The Liturgies of Life: How Our Habits Shape Our Souls

I once realized, somewhere between a McDonald’s drive-thru and a phone call I barely remembered, that I had lived half my day without thinking about God. Not in rebellion, not in doubt, just in distraction. I had done what I always do: wake up too late, rush through the motions, scan some headlines, answer some emails, grab a coffee, and carry on. And somewhere in that blur of predictable movement, I had functionally lived as if He didn’t exist.

That bothered me.

Because I believe in God with every fiber of my being. I preach, I pray, I teach others to do the same. But when I really paused to consider things, it dawned on me: belief isn't the only thing shaping my soul. My habits are doing some heavy lifting too. In fact, they might be doing more formation than my formal theology.

Most of us think our lives are shaped by our beliefs, our big ideas, our heartfelt convictions, and to a degree, they are. But if you watch what we do, day after day, a different story starts to emerge. We don’t just think our way through life. We practice our way through it. We are creatures of repetition, and every repetition forms us in ways we barely notice. Our rituals, routines, and habits are not just random patterns of behavior—they are quiet liturgies.

I’ve come to believe that how we brush our teeth, answer our phones, spend our mornings, and even how we scroll social media is doing something to us. These little acts of repetition are forming our loves. They’re pointing us toward some vision of the good life, even if we never call it that. James K. A. Smith puts it bluntly: “You are what you love. But you might not love what you think.”¹

When I first read Smith’s book You Are What You Love, that sentence landed like a confession for me. Since I have come to know Christ as Lord, I have always considered my love for God above all else, but my rhythms told a slightly different story. I began to wonder: what if the most powerful spiritual forces in our lives aren’t loud or dramatic, but silent and ordinary? What if the most important battles for our souls are being fought in the small, forgettable hours? What if the liturgies of our lives (the things we do without even thinking) are slowly shaping who we’re becoming?

I want to use this brief essay to journey through that question. It’s a theological reflection, yes, but also a pastoral one. I’m writing this as someone in the thick of it, someone who still cuts off a prayer to check a vibrating phone, and who often forgets to rest even when preaching about Sabbath. But I’ve seen what happens when we let our habits drift. And I’ve seen what can happen when we begin to reclaim them, not just for productivity but for formation. Not just to get things done but to become someone worth being.

We all live by liturgies. The only question is: what are they forming in us?

An Anthropology of Habitual Human Formation

I used to think habits were just boring versions of resolutions. The word made me think of flossing or organizing Tupperware. It's not exactly spiritual high ground. But the more I read Scripture, listened to people, and paid attention to my own life, the more I realized that habits are not boring. They’re powerful. Almost frighteningly so. They are the grooves our souls settle into.

We humans are habitual creatures. From our morning routines to the way we respond when someone cuts us off in traffic, we are bundles of repetition. We like to think of ourselves as brains on sticks, rational minds steering the ship. If we just get our ideas right, the thinking goes, we’ll get our lives right too. But try telling that to someone who believes in healthy eating and still reaches for chips every night at 10:30. We may be thinkers, but we’re also desiring, practicing, comfort-seeking creatures. What we do forms what we want, and what we want shapes who we become.

Aristotle understood this long ago. He wrote that virtue is not something we stumble into. It’s something we practice. Courage, temperance, and patience are not lightning strikes, they’re learned patterns. As Will Durant wrote in his Story of Philosophy, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”² Holiness, I’m learning, isn’t much different.

That might sound intimidating, but it’s actually encouraging. If we’re not just thinking machines, then that means our growth isn’t limited to the classroom or the study. It can happen in the kitchen, on the treadmill, at the dinner table. Our ordinary actions are doing extraordinary things to us, quietly but surely.

From a biblical view, this makes perfect sense. Scripture speaks again and again of the heart as the seat of life, but it also reminds us that the heart is shaped by what we treasure, what we repeat, and what we behold. Proverbs tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). But how do you guard something that’s always moving? You shape its direction by shaping your habits.

The truth is that the world is not neutral, and neither are our routines. Every rhythm we adopt is forming us into something. The question is never, “Am I being formed?” The question is, “Who or what is doing the forming?”

And if that feels like a lot to take in, don’t worry, I’m right there with you. I still have days where I eat lunch too fast, forget to pray, doomscroll headlines, and then wonder why my soul feels like it has jet lag. But I’m learning, slowly, that to follow Jesus is to invite Him not just into my thoughts but into my routines. Into my Tuesday mornings and Friday commutes. Into how I wake, how I work, and how I rest.

What shapes us, in the end, isn’t just what we believe. It’s what we practice believing every single day.

