Have you noticed that habit is a hot topic these days? The abundance of Christian and non-Christian books addressing the subject is evidence of people’s hunger for a well-functioning life.

The Holiness Tradition, or the Virtuous Life, is our focus this month. Richard Foster often says that virtue is good habits you can rely upon to make our lives work. 

Habits are powerful in and of themselves, which raises the question of where our effort ends and God’s grace begins. 

I once asked Richard about this. How do we discern between mere habit formation on one hand and disciplines which open us to the grace of God on the other? His response? ​“Never make a radical separation between the two.”

I sense he’s right — thick lines aren’t meant to be drawn between two things. (And I suspect such a question comes from a modern mindset and would be dismissed as absurd by ancient thinkers.) Yet I continue to wrestle with how grace and habit work together. If an atheist practices solitude and silence, would they benefit? In God’s graciousness, it seems they would, though differently than a follower of Jesus doing the same.

As a recovering self-fixer, I’m on the guard against what Paul in Colossians 2:23 calls ​“will-worship” — self-made religion and ascetic practices that have an appearance of holy habit but in the end ​“are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”

How then do we build habit without a self-help mindset?

Cue Colossians 3. Paul there prescribes a holy habit: ​“Set your mind on the things above,” and then gives a key for keeping habits in their proper place — ​“for you have died.” 

It’s hard to take credit for fixing yourself when you’re dead.

We are crucified with Christ, risen with Christ, and now in training with Christ. It’s not us that lives, not us that can take credit for a good habit, but Christ that lives in us, ​“without whom [we] can do nothing good at all,” as à Kempis says in an excerpt featured this week. 

I’m out of space and I can see this isn’t going to get all worked out in an email. But it has whet my appetite (and I hope yours) to dig deeper into habit and grace.

Your fellow student of Jesus,