Sermon Tone Analysis

Family Matters

Last week we started a new series called, “Family Matters” by talking about the one thing every family needs.

That one thing is God, the one who created family.

God created family and He cares deeply about family.

Our God is a God of authority and order.

He has the ability to transform your family when we place Him at the top of the family.

He HAS to be at the top.

If we want our best family, we have to put God at the top and we have to be intentional with our family.

We have to be intentional about the time we give them, the way we pray for them, the way we discipline, and the focus we give them.

Today we are going to continue this series by talking about the one thing every family needs to work on.

Last week was about the one thing every family needs, this week is the one thing every family needs to work on.

In short, you could call it “bad habits”.

We all have bad habits.

We each have different bad habits.

You may not struggle with the habits I struggle with.

In fact, you might think my habits are way worse than yours, or possibly silly in comparison.

The bottom line is that we all have bad habits and even if they just seem like minor faults, when we allow them to operate within the family we are giving them power and they can slowly work to destroy our family.

One of the ways bad habits can be harmful in a family is by being passed from one person to another.

This is especially true with children.

Kids learn habits from parents.

As role models for our children, we should do all we can to eliminate our bad habits and replace them with good habits.

We can’t fix every problem in our families over night and doing everything right will not guarantee that your children will grow up to be perfect and never make mistakes, but having a solid foundation in good habits absolutely will change the atmosphere of our homes and chart us on a course toward a successful and thriving families.

What is a habit?

What is a habit?

I am sure we all know what a habit is, but just for fun let’s look at the definition so we are all on the same page before we dive in.

The Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines a habit as...

Habit: a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior; an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.

Many times, when we think about habits we look at them through the eyes of surrender or defeat.

We look at the dishes piled up in the sink and think, “Man, I just can’t stay on top of cleaning the house.”

or “I am such a procrastinator.”

Or we look at the bank account and think, “I will never get ahead.

I probably shouldn’t have bought that thing last week.

I am horrible with money.”

Think about your bad habit.

When your bad habit is in your mind, how do you view it?

Is the tone of your thoughts that of defeat?

Like you lost a battle with your habit?

A tone of surrender because you didn’t even want to fight it?

The problem is the way we think about habits.

We have a tendency to view habits through the lens of behavior.

We look at the last part of the definition and say, “My bad habit is my behavior.”

or “my behavior has become completely involuntary.”

This is us settling on an identity.

Behavior is just behavior.

It is neither bad nor good.

What makes a bad habit is what behavior we settle on or surrender to.

The key words in the definition of a habit are “settled” and “acquired”.

That is great news for us and our bad habits.

That means that with God’s help, we can transform these bad behaviors into good ones.

We can stop settling and surrendering, and acquire new behaviors and form good habits.

Psychologists have a super scientific and complicated phrase for the process of forming habits.

They call it “habit formation.”

This quote comes from Psychology Today…

Habit Formation: the process by which behaviors become automatic.

Habits can form without a person intending to acquire them, but they can also be deliberately cultivated — or eliminated — to better suit one’s personal goals.

According to Psychology Today, people develop habits in order to get their needs met more efficiently in everyday life.

We aren’t always aware we are developing habits, yet they become deeply ingrained in our brains making them difficult to break even when they create more problems than they solve.

Habits are built through learning and repetition.

The most common way habits are formed is through pursuing goals.

Think about driving.

How many of you take the same route to work every day?

When you leave your house you have a goal to get to work.

If you have the bad habit of running late, everyday your goal is to get to work as fast as possible.

Everyday you take the same route, stop at the same stop sign, wave as the same car speeds by because they are also late, and pull in to the same parking space.

You do this every day over and over.

One day you might even be sitting at your desk and not even remember the trip to work because you have trained your brain to get you to work.

A habit is not an inherently bad thing, but when we consistently run on autopilot we will miss opportunities for improvement or fail to correct problems that arise.

Keeping with the driving theme, I was going toward Burns Flat the other day.

When I go toward Burns Flat I normally go through Sentinel because it is the fastest route for me.

Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, when I go through Sentinel, I am on my way to Elk City.

Because of that, my brain is trained to take a specific route.

That day, I made it all the way to Retrop before I realized that I went the wrong way out of Sentinel to go to Burns Flat.

What we need to do with our habits is retrain them.

Rather than letting our brain determine the quickest and easiest route to our goals, we need to participate and be intentional about each behavior that takes us to our destination.

In other words, we need to be in control of the “Habit Loop.”

What is a “Habit Loop?”

The habit loop concept was popularized by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

In his book, Duhigg describes the habit loop as a series of elements that produce habits.

Habits form when we experience cues, respond with a specific behavior, and then that behavior produces a reward.

If the example of driving to work resonates with a habit you are familiar with, you may have experienced the habit loop when you started the bad habit of leaving for work late…

The first day you left late for work was a cue or a trigger.

Because you were late you might have done something bad like speeding or running stop signs.

That would be the routine or the behavior.

The reward came when you shaved off a couple of minutes from your commute and managed to make it on time.

After you have repeated this loop of receiving a positive reward for a negative behavior a few times you find yourself living with a new habit.

Now you speed everywhere you go.

How does the habit loop play out in your family?

Maybe your sibling hurt your feelings one day, so you respond by being sarcastic or making fun of them.

A few times you managed to make everyone laugh giving you some positive reinforcement.

Now, instead of lifting up family members and being encouraging, you are regularly putting them down and dishonoring them.

When you were young your brother was always breaking your toys so you started hiding them and refusing to share.

Now, as an adult, you don’t feel you can trust your family with things that are important to you or you simply choose not to bless your family with generosity.

Maybe you were hurt by someone who said they loved you, so you retreated inside yourself and avoid intimacy in your relationship.

At some point you have experienced something that was a cue or a trigger.

That lead to your response, positive or negative.

Then your response rewarded you, encouraging the same response next time.

Now you and your family are dealing with bad habits.

Maybe you don’t handle stress very well.

Maybe it’s financial irresponsibility.

Constantly worrying about something.