Introduction to Ourselves

Within the six-volume series on education written by Charlotte Mason, her book entitled Ourselves is unique unto itself. It is written directly to the student unlike the other books which are written to educators. The intention is to teach students about themselves so that they have a deep understanding of their own inner working. She likens the person to a kingdom—the “Kingdom of Mansoul.” Even this analogy teaches the young person that they are to master themselves. Mason aims to equip young people with knowledge of themselves in order to make good choices in life and to be of good service to God and the world.

The book is highly structured, falling into two major parts: self-knowledge and self-direction. Within the first part, there are four main headings—body, mind, heart and vocation—each addressing aspects of personhood in keeping with the kingdom analogy by casting these aspects as offices within a ruling counsel or cabinet. Then in the second part, there are three main headings—conscience, the will and the soul. Throughout the volume there are references to the Bible, literature and poetry, which ornament this imaginative approach to Mason’s work. I have found it to be an enjoyable read and has the feel of a spiritual classic such as Pilgrim’s Progress or The Interior Castle.

Our selected chapter comes towards the end of the book, as part of self-direction within the soul. Mason defines the soul as a temple dedicated to “the service of the living God.” (174). Living out our Christian faith takes practice, so one can hear in this section advice for the young person to heed in terms of the dangers that would beset us and the ways we ought to practice gratitude.

Thanksgiving: The Nine

Mason begins with the story in Luke 17:11-19 of the ten lepers who were cleansed. Only one of the ten, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks to Jesus. The one who gave thanks was honored, but Jesus questioned, “Where are the others?” In our fallen condition, are we not like the nine when we neglect to give thanks.

The Nine: “Whoso offereth Me thanks and praise, he honoureth Me,” saith our God; and we are abashed when we realise that it rests with us to add honour to the Highest, and that we refrain our lips.

“Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine?” Alas, how often are we among the nine, the poor, pitiful souls who received everything and gave nothing, not even a word of thanks! It is worth noting that “the unthankful and the evil” go together in that list of lost souls which we find in the last book of the Bible. Even if we have our moments of thankfulness, when we cry,

“When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view I’m lost,
In wonder, love and praise”

our fault, and our very great misfortune, is, that we fail to take at regular intervals that survey of our life which must indeed cause us transports of gratitude. We fail to give thanks, partly because we are inert, partly because we are preoccupied with some fret or desire of the moment, and partly because of the petulant turning away of the shoulder from God which is our danger. But let us take time for the survey, if only on the Sundays, or, less frequently still, at the great seasons of the year. (191-192)

As we train our children and students, we can highlight the preoccupation that distracts us from reflection and offering our thanks to God. Moreover, there should be times set aside, even if it is only once a week, to spend in reflection and to articulate thanks to God.

Thanksgiving: My Rising Soul Surveys

Next, Mason helps to shape our gratitude towards God around the common things of life. Notice how she is cultivating the affections very much in the tradition of Augustine. The simple things that cause us delight are the springboard towards the upward thoughts that rise to the Father.

‘My Rising Soul Surveys:’ How good is life, how joyous it is to go out of doors, even in the streets of a city! Surely a pleasant thing it is to see the sun! How good is health, even the small share of it allotted to the invalid! How good and congenial all the pleasant ways of home life, all family love and neighbourly kindness, and the love of friends! How good it is to belong to a great country and share in all her interests and concerns! How good to belong to the world of men, aware that whatever concerns men, concerns us! How good are books and pictures and music! How delightful is knowledge! How good is the food we eat! How pleasant are the clothes we wear! How sweet is sleep, and how joyful is awaking!

The Soul that surveys these and a thousand other good things of our common life is indeed a ‘rising soul,’ rising to the Father,––who knoweth that we have need of all these things,––with the gratitude and thanksgiving that are forced out of a heart overflowing with love. Even an occasional act of thanksgiving of this kind sweetens the rest of life for us; unconsidered thanks rise from us day by day and hour by hour. We say grace for a kind look, or a beautiful poem, or a delightful book, quite as truly as for a good dinner––more so, indeed; for it is true of us also that man doth not live by bread alone. (192)

The goal of habit training is to instill the best practices of life so that they easily flow as a matter of course. Consider how the habit of reflection on the simple events and happenings of the day followed by an expression of thanks to God can support the spiritual life of the child throughout the rest of his life.

