Rule of Life Training

Jesus invites us to come to him like a child, (slide) NT Wright said this: “Jesus had come to know his father the way a son does: not by studying books about him, but by living in his presence, listening for his voice, and learning from him as an apprentice does from a master, by watching and imitating.”

We all receive the same invitation Jesus gave to his first disciples (slide): “Come, follow me...” (Mark 1:17)

This, in Jesus’ day, was a huge deal. It was only an option for the brightest of the brightest, think like the top 1% of an ivy league school today.

Imagination time: You’re working your job at Subway, and a Harvard professor walks in and says, “If you leave right now, I’ll teach you everything I know. You can learn from me, live with me, and I’ll give you everything you need to do what I do.” That would be an opportunity of a lifetime. That’s what Jesus offered His disciples—and what he still offers us today. He turns the world upside down. Following this rabbi, this teacher isn’t just meant for the super elite. The invitation of “Come, follow me” is meant for all of us.

But sometimes, we misunderstand what following Jesus actually is. We think it means we have to become Him. And in some ways, we do—we take on His character: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And. We are not first-century Jewish carpenters. Some of us aren’t men. None of us are fully God and fully human.

Jesus never asks us to become Him. He invites us to become like Him. To live our lives—right here, right now, in the families we were born into, with the tasks and work we’ve been given, using our unique gifts, talents, and abilities—as if Jesus were living in our shoes today. (slide) John Mark Comer says, “If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.”

(slide) Knowing God & Knowing Ourselves

To follow Jesus well, we need to know both God and ourselves. We often focus on learning about God, asking Him to show us who we are. But in that search, we can fall into the trap of comparison—measuring ourselves against Jesus or against the great heroes of faith in the Bible. And in doing so, we might miss the point.

The Bible is not a story about how great people are. It’s a story about how great God is.

(slide) David Benner in his book The Gift of Being Yourself says, “genuine self-knowledge begins by looking at God and noticing how God is looking at us…God loves each and every one of us with depth, persistence and intensity beyond imagination. God doesn’t simply like you. Nor does God simply have warm sentimental feelings toward you just because you were created in the Divine image. The truth is God loves you with what Hannah Hurnard calls a “passionate absorbed interest.” God cannot help seeing you through eyes of love.”

So how do we get to know both God and ourselves? Like in any meaningful relationship, we have to make time for it.

My husband, Nick, is in nursing school and works part-time. Some days, we barely talk because he’s studying for exams or finishing assignments and I’m distracted with household tasks, scheduling, the budget, and getting the kids to their activities. But because our relationship matters, we have to schedule time together. If we don’t, we are disconnected because life pulls us in different directions.

If this is true for our most important human relationships, how much more must it be true for our friendship with God? If we say God is the center of our lives, we need to be intentional about spending time with Him. Otherwise, our schedules will dictate our priorities instead of the other way around. Do our schedules say that God is the center of our lives?

We budget our money. We plan for retirement. We set work and study schedules. We tell our finances where to go—we must also tell our time with God where to go.

Dallas Willard gives us this framework for spiritual growth

(slide) Framework for Spiritual Growth (V-I-M)

Vision – We must first have a clear vision of life in the kingdom of God and what it means to follow Jesus.

Intention – We must truly decide to follow Jesus, not just admire Him.

Means – We must engage in practical disciplines and practices that shape us into Christlikeness.

A Rule of Life

This is where a Rule of Life comes in. Simply put, a (slide) Rule of Life is a set of planned habits for spiritual transformation.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all being formed by something.

If you’re not sure what’s forming you, take a look at your calendar. How you spend your time is, as Anne Lamott put it, how you spend your life.

Being Formed by Jesus

(slide) Paul writes this in Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

When we are connected to Jesus, our lives bear good fruit.

(slide) The Pattern of This World vs. Following Jesus (Primer course p. 36, will send this)

Take a moment to reflect (read over the slide): Where do you find yourself? Are you shaped more by the pattern of this world or by following Jesus?

When the you-know-what hits the fan, we don’t rise to the occasion, we default to our level of training. When stress comes,when we’re squeezed by the pressures of life, what pours out of us?

Our goal in following Jesus isn’t to do more—it’s to intentionally slow down so we can experience deep joy in him and move from the pattern of the world to the good fruit Jesus tells us about in John 15 when we remain, when we abide in him. Developing a Rule of Life isn’t about adding more to our already full plates. It’s about subtracting what distracts us so we can create margin for what really matters most.

