A few years ago we were visiting Teresa’s brother Bill and his family who live in Tulsa, OK. We had gone early one Sunday morning to Bible class. The preacher was teaching the class, and after it was over, and I was shaking his hand I said to him: “It was good to have you with us this morning.” To which he replied: “No, it was good to have YOU with US this morning.” As a local preacher at a congregation with lots of visitors, I say that phrase (and mean it) countless times each Sunday morning, especially when meeting someone new. But that Sunday morning I was the someone new. My brain, however, refused to let my speech find a new pattern.

Patterns of behavior are hard to establish, but once established are hard to break, or even adjust. Bad patterns are persistently destructive. Good patterns are persistently productive. The important thing is to know this and to live deliberately – to establish and cultivate good patterns. Some of us seem to be naturally good – to have a reflex for the kind, the selfless act. Others of us – me, for instance – do not. But we are not dependent on the impulse for good to do good, to be good. We can learn. We can choose. We can cultivate goodness and patterns of goodness in ourselves.

I think that is why there is such an emphasis on doing in scripture. Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven (Matthew 7:21 ). This isn’t works salvation – this doesn’t controvert salvation by grace alone through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9 ). This is about fulfilling our purpose – doing what we are re-created to do (Ephesians 2:10 ) – this is about training ourselves. By making the effort to establish patterns of goodness – by doing, doing, doing – we train ourselves to do good.

I stopped eating salt for almost ten years. I’m a salt person. I can not end a meal with the taste of sweetness in my mouth – so I invariably follow-up apple pie with another helping of green beans, or grab a handful of Doritos to get the taste of HoHo’s out of my mouth. It was hard to give salt up at first. But after 10 days or so, adding salt to any dish made it seem too salty. I had trained my palate. I had changed my natural response. Then one day I put a little salt on a glowing fuchsia slice of watermelon, and it was all reversed. Now I salt everything before even tasting it. I keep a shaker of salt at my desk. I keep an individual packet of salt in my wallet – because you never know when it won’t be available. The point of all this is that I have had both the impulse to salt, and not to salt – and both impulses were of my choosing.

Job is described as a man “nauseated by evil” (Job 1:1 ). Not only did he lack a taste for evil, it sickened him. I wish I could be so described. My tolerance level for evil is pretty high – especially if it is presented on television. But that has been my choice. It doesn’t have to be that way.

You and I can be as Job was. It is a matter of training our palates – of choosing to do, do, do what is right until doing right becomes a pattern of behavior. The word has clearly described what “right” is. The word had clearly communicated our responsibility to do right. The word has also told us God empowers us – He creates us for good works (Ephesians 2:10 ). And so it is ours to make the commitment. God has given us truth and power. God has given us the choice to make. It is ours, however, and ours alone to make.