Thanksgiving: We Honor God by Thanking Him

Mason rounds out her thinking about the habit of thanksgiving by contrasting the thanks we offer in exceptional circumstances with the daily thanks we offer for simple things. It reminds me of what the ancient philosophers taught about virtues such as courage or prudence. We ought not to wait for exceptional circumstances to show courage, for in those moments, we might not have the strength to withstand such circumstances. Better to practice the virtues daily in simple circumstances so that we are well acclimated to the virtue at the hour of need. The same holds true for offering thanksgiving to God.

We honour God by thanking Him: But we think so little of ourselves that it does not seem to us to matter much whether or no we thank God for all His surprising sweet benefits and mercies towards us.

Indeed, we should not have known that it does matter, if, with the condescending grace that few earthly parents show, He had not told us that He is honoured by our thanks! How impossible it seems that we should add anything to God, much less that we should add to His honour! Here is our great opportunity: let us give thanks.

Perhaps most of us fall on our knees and give thanks for special mercies that we have begged of our Father’s providing care––the restored health of one beloved, the removal of some cause of anxiety, the opening up of some opportunity that we have longed for. For such graces as these we give ungrudging thanks, and we do well; but the continual habit of thanksgiving is more;––

“Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be,
Thy praise.”

HERBERT. (192-193)

Three Practical Applications

As we think about these concepts from Charlotte Mason, I think there are many practical applications for us as teachers in our classrooms. Here are three that seem most immediately applicable.

First, schedule time in your classroom each day to have students reflect on the simple thinks and offer thanks to God for those things. This can be a great practice at the end of the morning or the end of the day. As students trace back over the day, have them notice people, events, activities or objects that catch their attention. Once they have something in mind, then coach them on appropriate ways to express thanks to God. A moment of prayer at the end of the day can occur in small groups or as a big group.

Second, gratitude journals can be a helpful tool in cultivating the habit of thankfulness. Designate a line in a homework steno or a section in a copybook for writing short expressions of thanksgiving. Start each day by reminding students to be on the lookout for opportunities to express gratitude for simple things in their gratitude journals. These journals can feed into an end-of-day gratitude session, by having students review their journals to populate their minds with occurrences from the day.

Third, lead by example from the front of the classroom. Find things to be grateful for and express your thanksgiving regularly. You can set the tone for this habit by demonstrating what it looks like to be a person who gives an “occasional act of thanksgiving” to sweeting your own life as well as the atmosphere of your classroom. Furthermore, by acknowledging and honoring God in this way, it serves as a regular reminder of His presence in our midst.

Watch an in-depth training session on how to apply Charlotte Mason’s method of habit training in your classroom. Dr. Egan briefly reviews the basics, and then takes you to new levels of understanding that has practical benefits for students of all ages.

Learn practical strategies to cultivate attention, piety, penmanship, and other specific habits. Whether you are a classroom teacher, administrator or homeschool parent, you will find helpful tools to take your craft of teaching to the next level.

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The character of Faramir is demonstrated in his resistance to the temptation of the ring. The downfall of Boromir had been his desire to possess the One Ring. Having brought the hobbits to the secret hideout overlooking the Anduin River, Faramir is confronted with the knowledge that Frodo carries Sauron’s greatest weapon. “Not if I found it on the highway would I take it” (J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Ballantine: 1965, 342). It was not as though Faramar hadn’t felt the power of temptation upon seeing the ring, it was his wise perception of the great peril for one wielding it, but also the care for Frodo, the ring bearer, that sustained him through his temptation.

As great as this moment is in the story of Faramir, the episode I find most fascinating is when Faramir invites the hobbits to a meal. Even in the rustic hideaway, it is a moment of great decorum. A table was set with a simple meal by the soldiers under Faramir’s command. The hobbits were invited to wash before supper and then to sit at the makeshift table.

“Before they ate, Faramir and all his men turned and faced west in a moment of silence. Faramir signed to Frodo and Sam that they should do likewise. ‘So we always do,’ he said, as they sat down: ‘we look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be. Have you no such custom at meat?’

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (Ballantine: 1965), 336

We hear in this moment an echo of Tolkien’s faith. Compare the Gondorian table grace to the Gloria patri prayer: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” (Note: Another hint at this harkening back to an older Christian piety is that they turned and faced west toward the place of their devotion. Churches were oriented east toward the sunrise which symbolized the resurrection. This practice fell away after the Middle Ages.) In the midst of quest and battle, this moment of quiet makes for a poignant reminder of our connection to something higher and more profound than ourselves. The scene goes on as Frodo answers Faramir’s question.

