What is your custom? - Daily Devotional September 29th 2009

Daily Bible Reading - 1 Chronicles 12, Ezekiel 25, Luke 22,

What is your custom?

Custom = a habitual practice; the usual way of acting in given circumstances.

There are probably alot of things we have grown a custom to. Whether it is the morning coffee, the daily facebook obsession or the weekly hang out. We all, with out realizing it, develop customs in our lives. Some of those customs are good, some are bad and some are just pointless.

Recently I sat down and re-wrote out the goals I have for myself. After I wrote them out I looked at how I was spending my time and realized that I was wasting alot of time on bad and pointless customs. At that moment I reorganized my schedule to make sure that I was being as efficient with my time as possible in order to achieve the desires and dreams that I have. Ephesians 5:16 talks about redeeming the time because the days are evil. This speaks to me of using my time wisely or having good habitual practices in my life so that I can achieve the destiny that God has for me.

Luke 22:39-41 shows us a custom Jesus had. That custom was to withdraw himself from His surroundings and distractions to pray. Jesus understood the destiny that He had and knew that the only way He would be able to accomplish it would be to have a habitual practice of prayer happening in His life. As I look at this it speaks so much to me because this was The Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh walking the earth and if he needed some customs in His life in order to fulfill His purpose on earth how much more do you and I need to have those habitual practices in place.

The greatest custom you could ever put in place is this one of prayer. There are so many things that have become customs in our life whether it is time with a friend, time on the computer, time watching tv or just other things that you can easily pick out as you look at your life, but yet we sometimes struggle to have time to pray. The reason we struggle with this and many other things we should be doing to help us get to our dream is because they have not become a custom to us.

I heard an old saying one time that goes like this, "Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny." If we begin to consciously think about our dream and our destiny we will then take action towards that destiny. The more we take action towards our destiny we being to develop a custom and as that custom prolongs in our life we will achieve the greatness that God has for us.

Think about your customs today. What are they producing in your life? Think about the ones you need to cut out that are not producing anything good, whether it is time with certain friends, late nights out doing nothing, gaming too long or just frivolous time doing whatever. Then think about how you can begin to start some new customs that are going to get you to the dream you have inside of you. Lets be like Jesus and first start a custom of prayer!

Tomorrows Bible Reading - 1 Chronicles 13-14, Ezekiel 26, Luke 23

Dream Big
Ben