Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn. And whether you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform or watching on our YouTube channel, I'm so thankful. As I always do say that, and I really mean it, I'm really thankful that you've joined me for this episode. We're picking up where we left off last time in talking about priorities, but I want to shift in this episode to habits that shape your soul. Because the truth is, every life is being shaped. The only question is by what? This is really vital to consider, because your habits are going to dictate the direction of your life. And most Christians don't fail or succeed because of one catastrophic mistake or one genius decision. They fail or succeed because of a series of small repeated habits that slowly form the soul and shape your life without really being noticed. And what you do by way of habits, I'm talking about, consistently becomes who you are, meaning the reality of your life. And so scripture makes this very plain time and time again. And we see that especially in Psalm chapter one. And that's really where I want to start us today. I'm going to turn there in my Bible. If you're following along on YouTube, go ahead and turn there, and you can hit pause if you got to grab your Bible. If you're working out, you're on a walk, maybe you're on your lunch break, maybe you're driving. I'll read the passage to you and you can follow along. But Psalm chapter one kicks things off in a very clear way, contrasting two paths, two patterns of life, two people shaped by what they delight in, meditate on, and who they walk with, which, spoiler alert, that's what the next episode is going to be on. The psalmist writes, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law, he meditates day and night. So you've got this meditation happening, morning and evening, just a lifestyle of sitting in and saturating in God's word. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water. That's what's going to happen. Which yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf doesn't wither. And in whatever he does, he prospers. It's not the promise of riches and money just for being a good person, but it's like whatever he touches, it seems to prosper. There's a general trajectory of success in whatever God would do. Why? Well, because he's constantly delighting in the law of the Lord. He's dictating his life and his direction and his actions all by the word of God. So the wisdom of God's informing his life. He ends up in God's will all the time and he prospers. The wicked, though, they're not so. They're like chaff that the wind drives away. They're always blowing around. The wicked aren't going to stand in the judgment. And sinners aren't going to stand in the assembly of the righteous. Those two things are attached. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. God knows. He knows and understands what you meditate on, what fills your mind and saturates your life, all those habits, they're going to shape your success or failure. I also think of Romans chapter 12, verse 2, and how transformation comes through the renewal of the mind. It's not by accident. You don't drift your way into spiritual strength. Habits are formed. They're a choice, they're a decision. So as we step into 2026, the question is not merely what do you believe? You got some good theology. Okay, but what are you actually practicing? And so I want to walk you through several habits today that over time are going to shape your soul towards Christ-likeness. That is my goal to encourage you and exhort you forward into Christ-likeness. And just as importantly, warn against some habits that quietly deform us. And so there'll be kind of a, I guess, a positive list, but also negatives in each one. I'm going to contrast these for you. Habit number one, scripture intake over content overload. I'm calling it that because we really have an overloaded life with content. Everything is just coming at us all the time. And Psalm 1 says that the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord, meditates on that day and night. So scripture assumes that something is going to occupy your mind daily. The wicked, oh, they just do what they want, live for themselves, delight in their wickedness. The godly man is meditating on God's law day and night. Yet the truth is, you know this, so do I. The modern Christian is not starving for information. In fact, we're drowning in it. It's everywhere. Podcasts, social media, news cycles, opinions, market cycles, entertainment, comedy. There's funny stuff out there. Outrage, commentary, all of it fills our attention from morning to night, and none of it's neutral. What you fill your mind with will shape your affections, and what your affections become actually dictate your formation and the way you live your life. And so you got to go to God's word and have it reorder your loves and correct your thinking and expose your sin and renew your hope. If scripture is supplemental while content is primary and online living is really your whole life, well then your soul is going to slowly drift, even if you're doctrinally orthodox or can pump out some good theology. I think about this all the time. I obviously use social media. Our ministry is based on or based in social media. We come to you through social media. But in all of these things, we're not sitting there all day just scrolling, sitting there all day doing content, sitting all day. No, no, no. There's a life that's lived, and social media or these platforms or content just becomes a vehicle. All of its moderation. And that's the whole goal, is to use it in a way that honors and glorifies God. But the real meat is right here. The filling station is right here at 5, 6, 7 a.m. in the morning, not waking up thinking, man, I just got to make some content. We got to do an Instagram live. I got to get out there and pump out another real. No, it's the word of God. And everything flows out of the word of God. Remember asking John MacArthur one time, how did you uh build a ministry so rooted and so