“‘No,’ said Frodo, feeling strangely rustic and untutored. ‘But if we are guests, we bow to our host, and after we have eaten we rise and thank him.’”

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (Ballantine: 1965), 336

Even though the hobbits have a far simpler culture than the civilized Gondorians, they still have traditions centered around the table. In particular, Frodo notes how gratitude is the final component when dining with others.

This little scene reminds me of a type of Thanksgiving meal. The scant resources of the Gondorian army feeds the wandering hobbits whose supplies are running low. Two cultures meet one another and exchange traditions and lore. In America we connect our annual Thanksgiving holiday to the Pilgrims feasting with the Native Americans. I could imagine hobbits of the shire celebrating Frodo and Sam’s meal with Faramir. The common thread amongst these celebrations is the idea of thanksgiving or gratitude. In days of old, the harvest feast served a similar purpose, gratitude to the Maker for that year’s yield.

A Definition of Gratitude

The word “gratitude” comes from the Latin gratus, an adjective meaning “acceptable, agreeable, pleasing, welcome.” From this word we derive other English words such as “grateful” and “congratulations.” We tend to prefer the words “thankfulness” or “thanks” – words having Old English roots – instead of gratitude, the Latinate alternative. At heart, gratitude or thankfulness is a natural affection. Edwards compares gratitude to anger finding that both natural affections can arise with or without passions associated with them. Just as I may be angered by someone I hate, I can also be angered by someone I don’t hate or even love. Similarly, I can feel gratitude towards someone I love or it may arise “without any true or proper love” (Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, 170-171). We shall come back to Edwards in a moment.

In modern psychology, gratitude has been analyzed for its relevance to subjective well-being. The Gratitude Questionnaire-Six-Item Form (GQ6) is a tool that analyzes how prone an individual is to experience gratitude in daily life. It is a rather short form that can be helpful in differentiating individual frequency and intensity of gratitude. The Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Scale (GRAT) – Short Form is a questionnaire comprised of 16 statements that are scaled by respondents “to measure an individual’s dispositional gratitude.” A very brief scale by comparison is The Gratitude Adjective Checklist (GAC) that measures an individual’s disposition by way of three adjectives: grateful, thankful, and appreciative. Social scientists have used these and other scales to measure dispositional gratitude, connecting increased gratitude to increased well-being. As we consider gratitude or thankfulness as an attribute worthy of cultivation in this article, measures such as these can be an asset that enables us to track our sense of gratitude over time. (The links above are to PDFs of the actual forms and can be accessed free of charge.)

From these considerations, we can define gratitude as a human affection or feeling that expresses appreciation. A person can have a greater or lesser disposition to express gratitude. And in addition, one can grow in one’s capacity to express gratitude. Finally, an increase in one’s disposition to express gratitude can positively impact one’s overall feeling of well-being or happiness.

A Theology of Gratitude

Having mentioned Jonathan Edwards above, it behooves us to further develop our understanding of gratitude in theological terms. We noted that gratitude is a natural affection, which leads him to claim that “it renders ingratitude so much the more vile and heinous” (171). There is something Aristotelian about his reasoning at this point. Gratitude is a virtue fitting to our nature and yet requiring cultivation, but it is all too easy to fall into the vice of ingratitude where the lack of gratitude is an offence against our humanity. Edwards reasons further, “The exercise of mere natural gratitude may be the foundation of a sort of love to God” (172), and yet without a true knowledge of God, the exercise of this virtue lacks any saving grace. The conclusion Edwards arrives at differentiates true gratitude from natural gratitude:

“True gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us, arises from a foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself, whereas a natural gratitude has no such antecedent foundation.”

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (Renaissance Classics, 2012), 175

The echo of 1 John 4:19 is made more explicit later in Edward’s argument. The origin of our true gratitude is not some mere natural gratitude that springs from some self-interest, but upon an understanding of our desperate reliance on God who supplies our need. This speaks in some ways of our utter inability to be truly grateful apart from a knowledge of our depravity and reliance upon the grace of God.

“But as to truly gracious affections, they are built elsewhere; they have their foundation out of self in God and Jesus Christ; and therefore a discovery of themselves, of their own deformity, and the meanness of their experiences, though it will purify their affections, yet it will not destroy them, but in some respects sweeten and heighten them.”

