4 Habits That Will Change Your Life – Why It Matters. | Ps. Foo Seng

Now, why are you here this morning? You don’t have to answer that, but it’s important to know why we do certain things the way we do, isn’t it? That’s what I want to actually look at as we bring to a close this entire series where we talk about the maturity of a believer.

We started by having our membership classes. For many years, we didn’t have that, so we reinstated a new process where we actually got people to sign up as members. After that, what we did was we moved members of our church on to maturity by having these four weeks where the Sunday sermon would be talking about different habits. Then, after that, we stay back a bit longer to actually talk about the rest of it. This week, no more staying back. After this, you can go and makan, but for now, give me your attention because I bring to you God’s heart and what he wants for all our lives. He wants all of us to actually mature. That is at the bottom of God’s heart. He wants us to grow. He doesn’t want us to be stagnant. He wants us to let go of the past, grab hold onto the now, and move forward to the future, growing in his glory, growing in his grace, and growing in the knowledge of Jesus. That’s what he wants.

Simon Sinek is quite a popular author. He actually wrote a book called “Start With Why,” and he says that it’s so important to know why we do certain things. That’s what I want to summarize today. Why are we focusing week in, week out on these four habits which will change your life? What is the purpose of that? Why are we doing it? Why are we putting in the energy, the time, the money to print materials? Simon Sinek wrote in his book that to differentiate a great organization is an organization which knows why they’re doing certain things. Leaders must know why they’re doing certain things because that will see you through difficult times, that will see you through times when you just feel like giving up, that will see you through and help you excel.

I’m reminded of this. I was just doing a bit of research a few days back, and Martin Luther King Jr., right, he’s an American civil rights fighter, you can say that, and he basically fought for African-Americans to have equal rights. Not only that, but to fight against racism, to fight against prejudice. He said this, “I submit to you,” you have the verse up there, that saying, “I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Very strong words, isn’t it? But this is coming from a guy who knew what his life purpose was. He found a why in his life, and because of that, he was willing to even die for it, which he did. He was assassinated because of his beliefs. He was assassinated because of what he was doing to bring true freedom for the African-Americans in the US. This was in the 50s and in the 60s.

Today, I want to revisit this. Why are we doing what we are doing, right? Because when there are times when you wake up in the morning, and you get the message saying, “Okay, let’s read God’s word this morning,” and you feel like, “Oh, never mind. I’ll just switch it off, put it on silent, let’s forget about it,” come back to the why. We’ve been talking about prayer, how prayer is important. Prayer is talking to God, how we want to spend 15 minutes, five minutes praying for different people in our lives. Sometimes we don’t see any effectiveness or any results, and we

feel like giving up. Come back to the why. Why do you do this? We talked about tithing, isn’t it, a few weeks back, how tithing is giving back to God, is putting him first in our life. Sometimes when finances get tight, or maybe you lose your job, you get a, for some reason, you lose your source of income, and you say, “Whoa, what’s going on?” and you feel like giving up. We come back to the why. And we’ve been encouraging everybody, “Let’s go to a connect group, get connected,” but it’s quite far, I have to take a bus, or it’s very jammed, traffic is bad during that time. Come back to the why and realize why we are doing these things.

Today we’ll be revisiting that. We’ll be going through the idea that the why of what we do and why we have these four habits which we are trying to push in church is that because God is our Father, he cares for us, he wants the best for us, he wants a full life for us. Because of that, he wants us to mature. That is in God’s heart.

All parents want this for their children, isn’t it? I have kids myself. A lot of you I know here have children. That’s what we want. We want to see our children grow up. We want to see them not only grow physically but to be independent adults. Stephen Covey says this, not only just to have independence but to have interdependence. That means that not only can they learn to manage themselves, we want to see them grow and also manage themselves and manage their relationship with others so that they can also be a positive influence in the lives of others. That’s what we want to see. We want to see them grow. We want to see them mature.

It’s the same because those same desires in our hearts mirror that of God for us. God doesn’t want to see us just respond to him 30 years ago, and from that point to now, nothing has changed. You just come to church as part of your religious exercise. God wants to see us grow. He wants to see us do new things. He wants us to have new experiences. A lot of that is being part of the church, being part of his community. It says in the Bible that God wants to bring us to fullness. That’s God’s objective for us, to bring us to fullness.

