This One Proven Grit-Filled Practice Can Transform Your Faith

Spiritual growth doesn’t happen by accident. Discover how I've created grit-filled habits to reshape my faith—and why it might be exactly what your soul needs, too.

Jul 04, 2025

Each week, I give two mornings to writing. Most of the time, this writing ends up in your inbox. This means that what takes you 5-7 minutes to read requires 5-6 hours of writing, which doesn’t include the time it takes to develop content deep within myself (reading, listening to podcasts, conversations online and in-person, etc.). I give you a look at how the sausage is made to put the following sentence in context.

Some days, I don’t feel like writing.

I don’t feel like writing because it is hard work. It’s hard to come up with new, fresh ideas (or angles to consider old ideas). It’s challenging to take an idea and create enough content for a 5-7 minute reading experience. It’s hard work to make all the ideas coherent. It’s hard to edit, re-edit, and re-edit again.

Today was one of those days. I didn’t feel like writing. As this post is released, it marks the beginning of a new month, which also signifies the start of a new series of posts. However, I didn’t know the topic, theme, or direction for today’s work. Yet, here I am, once again writing.

teal and black typewriter machine — Photo by Luca Onniboni on Unsplash

I considered all of this as I was walking in to write, and it reminded me that this is just life. Work is hard —both the good, enjoyable work and the difficult, joyless work. It’s true of physical labor and mental tasks, but it’s also true of spiritual lifting. The day-to-day work of seeking God transforms us.

The work of sanctification is hard work.

Sanctification is a Process

Sanctification is one of those church words that, if you’ve been around the church for a while, you probably have a general, if not specific, understanding of what it means. If you haven’t been around the church, then it may sound like a foreign language. So, let’s start here: If you are a follower of Jesus, you are somewhere in a continuum of sanctification.

A general understanding of sanctification is that anything that functions in the way it was created to function is sanctified. This means a stapler that staples paper together is sanctified (there is nothing worse than encountering an unsanctified stapler). The specific, Christian definition of sanctification is to be made holy. In other words, humans were designed to be holy, just as God is holy (we were created in His image).1

As is the case with most of life, sin disrupted the plan.

Sin, both the general sinfulness of the world we live in and our personal sin, separates us from God. Sin transforms humanity (including you and me) into profane beings. Sin keeps us from operating as we were designed. This is the bad news of the Gospel story, and we must thoroughly comprehend the bad news before we can fully appreciate the good news.

The Sanctification Two-Step

The good news of the Gospel story is that Jesus came to sanctify humanity; Jesus reverses the curse of sin in your life. But just like many things in Scripture, sanctification is simultaneously here and now while also yet to come.

Here and Now…

First, Scripture is clear that you are placed in a position of holiness when you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Positionally holy means you are washed of your sin, so when God looks at you, he sees a person able to commune with him. It means you are no longer outside the family of God, but you are adopted as a full son or daughter, and you are given the keys to His Kingdom.

Don’t buy it? Here are a few verses that speak the truth:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
-1 Corinthians 6:11
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. -2 Corinthians 5:17
…he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
-Titus 3:5
Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir. -Galatians 4:7

…but Yet to Come

While sanctification as positional holiness is entirely accurate, there is also the yet-to-come part. The Bible tells me I am sanctified, but at the same time, it tells me the process is ongoing. Just because I follow Jesus doesn’t mean I’ve arrived, but there is a process that needs to be worked in and through me, so that I can transform into being more like Jesus. Scripture makes this clear as well.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. -Hebrews 10:14

The key word is “being” — a present participle. I like English, but I still had to double-check the meaning of a present participle, which is a continuous or ongoing verb. That word “being” tells us the act of sanctification is ongoing. It occurs at the moment of salvation, but it continues as we follow Jesus.

Another way of looking at sanctification is that we are in God’s slow cooker. We are transformed daily through our thoughts and actions of faith. We prefer the microwave version. We want to be zapped into holiness, but God rarely uses that route. He prefers we slowly grow into the man or woman he designed us to be, which brings me back to the opening thoughts.

The work of sanctification is not always easy or fun. Sanctification is the daily work we put into becoming more like Jesus. We become more like Jesus by being with Jesus: the commitment to what I call “holy habits.”

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Transformed by our Holy Habits

This will be the theme for the month: developing holy habits that draw us deeper into the sanctifying process. Specifically, I will focus on three habits: Scripture, Meditation, and Community. I’ll take a week for each topic to share with you how the habits are transforming me (sanctifying me), and how you can more deeply engage in each habit.

Five Ways to Build Habits

To end this post, I have five tips for developing Holy Habits (or any habit) in your life. Notice each of the holy habits (Scripture, Meditation, and Community) is antithetical to our nature, so developing these habits will be work. It will require showing up to do the things you don’t want to do to build the inward life you do want to have.

Habits to be made LED signage — Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

1. Who Before Do

With any habit you hope to develop, here is an important question to ask yourself: What do I want?

If you follow that question far enough, you will eventually come to a part of yourself you want to improve, rather than a specific action you want to take. This year, I’ve committed to reading more books, so I’ve added habits of reading (non-Scripture) books in the morning and evening. This habit is tied back to my desire to be a person with deeper knowledge. I want to be a person who loves knowledge, so I am a person who reads a wide range of books.

