- Ecclesiastes 12:14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
Habits come from ‘thoughts.’ Since those thoughts get stored in your brain, when the time comes, you surely remember them and take action according to those thoughts. Once you take that action a few times, it becomes a habit. If you fail to fix it at the time you do it just a few times, it will become harder and harder to fix it. Later, your brain will get hardened that way and that action will become comfortable for you to do. It will become your constitution and your body will automatically take action that way.
With both plants and animals too – if you train them to develop ‘habits’ while raising them, they will turn out that way. When you make it a habit to feed a puppy dog food mixed with chicken, and later, if you give it only dog food, it will not eat it. If you get a plant that grows in the sunny spot into a habit of growing in the shade, it will become a plant that is used to living in the shade. Additionally, if you raise a plant giving it little water and no fertilizer, it will become that kind of a plant. However, as a consequence, it will not grow much. The same is true with people. Since ‘habits’ come from thoughts, when a person forgets something from his thoughts, the habit will also pass and he won’t be able to do that. Habits come from thoughts and habits are also discarded in the thoughts.
Thoughts are the source of everything. Therefore, you have to keep bad habits from coming through your thoughts at all. And once something has become a habit, you have to fix it right away.
Individuals, families, nations, and the world are all suffering terrible losses because they developed bad habits and ways and they sometimes fail to receive blessings they should have received. Speech pattern, actions, character, laziness, feeling left-out, diet, and lifestyle – once they become a habit, you can’t fix them even if God, Himself, tells you to fix them. Habits are really terrible. Therefore, you have to fix them when they start and when you do them just a few times. Once a tree is grown, you cannot pull it out by hand anymore. You have to pull it out while it is still young. The same is true with habits.
Your soul and spirit possess your body’s habits. So, if you don’t fix them, you will suffer terrible losses. Preschool and primary school children or middle and high school students, if you don’t fix your bad habits when you are young, you will keep doing that even after you grow up. If you develop [bad habits such as] drinking, smoking, [falling for] the opposite-sex or same-sex, pornography, rotten culture, and bad character when you are young.
It will be 2~5 times worse when you are grown. Since you cannot fix it once [you are that age], you are so tormented by it. You have to hurry up and fix them while you are even a year younger! Among adults too – people who failed to fix [their habits] even after they’ve heard the Word for 10~20 years still do things according to those habits even now. At this time, you must really fix them!
- ‘Bad habits’ are like a dead body. Therefore, you must bury them by completely fixing them.
- ‘Bad habits’ are like a flaw in an otherwise flawless jewel. Therefore, it will be a blemish in an otherwise good life and will hurt you.
- ‘Bad habits’ are like a lump on your face. You have to fix them like you would get the lump removed. Only then will you shine.
- ‘Bad habits’ are like ‘a rock that trips your feet when you are traveling on a path.’
- You have to extract the rock in order to travel comfortably.
In the same way, you have to fix your bad habits in order for your path of life to be peaceful and prosperous. If you develop bad habits of being excessively worried or concerned, you will live experiencing terrible suffering while worrying and being concerned more excessively than necessary. If you don’t fix ‘the bad habits,’ then ‘a person who is like gold’ will end up traveling ‘a path of life that is like steel.’ If you walk around with a hunched back and that posture becomes a habit, then your body will become hardened that way and you will feel comfortable only if you hunch your back. However, if you don’t correct that posture, your body will develop problems. The same is true with your heart, thoughts, and actions. If you develop a bad habit, your heart, thoughts, and actions become fixed that way and you will feel comfortable only if you think and act that way. Then problems will occur as a result of the bad habits and you will be harmed as a result. Even if it is something bad, if you keep liking it, it will become your lifestyle and thus, you will not know that it is a bad habit. You weren’t like that in the past but you acquired the habit because you kept doing it.
With speech, character, actions, the way you live your life, and faith – when you are used to doing them in the wrong ways, they will ultimately become habits and action that sin. Later you, yourself will pay the price for all that. It is you, who develop ‘bad habits’ and it is you, who make it difficult for yourself. Therefore, ‘fixing them’ must also be done by ‘you.’ It will be so comfortable for you when you fix your bad habits. It is to develop habits by the Word of life and to fix [the bad habits] by taking action on the Word absolutely with the Holy Spirit.
A person who has developed habits of laziness can’t fix it even after ten years. Since laziness has become a habit and constitution for them, they think that being idle is comfortable. Habits end up becoming the lifestyle you were born with. Even the habit of being lazy will become the lifestyle you were born with if you don’t fix it. Even if it may be a great house and a great garden, if you don’t clean, don’t do repairs, and don’t pull the weeds from the garden, it will ultimately become an old house and a messy garden.
This is true for life and also true for faith. ‘A habit’ is like a person who has already made a road and is traveling on the road. Since he lives his life with his thoughts and body made compatible with that habit, both their thoughts and actions continue to develop as they travel on the path of that habit. You have to fix them. Only then will you get out!
Look at the people who prosper and do well! They are people who live united with God, the Holy Spirit and the Lord. Since such people have ‘constitutions and habits’ that are compatible with each other, they congregate together, do things together, bring grace and make history happen. For such people, ‘their future lives’ are guaranteed. ‘The lifestyle of their spirits’ is also guaranteed.
Each of you must fix ‘your bad habits’ with intent. They will be fixed if you work on them properly for just a month.
- If you develop bad habits, you cannot discover your treasures.
- If you develop bad habits, you will suffer losses.
- If you develop bad habits, you will go to the domain of death.
- If you develop bad habits, even your eternal destiny will change.
Therefore, you must make sure to fix them. Everyone, I hope that you will not just be lives that are gold plated only on the outside but fix your bad habits, become pure gold lives and live that way!