Faith as a Habit with Jen Pollock Michel
I’m fangirling over here because one of the best writers on the planet is on the podcast with me today! Welcome Jen Pollock Michel! We are talking about spiritual disciplines this week and she has an incredible new book that talks about our faith and how we actually practice it and not just think our way to faith.
That’s one of my favorite quotes that you refer to in your book. It says, “don’t just try thinking your way into faith, but practice your way into faith.” So talk just a little bit about your passion behind this project, because it’s exactly what we’re talking about this week.
I think for a lot of people, the whole idea that I’ve got to think or feel my way into faith is totally untenable. Like we don’t know how to do that. So just to give somebody some practical advice and say, “here are some things you can do.” Not that we can just have faith because we do external things - faith is a work that God does in our hearts as we surrender and trust him. But for so many people, myself included, that feels too ethereal. Like thinking or feeling my way into faith? How about give me some practices and habits! The whole book is about this idea that habits can be a way to lead us to God.
For you, has that been a struggle? What’s the fight for you in that?
I’m such a routine person, so habits do come naturally for me. I think the struggle for me is to constantly remind myself of what the purpose of the habits are. You can have spiritual habits, spiritual practices and disciplines, but they’re not the end. They’re not the goal. They’re meant to bring you into friendship and communion with God and be transformed into the image of Christ. For me, it’s coming to a point sometimes where you just need to shake up the habits and routine. Maybe it’s gotten stale. You have permission to try something new! Because you’re moving into the desire to know God and be transformed by him.
WAITING FOR A FEELING OF FAITH
Here’s what I like about your writing: you take ethereal concepts like faith and you make them real and tangible and doable. I know what the average person is feeling and thinking - most of the people are more like me than like you. Habits don’t come natural to them. They’re waiting to feel something before they actually get in the word or connect with God. They are waiting for some emotional draw. You say don’t wait for that.
Don’t wait for that! It’s actually the habits that create that. I think that’s the real mystery of it - you can practice something and it actually give you the desire for the thing. It’s like exercise - for so long I did not have an exercise routine because it just felt hard. For as routined as I am, I don’t actually want to! But now that I have the habit of doing it, I actually feel the benefits of doing it, and I don’t have as much resistance to it. I think the same is true for reading the Scriptures. A simple habit like that. It can feel dutiful and like something you engage in because you know you should - it sometimes does feel like eating your broccoli. But you know what, if you eat broccoli enough, you actually start to like it! You start to feel a lot better! I think that’s the thing. The feeling does come - I don’t want to suggest that everything we do, we do it for obligation’s sake. But that initial resistance is so hard and if we wait for the feeling, we will never climb that mountain.
THE RESISTANCE TO DISCIPLINE
What is the resistance? Why is it so hard? We’re not talking about working out - we’re talking about spending time with God. But that’s real. I do think most people feel a strong resistance to that.
I think part of it is spiritual. I think there’s a spiritual battle and there are forces - powers and principalities - that want to keep us from God and keep us distracted. The enemy is very happy if we’re just binging on Netflix - it doesn’t mean you have to go fall off a cliff or do something criminal. I think there’s a spiritual element and I think there’s a total distraction element. Everything in our culture right now is so easy. You just flip open your laptop and swipe on your phone and you are endlessly entertained. There is an element of spiritual discipline where there is an effort required in it. I love how Dallas Willard says that grace is not opposed to effort. It’s opposed to earning. It’s opposed to thinking that effort could ever make God proud of you. But effort is an important part. There’s so much in a technological society that tells us that effort is bad and that your goal is to reduce the effort that life takes.
I don’t feel that way as much, because I do feel like there’s a hustle. Maybe it’s because I live in Dallas and there’s a hustle around me all the time. But I absolutely agree that I push against it and don’t want to feel it. I think there’s been this whole movement of grace and license that has been taken too far and there isn’t any longer this spiritual disciplines conversation. I remember reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and it absolutely blew my mind! Nobody ever talked to me about fasting or meditation or silence and the practices that had been part of generations of Christians. Yet I think in our culture and certainly in the generations that are coming, this is something they aren’t familiar with. Some people listening right now are thinking, “what is she talking about? What are those disciplines?” So talk about what those disciplines are and what do you see the most fruit from in your own life?
THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
I’m glad you mentioned fasting, because that’s a new discipline for me. There’s a huge resistance in me in fasting - I don’t want to spend one meal where I’m not eating and have to feel hungry. It’s so real. One of the things I started early in the pandemic was fixed hour prayer. It’s one of those really old practices of Christians to imagine a bell tolling at certain points of the day and be called back to prayer. I’m trying to put these moments in my day where I just return to prayer. It’s so hard. Usually it feels very interruptive and I want to keep going about my day and my plan, but it’s so good! The crazy thing about that spiritual practice - I think this is an interesting thing about the spiritual disciplines and something I’ve noticed in myself - I go to it so often just to feel better. It’s almost like it’s a self help thing - helping me not feel anxious, to feel more peaceful. Those are byproducts of the spiritual disciplines. One of the things I learned about fixed hour prayer is that initially, Christians implemented that practice so that they could join the ongoing hymn of praise that they imagined was resounding throughout creation. I thought, that’s not when I came to fixed hour prayer. I was in the middle of a pandemic and life was totally interrupted and I just needed some markers in the day. Reading scripture is a keystone habit. It always surprises me when I talk to Christians who bemoan or lament that they’re not growing, and then you ask about their scripture reading habits, and they’re like, “yeah I don’t really do that.” Jesus said it’s your food. How would you expect to grow if you didn’t eat and if you didn’t eat three meals a day? You can’t just eat once a week or even twice a week. I couldn’t be happier that when I was 16 and became a Christian, somebody said to me, “you’ve got to make Bible reading a daily habit.” They actually said do it for 10 minutes a day for 6 months. It was just a practical way to remind myself that the way to form a habit is by consistency. Just doing it daily.
Let’s talk about when they open their Bibles. What exactly would you encourage them to do? There’s a lot of people listening right now that have never done this. They’ve never been in their Bible in a consistent way, and it’s intimidating. I get it! What would you say to someone that’s opening their Bible for the first time?
I have had the opportunity to be reading the Bible alongside somebody who is a new Christian. The first thing I want to say is it is intimidating, but it’s not impossible. There are so many aids and supports - we’ve never had more supports than we have now to actually read the Bible. Get yourself a plan, get yourself some help so you feel like you know where to start. I’ve written some, you’ve written some, there’s the Bible Project, She Reads Truth, YouVersion - there are so many plans. I think the plan is a big part for a lot of people. It helps us feel like there is a structure. This is true for me and I’ve been reading the Bible for 30 years now - if you come to scripture and you don’t have a plan, it is very easy to say, “well I don’t know what to read so I’m not going to read.” Get some friends to do it with you! That accountability piece is so huge. Just so that you can share with each other what you’ve read. If you can have somebody that’s a little bit further along than you and to ask questions of - that’s huge. The thing you have to remember every time you sit down with the word is you’re not just reading scripture, you’re letting it read you. I’m letting God examine my own heart. You think about the prayer of the Psalmist: “Search me, God, and know my heart test me and know my anxious thoughts” (Psalm 139:23). I think that’s what it does to us when we sit down with the scriptures. That can be some of the resistance too! Sometimes we don’t want to be searched and we don’t want God to examine us. The reason that’s so beautiful and why we can lean into that invitation is that God’s ways are life. If he’s going to reveal something in our hearts that is sin, what that really means is that’s death and you don’t want it anyways. I’d much rather have God say, “you know what, you’re eating out of the garbage bin. I have so much more for you.”
I know that it is a struggle for people to sit down, read the Bible, and then feel like they don’t walk away with a feeling or an experience. Or maybe they walk away confused! What would you say to people who have given this a try and it’s not changing anything or causing any short-term feeling or change.