You can read more about this principle of Who Before Do from a few years ago.

2. The 2 Minute Commit

A few years ago, I started working out at a gym, and I learned I hate ab workouts, so I have an on-and-off relationship with sit-ups and crunches. A psychological trick I can use against myself is to simply start. If I commit to doing a set of 10-15 crunches, then I will inevitably do several more sets because it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be.

The concept is to choose the smallest amount possible and commit to it regularly. Inevitably, you’ll find yourself going above and beyond it, and further, you’ll create a pattern of showing up regularly. This groove creates habits.

You can read more about this principle of The 2 Minute Commit here.

3. Treat Yo’ Self

My preference is to wake up, get out of bed, pick up my phone, and begin scrolling through my email, Instagram feed, and ESPN reports. However, that habit will keep me from what I genuinely want…grow with God. So, I use that desire as a motivation to do what is most beneficial (Scripture, Prayer, Meditation). I discipline myself to do the work, and then I treat myself with some time to scroll through the less critical desires.

What is keeping you from holy habits in your life? While there is benefit to denying yourself of those things, there is also a way to use them for motivation to begin.

You can read more about the concept of Treat Yo’ Self here.

The first three principles of building habits aren’t new (hence, the links to past posts). The last two principles are new, but as I analyze how I’ve built my holy habits, I’ve realized they are just as important. They are a core part of my habit…habit.2

4. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Place

If you are my age or older, you probably just traveled back in time a few decades by reading those two simple phrases — same bat time…same bat place. For some reason, TV producers created a campy version of Batman. It was as if the comic book came to life on television. They used the newer Technicolor technology to make the colors pop, and they used the comic book style “Pows, Booms, and Whams” to life.

This has relevance to habits because each episode ended with a reminder to return to the particular station at the “same Bat time, and same Bat place” to watch next week. I watched this show as a rerun, but the principle remained the same: if I went back at 4 pm each afternoon, I could watch the next episode of Batman.

Batman was attempting to train me to develop a habit of returning each week or day to watch a new episode of the show. We need to use this principle to train ourselves to build holy habits. What is the time and place you will go to develop your habits?

I attend church every Sunday at 10:00 a.m. It’s a habit I’ve created. I attend a small group each Sunday at 6:30 pm. It’s a habit. I wake up each morning at 6:15, walk into my kitchen, and sit at the table to meet with Jesus. It’s a habit. Every week is the same. Every day is the same. In some ways, it’s quite dull, but as I reflect on the course of my life, I realize that these habits have had a profound impact on me.

My day-in, day-out actions are making me more like Jesus.

My time and place don’t need to be your time and place. There is nothing sacred about the morning as opposed to the afternoon or evening. There is nothing holy about my kitchen as opposed to my living room, bedroom, or basement. But finding your place and time will solidify another part of who you are.

What is the time and place you will go to develop your habits?

5. Become a Prepper

I went through Y2K and lived to tell about it. Do you remember that “crisis”? There was a legitimate fear that the computers controlling power plants, water processing systems, and banking databases weren’t coded to switch from the 1900s to the 2000s. They were supposed to break at the start of a new century, and there wasn’t going to be enough time to re-code them all.

A segment of society kicked off what I recall of the “Prepper” culture. People began stocking up on canned goods, bottled water, generators, gas, and anything else needed to survive the apocalypse (even going as far as to fill up bathtubs and sinks with water on December 31, 1999). It turns out that there wasn’t a need for any of it; the time and day rolled over (1/1/00) without a hitch.

I have never fallen into that subset of society, but I do believe in preparation to help your holy habits.

I work out almost every workday afternoon, so I make sure to pack my workout bag with my workout clothes and shoes the night before. It’s one less thing I need to think about and consider that morning, so all I need to do is grab my workout bag and head out the door for the day. I do the same thing with my morning holy habits.

I use an iPad mini, Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy prayer book, and a rotating book that I read through to deepen my intellectual and spiritual understanding. Therefore, I place them in the same spot after each use, so I don't have to search for them in the morning. I put them right next to my reading glasses (yes, I’ve hit the point where I need them most days) and a pen for marking books. I am a coffee drinker, so I will grind the beans, fill the coffee maker with water, and set it to begin brewing just after six, ensuring the coffee is ready when I walk into the kitchen at 6:15.

The more I can prepare for my habit of reading, praying, and meditating, the easier it is to stick to my desired habit. The more prepared I am beforehand, the less reason I have to break my habits.

How can you become a prepper to build your holy habits?

Do the Work

The morning I began this post, I didn’t think I had anything to say. It has ended up with hundreds of words. There is no special secret to this. I had to sit down and write down my discombobulated ideas. I had to unscramble them to make some sense.

I had to do the work.

A curse of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden was the sweat of his brow when he created anything. We continue to live that curse in all phases of life. If you want a life of meaning, you need a sanctified life. You need a life transformed to do what you were meant to do.

This requires hard work. It’s a curse, but it ends in blessing. The hard work of cultivating holy habits transforms the inner life into a garden full of life and blessings. My challenge this week is to do the work.

Finally, thank you for your subscription! A shout-out to new subscribers, Gmam and Izzy. I am amazed you appreciate my writing enough to make space in your inbox. I would love to hear your thoughts. Would you take a moment to leave a comment?