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Jeff Cox was a baseball journeyman, having played for several teams over his career. I knew him as the third base coach of the Miami Marlins when I was coaching and teaching in Fort Lauderdale.
Jeff was an inveterate note taker, having developed a penchant for recording all kinds of information gained from watching how other managers and coaches made on-the-field decisions. He stored that information in a little notebook he carried with him at all times.
In an interview with a reporter, he was asked how he used the information recorded in his notebook and he responded, "I go over it, and over it, and over it. When you're coaching third base, and you must make a quick decision, you don't have time to ponder that decision. You can't pull out your little black book and look up what you are supposed to do. Your decision must be instant and immediate. And that decision will be determined by the years and years of information you have accumulated and stored in your memory bank through repetition.
The more you study, and review, the more you assimilate and retain. The more you assimilate and retain, the more quickly and naturally you respond to those situations confronting you. Your decisions simply are the spontaneous overflow of all that you have learned and stored, and that process is fashioned by repetition, repetition, repetition."
As I thought about that conversation, I realized that it was a perfect analogy to what happens in the life of a believer. As we continue to study and digest God's Word on a repeated basis, it begins to manufacture and shape our spiritual muscles. We are not always aware of how those new spiritual muscles are being impacted and strengthened, but they are. As we read, study, memorize and repeatedly reflect on God's word, it gradually becomes a part of us, affecting our decisions, deeds and even our destinies.
In has been said that, "We act from habit nine times for every time we act from purposeful deliberation. Little do we comprehend the momentous consequences of our frequently repeated actions, for habits can add wings or weights to our feet" (Counsel to the Young, John Morison, quoted from a "Daily Bread" Devotional).
Jeff Cox had learned what every Christian needs to know, and that is that those seemingly spontaneous decisions we make are simply the overflow of what has been stored in our spiritual memory bank through repetition.
Scripture reminds us that we are to regularly study God's word, knowing that as we begin to make this our habit, this habit begins to make us.
The Psalmist tells us that as we delight in the law of the Lord, and as we meditate on the law day and night, the promise is that we shall become "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever [we] do prospers" (Psalm 1:2-3).
This is what I want for my life, and I know it is what you want for yours as well. So, let's open the Book, and through that repetitive discipline, allow God's message to mold our muscles and steel our soul, so that when confronted with quick and critical choices, our reflex actions will simply be the overflow of what we have stored in our hearts through habitual discipline.
Let us never forget the truth of this oft-quoted message:
"Sow an act and you reap a habit.
Sow a habit and you reap a character.
Sow a character and you reap a destiny." ~Samuel Smiles
 | Tom Crenshaw serves as Connections Pastor of the New Monmouth Baptist Church (non denominational) where he previously served as a three year interim.He has been married to Jean for almost 50 years, and they have four children, all of whom are teachers.Tom loves perennial gardening, umpiring high school baseball, coaching baseball and football, fishing for small mouth bass, rooting for his favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, and listening to ‘real’ country music, the classic kind. Learn More » |
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