how was your morning? How did it start? Good start, bad start. I'm gonna be honest with you. Mine was a little hectic and here's why. I woke up, it was Abby's turn to wake up with the kids, which, bless God for that. Abby woke up with the kids, we rotate every morning, she wakes up, she gets the kids. It's an insane game to see how long you can keep the kids quiet for. So she has the kids, I wake up and the outlet in our room, where our little clock is plugged in, I guess it blew or something happened, but the clock was off. So I immediately woke up and I think I panicked. I think this is where my day went sideways 'cause I thought, is it 3 p.m. and I slept all day?

Or is it four? I don't know what's happening. So my day, I think that was where it really went off, but I'm asking you how your morning is because here's a truth I've discovered in my life. How my morning goes is nine times out of 10, how my day goes. How my morning goes is how my day goes. If you wake up feeling anxious, your day feels anxious. If you wake up feeling happy, your day feels happy. If you wake up, you ever heard that saying, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed? First of all, what the heck you doing in your sleep, where you on the wrong side of the bed? You remember when you was a kid and you always to wake up at the bottom of your bed, did everybody ever happen to anybody? I thought, geez, I was wrestling demons in my sleep. I don't know what was happening, but here's the thing. You're gonna wanna talk to you about today. The habit that helps most, the habit that helps most, and it's connected to this idea. If you can win your morning, you can win your day. If you can win your morning, you can win your day. We're gonna talk about a single habit today that I think has the potential to change every other habit in every other area of your life. And here's the habit. When you wake up, when you start your morning, you have to start your morning with God.

Start your morning with God. If you're gonna have any habit, if you're gonna put any effort, any intention, any purpose into your life, the habit I would start with is start your morning with God. Now, before we go into three different reasons of how we can do that and why we should do that, we gotta be honest, we gotta start off with, how do we actually start our mornings? If you're like 99% of the world, here's how you start your mornings. You're laying down, shout out to my phone, you lay down. And next to your head is this buzzing information device that who knows what it's shooting off into our brain while we sleep, but we're laying down and it's (mumbles) and you wake up and you immediately reach for this and what do you do, you just start scrolling. Oh, look who texts me. Oh, I got an email. Oh, I got a, in my case, I got a Monday notification for my friend, Brie. Oh, look, the news. Oh my gosh, something terrible is happening. Oh wow, look, they got married. Oh wow. And before you know it, you have spent the first 30 minutes of your day, not inward, but outward. You spent the first 30 minutes of your day collecting information and intel on the world, their life, their ideas and what is happening.

You have filled up your spirit. You've filled up your mind. You have filled ultimately your heart with a bunch of stuff that hears the tension and hears the problem friend, a bunch of stuff you can't control, a bunch of people you can't control. And honestly, if we're really, really honest, a world full of anxiety has now filled up our hearts and our mind. And this is why we gotta start with this habit of starting our day first with God. We've gotta start with God first. I'm telling you, and this is not a religious thing. It's not a, oh, if I give God the first of my day, the rest of my day is easy. No, that's not the case. 'Cause I've read my Bible in the morning. It's still had a tough day. But what I've realized is, is that it infinitely more different day when I start with Him. So here's the habit, the habit that helps most, you start your day with God. I wanna give you three key details. Three things that can help you as you are starting your day with God. The first one, the first thing, it's gonna be three different words. The first one, write this down, is you gotta start before, before anything else. Why?

Because your priorities are proven by order. Your priorities are proven by order. What do I mean? What you start with first is what you value most. Now some of you, if I was like, oh, you value Instagram over your family and over God and over, you'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. But if we go to your screen time, it'd be a little dangerous. Because that screen time can get out of hand quick. I know for myself. I don't wanna show you on this screen, 'cause I'd probably be a little embarrassed. But you gotta start with God before. Listen to what the Bible says in Matthew 6, 33. It says, but seek first. That scripture is very clear. It doesn't say seek second, it doesn't say when you get around to it. It doesn't say if you woke up and had a dream and God spoke to you and said, "Read Galatians." It says seek first. The first thing you do, I want to encourage you, is connect with God. Let me tell you what happens to me in life. There have been times in my life when I wake up and Abby will ask me, she'll say that. She'll say, "Are you sleeping or are you praying?" Because I wake up, I wake up over my eyes and be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to wake. Okay, I'm still in my house. Okay, great." And then I immediately close them back and I'll just start praying. I'll say, "God, thank you for this day. Man, thank you for waking me up. Thank you for my amazing wife.

Thank you for my kids. God, thank you for my job. God, I'll check in." And sometimes you need to do this. I'm just laying there. I'm checking in with my body. It's starting to get old now, man. You know what I'm saying? So I can wake up, just feel like, "Ooh, Lord, that left me is about to shoot out my right knee. I don't know." But I just check in with my body. "Okay, I'm feeling good. I'm okay." But I'm processing. I'm starting my day slow, but I'm connecting with God. I'm saying, "God, thank you. I love you." Then for me in my morning specifically, the way it goes is I wake up and I'll do that for a second and then this is the greatest flex in the world. We have taught our six-year-old daughter how to work in a espresso machine and she makes me a cappuccino every morning. What more could you ask for? We have arrived. It's parents and my life is perfect, not at all, but that's a part of the first eight minutes. It feels pretty good. My little rosy brings me a coffee and me and Abby will sit in bed and we'll read our Bibles and when we do that, it doesn't happen every morning. Let me tell you, some days your kids walk in and they punch you in the face and the

