christian living on Behavior Modification

Behavior modification that’s not empowered by God’s heart-changing grace is self-righteousness, as repugnant to God as the worst sins people gossip about.

I am not perfect, and I will struggle with the “old Jim,” who was and is influenced by American culture, narratives and values. But the key is that identity comes before behavior. We almost always do ...

There is a story—likely apocryphal—of Alexander the Great discovering a soldier asleep at his post, a grave offense. When the guard was brought before him, the king asked his name. “Alexander,” the yo...

The psychotherapist M. Scott Peck spent many years of his practice as an agnostic. He, along with thousands upon thousands of his colleagues were taught that evil was a social construct, and therefore...

One afternoon, I was playing with my son in our living room when I suddenly smelled something burning. I stood up and walked around, nose high in the air, sniffing furiously. My wife smelled it too, s...

The question for each parable is: How did Jesus seek to change attitudes and behaviors with this parable?

When I was a child, my father brought home a twelve-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they would raise him ...

The goal of our convictions is to guide our own conduct so that it is pleasing to Jesus, not to guide the conduct of others.

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

Does reading the Bible really change us? Does it have the ability, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to shape and form our characters? That's what The Center for Bible Engagement wanted to fin...

Discipleship is transformation, not information overload or behavioral modification. When transformation occurs, there is an increasing hunger for more knowledge of Jesus and His Word, but the primary...

One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitude and feelings.

The definition of the word habit, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a usual way of behaving: something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way.” In the American Journal of Psychology it...

We only learn to behave ourselves in the presence of God.

Some years ago, the syndicated newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris shared an interesting anecdote from one of his friends. Each evening, this friend would stop at the same newsstand to buy a newspape...

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their f...

Many of us don’t like this word “discipline.” It makes us feel uncomfortable, even icky. It has negative connotations. We often associate it with punishment or retribution. To discipline is to punish,...

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

Culture shapes the way we order our life, interpret our experiences, and evaluate the behavior of other people.

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort.

Delayed gratification may be an important key to success in life, points out Mark Batterson. In a variety of experiments, the most famous from 1972, Walter Mischel studied how young children delayed g...

A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi...

Compared to our personality traits, character traits are more malleable. Our personalities can only be managed (or tamed, some might say). Our characters can be shaped, although this isn’t easy and ha...

There is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

I see my past drinking as a behavioral problem, a learned response to dealing (or not dealing) with emotional pain and stress. Once I achieved the excavation of my wounds, I no longer lived with the s...

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.