1 Corinthians 15:1 and 2 says,

Brothers and sisters, I am making known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and in which you stand;
Through which also you are being saved, if you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed for nothing.

Habits Are a Part of Our Lives

I want to start by asking you a question. What kind of habits do you have in your life? To try and help you understand what exactly the question is, let me explain to you what a habit is.

A habit is firstly something that you do frequently. And you usually do it without thinking. It is something that you are comfortable with and you are comfortable doing it.

Amongst all of those we have two kinds of habits. We have good habits and bad habits.

What are the good habits? They are the things that you are doing that you are pleased with. They are activities and actions that bring good results. You would like to keep doing those. You don't want to give them up.

Then there are the bad habits. Those are the things that you are doing that you wish you weren't doing. They are actions that bring bad results in your life. And usually they are activities that you would like to give up, but you can't.

Your successes and failures in life all result from your habits. So you need to get rid of the bad habits, and you need to develop some more good habits.

If you are honest, the scale usually sits with more on the negative side; with the bad habits being the maximum. You have to try and swing the balance and make the good habits in your life more than the bad habits.

I want to tell you that you are never going to get to the stage where there are no more bad habits. It won't happen while you live in this body.

You can however start working towards it. So in this section I would like to speak a bit about changing your habits, because this is practical salvation.

What Salvation is

When you came to accept the Lord, you were put into a position of being saved. But as I have taught before, there are three tenses to salvation. There is a past tense, a present tense and a future tense.

Notice in the verse that I shared at the beginning, Paul spoke about the gospel that he had preached to them and he said,

Through which also you are being saved.

The Greek tense there is the present continuous tense. It is a continual, present process. You are not saved already in the fullest sense of the word, but you are being saved.

A lot of the problem lies in our understanding of what salvation is. We think of salvation in this way. We say,

"I am not going to hell anymore. I'm on my way to heaven because I accepted Jesus as my Savior."

But the Greek word for salvation is a lot more than being delivered from the consequences of sin and going to hell. If you think about it, it is the same in English.

Salvation involves deliverance from everything in this life that can stand in the way of us living the abundant life that the Lord intended for us.

So salvation means walking in all of those things that we have been talking about for a while now. All the blessings that God has for us in this life are all part of our salvation.

Making Your Salvation Real

The gospel is what started it off. The gospel is the good news that says,

"You can have it."

The trouble is once we have received that good news, we now have to go through a process of applying practically what God has offered to us. In other words we have to make our salvation real and experimental in our daily lives.

To do that you will have to change your habits. But do you know what your biggest habit is? It is sin. What is a habit? Something you do frequently, that you do without thinking and that you are comfortable doing.

The first time you did something you probably felt uncomfortable. You probably thought,

"That is wrong. I shouldn't do it."

If you have ever taken up smoking, the first time you smoked a cigarette you probably felt quite bad about it. You probably did it behind your parents' back or something like that and your conscience pricked you when you did it.

The next time you did it your conscience pricked you a little bit less. Eventually it got to the stage where it didn't worry you anymore. You didn't even think about it. You see that is how a habit develops.

How to Change Your Habits

You have to change your habits. We have spoken a lot about this over the last while. But in this section I would like to zero in and show you how it will start happening for you.

Decide to Change

The first thing you must do is make a decision to change. It is not going to fall on you. You can't say,

"One of these days the Lord is just going to take that habit right out of me. Hallelujah! I will go forward, someone will lay hands on me, and I will be instantly delivered from the habit."

People who believe in deliverance ministry think that they can cast a habit out like a demon. But you can't do that, because the habit didn't just jump in. A habit was formed over time and it has to be removed.

Remove and Replace Habits

You need to be honest and identify what the bad habits are. Then you have to find a good habit to replace it. Because you see you can't stop doing the wrong thing. You can only start doing the right thing.

We have taught on this in many places, so I am just laying a foundation here. The Scripture says you must put off and put on. Put off lying and start telling the truth. Put off the sinful habit and put on a righteous habit in its place.

So you need to identify the bad habit and find a good habit to replace it with. Then you need to start developing that new habit.

That is how we change our lives. That is how we begin to make our salvation practical in our daily lives.

How do we get to the place where we stop doing what we were doing, change and start doing the other thing? This is what I want to zero in on here.

We Don't Want to Change

What is your motivation to change? Why should you change?

You might say, "I enjoy this bad habit. It actually makes me feel good. Yes I know it is bad for me and I shouldn't do it, but I really enjoy it. It meets my psychological needs and meets me in my comfort zone. I feel great, so why should I change?"

You see all of us eventually develop a spirit of complacency. We get used to coasting along.

You might say, "Yes there are a few inconveniences along the way, but I can live with them. Life is not perfect. I might not be living the kind of life I wish I lived, but it is good enough. I can handle a few inconveniences and will make it through."

But what do we do? We settle for second best. We settle for less than what God intended for us. How foolish!

But it is human nature isn't it? You see we have developed these habits over a period of time and we settle into our little rut of complacency.

Reaching the Turning Point

How do we break free of that? Usually nothing happens until we face a crisis experience in our lives.

This has been described in different ways. Amongst the self-help teachers, one of the greats was the late Jim Rohn. He had an expression to describe this.

Jim was the son of a preacher. He was a Christian, but he taught in the secular realm on principles of success. He coined the phrase the day that turns your life around.

He shared his own experience of how a little Girl Scout was trying to sell cookies. He wanted to buy them, but he didn't even have the money to buy some and help the poor little girl. He felt such a heel to have to actually admit,

"I can't even afford your cookies. That is how poor I am."

He said that is when he reached the point where he said,

"I don't want to live this way anymore!"

He said that is the day that turns your life around. It's when you come to the place where you say,

"Enough! I'm tired of going on this way. I have to change. I have to do something."

Salvation is a Turning Point

We all face the day that turns your life around as we go through different circumstances in our lives.

But let me tell you what was the most important day that turned your life around. It was the day when you accepted Jesus as your Savior. Salvation and the salvation experience often comes as a result of a crisis experience.

Perhaps there was a death in the family, or somebody that you knew died. You suddenly start thinking about eternity and you realize,

"If I were to suddenly die I would not be ready for this."

You begin to realize you are a sinner. Then you hear the good news of the gospel, that Jesus has paid the price and you say,

"That's it! I'm no longer going to live this life of sin."

The Bible calls that repentance. We often think of repentance as being sorry for our sins. But actually the Greek word repentance means to change your thinking; to change your mind.

Think about something here. If you needed to repent in order to get saved in the sense of being born again, how about all the other aspects of salvation?

You see repentance is the day that turns your life around, because it means you are walking in one direction and you turn around and start going in the opposite direction. That is exactly what repentance means. You did that when you became a believer.