How to Win the Battle over Compulsive Habits

There’s a Slow Word video every Monday and Thursday. Today’s is at the bottom of this post.

We know how to beat a path to the refrigerator when we’re sad. We know how to scroll through email when we’re lonely, how to grasp for things that fill, things that numb, or things that whisper we’re special.  We have an overflowing basket of coping mechanisms for when we feel cut down, cut out, or cut clean through. It’s fast food and it never lasts, except for the addictive path that remains.

It’s time, dear friends, to trail-blaze a new path straight to the feast, to pull out our chair, to sit at the table knowing Peace is a Person and He is sitting with us. In fact, in Psalm 23, it says He’s the one who has prepared the table before us and laid the feast.  Then in Psalms 119 we hear: “You are my place of quiet retreat. I wait for your word to renew me.” (Psalm 119:114 The MSG). This Slow Word Lectio Divina invites us to listen to the Word not just to gain knowledge but to be WITH the Word-Giver. And as we listen to His heart, we become rooted and established in love and stretch out into becoming followers who can risk the hard journey.

We’ve built what the neuroscientists call strong neural pathways. Lonely? Walk to the refrigerator.  Rough day at work? Search for the remote.  Anger or self-loathing? Search the upper cupboard for the wine bottle. Need a little jolt of recognition or a virtual high five? Write a Facebook post and watch for likes. We’ve done it a thousand times and the path is worn bald. But, Loves, there’s something more, and oh, it’s so very good.

“I am now going to allure her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” God declared these words over His people in the small Old Testament book of Hosea. He took her away from all her other lovers and from her greedy self-provision. He set a table in the wilderness as a spiritual detox. No other voices. No other distractions. No other Source. This is the gift of stillness. He invites us phone addicts, sugar addicts, noise addicts, and compulsory shoppers into the quiet of rest where He is the only one setting the table. We stop and we savor. We wait with expectation: “We wait for His Word to renew us.”

Slow word after slow word He invites us to feast on the word WITH the WORD. Then, every time we come to the Word carrying our strong and twisted hungers and find we are once again lavishly satisfied, we reinforce a new neural pathway. We practice resurrection. 

Dear friends, we’re building a movement all the while falling in love with the Word and the Word-Giver.

I’m absolutely amazed at how these little unpolished videos are connecting so many hearts to the word. Remember, there’s a Slow Word video every Monday and Thursday. Subscribe on the right to receive yours straight to your inbox, a twice-weekly invitation to the feast.

Share the movement and invite others to this simple feast and then share with all of us how the word or invitation is working itself through your heart.