First of all, whenever you have a habit, you can’t measure the rewards of a habit on the basis of one day or one time. The habit of reading scripture has rewards that really are measured in years. The other thing I want to say is that when we go to scripture, we really have to calibrate our expectations. The scripture is about God. Even if you don’t feel anything differently after you walk away from the scriptures, could you write down one thing in your journal that you learned about God’s character? Or how God has acted in history? Or God’s great and generous love? If you read any part of scripture, you’re going to find something to identify that you learned about God. Write that in your journal. Look back over a month and think about what new insights you have about God! Write down your questions too. Take those somewhere - to your pastor, your small group leader, etc. There are so many helps for questions as well.
MEDITATING ON THE WORD OF GOD
Let’s talk about meditation because I think that’s part of this for me. This is really about fixing our eyes on God at some point in the day - whether it’s the Pray as You Go app, which I absolutely love. It’s meditating and scripture and prayer. I would say that meditation piece is the part that’s the hardest, but it’s also the part that’s the most fruitful for me. It is not something that is about obtaining more knowledge or facts. It’s about absorbing it into our hearts and souls and bringing fruit and change in our lives. Is that hard for you? What do you feel when you’re just quiet?
I think it’s hard for anybody these days! Everyday can blur by and we’re all running so fast. But I think it gets easier - even the year of praying fixed hour prayer, I recognized it’s easier to come back to and I can settle a little bit faster. But I love what you’re talking about with meditating. Psalm 1 is my favorite parts of scripture, and I’ve been so fixated on trees in scripture this year. Psalm 1 is the tree that’s planted by the streams of water. Meditating on the law of the Lord day and night. I’ve read that a gazillion times and I would even say I’ve meditated on it, but sometimes when you sit with something, new things will come. I realized that I thought of that tree as an ever-blooming tree - constantly in bloom. But actually the scripture says that it blooms in season. Even just to meditate on that - a new understanding of that verse. I’m not always in bloom. You could be a healthy tree and you could be wintering. That doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy - it could be that you’re actually vital. I want it to be perpetually summer! But trees live all kinds of different seasons. Sometimes they’re in fall and it looks like everything is dying and the leaves are dropping. You might be in a season like that and it could be exactly the season God wants you to be in. It could be the preparation for the deep roots that grow in winter and then all that kind of buds and blossoms in spring. That’s just one example of sitting and thinking about a tree, then all of the sudden the Holy Spirit enlivens it in your mind. But you wouldn’t find all that if you just read it super fast.
What season do you feel like you’re in?
That’s such a good one. I think Autumn - I’ve been thinking about fall and it’s been a season during the pandemic where there has been so much loss. So many things feel like leaves falling. It actually reminds me of a poem someone read to me recently about leaves that fall. He was watching out of his office window and the leaf blower was blowing the leaves - it almost is like they’re rising, and it reminded him of resurrection. I think that can be so hard when things fall. When you say no to things. When life is getting smaller. You don’t see what’s in bloom yet! I think that’s a little bit of what’s happening for me.
I think that’s incredibly hopeful - even in the context of what you just shared, that this is part of life. There will be a spring! We’re all tempted to believe that what we feel or experience in this moment is what we’re going to feel and experience forever. I especially see that in my teenagers. It’s this moaning and gnashing of teeth and “this will never get better,” but I can’t say that, they have to just live it. There’s so much hope in what you’re saying. Even if you’re listening and you’re thinking, okay, this is my fall. This is not going to last forever. Or maybe it’s just dead winter. Talk about a dead winter that we just lived! That was colder than normal, snowier than normal in Texas at least, but after quarantine and the year we all had, we just couldn’t do it! I’m going to will myself to be in spring. I am putting on teal and pink and we are going to will ourselves to spring here. Would you pray for the people listening that want this, but don’t know how to get it? Because while this is discipline and effort, it’s also fueled by the spirit and that he would be moving our hearts toward him.
God, I thank you for your grace. I thank you that you are a good shepherd. I thank you that you seek and save the lost. And everyday we find ourselves lost and wandering and resistant to the very good work that we know you want to do in us. I pray that by your Holy Spirit, you would kindle the embers in our soul. Kindle a desire for you, a desire to see your kingdom come, a desire to respond to your grace, and I pray that each day as we fall on our face and get up the next morning, that we will experience new mercies. Lord, give your people your power to follow you, to receive from you, and to be like you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
