The formation of who you are — body, soul, and spirit — has been happening over the course of your lifetime. Your beliefs, thought patterns, values, ideas, opinions, and habits have been slowly shaped, resulting in you being the person you are today.

Some of it was outside of your control. The family you were born into, the culture your parents built at home, and the school they sent you to are examples of things that were both deeply formative and chosen for you.

Today, the formation continues. But as adults, we have an opportunity to choose 1) how to think about what formed us early in life, and 2) what (or who) we want to form us moving forward.

We can’t change the childhood we had, but we can bring it to God, thanking Him for the good and submitting to Him the bad.

As we look to the future, you’ll see that our ongoing formation boils down to one simple word — “yes.”

Of course, the choices that other people make will always be outside of our control, but we must understand that how we spend our resources — namely our time, money, and energy — largely determines who we will become.

This is good news. Otherwise, we’ll spend our lives as victims whose spiritual formation is at the mercy of everyone around us. But this is not what Jesus modeled for us.

Jesus never played the victim, and He was intentional about everything. The people around Him, even the ones who hated, ridiculed, and eventually crucified Him, were unable to stop Him from being who He needed to be.

The future is always on its way, and our formation is inevitable. We can’t stop the forces of influence in the world that are fighting for our attention, but we can choose what we allow to shape us.

This requires that we pay close attention to the habits, routines, and patterns that give shape to our days.

The Excuse We Need to Eliminate

We all have the same amount of time to spend. Regardless of our responsibilities and the fullness of our schedules, we all have exactly twenty-four hours every day.

Having a busier schedule doesn’t mean we have less time in our day than anyone else, and likewise having more margin doesn’t mean having more hours in the day.

This matters because it exposes the facade that we “don’t have time” for certain activities.

“I’d love to read the Bible more, but I don’t have the time.”

“I wish I could _____________” — fill in the blank. Whether it’s going to church, joining a small group, practicing Sabbath, or any other spiritual discipline, we need to eliminate this excuse from our vocabulary.

Rather than saying, “I don’t have time to pray,” we could more honestly say, “I haven’t made prayer a priority.”

It’s far more comfortable to say, “I don’t have time,” because we get to, in a sense, outsource the responsibility for our schedule and lifestyle. It’s as if to say, “I would if I could, but I can’t.” And it usually ends up being somebody else’s fault — the boss, a spouse, the kids, etc.

The shifting of blame might ease the burden on the conscience in the short term, but we cannot avoid the long-term effects of a lack of spiritual disciplines.

We have twenty-four hours to spend every day, and what our days get filled with reveals our priorities and, eventually, who we become.

Similarly, we have a certain amount of money and energy to spend. Unlike time, these will vary from person to person, but the principle is the same — whatever amount of money and energy you have, the responsibility for how they are spent falls on you. And whatever we say yes to spending them on will influence who we become over time.

Small Decisions That Lead to Big Change

When we zoom in on our days and consider the small decisions we make, it’s hard to see the impact. One seven-dollar drink from Starbucks probably won’t affect your financial situation. Skipping your morning Bible reading on a Tuesday won’t derail your spirituality. Missing the gym on Friday because you’d rather have an extra hour of sleep won’t ruin your physical health.

But what happens when you zoom out and look at the whole year? Was the drink from Starbucks an infrequent treat, or was it habitual? What about skipping time with Jesus or skipping the gym?

You make these small decisions all day, every day. You are almost always spending time, money, or energy — but if you zoom out, what are the patterns, and what is your lifestyle producing in you?

In Matthew 6:21, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (ESV)

I understand that the immediate context of this chapter is that He is talking about the dangers of seeking approval from others by appearing devout, and the false sense of security we can find in material wealth.

However, if you look at the sermon as a whole, He opens by contrasting the present reality and conditions of life on earth with those of the Kingdom of God. The idea of storing up treasure is about looking ahead to what awaits us in Heaven and choosing to invest in the economy of that reality by living righteously here and now.

What if our “treasure” is the resources at our disposal (time, money, and energy), and what if storing up treasures in Heaven is about spending those resources on what is good and godly?

What if it looks like choosing to use what God has given us to pursue Him and advance His Kingdom?

And how do we spend our resources? We say “yes.”

Every purchase is a yes.

Every activity is a yes.

Over time, those yeses add up. Your heart follows your treasure, growing fonder of whatever you’ve declared worthy of your time, money, and energy.

You will, over time, become what you say “yes” to.