Oftentimes, God works from the outside-in so that He might transform us from the inside-out. That is what the Habits of the Spirit are all about.

What are Habits of the Spirit?

They are spiritual practices that we learn to do over and over until we do them automatically, and that more and more help us to open the whole of our lives to God.

Personally, I have two heroes who lived the Habits of the Spirit: Enoch and Lynn.

Enoch’s life is summed up in Genesis 5:24: Enoch walked with God; then he was not there because God took him.

Enoch’s name gives us insight into his character, because back then a name represents the person: “Enoch” means “disciplined dedication” – that is, he had trained himself to serve a purpose to which he had dedicated his life to, a dedication from the heart.

What was this purpose?

To walk with God.

To walk with God is to open the whole of your life to God. It is both relational and directional: you go somewhere together with God, sharing with Him the realities of your heart as you do, just as He shared the realities of His Heart with you. This relationship is a Heart-to-heart relationship in which the two “keep in step” with one another.

We see, then, two dynamics at work in Enoch’s life:

Dynamic #1: Enoch had disciplined himself – meaning, trained himself – so that he might open the whole of his life to God.

Dynamic #2: Enoch had committed himself from the heart to align each step that he took with each step that God took.

In New Testament terms, he “abided” in Christ (see John 15:5 ESV). And he did so with startling results: God took him: God so enjoyed His fellowship with Enoch that He wanted it to be unfettered by Enoch’s fallen self. That is, by his flesh.

The same applies to my second hero in the Habits of the Spirit, Lynn Snyder, whom I will call “Mom” from this point forward.

Mom taught me one simple lesson about the Christian life: a Christian spends time with God on a regular basis through the Habits of the Spirit.

She did not teach me this with words, at least not at first, but with her example: morning after morning, night after night, I’d walk past her door at the top of the stairs in our California townhouse, and I’d see her hunched over her Bible on her bed, praying. Those few moments were holy moments. So, I slowed down and silenced my steps because deep down I knew she was engaged in a sacred work that I dare not disturb, even though at that time I was not yet a Christian.

Seeing her in this posture before God day after day, I internalized the message that a believer in Jesus spent regular time with Him in Scripture and in prayer. Or in what I call the Habits of the Spirit.

Mom continued in this posture before God until her final days here on earth, which I witnessed.

My family had the privilege of caring for her in her final months as cancer spread throughout her body, consuming her physical life but not her spiritual life. Even in her pain, she sat in her favorite spot on her couch, reading Scripture and waiting on God in prayer, as had been her Habit for the past 40 years of her walk with God.

But this Habit was not just an outward act: it helped her to open her heart to God at deep, deep levels so that He might do a deep, deep work in her. It also helped train her to open her heart to God in her deepest need even when it was not her set time for prayer.

I saw this with my own eyes one or two days before she passed. I had walked out of the bedroom and into the living room where she now lay in a hospital bed. She was speaking to someone. At first, I thought it was to me. She wasn’t: she was praying No, she was crying out to Jesus. Looking back now, I recognize that cry of her soul.

What was her cry?

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was a cry to be delivered fully from her dying body in order to be with Him. For me, that was another holy moment. It was also a moment in which I witnessed a cry of the soul come from a heart trained through years and years of practice to open itself to God in all of life.

Her Habits of the Spirit helped her to bring her needs to God when it mattered most.

Were her Habits always healthy? And did they always open her heart up to God? No and no. But then again: no one’s Habits are perfect or fully mature. Our Habits and our openness to God through the Habits mature along with the rest of us – as long as we are open to growing in them, which means to stop doing those spiritual acts that do not open us to God’s transforming power and to start doing those that do.

But what is a Habit of the Spirit?

To this question we turn in the InnerMeetingPoint training, Opening to God in All of Life through the Habits of the Spirit.