28: Practical Repentance: Nurturing New Habits – Practical Spiritual Warfare, Part 3

[00:01] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 28. Today we are continuing our series on practical warfare. And we’re happy to be with you.

Hello, Father.

[00:10] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. We are indeed in a series on practical warfare, and this is an acrostic you came up with, which, I think, needs to be emphasized. This is an all-in-the-family project here.

[00:22] Stephanie: Yes, I’m apprenticing.

[00:24] Marcus: Yeah, apprenticing in the ways of the acronyms and acrostics.

[00:27] Stephanie: Yeah.

[00:28] Marcus: This one is SONG.

[00:29] Stephanie: SONG. Yeah.

[00:30] Marcus: Which leads to whistling.

[00:32] Stephanie: “Whistling While You Warfare.” I don’t know if anybody else likes that as much as I do, but I’ve been kind of obsessed.

Yes, we pre-recorded last week because we were on the road, and so we are officially back from our Disciple Making Forum trip, which was really lovely. We got to talk about a lot of different practical warfare things there and minister with people and that was really good. So hello to everyone from Disciple Making Forum!

[01:02] Marcus: Yep. Discipleship.org and that whole group. We had a wonderful time meeting with some of the leaders of the group: Bobby Harrington, Shidanki Johnson, Jim Putman and several other people who we got a chance to connect with.

We made new connections with other churches that are interested in possibly partnering with us and getting training. And we even had ministry sessions taking place right after sessions where people were asking for prayer.

It was cool that we had a Deeper Walk team there and people were able to pair up and pray. We saw some breakthroughs in people’s lives as some things that had held them in bondage for quite some time were able to be removed.

There was much but good news coming out of that event. So thank you for your prayers and thank you for those of you who donated to help make that possible.

[01:59] Stephanie: Thank you! I just wanted to say one of the things that stood out from the trip was the multiplicative nature of freedom ministry: how you learned from your father and then you trained on.

And then we had people there who were training others, like Dan Allison, who learned from you, who then are equipping other people now. And there’s just multiple generations of people who are jumping in and helping others to freedom. It was just really fun and powerful to see, in person, kind of that unfolding.

[02:32] Marcus: That is true. It was very cool. And the other thing that I personally enjoyed was that Dan Allison did about half of the teaching with me at this event. So it’s nice to see that multiplying as well, the ability of other people to step in and train.

[02:45] Stephanie: Yeah, that was cool.

You did mention we couldn’t do all of this without our donors. So if you are one of our donors, thank you so much. This podcast and so much of what we do couldn’t happen without you. We are in the midst of a spring giving campaign. Do you want to give any words about that?

[03:08] Marcus: Yeah, we have a campaign that focuses on three areas: Trailblazers, Trail Builders, and President’s Circle.

[03:15] Stephanie: Right.

[03:16] Marcus:  Very cool. And basically, again, our ministry, while we do a lot of events that charge fees and things, we rely heavily on donors to make a lot of what we do possible. And so it really does make an impact.

[03:34] Stephanie: It does. So we’re trusting God for 100 new monthly partners. And if you are not a ministry partner yet, you could join. And if you are, you could consider looking at one of those tiers. We just thank you. Thank you for making all of this possible.

Oh, should I tell them actually that donors get a special invite to a donor only event in June?

[03:59] Marcus: Yeah.

[04:00] Stephanie: Okay. So this is exciting. We are launching a new event called the Deeper Walk Experience. Father, give us a quick pitch.

[04:10] Marcus: Deeper Walk Experience. I teach through the core content from the book, A Deeper Walk, in six or seven sessions. And then Dawn Whitestone is going to be there and she’s going to walk people through exercises live on site so that you’re actually experiencing the things that we’re talking about.

A lot of Deeper Walk team members will be there. We’re doing our first one at the Harper Christian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. And our second one will be at, I believe it’s called, the Christian Worship Center in the Chicagoland area.

So yeah, it’s a great opportunity to connect with Deeper Walk people and also to go through both training and experiential activity.

[04:51] Stephanie: And the surprise thing that I was noting was that we’re actually doing an online only version of that in June with only donors who are invited.

[05:01] Marcus: Donors only get a chance to preview what this is all about, to experience it for yourself. And the good news is you can make a donation right now, and you’re invited.