faithful? Of course, we know God did, but I was really asking him in a warning way, what are the things to watch out for? Is a lot of our generation is trying to build platforms or build social media or build ministry. And you see a lot of conferences and different big brands in ministry worlds kind of like, you know, do their thing. We're gonna build this, we're gonna do this. And I said, How do you guard against that? What do you think at your age and stage as you look back? And he said, Oh, everything's got to flow out of the word of God. If you build it on a conference, you build it on a lineup, you build it on the hype, you build it on some culture war, whatever, you're always gonna phase out or fizzle out. If you build everything on the word of God, and everything flows out of that, every and you know, he kind of like whatever you call reels or whatever, short content, long sermons, everything. The man of God ministers the word of God. And all the content is made from that. But in the end, his life is in the word of God. I took that advice to heart and I'll never forget it because I was thinking about for the gospel, thinking about our church, thinking about everything in my life and this thing, and I'm a Bible man. That's where you'll find me. The word of God is what everything flows out of, and then everything else is really secondary. And I tell you that story because you can apply it to your own life. You don't have to be a pastor or a preacher to think that way. I want you to understand everything flows out of the word of God. A healthy word life is gonna inform every area of life after that. You will not drift, you will not look back on 2026 dry and empty, and thinking I spent a lot of time doing a lot of stuff. I consumed a lot of content, but my soul is empty. If you make the word of God primary, that's Psalm 1 ethic. And so, habit to cultivate in 2026. Daily, intentional scripture intake that is unhurried and reverent. I wrote it that way for a reason. Unhurried and reverent. Not skimming for inspiration. You're not just looking so you can post a quote. You're not thinking of, oh, that person, oh, this. No, no, no. We are feeding ourselves. It's nourishment. You don't need to read the Bible faster, you need to read it more faithfully. Habit number two, prayerful dependence over functional self-reliance. Okay. Prayerful dependence over functional self-reliance. What do those big words mean? Well, we're prayerful dependence. We've got to be dependent on God. That's the habit we want to form over functional self-reliance. Just saying, I'm gonna go do it. I got this, let's go, roll my sleeves up, tighten the bootstraps, I'm just gonna go make it happen. You're gonna exhaust yourself living that way. Prayer reveals what we truly believe about God. If prayer is sporadic and rushed or absent, it reveals that we trust in our own plans, our own experience, our own strength, and our own instincts more than God's power. Jesus said in John 15, 5, apart from me, you can do nothing. And yet so many Christians live as if that verse is theoretical. Prayer has got to be for more than emergencies. It's the posture of a dependent life. The habit of prayer forms humility. Now we're humble before God. Our desires are recalibrated, and God's will is what we're aligned with. He anchors us in eternal realities, and all of that is deepened through prayer and consistent prayer. And so the habit to cultivate in 2026, fixed prayer rhythms. What I mean by fixed, I mean concrete, cemented. I will pray at this time. I will pray each day. I will finish and start and refresh each day in prayer. You know, morning and afternoon and evening, whatever that is. But you choose morning, evening, or both, you choose all day in certain slots, but you're just you're gonna be a praying person. You're not gonna start the to-do list until prayer has been meditated in and saturated your morning, until dependency has been found. So practice dependence and guard prayer time vigilantly. And and one final thought here: reject any notion that prayer is taking up valuable time that you could use to start executing your daily to-do list. That's the lie, you know that? That skipping or rushing through prayer is gonna, you know, let's get that out of the way so we're more efficient. I'll just pray later. No, prayerlessness then actually may not feel rebellious. You think, well, I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty efficient. I'm just, I need to pray quick. I'll pray later. I'm gonna just get the stuff done so I can really focus on prayer. No, that's what makes that lie dangerous. Pretty soon you're off to the races and you forget to pray or you don't pray. Habit number three, Sabbath rest over chronic exhaustion. You know, that's something I see in the church so much today. Chronic exhaustion. People going and going and going and going and going, and they don't rest. One of the most overlooked spiritual disciplines in the modern church is rest. God built in rest before sin ever entered the world. You know that? The seventh day when God rested was all before the fall. Sabbath is not this concession to sin and weakness, and oh, so because of sin, you know, everyone needs to take a day off, and you can't, you know, smoke a brisket on your, you know, Traeger, and you can't make an omelet and can't lift a finger. No, no, no, no, no. It was always a declaration of trust. God was modeling how to cease from working. Chronic exhaustion is going to dull your spiritual sensitivity. It makes you impatient, prayerless, irritable, and vulnerable to temptation. And so many spiritual crises are rooted in physical and emotional depletion. So here's the habit to cultivate in 2026 regular intentional rest that restores worship, joy, and perspective. Build it in. What is the day where you're going to cease from working and striving? What is the time where you devote yourself to Christ and you relish in all he's done and you pull back from having to achieve and make moves and work the angles. No, rest is not laziness either. So don't buy the lie that what I've just described, well, Costi, I'm, you know, I'm a go-getter. You know, so am I. We got to reject the lie that your worth or mine is measured by output. Rest is biblical. Rest is worship. Habit number four, confession and repentance over quiet compromise. You know, a lot of people are ensnared by sin and they just go quiet, or they run away, or they think, well, it'll just go away on its own. No, one of the most soul-shaping habits is what you do after you sin. And so let's think about that for 2026 and what we do after we sin. So, of course, the point assumes that we're gonna sin. Yeah, you need to come to grips with that. We all stumble in various ways, James says. