What's going on here?

Sometimes it seems like we live out the Christian life more by accident than on purpose. We go to church because that's what we do on Sunday morning. We read the Bible because it's part of what we're 'supposed to do'. We watch our language around other Christians simply because that's what you do around other Christians.

Often it's just because we don't take the time to really examine our lives and the reasons that we do things. Let's face it, living life takes up most of the day. Between work, wives, kids, yardwork, paying bills, cleaning the house and doing the dishes, the day can often go by pretty quickly. We rarely have the time to really stop and examine our motives and reasons for the things that we do.

And yet, I know that in the midst of our business, we're missing something. Without having a reason for the things that we do, we're little more than automatons going through the motions. And I think that this is especially true in the area of our Christian lives. We go through the motions more out of habit sometimes that out of a true drive.

But that's not always bad. We learned all of these behaviors on purpose at one time or another in our lifes. The fact that we do them automatically means that they have become part of who we are. That's what we should strive to do in our Christian walk - make these behaviours so automatic that they are part of us. So that when things start to get busy, we can act out of instinct and behave in the way that we want.

But acting out of habit also limits our ability for growth. Doing the same thing over and over means that you're not learning anything new. You're not adding to your collection of automatic behaviors. That would be okay if we had learned everything that there is to know. But I'd wager to say that none of us would go so far as to say that we had learned everything there was to know about being a Christian.

So, I've started this page to allow us to have a place to challenge each other and to encourage each other to get out of that rut that we're in. To learn new behaviours and to practice them so that they become habits for the next busy season. To live the Christian life intentionally rather than by accident.