Sunday message · Spiritual Habits series
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Message Summary
Pastor Phillip Santillan launches a new series, Spiritual Habits: Rhythms for Building a Life on Mission, from Luke 19:1–10. Living on mission simply means living the life God created us for, centered on Jesus, since God has a God-sized mission for every person. A disciple is someone who knows Jesus, believes in Jesus and becomes like Jesus, and spiritual habits are how we grow: the scriptural rhythms of living God uses to make us more like Jesus in our everyday lives.
Phil observes that good habits are often things we know are good for us but don’t want to do. They begin as discipline and can become a passion. His parents made him practice scales as a boy, and years later, as a piano major in Bible college, he spent twenty hours a week in the practice room. Good habits also bring progress whatever our attitude, as a grumpy season of healthy eating and exercise taught him.
Drawing on Don Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Phil explains that spiritual habits are both personal and interpersonal. It is a lie that we can become all God wants apart from the church, and equally a lie that church involvement can make up for a missing personal devotional life, a trap Phil admits he has fallen into. They are also derived from the gospel, not divorced from it. Practiced rightly, they draw us deeper into the good news, not into a new religion built on our own ability.
Why engage in them? Phil turns to Zacchaeus. As Jesus heads toward the cross, a rich chief tax collector too short to see over the crowd climbs a sycamore fig tree. Jesus calls him by name and invites himself to his home, and Zacchaeus, having simply met Jesus, gives half his wealth to the poor and repays those he cheated four times over. Salvation came, Phil notes, not through his giving but because Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). God loves us as we are, but he doesn’t want us to stay that way.
Spiritual habits are how God transforms us from the inside out. Whitney describes them as ways we place ourselves in the path of God’s grace and seek him, just as Zacchaeus placed himself in Jesus’ path. God also shapes us through people and circumstances, but spiritual habits are where we have the most choice: a hunger for the Bible is God’s gift, but we must turn the pages. So Phil asks, “When was the last time you spiritually placed yourself in the path of God’s grace?”
He ends with an illustration from his youth pastor days. Chocolate poured into milk sinks to the bottom until it is stirred. Likewise, God gives his Spirit to everyone who receives Christ, and spiritual habits are the stirring, as believers let the Holy Spirit change and transform them. If we want God to make us look like Jesus, Phil says, the coming weeks are an invitation to learn how to stir our lives and build a life on mission.