This morning we were just praying, and we were praying using Psalm 50:1 as a base. The Lord is the mighty one. You know, the Lord is so amazing, isn’t he? He’s mighty. Why is he mighty? It says in the psalm that he’s the one who can summon the universe. What it means is that just by mere words, just by his mere breath, he can cause something to come out of nothing. That is the amazing power we have in this God, and it is this mighty God, this mighty one, who wants this for us. Can you imagine? That’s how intimate he is and wants to be with us. He’s not a faraway God out there. He’s not one who doesn’t care. He’s not one who just wants to see you running on that hamster treadmill, okay, and he says, “Wow, that’s a nice show,” and that’s it. No, he wants to be part and intricately experience together with us in our lives. He has objectives for all of you, all of us here who have responded to Jesus. He wants you to grow and bring you to fullness.

For those of you who have not responded to the Lord and you’re here this morning, it’s a cry from all of us, and it’s a cry from the Lord. Respond to him. Respond to Jesus being your Lord.

That it may be the first step of you attaining a full life. It says in the Bible, isn’t it, what’s the opposite of a full life? A life which the devil has for you. The devil’s plans for you are very clear, to steal, kill, and destroy, to rob you of everything which is good. Immediately, in that same verse in John, it says that, “Okay, if this is the devil’s plans, let me show you what Jesus’ plans are for your lives. It is so that you may have life, and life to the fullest.”

Now, the idea of bringing to fullness is this, isn’t it? It implies that there are some lives which are empty, some lives only quarter, some lives three quarters, and some lives very full. That’s what God wants for us, not to live an empty life, not to live a half-life, but to live a full life.

In Ephesians chapter 4:1, it says this, “As a prisoner for the Lord,” the person writing this, Paul writing this, “then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” A lot of us have made that decision at some point in our life. Maybe we were in church one day, listening to a pastor, or being part of a worship service, and it struck us that, “Wow, this Jesus is real, and this Jesus loves me.” That’s what happened to me. I remember when I was young, about 12, 13 years old, I was in Glad Tidings Church, and I was just sitting there, listening to this pastor called Prince. I thought, “Wow, what a name.” I was sitting there listening, and in the service, I realized, “Jesus loves me. With all my issues and all my problems, all my loneliness, Jesus cares.” That person said, “How many of you want to believe in Jesus right now? Stand up.” I did that embarrassing thing of standing up. I didn’t care who was around me. I just stood up.

That’s what it says here, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Somewhere in our life, we were once called. There was a moment where we realized this is real. There was a moment where it switched on for us. But here’s the challenge: it does not and must not stop there. It is not just me standing up and that’s it, it’s over. But it says here in Ephesians 4:1, “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Once we respond, then we need to change our lifestyles. We need to start changing the way we think, change the way we do things, change the way we say things, because that is then changing to a life worthy of the calling you have received.

It’s a choice on how we want to respond to the call of God in our lives. There is an end goal. So, verse one here in Ephesians tells us that we are first called, and hence, change your life, start living a new life. Chapter 4, verse 13 tells us the end goal. Let’s read this all together: “Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” It says here we are to attain. Attaining means we

need to work at it, something we can get and achieve. To attain it, what are we to attain? It says here, “The whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Now, once you follow Jesus and you decide to change your lifestyle, then you can start getting some measure of Jesus. Or you can say, “Okay, I just believe, I put up my hand, after that everything is back to normal, status quo, nothing changes. I just continue to be my own self, do my own thing.” Then actually, there’s no fullness whatsoever.

We can actually work at it. The more you change your life, the more you change certain areas in your life to be more like Jesus, the more mature you will be. The more you can attain, it says here, the whole measure. That’s our goal, isn’t it? Not to attain half measure, quarter measure, three-quarter measure, but God wants us to attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

When I was growing up as a young boy, my family’s favorite holiday destination was Port Dixon. That’s probably because that’s all we could afford at that point in time. Every two or three years we could go on a holiday, and we were so excited. We always go back to the same place called the C rusa Inn, which is a Merlin hotel if you know it. It’s around that area. We always go back there, the same place. Every time we would go, we would go to a bunch of vendors nearby. My

parents would allow me to choose a float, you know, the float where you blow up, and then you see. I was always very amazed by this life-size, it was life according to my height, about this, not much taller now, but back then it was a life-size dinosaur. By the side of it were life-size balloons of Superman or Batman, and I thought, “Wow, that’s interesting.” I would choose this dinosaur, but the problem is when they gave you the dinosaur, what was on display there, I don’t want the display unit, I want something new. So, they would open up a box and take out this full dinosaur, but in a flattened state. What you had to do was blow it up.

