Monday, January 7, 2013

Review: How To Use Lift for iPhone as a Spiritual Aid

[Source: Shutterstock]
One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from the book of Hebrews. It reads, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (12:11) Nobody enjoys discipline because, by definition, it goes against our natural inclinations. This proves to be true whether we're talking about working out more or reading our Bible. Because of the way the central nervous system is wired, habit formation is one of the most difficult things for the brain to develop. We don't want to change. But according to Scripture, on the other side of discipline is freedom, blessing, peace, and joy.

This being resolution season and all, it seems like everyone's trying to develop new habits right now. Just drive by your local gym if you don't believe me. But starting is easy. It's the sticking-with-it part that we tend to find impossible. How do you keep from giving up after a week? Well, here's a little trick I've been using lately that might help with that.

I was perusing the iTunes App Store a few months ago when I stumbled upon a new free app called Lift. I read that Lift was designed to serve people hoping to develop and foster better habits by tracking how frequently you perform the habits you're wanting to develop. Every day, it produces a list of habits for you to check off as you complete them throughout the day. A calendar history allows you to monitor how you're doing with each habit you create. It looked interesting and well made (not to mention free), so I downloaded it. Today, Lift is part of my daily routine, and I’m thoroughly pleased with the ways it's helped me to live a better life.

Really, you can use Lift for keeping track of anything. But I love the way it lends itself to being useful in the area of spiritual formation. For instance, Lift helps remind me how often I'm taking time to pray. Using it has helped me develop a morning routine that has taught me to pray before I even leave my room when I wake up. Normally, I wouldn't have any way of keeping track of how I was doing with something like this. I would just have this vague sense of doing "ok" or "not so good," depending on how I was feeling. Using Lift helps me to daily submit myself to the sort of discipline that I so desperately need if I ever hope to really change. Like the writer of Hebrews tells us, discipline produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who are willing to be trained by it. That sounds pretty good to me.

[Source: Lifehacker]

I'm not going to waste any space here talking about legalism. This isn't about you and I creating ways to prove to ourselves how righteous we are. This is about becoming good servants who do what the Master commands. It's about taking Jesus seriously and entering into the sanctification process willingly instead of kicking and screaming. I offer this to you as merely a tool to be used in the journey of looking more like Christ. It may or may not be something for you. But I can tell you it has helped me a great deal.

If you've got an iPhone, I highly recommend you take Lift for a (free) test drive. Click the link below to download it from iTunes.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lift/id530911645?mt=8]

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