Four Ways to Fight Bad Habits - Daily Hope with Rick Warren - May 29, 2025

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Four Ways to Fight Bad Habits
By Rick Warren

“We must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially sin that distracts us. We must run the race that lies ahead of us and never give up.” Hebrews 12:1 (GW) 

Just like we do a spring cleaning in our homes, it’s important to do a spring cleaning in our minds—but this one lasts all throughout the year. For transformation to happen in your life, there are going to be some bad habits you’ll need to clear out regularly because they’re slowing you down.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “We must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially sin that distracts us. We must run the race that lies ahead of us and never give up” (GW). 

Have you noticed that it’s easier to pick up bad habits than it is to get rid of them? There are four reasons why it’s so hard to clean out your bad habits:

Because you’ve had them a long time. You didn’t collect your habits, hurts, and hang-ups overnight. Many of these patterns were established in childhood—patterns that started as survival skills. They might not be helping you now, but they’re familiar, so you hang on to them. 

Because you identify with them. We often confuse our identity with our defects—we’re aggressive or a workaholic or an overeater. And when we see ourselves in a certain way, we set up a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we have an unconscious fear of change. We wonder, “If I change, then who will I be?”

Because they have a payoff. Whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. Sometimes we reward negative behavior because it masks our pain or gives us an excuse to fail or gets us some attention.

Because Satan fights it. Satan doesn’t want you to be transformed and set free. So the moment you get serious about changing, he starts whispering to you, “Who do you think you are? You can’t change. You’ve tried to change in the past; it won’t work. You may as well give up!”

Cleaning house in your mind is never easy. It takes time, so you will have to be patient. You will have to remind yourself of your new identity in Christ. You’ve got to remind yourself of a better and bigger payoff—the joy that comes from having a forever relationship with Jesus Christ. And you’ll have to rely on the Holy Spirit, whose power in you is greater than Satan’s attacks.

Choosing this kind of mindset every day will lead to healthy living and a lighter load as you run the race God has for you.

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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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