Virtues over Vices

This month we will look at virtues and vices described in the Bible and how these affect our everyday lives. It can be helpful to think of virtues and vices from a growth mindset. Virtues help us grow into our God-given destiny to become our true selves, receiving life to the full as God intends for us (John 10:10). Vices work against that destiny, sometimes just distracting or disrupting our lives but more often harming our ability to live well.

This month’s author, Scott DeVries, has been spiritually blessed through studying these subjects.

For me, learning to trust that virtue is something to grow into, and that vice is something to grow out of, has had a healthy effect on my spiritual life. When it comes to growing out of vices, I am less tempted to fall into the opposing traps of either letting myself off the hook from my vices, or beating myself up about them.

They instead become marks of maturity, and I learn that I will outgrow them faster by recognizing them and learning how to do better. This, in turn, helps in avoiding spiritual pride that can result from focusing too much on virtues, and at the same time it avoids a sense of defeat, burnout, or spiritual depression that can result from denying virtue.

My prayer is that these devotions will have a similar effect on your spiritual life and that you too may gain understanding in how to grow out of a vice or into a virtue.

Scott DeVries has served as a church pastor and as a ministry coordinator in the Holland, Michigan, area. He currently works at facilitating connections between the twenty-plus ministries and 1,100 churches of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. He has a passion for prayer, church organization, and studying the Scriptures in their original languages.

As you read the Today devotions this month, may you be refreshed, refocused, and renewed in God’s Word!

Begin with day one of Virtues over Vices here or download the full PDF.