My parents would be in the water or hanging out, and I’d be spending time just blowing, trying to inflate that dinosaur. As I was preparing for this message, I thought, this is what it means to attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. We have to blow into that dinosaur. If we only blow a little bit, it will just inflate. Does it even look like a dinosaur? No. We keep going at it, we keep working at it, we keep blowing, and slowly it will start to take shape, isn’t it? It will start to grow. It will start to take shape. Sometimes maybe the tail is not so hard or the head is a bit floppy. We keep blowing into the dinosaur, and eventually, it will start to expand and grow into the fullness of that dinosaur. Then we make sure we plug it, bring it into the ocean, and we can ride it, and so on and so forth.

If you look at the words carefully written here in Ephesians chapter 4:13, that’s what it means. They didn’t have the dinosaur back then, but this is an illustration of what it means for us to have that fullness of Christ. That is, to let the Holy Spirit blow into us, and as we start expanding and growing, we end up having the end product, not as ourselves, but of Jesus. If we don’t allow that to happen, we may look not really like Jesus, some measure here and there. That’s not God’s objective for us. God doesn’t want us to look something like Jesus. God doesn’t want us to look a little bit like Jesus. God wants us to look completely like Jesus. Amen?

Why? Because that’s when we can get that full life he promised us. This idea of full is all throughout the Bible. With the idea of full comes the idea of half, comes the idea of just a bit. We don’t want that. We want the idea of full, right? As the Holy Spirit inflates us, just like that dinosaur inflates us to the full measure of Christ. We see this also in Colossians chapter 1:28: “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” All of us, that’s God’s objective for us, to be more like Jesus. That’s our end goal.

Romans 8:29: “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his

Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” He chose them to become like his Son. So as we respond to God, as we say, “Okay, Lord, I want my life to change. I want certain things to stop. I want to grow in certain areas.” This is what it means. The end goal is that we be like his Son. What does it mean to be like Jesus? At the end of the day, we don’t know how Jesus looks like. It doesn’t mean we have to comb our hair the same way or dress in the same robes. We don’t do that. That’s not what it means.

What it means to be more like Jesus, to be full like Jesus in his full measure, is that we start thinking like the Lord. What is important to Jesus is important to us. The way the Lord treats other people is the way we treat other people. The way the Lord thinks about God is the way we think about God. We look at others with compassion and love because Jesus did the same. The Holy Spirit can help us. Blowing into this picture, into this fullness, is the Holy Spirit. That’s the word he used. The Holy Spirit gives us breath. You know, as I blew into that dinosaur, I was blowing the breath in, and the Holy Spirit is described as that. He gives us breath. The breath of God comes into us, and what happens after that? We have the fruits of the Holy Spirit: peace, gentleness, love, kindness, self-control. All that comes from the help of the Holy Spirit. That’s why we can change, not just on our own effort. If you just depend on your own effort, you can only go so far. But we depend on the Holy Spirit and the power of Jesus.

That’s why reading his word is so important every day because that’s when we abide, we join with him, and he strengthens our mind. When we pray, he strengthens our spirit. He strengthens our soul. When we tithe, he strengthens all of us. He strengthens our situation. When we are in fellowship, he strengthens us as well. It is in those four habits that we start growing. We practice the same habits that Jesus did. When we say, “Jesus, we want to be more like you,” we do the same things he did. If Jesus prayed, we pray. Jesus knew the word well, we know God’s word well. Jesus tithed, we tithe too. Jesus was in close fellowship with those around him, we will be in close fellowship with those around him as well.

I’ve just spent about 10-15 minutes telling you why we have to grow, right? That’s so important. That’s why I’m just belaboring it a little bit. God wants us to be a full person like Christ. As we are presented, this is Jesus. For us to grow mature, we need four mindsets. We need four things to change in the way we think. Number one: growth is not automatic. A lot of us think that after we have maybe some of us are inclined to a supernatural experience for what, you know, however it works out, the way you met Jesus and the way you came to the Lord was a supernatural one. Some of us are a little bit more intellectual, some a bit more emotional, there are different ways. But for some of us who think that, “Okay, it’s going to be that one off, and after that I will immediately be another person,” well, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not automatic.

