Set Your Course

When you’re building a house, the most important step isn’t when you put on the roof or paint the walls or decorate. The most important steps are laying the foundation, installing the wiring, plumbing, and other important parts of the house that support everything else that is yet to come.

The same is true in life. The most important time is at the beginning, when we’re laying the foundation in the time of our youth. It is there that we set our course. We develop our habits and form attitudes.

It is during our youth that we make decisions that will affect us for the rest of our lives, like career choices and marriage choices. We sow seeds that we’ll reap in the years ahead.

When you’re young, you’re willing to do crazy stuff. But as you get older, you become more set in your ways. You start liking routine. You have habits, and you live by those habits. Now, I’m not criticizing this. Rather, I’m offering an observation on aging. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to have routines, to have habits.

For instance, let’s say that early in life you got into the habit of regular prayer and Bible study. You got into the habit of never neglecting worship on the Lord’s Day, faithfully giving to the Lord, and other spiritual disciplines. And you still practice them to this day.

I’m glad you have those habits. I’m glad that you’re set in your ways, then. Because every day you make hundreds, even thousands, of decisions as to whether you will sow to the flesh or sow to the Spirit.

You will make decisions in January that will be played out by next Christmas. You decide what principles you will live by and what road you will take.