Bad Habits That Will Kill Your Spiritual Growth and
Destroy Your Christian Testimony
3 Bad Habits That Will Kill Your Spiritual Growth
Pastor Jack Wellman
What are three bad habits that will kill your spiritual growth as a
Christian and stunt your faith? What things can you think of?
A Bad Temper
One guy said that he lost his temper with his wife
and said something he regretted. In actuality, he didn’t lose it; he found it.
But maybe he needed to lose it.
Anger is almost always a pride issue. That’s when we
lose our temper. Righteous indignation is not what I’m talking about here
because when we see a child abused, children aborted, or rioting and looting,
getting angry is a natural feeling.
What I mean by losing our temper is when someone
cuts in front of us in traffic or in line and suddenly we unleash the middle
finger or profanity-laced words come flying out of our mouth.
The thing is, you
can’t ever take words back. It takes 10 times the amount of time to clean up
the damage by one single outburst.
James wrote that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
So we should “put away all
filthiness and rampant wickedness” (James 1:20-21).
A bad temper can destroy your spiritual growth and
your Christian testimony. You’re always doing damage control by trying to
apologize time and again.
Failing
to Assemble in Worship
I knew a couple that had problems coming to
church. Their attendance was very sporadic. They would be gone about two out of
every five Sundays, and then it got to be three out of every four.
Over time
they stopped coming to church altogether. The man started drinking and became
hooked on pornography. His wife was on the verge of leaving him, and that was
when he contacted me for some counseling.
What he and his wife were doing was “forsaking the assembling of [themselves] together, as is the manner of
some” (Heb 10:25).
And they missed the encouragement of one another
in the church (Heb 10:26).
Not being within the Body of Christ, they missed
out
They missed out on the
fellowship of the saints, and they missed out on being fed the Word of God on a
regular basis.
They were literally starving to death from a lack of the Bread
of Life. This really stunted their spiritual growth, and it about caused them
to divorce.
Absence of Prayer and Bible Reading
One of my old seminary professors wisely said that
prayer is the pulse of the believer’s spiritual temperature. If there’s a
slowing or decreasing pulse in prayer, then there is spiritual decay, and the
fellowship between them and God is affected.
Add to that a lack of regular
Bible reading and you have a recipe for killing your spiritual growth.
I have counseled so many people who are struggling
with their faith. They begin to doubt their salvation, and then they stop
reading the Bible altogether.
It is a self-replicating cycle. They pray
less; they read less. The less they pray and read, the more they get into
the habit of doing neither.
Reading the Bible will lessen your doubts. Not
reading the Bible will increase your doubts. The exact same thing goes for
prayer.
Conclusion
Take your spiritual temperature once in a while
and ask yourself: Is my temper ruling me, or am I ruling my temper?
Am I failing to assemble and worship with the
saints? Then I may be failing in other areas, too.
Is my prayer life and Bible reading
declining? If so, my spiritual growth is, too.
Would you want to have a
deeper relationship with God?
God has made it possible
for you to know Him and experience an
amazing change in your own life by
receiving His Son, Jesus Christ, and have eternal life.
Say the following
prayer:
“Father God, I confess I am a sinner and
my sins have separated me from You.
I am truly sorry. I now want to turn away from my past
sinful life and live a new life pleasing to You.
Please forgive me, and help me avoid
sinning again.
I believe that Your Son, Jesus Christ died
for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer.
I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my
life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Thank You that
according to your Word, I am now born again.
Please send Your Holy Spirit to help me
obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life.
Please use me for Your glory.
In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.”
Related Posts:
“Create In Me A Clean Heart”
lyrics
Create in me a clean heart, oh God
And renew a right spirit within me
Create in me a clean heart, oh God
And renew a right spirit within me
Cast me not away from Thy presence, oh Lord
And take not Thy holy spirit from me
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation
And renew a right spirit within me
And renew a right spirit within me
Create in me a clean heart, oh God
And renew a right spirit within me
Cast me not away from Thy presence, oh Lord
And take not Thy holy spirit from me
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation
And renew a right spirit within me
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