day's off. But the days we start with before I'm telling you, it changes your morning and if you want to change your life, we're saying you've got to change your habits and the first thing I would say is put God before anything else. Put God first. If you start off and it's just a prayer, if you start off and it's you open, one thing I specifically do is I have a physical Bible on my nightstand. Why? Because it's easy to be like, "Oh, I'm going to read my Bible on my phone" and then you read your Bible on the phone and it's like, "Wait, who texts me? Oh my gosh." And all of a sudden you're gone and you're out of the moment. Get you a physical Bible. Put it there. Pick it up. Read it. There are beautiful daily journals where it's like you just read the devotion for the day and it helps you process but I want to encourage you, you've got to start before. Everybody say before, we're going to do the door exploring before. See, yeah, yeah, yeah. You did a great job. Okay, you've got to start with before. The next one, if you're going to connect with God, is between, between, between, between. Why? Because in between moments, they matter. Thursday is date night for me and my wife. And when I tell you all day, I text Abby. I'm not in line. I will show you my texts with her right now. Five times a day.

Thursday, I'm like, oh my gosh, countdown. Five hours till date night. Oh my gosh. Four hours until we get our favorite burger. Oh my gosh. Three hours until I sit. Like, it's the between moments that are beautiful and build a relationship. If you think about it, you know, it's easy to picture. Let's take the example of marriage and think that, oh, marriage is all these big moments. It's when you get married, it's the honeymoon, it's the anniversary, it's when you have your first kid. Let me tell you where me and Abby's life has been built and our love has been built. It's all the moments between. It's all the random passing conversations. Let me tell you, friend, your relationship with God is the same way. In John chapter 15, the Bible says this, it says, "Remain in me and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me." What is it saying? God is not something that you plug into and then unplug and then you just, oh, when I get low on charge, I plug back in for a little bit and then I check out, no, you stay with it. It's the between moments. Just as I wake up and I pray, I'll be sitting in a meeting praying. I'll be having a conversation, but I'm still praying. Why? Because it's all those in between moments. If you build a habit of a life that stays connected in between, it will change your life. You got to start before you got to stay connected between.

This last one, I think, is the most intentional. You got to go beyond and here's what I mean by this. Daily disciplines determine your direction. Daily disciplines determine your direction. I heard a great leader, he said, it's not what you do occasionally that changes your life. It's what you do consistently that changes your life. If I told you, you know, I'm about to get in the best shape of my life, I'll give you a real life example. So this is real and y'all know I'm a little dramatic. You may not know me, but you're going to get to know me through this next sentence. About 11 days ago, I committed to running a half marathon. No, two days ago, I committed to running a half marathon in 11 days. It's now nine days away. I've never done this before, mind you. So you could tell, I'm a little dramatic. But here's the thing, I immediately went to my running trainer, their name is a chat GPT, and I put it in there and I was like, "Hey, I wanna run a marathon in 11 days. "What should I do?" And my chat responded, "You're an idiot." No, I didn't say that, that was too much. But what it said is you gotta build up some, we're gonna try to do the best we can for you to build up stamina. And here's the real thing, you can't just decide one day you're gonna do something. I wanna do the best I can and I'm a little bit crazy, so I think I'll be able to finish. But the truth is, if you wanna build a life

that goes beyond flickering moments with God, you have to build daily disciplines that go beyond just how you feel, beyond just what's going on right now. The Bible tells us in Proverbs to trust in the Lord with all our heart and acknowledge Him in all of our ways. Not some of our ways, not occasionally, not when we feel like it, not when life is always working out, but it's beyond those moments. If we're gonna talk about the habit that will help you the most, it is connecting with God before, between, and beyond. And if you can establish this habit, the one habit, we're gonna talk about a lot of habits, a lot of beautiful things. But if there's one, I would say please, with everything you have, protect this one, it is starting your day with God. I know it can feel easy for life to get out of hand quick. There are a lot of stuff to worry about. And let me tell you this, the human nature and human condition is you can always find something to worry about. We have this idea that, oh, if I solve this problem, then I won't worry. Let me tell you what happens. There's this little bucket that like, your brain just continues to fill up. It continues to say, oh, if you're worried about that, let's worry about something else.

But if we're gonna talk about the habits that we have, and you're saying and you're watching this, man, help I got bad habits, the first one you could attack is connecting with God first. We're gonna do it in three ways. We're gonna do it before, we're gonna do it between, and we're going to do it beyond. Because if you wanna change your life, you have to change your habits. Here's what I want you to do. For the next seven days, I want you to give God your first 10 minutes. First 10 minutes. And I'll even challenge you. I'll even, I'll make it easier. If you can't give him 10, give him two. Because here's what God does. God is in the business of doing a lot with a little. Some people, you're a little dramatic like me. You're like, I gotta start a habit. I'm gonna wake up and read the Bible for an hour. If you can do that, incredible. But let me tell you, when you start that first 10 minutes with God, it'll change the next 10 hours of your day. Start with God, and it'll be the habit that will help you the most. I'm gonna take a moment right now. I'm gonna pray for you. God, I pray for the person under the sound of my voice

that as they go to master their habits, that they would first master their ability to connect with you. They would do that before, they'd do anything else. They would do it between tough and good moments. And they would also do it beyond fleeting moments so they could build a life that matters. God, I thank you that you would empower their spirit. You would empower their heart and empower their mind to take control of their life by taking control of their mourning, connecting with you. It's in Jesus name we pray, amen. Hey, listen, friend, I'm so grateful for you. I'm so proud of you, and I want you to get ready to live a transformed life built by your healthy habits. We love you so much, and we'll see you in the next class. (whooshing) [whooshing sound] [BLANK_AUDIO]