Think about what you do when you have a free moment. Many of us say we don’t have time for God, but we all have that little glowing device calling to us at all hours. The moment we get a second to breathe, we pick it up. And what are we met with?

If we’re on social media, we’re fed content designed to spark an emotional reaction and keep us scrolling. There’s literally a term for this: doom scrolling and here’s the definition: the habit of compulsively scrolling through negative or distressing news, often on social media or news websites, even though it causes anxiety, sadness, or stress. It’s driven by a desire to stay informed but can lead to an unhealthy cycle of consuming bad news without a break.

We see a picture of someone on Instagram and suddenly need whatever it is they’re selling.

We watch advice on TikTok instead of investing in real conversations.

We locate our friends on SnapChat and consider where they are and if we’re being left out.

Or it’s the email, the text messages, the apps with the little notification thing that we just can’t help but click on.

For many of us, our media consumption is forming us more than we realize. For others of us, even if we don’t have a smartphone or a TV in our house, there’s always something shaping us. Maybe it’s friendships. Maybe it’s always needing background noise because silence feels uncomfortable. Maybe it’s an obsessive hobby, or the frustration that builds as we endlessly consume divisive political news without ever taking action. Or watching romcoms with unrealistic relationships and being angry that our spouse would never treat us like that.

Can anyone relate?

We’re all being formed by something. The question is: Are we being formed into the image of Jesus?

A Rule of Life is about choosing what shapes us. What can we subtract to make space for spiritual transformation? Instead of passively letting our schedules run our lives, we create intentional habits that make room for God to do His deep work in us.

Practices for a Rule of Life (Slide)

If you want to dig deeper, books like Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster explore these practices further. But we can start by looking at Jesus’ own life, and these are just some suggestions from the materials we’ve been using this year and it’s not, by far, an exhaustive list: (slide including definitions below)

Sabbath – Setting aside one full day each week to stop, rest, delight, and worship. In our fast-paced world, this is more needed than ever.

Prayer – Spending time talking and listening to God.

Fasting – Stepping away from a culture of overindulgence to create space for dependence on God.

Solitude – Finding quiet in a world that constantly demands our attention.

Generosity – Practicing contentment and giving with gratitude.

Scripture – Clinging to God’s truth instead of the shifting voices around us.

Community – Choosing deep, intentional friendships over isolation and individualism.

Service – Pouring ourselves out in obedience to God, putting others before ourselves.

Witness – Practicing intentional hospitality, inviting others into the love of Jesus.

Heart Posture Matters

Like we’ve talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, you can do all the “right” things for the wrong reasons. That’s heart danger, we just wrapped up that series before Easter. If we treat these practices as a formula to get what we want from God—whether it’s healing, a spouse, a better job, well-behaved kids, or respect from others—we miss the point.

The goal isn’t to manipulate God. God isn’t a genie. He doesn’t always give us what we want, when we want it.

Inner Transformation, Not Just Outward Behavior

This is the solution to heart danger: spiritual formation, planned habits for transformation. Creating a plan of intentional practices changes us from the inside out, leading to a life that naturally reflects Christ’s love, wisdom, and power.

The goal of spiritual formation is not just behavior modification, it’s becoming the kind of person who would naturally live as Jesus did—full of love, peace, and power in the Holy Spirit, getting to experience God’s love and presence in the boring, painful and beautiful places of everyday life.

Grace in the Practice

Let’s not be legalistic about this. Maybe you hear “Sabbath” and immediately think, I can’t take a full 24-hour break. When would I take my kids to soccer practice? (Okay, maybe this one’s personal—my kids love soccer!) Even on the Sabbath, I still take them to practice because it’s something that brings them delight and I delight in what delights them. Maybe a once a week sabbath doesn’t work, or maybe it’s an intentional evening or something you practice every couple of weeks or once a month.

The point isn’t rigid rule-keeping. The point is creating space to connect with God where we are today.

Another challenge: we start these practices with good intentions, but they don’t go as planned. Maybe you decide to put your phone away and spend two minutes in silent prayer—only to find your mind racing through a hundred distractions. The timer goes off, and you feel like you failed.

We need to remember that these are practices. Growth takes time. Be patient with yourself. And when you find yourself saying terrible things to yourself that you’d never say to anyone else, consider inviting God into that unhelpful and judgemental narrative.

Clint: Dunning-Kruger Effect Curve

A Container for Commitment

The Notebook: beginning and end of a marriage, not the boring in-between of the fidelity of marriage. Dietrich Boneheffer officiating a wedding said this, “Today you are young and very much in love and you think that your love can sustain marriage. It can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.”

