The goal of this series is to make space in our lives for God, and with that space, craft a set of habits and rhythms patterned after Jesus’ life and God's revealed will: a Rule of Life.
This web page is designed to be a resource for you as you walk through the steps to build a Rule of Life in your own life. Like the Sabbath, it made for man, not man for the Rule of Life. The Rule of Life you create over these next twelve weeks and beyond should be a tool that aids you in using your God-given freedom for His purposes and glory, not something you become a slave to. The goal of this website is to provide additional references, resources, and templates for you that go deeper than the companion guide, not everything here will be incorporated into your own Rule of Life. Don't get overwhelmed—pick a few things, work on those, pick up and start again when something doesn't work or you fall away, and keep going. As Paul encourages, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13b-14).
Our Commitment
Building a Rule of Life involves pruning away distractions and intentionally rebuilding our lives with practices that lead to godly living. The spiritual environments, disciplines, and obediences that we discuss within this study are great elements to use as building blocks as we construct our own Rule of Life. Although this process of pruning and rebuilding can be difficult, it is imperative that we undergo this process to reach greater levels of spiritual maturity and sanctification. As we walk through this series and build a Rule of Life together, we are all going to commit to the following practices in community:
1. Attend church and listen to the weekly sermon
Make it a priority for the full 12-week series to come to the Sunday worship service each week. Listen to the sermon. Ask the Lord in prayer what He wants you to take away from the sermon each week. Take notes to reflect on later in the week.
2. Read the weekly Scripture passage
Meditate on the weekly scripture passage provided in the companion guide. Each passage was selected to help you thoughtfully examine your life and evaluate the state of your apprenticeship with Jesus.
3. Work through the reflection questions
There are eight questions in the companion guide to ponder each week. Reflect on these in light of the sermon. They are designed to be reviewed before diving into the homework for the week.
4. Discuss this content with someone
Join a small group, engage in a class, find an accountability partner, or commit to discussions as a family. Whoever you talk with, make sure to follow these practices in community. The community you work through this series with will be critical to help you put aside any failures and celebrate any successes you may experience as you create new habits in your life.
5. Follow through on the exercises
Spend time working through the companion guide. You may start some practices and fail to continue in them. Don’t quit; it’s okay. Revise anything that needs to change and restart again. The follow through of repetition is more important than the specific practices themselves. Accept the slow nature of progress, knowing that God’s promise of help and growth will not fail.
6. Memorize the memory verse
The memory verse for this series that we’ll be coming back to each week is 1 John 2:6. Commit to memorizing this passage. It is a helpful reminder that all that we are doing is to live as Jesus did. If we make claims that Jesus is our Lord, we must walk the walk and talk the talk, living as He did. In the general resources section, there are phone lock screens with this passage on it so that we can be reminded of what we're doing and why we're doing it.
General Resources
This page has several resources for you as you start this journey. The primary resource is the Rule of Life companion guide. It has scripture passages, reflection questions, space for sermon and reflection notes, and instructions for each week that culminate in building a Rule of Life by the end of our 12 weeks. We also have phone lock screens with the memory verse on them so that we can be reminded why we're doing what we're doing in restructuring our lives. This series is just the beginning of your journey though. Our hope, prayer, and goal is that this will be the start of a lifelong journey of evaluation, refocusing, and reshaping your life practices to reflect Christ.
COMPANION GUIDELOCK SCREEN (16:9) Lock Screen (21:9)Technopoly Resources
MEASURE
What to Measure
Before you can start measuring, you need to determine what to measure. Don't try to measure everything. You can't and shouldn't—the point of this exercise is to make you more aware of how you spend your time and identify some habits that lead to other things (both good or bad). If you try to measure everything, it will be overwhelming, and you might not even be able to identify those key habits amidst the noise of tracking everything.
Things to look for:
- Golden Habits: what thing tends to lead to other good things?
- Corrosive Habits: what habit, environment, or person's company leads to other bad things?
