Three Steps to Breaking Bad Habits for Good: How You Can Live the Victorious Christian Life

We are resolved to quit. We sincerely and passionately tell God that we need His help to overcome a sinful habit. The problem is that this is not the first time to have this kind of determination and to pray this prayer about the very same habit. Without fail, we find ourselves repeating the very thing that we were so determined to get rid of.

The transformation of our hearts, and the works that proceed from our hearts, is a process that happens over time. God is the one who does the transforming. Only He is able to change a heart.

There is, however, an important principle of transformation that He has given us. It is our part in the process. As we obediently incorporate this principle in our daily lives, old habits fall away, and new habits are formed. The power to do so comes from the Holy Spirit. The will to do so comes from us.

God’s principle of transformation has three components…to put off the old, be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and put on the new.

The first component, putting off our old responses, is perhaps the most obvious. This is our resolve to quit. Picture taking off a dirty, smelly shirt at the end of the day. If we stop with that, however, simply putting off the old, we find ourselves with the same frustration that a diet causes…we think of nothing but food! The unfortunate result of stopping with the put-off is that we eventually pick up that same dirty shirt and put it on again. We find ourselves continuing through the cycle of repent-repeat-repent-repeat.

Success comes when we replace the old with the new. It is in pursuing the new that the old is dealt with. In order to do that, we have to embrace the second component of the transformation principle…to know what the new is. It isn’t just gaining information, it’s allowing that information to become our active pursuit. Now that we have removed the dirty shirt, we open the closet of clean, new clothes to find what to wear instead.

That knowledge of what to put on, the renewing of our minds, comes by reading God’s Word. We discover, for example, in the second half of Ephesians 4, that to overcome lying, we must become truth tellers. In order to not steal anymore, we must work and give. To be victorious in our desire to remove bad language from our vocabulary, we must seek to edify with our words. And to win the war of defeating anger and bitterness, we must forgive.

In a general way, we are told in the New Testament to cloth ourselves with the Lord Jesus. There are passages, such as Colossians 3:12, which instruct us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. For true transformation to happen, we want to get as specific as we can. Wherever we find in the Bible instruction to put off something, we will find, not far from that, instruction about the exact thing to put on in its place.

Habits come with repetition. The third component of the transformation principle is to take very deliberate, thoughtful steps to clothe ourselves with the new. Each time we do, it becomes more natural. The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that it is ‘constant use’ that trains us to distinguish between good and evil. Eventually that new behavior is woven into our character.

God uses our pursuit of righteous behavior, empowered by His Holy Spirit, to transform us in reality to what He has declared us to be: New creations. The old is gone, the new is here!

How have you experienced the pursuit of righteous behavior giving you victory over an ungodly habit?