{"id":1812,"date":"2024-07-22T03:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","slug":"big-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1812","title":{"rendered":"BIG DIFFERENCE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It is the inner life of the soul that we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally and easily follow. But not the reverse.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This quote from Dallas Willard sums up much of what his book, <i>The Divine Conspiracy<\/i>, is all about. (p. 144)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Christian life isn&#8217;t so much about changed behavior as it is about a changed heart.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It put me in mind of some teaching from James Clear about habit formation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to <b>outcome-based habits<\/b>. The alternative is to build <b>identity-based habits<\/b>. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The key is to take our eyes off what it is we hope to achieve &#8211; in the case of the Christian, true righteousness &#8211; and focus instead on our identity: what type of person we desire to become.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the difference between striving to do good deeds on God&#8217;s behalf &#8230; and becoming like Christ Himself, loving God and loving neighbors.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;It is the inner life of the soul that we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally and easily follow. But not the reverse.&#8221;\u00a0 This quote from Dallas Willard sums up much of what his book, The Divine Conspiracy, is all about. (p. 144) The Christian life isn&#8217;t so much about changed behavior [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}