[05:14] Stephanie: If you want more information, there are links in the description on finding out more about that.

But now on to practical warfare. We’ve been working through this acrostic, SONG: Whistle While You Warfare. Stop giving permission, Oust the enemy, now we’re talking about Nurturing new habits, and then we’ll talk about Guarding your ground.

So today, nurturing new habits. We talk a lot at Deeper Walk about habits. We have joy habits and leadership habits and all the things, relational habits.

Today we don’t actually have a new acrostic for you in terms of habits, but this idea came out of repentance. The idea of nurturing new habits came out of, once you have ousted the enemy, you have done the renunciation process saying, “I’m stopping this,” then repentance is about turning and walking the other direction.

It’s walking out that choice you’ve made to renounce whatever was giving permission. And so that can look so many different ways depending on what the issue was that you were renouncing. So we’re not giving a really specific plan of, okay, now you need to do this, and now you need to do this, because I don’t know what it was that you were renouncing and ousting. But we want to give some encouragement and some help and just cast a vision for what repentance looks like in terms of nurturing new habits.

[06:49] Marcus: Well, when you think about repentance, there are really two parts to it: get off the path you’re on, and get on a new path. So, “I’ve got to get off of this one,” that’s kind of the renunciation part. And then “I’ve got to get on a new path.” Well, that’s not always easy.

But one of the reasons that we go through spiritual warfare is to get rid of those demonic obstacles that make it impossible to turn around and go the other direction and get on a new path. Just because a demon’s been evicted or ousted does not mean that you’re automatically going to get on a new path. You have to be intentional about, “What are the new habits I’m going to build in my life?”

And whenever I think about habits, I think about gaps, because there are always gaps in our lives between where we know we ought to be and where we are, or where we really want to be and where we are.

The core way that we close gaps in our lives is the cultivation of new habits. And so when I’m struggling with anxiety on a regular basis, or depression, then I know that I not only need to maybe get rid of a spirit related to those things, but I need to cultivate new habits that are going to grow my capacity for joy, grow my capacity to feel relational connection with God. Those habits help to shrink that gap and get me on a new path. So that’s what we mean by nurturing new habits.

[08:15] Stephanie: Yes, I like that you brought up the gaps. I also was just thinking about the fact that when you’re talking about nurturing new habits, there’s sort of a presumption there that maybe you were dealing with a habitual sin or habitual something that was a problem.

You can also grow your understanding of things or your maturity of things. Okay, I’m getting too complicated. There are so many reasons why ground could have been given. Sometimes it’s something from your ancestry or sometimes it’s something that you did or whatever. So we’re not saying that this is always ….

[08:50] Marcus: We’re not saying that you’re having to break a bad habit. We’re just saying that there is an underdeveloped habit in your life. It’s not even that the habit doesn’t exist. It just might be underdeveloped and it needs strengthening and needs to get deeper.

I’m pretty sure all of us read the Bible, but could that habit be strengthened? All of us probably pray, could that habit be strengthened? All of us probably connect in community. Could it be strengthened?

[09:17] Stephanie: If you don’t, could you start?

[09:19] Marcus: And then if you realize, “No, actually I’m not doing those things,” then that’s where we need to start a new habit.

[09:26] Stephanie: Let’s just delve briefly on the idea of repentance being the happiest word in the English language.

[09:34] Marcus: Yes, I can’t remember where I heard that, but I remember the first time I did, I was like, “Whoa. I have literally never thought of that,” because repentance was always in my mind connected to hell and fire and brimstone.

“Repent or perish!” was always the connecting dots. The idea of, “Repentance is a happy word,” had never occurred to me until it was explained that repentance means you can get off of the path that is heading to destruction.

You can get off of a path that is going to destroy you. That’s good news. You can actually get off of that path. And if you repent, you can get on a different path that doesn’t lead to destruction. It leads to life and life abundantly. So that does make repentance the happiest word in the English language. It was just a very different way of thinking of it for me.

[10:30] Stephanie: I love that. When we’re talking about nurturing new habits and repentance, it’s a path of hope and of building a good thing.

We talked about the “counterfeit citadels on the edge of despair” in a prior episode. This to me is, hey, we are tapping into the true hope and we are walking out the true hope here. There’s life on this road and good things to come. So where would you start?