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Hebrews 13, 3, though, warns us about the deceitfulness of sin. It says, but encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. That warning in the book of Hebrews comes in the context of Israel's wilderness rebellion. They are wandering. And it emphasizes that sin is not merely disobedience, it's deceptive because it hardens the heart gradually through unconfessed compromise and delayed repentance, especially when believers are isolated from regular community and exhortation within the body. Israel got hardened in their hearts. They were calloused over. So when confession is absent and community is absent, and you don't have people in your life sharpening you, and you've gone quiet, sin normalizes. You dull the conscience. When repentance is delayed, the conscience dulls. Just this past fall, I went through a study with our small group. My wife and I have a wonderful group of friends, just regular folks in our church that from the beginning we did a small group, opened up our home, invited them, didn't know half of them from a hole in the wall. And just the Lord does that. It's awesome. And so we did this study. We go through different studies, marriage, sin. We'll do uh talks about culture and what's happening in the world, but basically Bible study. We've been through books of the Bible. It's a blast. Well, I took him through this study because there's this book by John MacArthur called Vanishing Conscience. I think I've talked to you about it before. The Vanishing Conscience. It's an oldie but a goodie from the 90s. It's like vintage MacArthur just letting it fly. And everything he was saying in the 90s, you're thinking this guy has come back from the dead or he's still here, and he wrote this, you know, just this year or last year or in 2020 and 2021. Nope, in the 90s, why? Because there's nothing new under the sun. And it was all about how the conscience gets dulled. And all of a sudden, we open the door for sin, repentance is delayed, we push aside that feeling that we're wrong, and we live in denial. And once you can silence the conscience, which the Holy Spirit uses, by the way, to inform our obedience and make us feel guilty, the good guilt, well, you're in a whole bunch of trouble. And once you renew and inform the conscience with Scripture, well, confession is practiced. Humility grows, sensitivity to sin floods in. And so my goal and our goal as a small group was to be sensitive to sin. We want to have sensitive consciences, not weak ones, sensitive consciences, where holiness matters, where things begin to bother us, because scripture has informed our radar system, the conscience. Repentance becomes quick and joy rushes back in when we are thinking about these things. So don't go quiet. The habit to cultivate in 2026, regular self-examination, honest confession before God, and repentance without denial or rationalization. And don't you dare listen to these people who call self-examination legalism or asceticism. No, it's not. It's wisdom to look under the hood of your life and say, Holy Spirit, lead me and guide me. Bring out the weaknesses, bring out the sin. Lord Jesus, thank you for dying for these sins. Thank you for your grace and your mercy. I'm not scared of losing my salvation, and I don't think I'm less in your eyes. Your forgiveness is for me. Now I want to grow more and more into your likeness. So let's get after it this year. Do your work in me. And then remember Philippians 1 says, He who began a good work and you will perfect it until the day of Christ. There's this whole movement out there full of young people that are either misinformed or they're living in sin and they can't handle anymore the Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God, kind of preaching. And so they run for the hills and find little convents and confessional silos that say, oh, self-examination bad. Oh, the Puritans, they make me feel uncomfortable. Well, get used to being uncomfortable when you assess your heart in light of who Christ is, because sin is uncomfortable. And until we're in glory, we're still going to sin. Healthy Christians examine their hearts, not because they're scared of losing their salvation or if they're not even saved, but because they care deeply about Christ. They love him, and so holiness matters. Healthy Christians do not sin less because they're perfect. They begin to grow in godliness because they hate compromise and they love Jesus. I took a little extra time on that one. I'm kind of fired up about that lately. Habit number five: stewardship of time, body, and attention. Your soul is shaped not only by what you believe, again, but how you live in your bodily schedule. I want to talk about the physical here. I've always been big on this. I've done a lot of research. I spent my early years after college using my kinesiology degree before I got a seminary degree. I was an athletic trainer. And I was obsessed with figuring out how the body works and trying to maximize output. That's what I was really into. And the bottom line is there's no secret here. Sleep matters, nutrition matters, movement matters, and intentionality matters. How you train is going to give you the results. And look, I'm not saying we all have to be fitness models. I have said that repeatedly. You go back and look at previous January kickoff series, and I'm talking about the