Formation in the Wild

I used to think that I was immune to culture’s influence as long as I avoided the “bad stuff,” like violent movies, bad theology, or anything with a pentagram. But I’ve learned that the most potent formative forces in my life don’t come with a warning label. They come with free shipping, curated playlists, and three-second attention spans.

We are always being discipled. Always. The question is, who is doing the discipling? Not all liturgies are printed in church bulletins. Some are piped through headphones and social feeds and afternoon routines. These are our secular liturgies. Not because they’re evil in themselves but because they are spiritually formative. They shape how we love, what we fear, and where we place our hope. And most of the time, we don’t even realize it’s happening.

Think about social media. I tell myself I’m just catching up on the news or reading a great substack, but thirty minutes later, I’m neck-deep in curated envy, performative outrage, and some rabbit hole I had never even considered before. I put the phone down, and I’m more distracted, anxious, and a little less rooted in reality. That’s not just a time-waster. That’s spiritual formation. Every scroll is a practice in comparison. Every click is a nudge toward discontent. Every feed is a silent teacher telling me what a “good life” or what a “good article” looks like.

The news cycle has become a kind of liturgy, especially for my boomer friends (no shade here, friend; we all have our vices). It doesn't just inform us. It catechizes us in fear. The repetition of doom and outrage trains our souls to live in a state of chronic alarm. Our inner lives begin to reflect the pulse of headlines, not the peace of Christ. It’s not wrong to be informed. But it’s dangerously easy to be deformed by a constant diet of despair.

Now, to be clear, I’m not advocating for some kind of Amish withdrawal. I own a smartphone. I like Audiobooks. I’ve even been known to wander through Target with my wife for no reason at all. The point is not that these things are inherently bad. The point is that they are not neutral. They disciple us in habits of attention, desire, and identity. And if we’re not actively counter-forming our souls in the love of Christ, we will be formed by default into something far smaller and sadder than what we were made for.

The devil doesn’t need to get us to renounce God. He just needs us to forget Him. To slowly, quietly rewire my habits until we’re too busy, too tired, too entertained to notice how far we’ve drifted. He doesn’t need us to become a heretic. Just a passive consumer with a spiritual appetite dulled by noise. So the question isn’t whether we’re living liturgically. It’s which liturgy we’re living. And, more importantly, where it’s taking us.

The Spiritual Gravity of Small Things

We tend to think that only big things matter to God. Our conversions. Our crises. Our worship music playlists, that’s the real “spiritual” stuff. At least so we think. But what about the tiny, boring, repetitive acts that make up most of our lives? What about brushing our teeth, folding laundry, packing lunches, driving to work? If God really loves us, shouldn’t He care about those too?

I used to read the book of Leviticus with a kind of grim determination, like hiking through a forest with too many mosquitos. All those details about fabric blends and skin diseases, how to clean pots and cut animals just right, it felt like the ancient version of fine print in a user agreement. And yes, I am profoundly grateful that Jesus fulfilled those ceremonial requirements because I’ve never felt spiritually gifted when it comes to avoiding shellfish.

But as I’ve grown in faith, Leviticus has started to feel like a love letter written in a strange dialect. What once seemed tedious now feels intimate. God was not just commanding sacrifices. He was forming a people. He was shaping their lives down to the thread count of their garments and the rhythms of their meals. And here’s the point: there is no part of human life that is too ordinary for God to care about.

We are not gnostics. We don’t believe the spirit is good and the body is bad. God made us embodied physical beings, and He called it good. He met His people in tents, in deserts, in kitchens, in childbirth, in dirt. When He came in the flesh, He didn’t float above the world. He walked in it. Sweated in it. Ate fish, drank wine, touched lepers, cried tears, and cooked breakfast on a beach. So, if God cares about cooking fish and folding priestly garments, I think He can handle the little routines in my life also. The small things are not beneath Him. In fact, they might be where He meets us most often.

This changes how we see our habits. Making the bed is no longer a meaningless act. It is a small liturgy of order in a chaotic world. Doing the dishes can be an act of service. Sitting silently with someone in grief, laughing over a shared joke, or writing a thank-you note are all deeply spiritual acts, even if no one calls them that. In fact, most of the holiest things in life never get hashtags.

If I believe God is with me, then I must believe He is with me in everything—not just when I’m singing hymns but when I’m cleaning out the fridge. Every part of me matters to Him. Every habit is a chance to become more fully myself, more rooted in Christ, more awake to the world. So I’ve started asking myself: If God really meets me in the small things, how can I show up more attentive to Him there, also?