[11:03] Marcus: Well, first of all, hope in the Bible is not wishful thinking. It is not, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” That’s not what the Bible means by hope. The hope in the Bible is always related to something that is already promised, that it is already a reality.

God is saying, “Anchor yourself to the hope of this promised reality.” And that’s very different. There are things we’re not promised in life.

We’re not promised that everything will go the way we imagine it in our heads. We’re not promised that I’m never going to lose my health, or I’m never going to lose money, or I’m never going to lose the situation that I’m in. But there are things that are promised to us, and that is, “I will always be with you. I will go through the fire with you. I will get you through.”

And then the ultimate promise of eternal life. Billions and billions of people in the world today do not go to bed at night knowing that they have eternal life. And that’s a big, big thing. We are grateful for the confidence that that gives. Now, I think your actual question was on what are some of the habits?

[12:20] Stephanie: Sure. We have just ousted the enemy. What’s your next step?

[12:27] Marcus: So, next step, let me give an example. Depending on what it was, let’s just say a real problem, a common problem in our culture today is pornography, sexual sin of all kinds. Let’s just say that you have tried to stop doing this a thousand times, “I just really want to stop.” And now you evicted something demonic that was related to it. But you’ve still got to build new habits.

One of those new habits can be as basic as, “I just don’t even go on my computer at this time of day,” or “If I am on my computer this time of day, I make sure I’m with somebody, I make sure there are some safeguards.” I look for things to remove temptations from me. If you think about the world, the flesh and the devil, then you have different strategies for how you deal with each of them.

The way Karl Payne explains this, I like, is that when it’s the world, you flee. You run. And that’s why the Bible says, “Flee the evil desires of youth.” But if it’s the flesh, you can’t run from your flesh. It goes with you. The other idea behind running is also putting up roadblocks to keep you from running to something that you shouldn’t be running to.

If the roadblocks would be a habit, things that we need to run away from, when it comes to the flesh, we’re talking about replacing. “What are the thoughts that need to get replaced with other thoughts. So it’s not enough just to say, “I’m going to stop thinking this, I’m going to stop thinking this.” I’ve actually got to have a battle plan for how I’m going to replace those thoughts with something that is going to be what Philippians 4:8 describes as “Whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report, whatever is excellent and praiseworthy. Think on these things.”

We also have, then, the third idea is the devil. And you don’t want to run from the devil and you can’t replace the devil, so you have to resist the devil and make him flee. That’s James’s advice: “Resist the devil and make him flee.” And it actually starts with this idea of, “Submit yourself, therefore, to God,” which is what we’re doing in repentance. We’re submitting ourselves to God, and then we are resisting the devil. And so that’s kind of the one-two punch thing.

[14:52] Stephanie: Because we cannot resist the devil in our own strength.

[14:55] Marcus: Yeah. If you haven’t submitted to God, resisting the devil may not go so well. But if you have submitted to God through repentance and forgiveness and embracing truth, then resist. Now the devil doesn’t have any more permission and it’s easy to make him flee.

So I think there’s a reason that James pairs those words, submit and resist. So those are the three ideas: there are things I’ve got to run from, there are things I’ve got to replace, there are things I’ve got to resist. Those are all battle strategies.

[15:27] Stephanie: Right.

[15:27] Marcus: On the other side is what one of our early counselors used to call “building a tower of truth”.

[15:33] Stephanie: Yes.

[15:34] Marcus: And I like that. We tore down the stronghold of deception, and now we want to build up a tower of truth. And there’s only one way to do that and the Bible talks about it all the time, “Meditate on God’s word day and night.”

He said that it will anchor you deep, it’ll give you deep roots, it’ll connect to water that’ll get you through the hard times in life. There’s just no replacement for biblical meditation.

[16:03] Stephanie: I’m so glad you went there. Some people will say, “Oh, you need to read your Bible. You need to read your Bible.” But people bring different interpretations to that or don’t understand how to study their Bible or whatever.

It’s good to bring all the tools. We need to be feeding, discipling ourselves with the Word. Our first level of discipleship, our first level of crafting our worldview, and understanding who we are, and how God made us to interact with life and reality is the Bible. And so if we’re not watering our brains, so to speak….