Like the commitment of marriage, we need a container to commit to, a set of practices where our love of God can mature. Like married couples grow to be more like each other in years of commitment and companionship, the same can be true as we make a relational commitment through intentional practices that will make us more like Jesus over time.

(Slide) David Brooks in his book Second Mountain defines commitment as ”falling in love with someone and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.”

This is the easy yoke Jesus invites us to put on in (slide) Matthew 11:28-30, in verses I think many of us are pretty familiar with: “28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

A Rule of Life is a structure to support our deepest desires even when our feelings don’t line up with those desires.

Facing Unprocessed Pain

These practices can feel difficult because they often bring up unprocessed pain.

We live in a culture that does everything it can to avoid pain. We medicate it—sometimes with actual pills, but also with social media, TV, alcohol, porn, shopping, gaming, or overworking. Or we bury it, pretending it’s not there at all.

Unresolved pain doesn’t disappear—it comes out sideways.

Emotional outbursts over small things

Irritability and impatience with others

Tears that seem to come out of nowhere

Sarcastic comments that mask deeper hurts

Withdrawing emotionally

Overworking, filling every moment with busyness

When we let God work in our pain, we take important steps toward emotional and spiritual maturity. We become aware of our feelings, we learn to name them, but we are not ruled by them.

Matthew 26:36-39 – Jesus in Gethsemane

(slide) 36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus experienced deep pain, and He brought it to God.

We, too, need to create space and time to bring the deepest, most painful parts of our lives to Him. This requires trust—it’s a choice to keep showing up, to spend time with God, and to let Him meet us in those places. We might not be in a place to bring our deepest pain to him now, that comes over time, intimacy, seeing God’s faithfulness, goodness and love at work in our lives and choosing to trust him more and more vulnerably with the deepest places of our hearts. Vulnerability is scary because we have something to lose. I’d suggest something my Faithwalking facilitator told our group when we began our module together: however comfortable you are sharing with God, take a baby step beyond that. Intimacy is grown one baby step at a time.

When the worst was happening, when Jesus was sweating blood, what did he say? Not my will, but your will be done. As he trained his followers to pray: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” He defaulted to his own level of training.

And I hope this goes without saying, but for many of us, deep pain—especially trauma—requires more than just personal prayer and reflection. Seeking help from a therapist or a spiritual director can be a vital part of healing. Fun fact, I’m actually meeting with a new therapist for the first time tomorrow! Use wisdom and discernment in finding the support you need. Therapy or spiritual direction could absolutely become part of your Rule of Life.

Crafting Your Own Rule of Life

Ok, so how do we actually create a rule of life, a rhythm that helps you be with Jesus, become like Him, and live as He would if He were walking in your shoes today? I’d like us all to consider taking a stab at creating a rule of life, even a rough draft of a few ideas towards that together tonight.

(slide, just the bold parts, not the rest, please) A few guiding principles:

Start small. Don’t try to overhaul your entire life overnight. Pay attention to things you’re already doing that connect you to God.

Think subtraction, not addition. This isn’t about cramming more into an already full schedule—it’s about creating space for what truly matters. Consider what helps you to slow down.

A foundation for spontaneity! Many of us say routine makes things boring. But if there is no routine in place, again, our time and how we spend it forms us. Spontaneity can still happen, but it needs a foundation to build upon.

Consider your personality and stage of life. Not everything works for everyone, and that’s okay.

Repetition is key. Transformation happens over time, through consistent practice.

Do this in community. We were never meant to walk this journey alone.

Think about how much and how often you need to engage in these practices to get the most benefit without overdoing it, getting frustrated and quitting. These should be stretching but realistic.

God, self and others balance. Balanced to grow, attainable to sustain.

Share this with a friend. Again, we’re invited to become students of Jesus, to be with him, become like him and do what he did within the context of community. Community encourages and stretches us, helps us consider things we might not otherwise consider on our own.

Lastly, put your Rule of Life into your schedule. If we make these and then it just goes in a drawer, becomes that thing we did that one time, it won’t actually change us. We need to tell our tine where to go. Schedule it in. And, consider accountability, who can you talk with about this on a regular basis?

(Slide Examples: p.94, 95, 96): I’ll email these to you!

Now, take some time to write out your Rule of Life.

Pray

Print-outs

Pages for Notes

P. 36

Slide of Rule of Life practices and definitions

Rule of life page

Additional Resources:

Practicing the way primer course

Practicing the Way book

Chapter 9 of Divine Conspiracy