Habits

Saturday, Rachelle, Rael and I went to see our beloved midwives in Hamilton. We just wanted to touch base with them and bless and thank them again for being such an incredible part of our lives. So we took them out to lunch. We love driving to Hamilton Mt. It's a 90 min drive through the snow covered mountains. It's a well traveled road for us. We generally have some blessed revelation and prophecy emerge in our conversation. This trip was no different.

Shell and I had a great conversation about culture. We want to experience a supernatural culture in our family. How do we do that? What does that look like? How is culture created and sustained? Through our conversation the Lord began to breakdown the concept of culture in a way that it works for us (to at least talk about it and get our minds wrapped around such an enormous word). It really breaks down to customs, traditions, habit. If we don't see that our habits are forming a culture now, we won't see the encouragement we should have.

This came to me as I thought about how we put Rael to bed. There's a culture hidden in our habits. My wife and I pray over Rael, sing and pray in tongues over her, and sing worship songs about His Presence and His Name over her. Through our habits, our culture is created. As we repeatedly practice this family custom, we will have created a culture for Rael to pass on to her kids. Really, a culture is a family practice passed down through the generations. When more than just an individual or family operates and functions with a certain custom of habits, and you have those habits influence a greater population, you now have a culture in a specific geographic area.

What's my value of prayer? What's my practice or habit of prayer? What's my value of worship? What's my habit of worship? What's my value for prophecy? What's my habit? Go through the list and ask these questions. What is my habit of speech in all manners of circumstances? If our values are disconnected from our habits, we are not in unity with ourself, and we are prone to deception because we think we are practicing our values when all we've really done is make a statement of them. The value placed on these disciplines are demonstrated by the time and effort we put into practicing them. Now we may say we have these disciplines of the faith and highly value them, but our actions really determine the depth of our belief. In some instances, people think they live by the values defined in a Christian culture, but in practice, at home, their values are really immersed more in the secular culture. We are touched by its emotional energy more so than the godly culture. Our words and our actions tell what culture is really influencing our heart.

Be encouraged, beloved. Your actions, words, habits, and practices are building the culture of your God in your homes this very minute. With focused intentionality, do what you're doing all the more!

m.