[16:48] Marcus: One of the things that happened to me in my lifetime is that we went from everybody reading King James when I was a kid, and then out came the new American Standard, and then came the NIV. By the time I was in college, all the churches I knew were using NIV. And then along came more. Now, I open up my Bible app, and it’s Christian Standard Bible. And I have, ESV came out and made a big splash. Part of what’s happened for me is, a lot of the Bible memory work that I did early in life was all King James, and then I did Bible memory work in NIV, and now we’ve got new things.

One of the things that’s actually helped me is to realize it doesn’t matter if I’m memorizing things word for word. I just need to be concept by concept. What Bible memory does is it gives you something to meditate on at any given time. What happens is, for example, sometimes if I’m trying to fall asleep at night and I just need something good in my brain, I will just quote Psalm 23 and I’ll realize that as I’m going through there some of the verses are King James and some of the verses I’m not always consistent on exactly getting the wording right.

But just knowing all of those verses and being able to do that, and then you start adding other passages and texts. I just want to commend the practice of Bible memory because I think that it makes it just so much easier.

The other thing that happens when you are routinely in the Word is that you begin to develop a biblical worldview without even realizing you’re developing a biblical worldview. What happens now is, instead of you coming from your story into the Bible story, you are spending so much time in God’s Word that that story is now becoming the starting point and giving you the framework through which you look at your own life.

[18:50] Stephanie: You articulated that very well! That’s what I was trying to say.

[18:56] Marcus: The goal is not just to master the Bible, but to let the Bible master you, to make the Bible so central to our lives that we naturally think about things from biblical perspectives.

[19:16] Stephanie: Someday we’ll do even more just on Bible study and where we can break things down. But I just want to encourage people. I know some people need the encouragement to dedicate time and get into the study of it. But for others, I know I’ve gone through periods where I struggled to do as much Bible study because I was wanting to go 100%, get out all the commentaries and do my word studies.

[19:45] Marcus: I have 17 different colors of highlights.

[19:47] Stephanie: I have all the Bible study I want to do, and I would have to say, you know what? Today, just read a couple chapters, and that’s okay. I love, as Asheritah calls them, snacks and feasts of the Bible. Be with God as you’re doing it and just make sure that you’re tapping into that word that he has for you, whatever that’s looking like for the season you’re in.

All right, any next steps?

[20:19] Marcus: The other thing I like to do in Bible study is pray ahead of time. Say, “God, what do you want to jump out at me today? Would you make the right thing kind of jump out at me?”

And then you ask him, “Why did you want that to jump out at me? Is there something you want me to be thinking about?” Especially when you have a relatively short time for your Bible reading, that’s a good way to make it interactive. I encourage you with that.

There are other times where it’s just study, and literally your whole goal is to try to understand the text. But even then you’re praying, “God, would you guide me in my understanding here? Because I’m not going to get there without your help.”

[21:01] Stephanie: Could you give us some how-to-plan steps that are practical? Like, if you’re saying, “Okay, I know I need to make a change,” whatever this is looking like, and you’ve been convicted about whatever the change is. Can you give us some guidance on what it looks like to plan your steps?

[21:23] Marcus: Planning a step starts with taking the change you want to make. The classic example is the change I want to make is an elephant. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So the idea here is how do you pare this thing down into manageable steps? And as our friend Judy Felix likes to say, you want the tiniest steps possible, tiny habits.

[21:51] Marcus: And so some of this is just making sure that you’ve got a Bible app very readily available on your phone so that next time you’re in line, instead of going to YouTube and scrolling or Instagram and scrolling, you go to your Bible app and you have five minutes there looking at something that you’ve been thinking about. That would be the idea of how do you develop a habit. You’ve got to make some concrete decisions. Here’s a tiny thing I can do. I can make sure that I am opening my Bible on a regular basis.

The fact that we all have phones and apps these days actually makes that easier if we want to use it that way. I confess that I have had seasons of doing that and seasons where I’ve abandoned that completely. But that’s a good thing to do.

Then the other thing is using Sundays well. Or using one day of the week well. And that is, having at least one day a week, like a Sabbath day, where you’re going to do a deeper dive on that day. And so that’s kind of the, when am I going to do my snacking? When am I going to do my feasting? And if you take it a step further, the idea of festivals in Israel where there would be a whole week that was dedicated to something, that’s the idea of a spiritual retreat.