In Hebrews 5:12-14, it says this: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” If you read this verse, there’s a tinge of sadness here. The writer writes it with a bit of regret, with a bit of sadness, because this person who he’s writing to actually should be much more mature than they are. In fact, it says here, “Though by this time you ought to be teachers,” but they were not. Instead of being teachers, it says here, “You need someone to teach you the elementary,” that means the most basic truths of God. You

still haven’t grasped yet, and not only that, to teach you all over again. That means somewhere along the line, the recipient of this verse was probably growing, but probably gave it up and just said, “Ah, never mind. Let’s just live my own life,” and gone back to being or regressed into being a baby, into being an infant. “You need milk, not solid food,” when actually solid food is what you should be having if you’ve grown up this way. “Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness, but solid food is for the mature.”

As we read this verse, it’s quite clear that you can grow old, but it doesn’t mean you have grown up. People can grow old, but it doesn’t mean that they grow up. We could be 50, 60, 70, 40, however old, but still babies spiritually. That’s what this verse tells us, and we see that the author is clearly upset. So, if we don’t invest time and energy, it says here in the last part, “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” If you can distinguish good from evil, that’s a sign of maturity. That’s why it’s saying here. But the constant use means that we have to work at it. If you just leave it to chance, or you just leave your growth and development to thinking that it’s an automatic thing, well, that’s not going to happen.

When we receive God, we must not stop there. We must change our lives by putting some things in the process and start growing. Number two is this: it is a process. Us growing and maturing into the fullness of Christ is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. It needs certain steps. What is a process? A process is a number of steps, one after the other, which you need to take to achieve an end goal. That’s a process, right? You brush your teeth, there’s a process. It involves you going to the sink, switching on the water, putting toothpaste on the toothbrush, and so on and so forth. There are some steps to achieve the end goal. So, being in the fullness of Christ also requires a process. It needs a few steps to get there.

In 2 Peter 3:8, it says this: “Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” The issue is this: in our lives right now, in our modern-day situation, with the handphone, with computers, many things are just at the touch of a button. The computer does the processing; that’s why it’s called the CPU, isn’t it? Central processing unit, right? So, you press enter, it does all the processing and gives you the result, and we think life is like that. Well, it’s not. In a society where the Bible was written, often it’s an agricultural society where

they understand what it means to grow something. It’s something you need effort, you need to put in, and that’s what we need to have a little bit of a mindset change in. If you want to experience the fullness of life, if you want to be mature in Jesus, if you want to be more like Jesus, we need to put in certain steps in our lives and work at it. Growing mature in Jesus is a process. It is not an event. It’s not something that just happens overnight.

It says here, “Rather, you must grow,” so that’s the process, “in the grace.” That’s the first thing. We must grow in the grace. What does that mean, to grow in the grace? It means that we start understanding more and more how to trust God, how to trust him for our everyday needs, how to trust him for our future. As we mature, our faith grows, and we start being a bit more solid, a bit stronger, and we realize that no matter what situation comes, we can continue to trust in his grace. We are also called to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s not just an experiential thing, it’s a mental thing. We need to understand, we need to know why we believe what we believe, and that’s the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Number three: it takes time. Growing to the fullness of maturity, the fullness of Jesus, takes time. In 1 Timothy 4:7, it says this: “Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly.” The idea of training ourselves, I mean, if anybody who’s into sports or if you watch enough TV shows and all that, you realize, “Oh, sports people, they really have to work at it.” The idea of training ourselves is this: back in those days when this was written, there were no quick fixes. The training was tough. If you want to run a race, if you want to do something, there’s a lot of work you had to put into it. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and in the same way, for our spirituality and our growth, it’s not built in a day. It

takes time. It is not overnight. So, there’s a period, but we must set a period. How does this change us? Well, first, of course, we know it’s not automatic. We need to first say, “Okay, I’ve got to do certain things.” Number two, all right, it happens, it takes a few steps. “Okay, I’m going to put in these four habits.” Number three, give yourself some time. I’m going to say, “I’m going to focus on this for the next six months, and let’s see where I am in the fullness of Christ.” Set yourself a time frame because it takes time.