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (Renaissance Classics, 2012), 181

So our natural gratitude become purified by Christ, but not destroyed. We might feel something of gratitude apart from Christ, but in Christ, that natural feeling becomes magnified as we recognize how far the love of God has reached to meet me in my depth from his heights. Every simple gift – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the warmth of shelter – is magnified by the immeasurable gift of Christ.

This is the message we have received in any number of passages of scripture. Consider as one example Hebrews 12:28, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” The better part of our prayers should be issuing words of thanksgiving to our creator and sustainer; far more than our requests, as important as these are.

A Philosophy of Gratitude

Such a theology resonates with what the philosophical tradition considers as the foundation of happiness. Here I am thinking in particular of eudaimonic happiness as expressed in the writings of Aristotle. The pathway to happiness in life is the cultivation of virtue. Even though Aristotle did not list gratitude among the virtues, there are ample reasons to consider it as such. Cicero, for instance, considered gratitude as “the mother of all virtues (mater virtutum omnium)” (For Plancius 33.80). We can even identify gratitude as a virtuous mean between vices of absence and excess in an Aristotelian manner. Edwards, for instance, spelled out how ingratitude is an assault on our humanity. This vice of absence is equally as bad as the obsequious groveler who ingratiate themselves to others but whose heart is far from truly thankful.

Ancient philosophy agrees with modern science that subjective well-being can be increased by cultivating gratitude. If we are not already convinced by the testimony of scripture, we can see by every measure how important gratitude is if we want to live lives of meaning and purpose.

I am struck by Jordan Peterson‘s latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for LIfe, which adds twelve more rules to his previous 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The last of the rules is expressed as “Be grateful in spite of your suffering.” For Peterson to conclude his most recent book with the concept of gratitude strikes at the continuing relevance of gratitude. Earlier this year when tweeting some 40 rules, Peterson included this rule and added, “Gratitude is the process of consciously and courageously attempting thankfulness in the face of the catastrophe of life.” This expression gets at an intentional practice of gratitude, not when one feels great about life, but actually developing such a practice when life is not particularly going so well. What this means is that there is no better time to develop a habit of gratitude like the present moment.

The Practice of Gratitude

To that end, I want to provide a few practical tools you may want to incorporate into your daily classroom routines. The empirical scales provided above offer some potential for older students to gain some understanding of their own disposition toward gratitude. Yet all ages can benefit from growing in the habit of gratitude. So, here are a few suggestions for you to consider.

The first practical tool for you to consider is a gratitude journal. Now you can devote an entire journal or notebook to this, or you can simply use a homework steno for this. The idea here is to record on a daily basis something each student is grateful for. This can be a basic sentence, such as “I am grateful for the warm weather outside,” or, “I am grateful that we got to go on a field trip today.” These expressions lay a solid foundation for expressing gratitude in concrete ways. Building on this, you can ask for more and more specificity. What made the warm weather something you were grateful for, or why was the field trip such a gratifying experience? Yet, even the simplest expressions of gratitude can have a deep impact on your students’ lives.

The second practical tool is having students write a gratitude letter. Okay, this is a thank you note, but by framing it as a gratitude letter, you are able to break the mold, so to speak, of people’s preconceptions about thank you cards. Have students think about someone they would like to express their gratitude to. The act of expressing gratitude to another person is so powerful in their lives. You can incorporate this into a unit of letter writing by teaching your students how to include such things as the format of a letter, the greeting and closing, and how to address an envelope. In a gratitude letter, students should learn how to give specific details about what it is they are grateful for (a gift, an event, the meaning of the relationship, etc.) and the impact it has had on their life. They can also learn different phrases that express gratitude. Sending these letters to the recipients can be a powerful moment in both the students’ and recipients’ lives.

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The greatest liability of education is an undue focus on the intellect. One of the chief concerns teachers have when they plan their lessons is the conveyance of knowledge. This is indeed an important aspect of teaching. But this is not the only aspect of teaching and perhaps actually not the most important, despite the fact that the intellect or mind would seem to be the chief organ we’re concerned with in education. This misunderstanding of our educational aims has the potential to misalign our goals and strategies as educators.