Every now and then, building a spiritual retreat into your schedule. And so a lot of this actually starts with a calendar and then starts with tiny habits and tiny changes that we can make that all add up to more significant change down the road.

[23:19] Stephanie: Yes. Don’t expect to sprint to the finish line. We’ve talked about this in a recent episode as well, of just not trying to bite off more than you can chew and burning out or getting discouraged.

But what is an actionable step I can take right now, and then maybe planning in, “Okay, what is going to trigger doing more of that step or moving on to the next step?” Like having ideas in place for, now that I’ve done this, I can move on to the next one, or now that I’ve done this, I can and make doing that larger. Having a plan that is attainable is also a great way to continue your hope and not get discouraged.

I would also just say, as you were talking earlier with the sexual temptation, pornography example, I know we’ve talked to multiple people who will do things like, “On my way home from work, I’m going to drive this way instead of that way because I pass something that tempts me when I drive this direction.” Or, “When I travel, I’m not going to turn on the TV in my hotel room,” or things like that where there are actionable, concrete things as well that are just, “This is a new habit I’m going to institute to also help me stay away from the temptation,” if that was the issue.

[24:43] Marcus: Yep, it’s true. For a lot of people who travel, there’s a lot of temptation. And it’s not always overt sexual sin, but there’s the temptation to watch things you shouldn’t watch, or to dwell in areas and things that you shouldn’t.

And so having a plan of how you’re going to handle that. Just this week, somebody told me that his pact with his wife is that he does not watch TV when he’s on the road so that he doesn’t find himself watching something he shouldn’t.

[25:13] Stephanie: Yes, so things like that. Well, speaking of nurturing new rhythms, start gathering your groups for a summer study. We have one episode left of this season and then we are shifting into a summer schedule.

And our summer schedule is not technically the podcast. The podcast will be taking a break, but you will still be hearing from Father here. Oh, I didn’t grab a book to show. The book A Deeper Walk. We are having a summer study going through the companion videos. Oh, it’s behind me.

[25:53] Marcus: It’s behind you.

[25:55] Stephanie: I don’t know if it’s in frame. Yes, we are doing a weekly drop. Oh, thank you, producer. Thank you. Ta da.

All right. For those who are watching on YouTube or on Spotify, I’m holding up the book A Deeper Walk. This is our flagship book at Deeper Walk that works through the FISH model of heart-focused discipleship. And so weekly, for 10 weeks, we will be going through a video study of this. And you can gather your groups and go through it together in person or virtually.

You can also join us in our Mighty Network’s Deeper Walk community group if you don’t have a group, or if you want more groups, expand the joy.

[26:45] Marcus: Yeah, the way I understand it is like when normally we would upload a podcast, we’re going to be uploading the next episode of this series. And so that’ll be what we’re doing for the summer. So if you’re in the habit, or the rhythm, of listening to podcasts, you can listen to the teaching from the book instead. And also, like she said, if you want to do a group on it, this is a built-in, free small group curriculum.

[27:12] Stephanie: Yes, yes. So there will be a discussion guide that you can download and you’ll be able to find this in Learning Library, our Deeper Walk video streaming service. And then also we will be dropping it weekly on YouTube.

All right, Father, final thoughts about nurturing new habits.

[27:31] Marcus: You know, this is one of those things where I think a lot of us get discouraged. It’s like people who’ve said, “I’ve quit making New Year’s resolutions. Because I set all these goals for myself. I’m determined I’m going to make it.” It’s one of the reasons why you’ve got to focus on celebrating little successes along the way and not just looking at it as an all or nothing proposition. You know, for people like, did I lose my 20 pounds? That’s a pretty big step.

But if it’s, “Hey, am I drinking more water? Did I actually carry a bottle of water around with me all day today?” If there’s smaller things that I can do, celebrating the fact that I took a step forward today. And if I didn’t, if I took a step backwards, say, “Well, you know, it’s all a journey. I’ll take another step forward tomorrow.”

[28:19] Stephanie: Good word.

All right. We’ll be with you next week. Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend.  And do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.