Lastly, sometimes we all struggle with this; I struggle with this. Number four, it takes discipline. 1 Timothy 4:7, the latter part of the verse says this: “On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.” This word “discipline,” if you read the Greek, it’s also “gymnasium.” You know what that means. Have you ever been to a gym or enrolled in a gym before? The first month is very nice. Every week you’re there. After a while, it takes a little bit more strength, a little bit more self-denial, and after a while, you give up. But the idea is this: if you want to go to a gym, it needs effort, it needs sacrifice, it needs you to tell yourself, “Okay, I’m going to put aside my relaxed time and head to the gym. I’m going to stop taking it easy and head to the gym, even though I feel a bit tired, even though I feel a bit…” That’s the same if we want to grow in the Lord. We must help each other. I’m not here telling you I’ve got it all. We must help each other be disciplined, help each other work at it, so that we can then discipline ourselves for the purpose of our maturing and our godliness.

Luke 9:23 says this: “Then he said to them all, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.'” It’s a daily thing we need to do. As I move into the next section and the musicians come up soon, this is my encouragement so far: that, number one, it’s not so that we, the church, can say, “Oh, my members, you read the Bible and do all this.” That’s not our purpose. God wants us to mature. God wants us to grow to be more like Jesus, and in that process, the end goal is that we have a happy life, we have a rich life, we have a fulfilled life. That process is through us implementing these four habits, and we know that habits are things which we can do over and over again without eventually even thinking about it. That is what I’m getting at today.

As we do these four habits, as the four weeks have gone past, hold on to this: that it is the Lord who wants this for you. Can we have the musicians up as I just summarize the four habits quickly, and then we’ll bring today’s sermon to an end? What are the four habits?

Number one: daily time in God’s word. I can’t stress this enough, that we must put this in as part of our growing process. In John 8:31-32, it says this: “Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'” We’re all looking for freedom in some way, isn’t it? Freedom from sin, freedom from our own issues, freedom from negative thoughts, freedom from destructive behaviors, freedom from criticism. When we latch onto God’s word on a daily basis, not just a one-off, on a daily basis, it changes the way we think. When we change the way we think, it changes the way we behave. When we change the way we behave, it changes us and brings us that freedom we need.

Habit number two we’ve been working on is this: prayer is talking with God. Let’s have that every day in our lives. Amen? God, the mighty one, God, the Lord, wants to hear us, wants to be in that relationship with us. This is the medium he’s chosen, that we are to talk to him wherever we are, whenever we are, wherever, and with whoever we are. John 15:7-8 says this: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” Part of us maturing and growing in Jesus and growing to be more like Jesus is increasing our prayer time with God. As we saw and as we read in God’s word, we see how Jesus was so intimate with his father. He would pray at different times. He would take time away just to be on his own to pray. That’s our example as we become more like him. If we want to exhibit fruit, as he says here, we need to be with Jesus more. We need to pray, talk to him, share with him your ideas, share with him your thoughts. It is the way we get to know him better and start changing.

Habit number three is this: tithing. We know tithing is giving back to God. It says in Deuteronomy 14:23: “The purpose of tithing is to teach you always to put God first in your lives.” It’s an outward expression that we trust God, that all we have comes from him, and we are putting God first by doing this. I know it can be a challenge for some of us, but let’s endeavor forward. Growing something is never easy. It involves time, it involves effort, and it involves sacrifice, but the end result is worth it.

The fourth habit is this: fellowship. Fellowship is enjoying God’s family. To be honest, a lot of these habits can’t work if you’re on your own. The reality is we need one another to support each other, to just give each other a little bit of a nudge when things are dropped, and that’s fine. Just get back on. When you jump off the wagon or you fall off, get back on the wagon. We encourage one another. “Hey, how’s your quiet time going?” “I haven’t done it in a week.” “Never mind, let’s start tomorrow. Let’s do it together.” “How’s your tithing going?” “How’s your prayer life?” “Have you been praying?” It’s not so that we take an extraordinary interest in your life, but so that we can encourage one another, that you can encourage me and I encourage you as well. It says in John 13:34-35: “Love each other just as much as I have loved you. Your strong love for each other will prove to the world you are my disciples.”