body, food, obesity, all of it. These are topics that Christians should really talk more about. And there's many people with great bodies who are spiritually dying and their six-pack abs can't save them. I'm not saying that a good body is something super spiritual. Paul does remind us, though, in 1 Corinthians 6 that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. So how we use and treat the body matters. Paul also says to Timothy, bodily discipline is of some benefit. When he's talking about godliness being even better, he actually doesn't diminish physical health so much as he just puts it in its place. Godliness is best, but it doesn't mean we're going to kick back with a giant bag of ruffles and pound nachos all night and eat a bunch of frozen taquitos till 2 a.m. and eat corndogs because we're hungry. Like you got to think about what you're putting in your body. Nowhere in Scripture is godliness elevated to the level that obesity is validated. Laziness, never. Read the book of Proverbs. Junk food is a lifestyle because we're on the go. We're just busy. I'm a minister. Not okay. Pastors especially should not be obese. We're preaching, we're teaching, we're counseling, we're guiding, telling a whole bunch of people about discipline and lifestyle and how to honor the Lord. And meanwhile, we're eating all the cares of the church and you know, comfort food and sitting there, some guys, you know, drink, some guys eat, whatever it is. The body keeps score, they kind of say. Well, yeah, that's why you have a lot of obese pastors, just taking the burden of the church and sitting there and going, I just need to take a load off. No, you're killing yourself. I remember a tough season in ministry. I've been there. It was a really hard season very early on. And I regularly walk around like 210 to 215. I'm 6'2. I was 240. And I was an obese young pastor. I was starting to get my wife couldn't reach her arms around me anymore to hug me. I was just wearing it all in my face, wearing it all in my body. All the pressures, all the stress, all the. And I had good mentors. I had guys I could go to that in a heartbeat would have said, that's not how we deal with it, Costi. We don't internalize. Let's go. And I avoided them. That's why I even say quiet compromise, going silent. You're dealing with a lot. Men, we internalize it. Listen, make it your goal this year to view your temple as a part of your physical temple as a part of your spiritual worship and your spiritual formation. And don't you dare use God's sovereignty as some excuse to be terribly treating your body. Even though God has numbered our days, we can spend those days in a lazy chair or a hospital on medications, or we can maximize those days for his glory and be active because we're taking care of the temple. Make no mistake about it. Exhaustion, constant distraction, and neglect of body will show up later as spiritual lethargy, not only physical ailment. The enemy doesn't need you to abandon the faith. He just needs you tired, distracted, and undisciplined. And those of you in ministry especially, for us, we do not blame the ministry and then just destroy our body. So a habit to cultivate in 2026 wise stewardship of your physical. Physical and mental health, so your soul is not constantly fighting unnecessary battles. The discipline doesn't make you spiritual per se, but a lack of discipline will eventually make your spiritual growth that much harder. Habit number six faithful obedience over emotional Christianity. Why do I bring this one up? Well, it's vital. You'll see why. A lot of believers are trained to follow Christ when they feel motivated, feel inspired, or stirred up. My prayer, ironically enough, is that this episode has stirred you up. You're feeling some of that emotion and passion. You're like, all right, Costi, let's go. Okay, but hold on. Scripture calls us to faithfulness even when the feeling isn't there. So when this episode is long gone and we're five months in and it's like May or June, and the, you know, the shiny New Year kickoff is worn off, obedience doesn't fade. Obedience forms the soul in ways that emotions cannot. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll obey my commands in John 14, 15. So when it's easy and when it's not. When it's exciting, when it's not. Why? Because we love him. If you focus on loving Jesus, whether the feelings are there or not, you're going to strive to obey him. And so the habit to cultivate in 2026 is doing the right thing, even when it feels ordinary, unseen, and unspectacular. Do not be one of those Christians who's been pompful of hype your entire Christian life. And now you can't do anything unless your the feels are there. And let me close just saying this: you're not going to accidentally drift into Christ-likeness, but you can definitely drift away from it slowly but surely because of your habits. They're shaping you. They're shaping me. Every scroll, every conversation we have, everything we consume, every choice to rest or to neglect, to obey or to compromise. All of it is shaping us. So as you look ahead to 2026, don't just set your goals. Set lifestyle patterns, priorities, set habits that honor the Lord and shape your soul for his glory. Happy New Year, friends. I'm excited to keep doing this with you. Next week, I'm going to take you into a very sobering New Year tune-up as we consider toxic friendships and bad company. We want to look at our relationships. And I'll walk you through some relationships that will sink you in 2026. And Proverbs has a lot to say about those friendships. Paul the Apostle said bad company corrupts good morals. And I want to help you think through that. It's very important that we do. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thanks for all of your support. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for free resources. Or uh leave us a review or drop a comment. Let us know how we can serve you. And if there's certain videos or topics you'd like me to cover, I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on Living for the Gospel.