When we have a lot of responsibilities – or, at the very least, a lot of activities – we have a tendency to use different methods for reducing the number of decisions we have to make.Sometimes we will eat roughly the same things for breakfast, or we will have a way of quickly choosing the clothes we will wear.

We create ‘routines’ that take on the force of habit.

These things are ‘pre-approved actions’ which will (generally) always work, so they free up mental space for other things. We built soapboxes to stand on, so to speak, so we could do other things. These habits enable more activity.

But many of these ‘pre-approved routines’ over time take on the force of law, and it becomes very difficult for us to break them.

• Three worship songs before church.
• The offering after the worship songs.
• A sermon just so long and no longer.

People who go to seminary before they ever start teaching in a church, so that we know they will teach the right things.

They are safe laws: ’No one ever got fired for buying IBM.’ The problem is…

eventually these decisions are no longer workable or valid.

The time they were good for is past.

But then, our brains are occupied with so many other things, that it is excessively hard for us to get down off the box we are standing on, and examine the box itself.

Breaking out of that box requires something more than the idea that it would be good to examine the boxes.

It requires a greater desire and passion for something which demands the boxes be reexamined.