4 Habits That Will Change the Way You Approach Fall
It took me a long time to learn that habits can be empowering rather than limiting. It’s natural for me to go with the flow, not letting change or unpredictability upend me. But in the pushing against my grain and establishing rhythms for my life that determine the direction my life flows, I’ve found freedom.
I’ve learned that the things I say are truly important to me are only as important as the space I create to actually do them. And when I take each day as it comes, the essential things get overcrowded with non-essentials, and at the end of the day I just feel a bit empty. Perhaps you’ve experienced the same.
The snooze button is tapped one too many times, and now there is no margin to meet with Jesus before it’s time to get breakfast for the kids. Then I determine to read my Bible before I fall asleep that night, but the movie runs late and the kids go to bed late, and by the time they’re all tucked in I’m tuckered out, and I fall asleep yet again without spending time with the One who gives life.
It’s a script I lived for years. Yet I avoided a schedule because planned-out felt too-restrictive.
But something has to change if we want our lives to turn out differently—because what we give our time to is what is most important to us.
Are you ready for a reset?
Fall is fast approaching, and with it, opportunity to choose the habits we will carry into the new school year. We can choose our rhythms with intention rather than letting our circumstances or others choose them for us.
Let’s set our face towards the things that give life, make habits of what grows us to look more like Christ and cultivates a missional mindset. It’s not too late to start fresh, to make every day about Him.
4 habits that will change the way you approach fall
1—Savor the Word
God has transmitted his very substance into every Scripture, for it is God-breathed. It will empower you by its instruction and correction, giving you the strength to take the right direction and lead you deeper into the path of godliness.Then you will be God’s servant, fully mature and perfectly prepared to fulfill any assignment God gives you.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 TPT
Savoring the Word means to esteem His words highly, to linger as we read, to enjoy the truths we are ingesting. Implied is that we are reading Scripture, but the habit we are cultivating is how we approach our reading.
Is our motive to check another box? Is it to merely get through it to say we did it? Or are we letting the living water flowing from the words fill our thirty souls?
2—Seek His face
I heard your voice in my heart say, “Come, seek my face;”
Psalm 27:8 TPT
my inner being responded,
“Yahweh, I’m seeking your face with all my heart.”
We seek God’s face when we let rise our desire to know Him, to be near Him. We pursue Him because we want to be near Him, not because of what He can give us—and this difference makes all the difference because being in His presence is what changes us.
It’s here in your presence, in your sanctuary,
Psalm 77:13 TPT
where I learn more of your ways.
For holiness is revealed in everything you do.
Being near Him is where we learn to imitate Him. So if we are to live lives worth imitating in our homes, neighborhoods, and communities, we must cultivate a rhythm of drawing near and seeking God’s face.
3—Praise always. And anyways.
We overflow with thanks, for your name is the “Near One.”
Psalm 75:1 TPT
This practice of spending time in the presence of God has a side-effect of growing gratitude within our hearts. It helps us to see how the with-us God is good no matter what swirls around us. So we praise Him. Often. Even on the hard days, and the lonesome days, the days we feel misunderstood, and the days everything seems to fall apart.
Because when we turn our attention to Him and offer our small thank you, His peace transforms our broken pieces.
Practicing gratitude feels far more effortless when we spend time regularly with Jesus. So draw ever closer and let your praise overflow.
4—Commit to community
How truly wonderful and delightful it is
Psalm 133:1 TPT
to see brothers and sisters living together in sweet unity!
Love empowers us to fulfill the law of the Anointed One as we carry each other’s troubles.
Galatians 6:2 TPT
Who are the people in your life who are mutually standing in the gaps for each other? We are not meant to live this Christian life in solitude. As we open up and be real with the people we are in community with, we help each other grow in our faith. I’ve tasted this and know it to be true—and I long, friends, for you to know it for yourselves too.
In all a call to slow
There is a commonality between all four of these habits: the invitation to slow. When we rush through even the good things, we undercut their life-giving quality. We make the end result our focus rather than the process itself, and miss what there is to glean along the way.
Let’s approach fall differently this year, shall we friends?
Let’s embrace the cultivating that happens in the small moments. Let’s lean into the growing into Christ-likeness that happens in the near-Him place. Let’s be real with ourselves and those around us about what truly matters most.
And let’s begin our fall this year with our hearts soft to the Lord and our hands open to the work He wants to do in and through us.
A prayer as we form new habits for fall
Jesus, the pace of our lives so quickly misdirects our attention. We grasp for what we think will fulfill and push You—who alone can satisfy—away in the process. Today we offer both our sorry and our praise. Because God, You are worthy of all of our devotion. Grow within us a desire to know You and be near You. In the precious and holy name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
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