Your Habits Are Not Your Identity

Sermon outline

Your standing with God is settled, so stop letting habits, culture and old patterns define you: ask why, find yourself in the word and the house of God, guard what goes in, and learn who you are in time alone with Him.

1. Realise there must be more than this

   Asked how someone gets back to God's original plan, Pastor Wesley says the first step is realising you are not in God's purpose. Most people simply copy what they see. When you start to feel there must be more to life than what you are doing now, you are in a good place, because then you begin to seek, and those who seek find.

   Illustration: In a social experiment in a waiting room, actors stood up every time a buzzer sounded. Newcomers copied them, until the last person, alone in the room and not part of the experiment, stood up at the buzzer for no reason, because everyone else had done it.

   “When you feel that, you know what, there must be more to life than this, that's a good place to be.”

2. Ask why you do what you do

   Find out why you do things a certain way, including your pet peeves and what irritates you. University teaches you to question and research; do the same with life. Someone decided which lipstick, clothes and shoes are fashionable, so ask why you follow it. 'This is how my mother did it' is not good enough.

   Illustration: A husband asks his wife why she always cuts the end off the roast before it goes in the oven. Her mother and grandmother did it, so she does. He keeps asking until an old granny explains that ovens used to be too small for it to fit.

   “Don't be satisfied with nominal answers.”

3. Your habits are not you

   Pastor Thamie recalls sitting outside a friend's flat one night before either of them was saved, tired of the drinking, partying and clubbing, saying there had to be more. Both found the Lord in different churches around the same time. Christians, young and old, make the mistake of letting a habit such as anger define them. Your standing with God is right; the habit is not who you are, though the enemy will tell you it is.

   “Your standing is right in God, but your habits are not you.”

   • 2 Corinthians 5:21

4. Found in the word and in the house of God, over time

   Pastor Thamie tried to change in his own strength and it did not last. When someone invited him to church and he heard the word preached, new possibilities opened beyond his background and bank balance, and he no longer had to be the old Tommy. Satan separates people from the church because outside it the world defines you. Pastor Wesley adds that the malformations of trauma fall away through forgiveness and the Holy Spirit's healing, and that identity grows like your shoe size, over years, as you ask the right questions.

   Illustration: Digging a two-metre hole: you cannot dig for an hour, call it a day and start somewhere else. Sunday after Sunday, message after message, you keep digging in the same spot.

   “Likewise, your identity is something that will be established in your life. But the right questions need to be asked.”

5. Guard what goes into your ears

   Pastor Thamie remembers Pastor Wesley teaching years ago on the influence of music. Pastor Wesley describes how gang initiations used drugs and aggressive music to push a person across the line, and how the same music in a teenager's earphones at night can leave him angry and estranged from parents who love him. Words matter, because the tongue is the pen of a writer, and lyrics that call women by an animal's name devalue every mother and sister. Read the lyrics before you listen.

   Illustration: When he noticed a change in his own child, he checked the music on her phone, asked her to read the lyrics of one song aloud, and she was shocked at what she had been listening to.

   “If you wanna listen to something new, go read the lyrics. And if the lyrics doesn't identify with you as a human being, then don't listen to it.”

   • Psalm 45:1
   • Isaiah 5:20

6. Some things are for later

   Every sexual relationship creates a soul tie: a little of you goes to the other person and a little of them comes to you, and in marriage you end up comparing your spouse with everyone before. Focus now on who you are in Christ, what you will study and how you can add value to your parents. His father taught him that the first twenty-five years turn on your education, the second on the person you marry, and the third on the first two.

   Illustration: The looks fade, and the older he gets the more he realises a cooked meal at home is worth more than eating out.

   “The first 25 years of your life is based on your education. The second 25 years of your life depends on the person that you marry.”

7. Know yourself in time alone with God

   The show's host, recently married with a young son, says that young people who do not know themselves look for themselves in other people and in what family says they inherited. Time alone, away from family, work and society, is where he hears God best and learns his likes and dislikes, so he no longer fears what people think. Pastor Wesley adds that Christ is not a statue but an intimate relationship, a still small voice you hear when you are alone. Pastor Thamie closes with practical keys: read the word, let the Holy Spirit transform you, believe what it says about you, change your circle and change what you listen to and watch.

   “Christ is not a religion. Christ is a very deep, intimate relationship with somebody.”

   • 1 Kings 19:12
   • 2 Corinthians 3:18
   • Romans 8:37
   • Ephesians 2:6
   • Psalm 139:14
   • John 8:36
   • 2 Corinthians 6:17

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