In previous posts, I have shown how a focus on intellectual knowledge has been the chief concern of educational thinkers and policy makers over the past several decades, who boil down the intellect to standards of intellectual achievement measured by standardized testing. Don’t get me wrong, the intellect needs to be trained and it is a lofty goal for educators to train the minds of our young ones.

The point I will make here, though, is that there is so much more to a person than just their intellect, and that it is essential for educators to consider the whole person if we are to properly align our goals and strategies. If the mind is not the only organ of learning, then we do our students a disservice by only training that organ. As we explore what it means to educate the whole person, we will draw upon the wisdom of ancient and modern thinkers as they express the power of habit training.

“With All Your Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength”

When we speak about the whole person, what do we mean? Let us consider the human person from a biblical perspective. Human beings are embodied souls. The concept of imago Dei in Genesis 1:26-27 means there is a spark of divinity that resides within each individual person. The embodiment of this divine spark means, however, that we are physical creatures, existing temporally, regulated by the laws of our natural universe. The imago Dei connects us to our creator such that our soul’s greatest desire is to relate to God. The Hebrew Bible expresses this in terms of a law:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:5)

This tripartite expression of our personhood considers three organs: heart, soul, and body. This tripartite division, though, is not as cut and dried as we might want. Ancient thinkers as well as Christian theologians have noted the will, conscience, intuition, reason, imagination, emotion and, yes, the intellect as other constituent parts of our being. Grappling with what we are and what we are made of is not a straightforward exercise. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 in Mark 12:30 and includes an interesting word:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

The mind has now been added to the list. Matthew and Luke condense the list back down to three – soul, mind and strength – combining heart and mind as synonyms for the same organ. The biblical testimony is that we are complex creatures, multifaceted, resonant with our Creator, and fit with diverse organs that operate a wide array of human functions.

In his book You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith connects our multifaceted nature to learning. He writes:

Every approach to discipleship and Christian formation assumes an implicit model of what human beings are. While these assumption usually remain unarticulated, we nonetheless work with some fundamental (though unstated) assumptions about what sorts of creatures we are—and therefore what sorts of learners we are. If being a disciple is being a learner and follower of Jesus, then a lot hinges on what you think ‘learning’ is. And what you think learning is hinges on what you think human beings are. In other words, your understanding of discipleship will reflect a set of working assumptions about the very nature of human beings, even if you’ve never asked yourself such questions.

Smith, You Are What You Love, 2-3

What Smith enables us to see is that our model of learning and discipleship hinges on our model of human nature. If we fundamentally think of human beings as physical creatures, our model of teaching will be like training. If we fundamentally think of human beings as intellectual, our model for teaching becomes knowledge transfer. Smith challenges the latter of these understandings of human beings, noting that an intellectual model of “assumes that learning (and hence discipleship) is primarily a matter of depositing ideas and beliefs into mind-containers” (3). One might expect Smith to draw upon James for support (“I will show you my faith by my works”), but he actually turns to Paul, quoting his prayer in Philippians 9-11. The key phrase for him is “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” We can note along with Smith that the order is not that knowledge may abound, although the mind is not far behind. Instead it is that love may abound.

There is a very different model of the human person at work here. Instead of the rationalist, intellectualist model that implies, “You are what you think,” Paul’s prayer hints at a very different conviction:

“You are what you love.” | What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers?”

Smith, You Are What You Love, 7

For Smith, the heart better models the seat of learning and discipleship than the mind. This shift in models for learning means that education is not merely knowledge work, but the cultivation of affections. In order to cultivate the whole person in this fuller understanding of what it means to be a human being, habit training becomes an essential tool for learning.

Common Grace Habits

Training the heart comes by instilling habits. This concept, though, has often raised questions in the minds of Christian parents and educators. We can only love because he first loved us. The work of justification and sanctification comes through the work of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t habit training a circumvention of God’s work in our lives?

Jason has written previously on habit training, connecting the dots between moral virtues as expressed by Plato and Aristotle and the Christian doctrine of common grace. His point was so well made that it deserves rearticulation here. He makes the point that even though human beings are born fallen, depraved and sinful,

“human society would completely fly off the rails if God did not also grant the grace of moral virtue, distributed generally (i.e. in common) to people, regardless of their spiritual condition.”

