Prioritizing the Presence of God

INTRO

The last month or so we’ve been talking about what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus. We’ve talked about how Jesus was a rabbi that gathered followers. That the main focus of His earthly ministry was to compel people to follow His way of life. That every person that followed Him would have had 3 primary goals

Be with Him, Become like Him, and to Do as He did.

Be With Him: The starting and ending point. The purpose of everything

Become Like Him: Jesus came to be our example on how to be the humans God has created us all to be.

Do as He did: The goal of every rabbi was not just to teach you facts, but for you to take His teachings and put them into practice. Jesus asks us to do the same. To take on His ministry and multiply it through the lives of His church

Now these are the primary goals of what it means to be a fully fledged follower of Jesus, and they are beautiful. However, it would be dangerous to have these as aspirations only, without any real plan to see the vision that we hold so dear come into reality.

Family Disney Trip - Save money, take time off, watch Disney movies with EG, book the flights, arrange hotel

In short we need a plan to reach our desired destination.

This is true for any journey we set out on. Money, weight loss, education, opening a business, planting a garden. Everything must have a goal (destination) and a plan to get there. The spiritual life is no different.

Most people have a plan for their money, health, retirement, career, etc. But very few have a plan for their spiritual life.

We must arrange our lives toward the presence of God, and rearrange our lives away from the things that create distraction or distance from the presence of God.

You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.

-John Ortberg

Arrange your days…

This may sound boring to some or rigid to others… It is simply making space for God in our everyday life.

But again, this won’t merely happen on it’s own.

So here’s the plan…

The Trellis and the Vine (A Way of Life)

John 15:5 ESV

5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Trellis - support for growth of a vine, used to both draw it where it’s supposed to go, but also away from what will hurt it.

Early followers of Jesus were asking the same questions that we are: How do we live our life in such a way that we are transformed into a person of love in Christ?

The answer they came up with was what they called a Rule of Life. Now that definitely sounds off putting to most of us, and understandably so. But, it most likely isn’t what you think it is.

When they used the word Rule, they weren’t thinking in terms of the list posted on the wall in your 2nd grade classroom. The word “rule” comes from their latin word for “a straight piece of wood” or a piece of wood used to measure things. That word is where we get our word ruler. It was also the word many believed early believers used for the word trellis. And many early followers of Jesus took His metaphor of the vines and the branches to it’s logical conclusion. If you’re going to bear much fruit, you’ll need a structure to promote growing toward the right direction and away from the dangers.

As followers of Jesus who seek to remain in the vine and bear much fruit, we’ll need a trellis, support structure to make to space for us to be with Jesus, become like Jesus and do as He did.

Simply put, A Way of Life is a plan to follow Jesus. To stay true to one’s commitment to apprentice under Him.

Now it that sounds a bit dry to you, think of a marriage ceremony. Nowadays marriages are extravagant. The average bachelor party is $40,000. But think about the ceremony itself. All the love, passion, and vision for the future of growing old together would be worthless if it wasn’t for the vows. The actual commitment to the marriage of two lives into one.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

- D. Bonhoeffer

“to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part,” These vows of commitment sustain the love through the various trials of life.

In both marriage and a relationship with God it’s the vows of commitment that make space for maturity and transformation to occur.

Oh, and here’s another thing……

You Already have a Rule of Life

Even if this is the first time that you’ve ever heard about this terminology, you have most assuredly have a rule/way of life. (John L. Breakfast)

You have a way in which you live: a morning routine, a typical workday, a network of relationships, a budget, activities you spend your free time on, and so on.

The question isn't, Do you have a Rule of Life?

lt’s, Do you know what your Rule of Life is?

And is it giving you the life you want?

Picking up your phone first thing upon waking and checking social media isn't just a bad habit - it's a choice to let yourself become formed into a certain kind of person.

Spending more time reading the news than reading Scripture isn't just "wrong"— it's a choice to become more like your favorite news commentators than like Jesus.

Spending your money on yet another thing you don't need isn't just playing around with "disposable income" it's feeding an appetite within you that will grow only more ravenous.

All these things we do, do something to us.

Growing Toward and Away

Lets return to the idea of the trellis. The purpose of the structure was to promote the vine to grow up toward the things it needed to flourish and bear fruit (sunlight, space to move and breath), and also just as important to grow away from the things that would destroy or hinder its growth (suffocation, disease).

In the same way, as we examine our lives, we must look for Ways to prioritize our days so that our souls move toward Jesus who offers life and life to the fullest and away from the world that seeks to destroy us.

We must form practices in that accomplish both of these aims

Some examples

1hr every morning of contemplation, scripture, and prayer

Morning, Mid Day, and Evening Prayer

Read 2hrs every morning

Dumb Phone

No work at home

Some of these are ones that you’d expect, like the bible and prayer, others are more specific toward me and the inclinations of my heart that i’ve put in place to guard against some things that i know i’m susceptible to.

I used to hand my decision make with the question “Is this sinful?” which is admirable. But now I’ve learned the more mature question is “Does this draw me toward Jesus and others or away?”

4 Things a good Way of Life will do for you

1. It will help you turn vision into reality

The greatest challenge of following Jesus is turning aspirations into transformation. Everyone thinks it’s a good idea to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and to do as he did. But when we structure our lives and habits and daily routines with theses goals in mind our hearts deepest desire becomes reality.

2. It will help you experience peace as you live in alignment with your deepest desire

“We find inner peace when our schedules line up with our values.”

-Stephen Covey

To reverse engineer that: Who we want to be (The 3 Goals) is best achieved when we prioritize it in our daily lives through our habits and lifestyle, then we’ll find the inner peace we all desperately long for.

Most of the anxiety in our lives comes from all of things we wish could be/do but we feel like we can’t because of the patterns of the world. A good rule allows us to say yes to Jesus and no to the course and ways of the world.

3. It will help you live at the right pace

Burnout and apathy are real threats.

Too much, too fast, and we accelerate to hurry (definition: too much to do, not enough time to do it), killing our spiritual lives, sapping our emotional energy, and inevitably burning down our soul.

But the reverse is also true: Too little, too slow, and we atrophy, falling into a lethargic, nicknamed by the monks "the noonday demon."

A Rule of Life will help you determine in advance the speed of your life, so you don't burn out or stall out, but "press on toward the goal to win the prize.'

4. It will help you balance freedom and discipline

The goal of all of this is not to create a rigid structure by which we feel constrained by religion and legalism. However, we also want to safeguard from the chaos that “personal freedom” can bring. Creating a rule of life can give us the constraints that will aid us in structuring our lives toward Jesus, and away from the world, but also correctly understood will give us the freedom and flexibility to have them motivated by love and not fear.

Psalm 1 ESV

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.