The Counter-Liturgies of the Kingdom

We don’t drift toward godliness.

That’s a truth I’ve learned the hard way. I never accidentally became patient. I’ve never stumbled into joy. I’ve never found myself forgiving someone just because I had a free afternoon. The soul, like a garden, doesn’t flourish on autopilot. Without intention, the weeds win. And the weeds, I’ve noticed, grow fast.

But if secular liturgies constantly shape us, then we need something stronger to reform us. We need to embrace the counter-liturgies of the Kingdom. Practices that resist the gravity of the world and point our hearts back to Christ.

These aren’t flashy, and they’re not designed to impress your Instagram followers. But they are powerful. Like water shaping stone, these habits slowly carve new channels in our souls, orienting our desires back to the true and beautiful.

Prayer is a counter-liturgy. Not the polished kind with perfect words, but the messy, faithful kind that shows up daily before the coffee, after the stress, during the silence. Prayer recalibrates the heart. It says, “I am not self-sufficient. I am not in control. I am not the center.” In a world obsessed with productivity, prayer is a revolutionary act of stillness for the sake of love.

Scripture reading is a counter-liturgy. Not as a checklist, but as nourishment. In an age of constant noise, reading the Word trains us to hear a different voice, the most important voice. The voice of the One who spoke all creation into existence and upholds it by the power of His Word. Each verse is a little rebellion against the tyranny of headlines. It is truth that anchors us when emotions are loud and opinions louder.

Sabbath is a counter-liturgy. It is holy resistance against the idol of exhaustion. It tells us we are not machines. It reminds us that rest is not a reward for getting things done, but a gift because God is already enough. When we stop, we proclaim with our bodies that the world keeps spinning not because we strive, but because God reigns.

Generosity is a counter-liturgy. It breaks the spell of scarcity and teaches us to live open-handed. In a culture that teaches us to hoard, to store up, to build personal kingdoms, giving says, “I already belong to a bigger one.”

These habits are not magic spells. They don’t make life easy or automatic. But they do shape our souls. They pull us out of the current. They form grooves of grace. They teach us, slowly but surely, to desire what is good and love what is eternal. And they are not meant to be done alone.

We need the communal liturgies, too. We need the gathered church, the call to worship, the sharing of bread and cup, the preaching of the Word, and the voices of saints who believe when we ourselves are struggling to. Sunday worship is not a pit stop on the highway of personal faith. It is the weekly re-narration of reality. It reorients us to the true story: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ reigns, and Christ will come again. But it doesn’t stop there. These Kingdom habits can and must spill into the home.

Household liturgies are among the most potent of all. The way we speak to one another. The prayers whispered over our children. The quiet rituals of meals, rest, work, and forgiveness. These are the sacred patterns that form a people of endurance.

In the end, these counter-liturgies are not burdens. They are lifelines. They are the Spirit’s tools to make us more fully alive. They root us in grace, remind us who we are, and point us toward the One who is shaping us through every small and faithful act. Because becoming like Christ is not about doing something dramatic once, it’s about doing something faithful “seventy times seven.”

The Soul You’re Becoming Is Hidden in What You Do Today

The soul you’re becoming isn’t formed in grand gestures. It’s being written quietly into your routines, into your reflexes, into the thousand small decisions that no one sees but God.

Every time you choose prayer instead of scrolling, you’re being formed.
Every time you speak gently when anger would feel easier, you’re being formed.
Every time you show up again to the work God gave you, whether it's raising children, writing emails, washing dishes, or sitting with the suffering, you’re being formed. You’re becoming someone, and you’re becoming them right now.

We live in a world of instant everything. We want spiritual microwaves, not slow cookers. But the kingdom of God grows like a seed, not a spectacle. It works its way through the dough of our lives almost imperceptibly. And yet, if we give ourselves to the Spirit’s quiet work in the ordinary, we will look back one day and realize what we have become. People of joy, people of peace, people of love, saints-in-process who were slowly, daily, beautifully formed by the Spirit of God at work in us.

Annie Dillard once said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”³ When the final chapter is written, it won’t be the highlight reel that tells the story of who I was. It will be the habits. The liturgies. The quiet choices made in the presence of God.

And so I’ll end with this simple but urgent invitation: Don’t despise the small things. That’s where God does some of His best work. Let your ordinary life become a liturgy of love. Let your habits preach a gospel of grace. Let your routines shape you into someone more alive, more human, more holy. Because even now, in the sacred monotony of today, your soul is being shaped. And the one who is shaping it is faithful.

1. James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 1.

2. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and the Opinions of the Great Philosophers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1933), 74.

3. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 32.