Jason goes on to distinguish the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, which we would say are “imparted by the Holy Spirit as a result of true repentance,” and the cardinal virtues (such as courage, temperance and prudence), which are cultivated by habit or practice. We hear similar refrains from Aristotle and from the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes, “The virtues (αἱ ἀρεταί) on the other hand we acquire by first having actually practised them (ἐνεργήσαντες).” (Nichomachean Ethics 2:1 or 1103a15-b25; trans. H. Rackham).

A similar refrain echoes in Psalm 111:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Or consider Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The wise and virtuous person acquires good habits through training or practice.

Returning to our theme, it is noteworthy that virtue and wisdom are acquired through a process that is fairly physical in nature. Constant repetition, like a gymnast practicing a routine or a baseball player repeatedly swinging a bat, is the impression these passages leave us with. This is far more effective than a mere appeal to the intellect by way of a lecture.

Christ Our Habitude

Building on Jason’s work regarding the connection between habit training and common grace, I would like to make the case for habit training as likewise essential to our understanding of saving grace. It is a common misunderstanding of the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works to think that human effort has no place in God’s salvific work. One might call upon James to make this point (“I will show you my faith by my works”), but we can find this point made repeatedly in Paul.

In 1 Timothy 4, Paul exhorts Timothy to train disciples in the faith, “being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.” We might tend to focus on Paul’s injunction in 4:11, “Command and teach these things.” This is quickly followed by Paul telling Timothy to devote himself to “the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” Here is the appeal to the intellect, right? However, we should examine the advice Paul gives Timothy leading up to this command.

Paul says in 4:7, “train yourself for godliness” equating this to bodily training in 4:8, noting that training in godliness is of greater importance to bodily training. Paul notes that we toil and strive in this pursuit of godliness, secure in the “hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” (4:10). So it is not actually an appeal to the intellect that Paul advises, but that Timothy should command and teach this very physical pursuit of godliness. Timothy himself should be an example in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, laying out the pathway his disciples should follow in their pursuit of godliness. This is a very active faith.

Paul’s advice to Timothy resonates with what he writes to the Philippians. Here we can clarify the uselessness of works or effort as it relates to merit. Paul writes in Philippians 3:9 that he is “found in him, not having a righteousness of [his] own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Human works are worthless in terms of meriting salvation. God saves based on the work of Christ, which is appropriated through faith, not by works.

However, Paul goes on to describe a faith that is very active. “I press on,” he writes in 3:12, “to make it my own.” Paul is making a habitation in Christ. When a person is justified, they now live “in Christ.” We take on the habits that are consistent with Christ, training out the bad habits and training in the good habits so that our lives become more and more conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.

Christian discipleship according to Paul is a putting on of Christ Jesus. This is what it means to take up our cross daily. We become habituated through regularly reconnecting with the cross of Christ. Habit training as a spiritual exercise enable us to live in Christ, to have Christ as our habitude.

Daily Spiritual Habits

Education is not merely about training the intellect. Our exploration of theological concepts has assisted us in conceptualizing how habit training permeates the entirety of God’s grace in our lives. Education deals with the heart and soul as much as it deals with the mind. To that end I would like to briefly consider a number of daily habits worthy of consideration.

Pray always. That’s a tall order. How many of us faced with the immensity of constant prayer wind up never praying, even though we are intellectually committed to the benefits of prayer. Establishing a daily habit of prayer takes some planning. If you would like to grow in consistency of prayer, attach prayer to an already established habit. If you make coffee for yourself every morning, add prayer to that routine. Maybe brushing your teeth every evening is a solid habit. Build another habit on top of it by spending some time in prayer afterwards.

To form habits, one must be able to accomplish something regularly and consistently. So don’t set yourself a goal of an hour in prayer every day if you haven’t done five minutes consistently. Instead, set a small goal – like five minutes – that you know you can do automatically every time. You are likely to do more, but your small goal means you are more likely to follow through each time.

Gratitude has become a catchphrase in positive psychology these days. Yet Scripture calls us to give thanks regularly. For instance, steadfast prayer is coupled with thanksgiving in Colossians 4:2. In the rush of our daily routines, it can be difficult to pause and reflect on the good God has accomplished in our lives each and every day. Just like prayer, we can add a moment of thanksgiving into our daily routines.

There are many practices faithful Christians have found meaningful for their lives. Perhaps there’s a practice you feel called to make a regular part of your life. Personal habit training can be a means to a deeper walk with God in Christ.

If you would like to learn more about habit training, download my free eBook A Guide to Implementing Habit Training.

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