As you plan and measure, the most important thing to do is to invite God into the process. Go through this process slowly and prayerfully, asking God to highlight areas you need to dig into deeper. Measure and answer the questions honestly and non-judgmentally. It will be tempting to drift toward shame or denial, but both of these responses will sabotage the effectiveness of this exercise.
A helpful passage to meditate on during this phase is Romans 7: 14–25. "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."
In these first few weeks of measuring, don't try to change anything yet. This phase is all about measuring reality and being sobered by what we can't accomplish on our own. While measuring, try to gain insight into why you do what you do, and go to the Lord in prayer and thankfulness that He has delivered us through Jesus Christ.
Tracking Questions
Here is a list of questions to think through as you plan what to measure in your own life. They are organized around key aspects of life. Read through them and pick a few to revisit at set periods (mealtimes, daily, weekly) throughout the measurement phase.
Mind
- What are you paying attention to? Why? For how long?
- How much time are you focused on yourself and controlling your surroundings, and how much time are you serving others?
- What are your intrusive interests – the things that come into your mind uninvited and will not leave when you mentally excuse them?
- What are your triggers? What are you reflexively avoiding? Homework, talking to family, praying?
- Set a 25–45-minute timer and ask yourself the following questions whenever it goes off:
- What were you thinking about when the timer went off? Is there repetition? Is it positive or negative?
- How much are you in an anxious vs. a peaceful frame of mind and heart? You can monitor this one by setting a timer and taking stock each time it goes off, logging from 1-10 how peaceful/anxious you are at that moment.
Relationships
- Who do you spend time with and in what way?
- Think about everyone you talked to today. On a scale of 1-10 how cheerful and genuinely interested in them were you? 1-5, how much did they have your undivided attention?
- What time is spent in public/corporate worship, study or prayer?
- Do you have any scheduled or ritual time to spend time as a family? A shared dinner time?
- Do you have any daily times of prayer alone or with anyone else? First thing when you get up, or right before bed?
Body
- When and what do you eat?
- When and how do you exercise?
- What and when do you use stimulants or self-medication?
- Example: caffeine, alcohol, sugar, tobacco, vapes, etc.
- The idea is not that these are bad; it is that if we are borrowing from rest or we don’t have peace, we may be using these to fill in the gaps.
- How well are you sleeping?
General
- What are you spending your time doing?
- What do you do automatically without really intending it? Pay particular attention to distractions and anxious repetitions. Usual suspects are eating, turning on music or other sounds, going to the bathroom when unnecessary, clicking on links that waste time or are defiling of your attention often for vanity or sensuality.
- What time is spent in private worship, study or prayer?
- What are your habits? When do you do them? Are they good or bad?
- Are you watching or looking at sexually explicit material (pornography)?
- Not just IF, but when? And why then?
- How much money have you spent, and in what categories, over the last 3 months?
Technology
Technological usage is the most immersive and controlling ecosystems of forming us in worldliness. See the sermon series “Technopoly”, or review it if you have not considered its effects recently.
- How much time do you spend on screens each day?
- When do you spend more time than you intend to on a screen?
- When and why do you take out your phone? When is it intentional? When is it reflexive?
- What is the ratio of screen activity to silence and solitude in your free moments?
- How would you describe the difference between solitude and isolation?
- What is the ratio between in person interaction and digital interaction?
- Do you allow people who are not present (by use of your phone) to take precedence over people that are present? Like family?
Sample Tools
Here are a few examples of what a measurement tool could look like. We have a few templates for you to use as a starting point for your own measuring. Remember, these are really only starting points. Each person's measurement tool should look different; it should encompass the specific tendencies, habits, environments, and relationships specific to each individual to measure reality and identify the underlying things that lead to other habits.
Other Resources
Another resource to dive in deeper is doing a Formation Audit from Practicing the Way. Instead of taking a few minutes each day over a longer period of time to measure habits, this is a "life audit" that aims to take an inventory of all of the forces that are forming you, both now and in the past. Plan to dedicate a two hour block to prayerfully walk through this exercise. Below is a video explaining more about the formation audit before you go through it.