Cultivating Habits of the Heart

In this booklet, we will take a radically different approach to the habits of the heart. God never intended our lives to be based on a set of individual daily habits, but rather on a whole life orientation that grows out of family and community life. We are not to gain insights from the Word fundamentally in isolation but from disciplines in all spheres of our lives. God carefully designed these habits to guide each believer into a life in which Christ can richly dwell in our hearts, resulting in our entire lives being transformed by our calling. In session one, we will develop an understanding of what it means for Christ to dwell in our hearts, along with an orientation of having our hearts firmly rooted in the faith. In sessions two through five, we will examine the habits of the heart that we need to cultivate in each area of our lives. We will focus first, in session two, on habits in our individual lives—habits that need to be part of our personal growth in the faith and in our relationship with God. These habits are foundational to maturing in Christ, but when they are developed in isolation from family and community disciplines, they become significantly distorted. We will then focus, in session three, on cultivating habits in our family lives. These habits are essential both to passing on our faith to our children as well as to building solid, biblical marriages and an intergenerational heritage. In session four, we will focus on cultivating habits in our church family that are essential for the sound and mature development of our faith. One of the most significant reasons that sincere believers fail to be properly and soundly established in their faith is that they fail to develop these church-family community habits. Finally in session five, we will focus on what we are calling lifework habits—habits that integrate our faith into our everyday lives in the world around us. In essence, developing serious, integrated life habits is really nothing more than bringing every area of our lives under discipline—the discipline required of a disciple of Jesus Christ.

As in all of the other booklets, session six is designed to pull it all together. This is especially helpful in this book, since its very intent is to build an integrated set of life habits. It is designed to move the knowledge we have learned in the first three booklets fully into our hearts, that we might completely grasp (and therefore fully live) the magnificent plan that God has set before our lives and families. Session six goes a long way in integrating all of our work from the first four books of series one of the First Principles Series.