Catch the Foxes

Starting a New Year is always so fresh and bright! New possibilities, New ways of living, Newness in general! It feels hopeful and it feels exhilarating.

I love that God gives us new days every day. We get opportunities constantly to live by His grace. Progress is something that humans actually need in order to feel “alive.” Even if we are going very slowly, moving forward is hopeful and we all know how moving backwards feels. Eh.

One of the moving forward techniques that we see in many self-help books is to create habits. I love love love to read about and hear about habits. However, one thing I have noticed is how hard it is to keep healthy habits. Simply reading and hearing about habits isn’t enough. You actually have to do the things over and over again to make that habit stick.

But, we also seem to do this all in reverse. We start with good intentions to get the habits going without considering our insides. The outer actions will never stick if we haven’t considered the inside.

For example, when I first began the habit of spending the first part of my day with God, I knew in my head that it would be a good idea. What actually made me take action was realizing that nothing in my life worked unless God was my focus. My mind was made up that it was a worthwhile sacrifice of time. That snowball effect kicked in as I saw that action turn into positive results.

Just going through the motions of forcing myself to read the Bible and pray wasn’t going to stick. My heart first had to want it. I prayed to want it. The Spirit made me want it!

A verse that has been on repeat for me for months is:

You must catch the troubling foxes, those sly little foxes that hinder our relationship. For they raid our budding vineyard of love to ruin what I’ve planted within you. Will you catch them and remove them for me? We will do it together. Song of Songs 2:15 TPT

Lately, I’ve been noticing various “foxes” that creep in stealthily to stir up trouble in my mind and in my life. For me, these “foxes” are distractions (busy things, people’s opinions, pain-my jaw, even wine!), doubts (am I really going to be able to do that, what if “they” are right, what if my jaw pain never gets better), discouragement (jaw pain, feeling like I can’t make good habits stick!)

Thus, I have decided to start a study called “Catch the Foxes.”

How do we Catch the Foxes? We do it with Jesus. We do it because we don’t want to ruin what has been planted in us and we don’t want our relationship with Him hindered.

To me, these reasons make all the difference in motivation. If our motives our right, and we rely on God’s grace rather than a bunch of rules and regulations, we will act out of our healthy motives.

So, let us do this together! Let’s Catch the Foxes!

What are your foxes?

—-

I will be posting a longer message on Mondays and shorter snippets Tues-Friday.

Consider getting The Passion Translation Bible and reading Song of Songs with me.

I will be using one chapter per week as our focus.