A rule of life is an act of defiance against a digital empire that seeks to cultivate you as a consumer. It's you taking charge of your life again, saying, this is how I'm going to live my life. You don't decide how I'm gonna live my life. I'm going to decide how I'm going to live my life and I'm going to do it because I'm a disciple of Jesus. Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast.
A quick reminder if you missed last week that from now on, you'll hear full sermons here on the podcast.
So instead of new episodes every weekday, you can look forward to hearing two brand new full-length sermons releasing every Monday and Wednesday. We hope this makes it easier for you to follow along and really go deeper into God's word. Today we're continuing our teaching series titled The Whole Disciple. Remember, this is a brand new, never before aired teaching.
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Now, let's get started. Here's Pastor JD. John 15, if you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope that you do. Today, this morning, we are going to deal with a question that most of us think about or encounter on a regular basis. Whether you're a Christian or not, you think about this question, and that question is this.
How can I change in me? the things that I don't like. A lot of us have things in our lives that we want to change, right? I think that's true of all of us, but. The question of how to change It's a major felt need in our society.
If you don't believe me, just go to the local Barnes Noble or a bookstore, and you will see that the self-help section takes up basically half the store. Or look through the list of the most popular podcasts right now. They're all about how can I develop more self-discipline? How can I stand up for myself better? How do I get rid of my anxiety?
How do I become a truly generous person? Maybe you've observed somebody recently who was just so generous and so patient and so kind, and it all just seemed so natural to them. And you thought, I want to be like that. Because when you try to be like that, it's like rubbing a cat's fur the wrong way. And you wonder, how can I become that kind of person?
I want to be better. By the way, if you got some area in your life like that right now, would you just raise your hand? I would dare say every hand in this room, every hand in every campus would be up. We're not alone in that we all have things in our life that we want to see change and grow. In John 15, Jesus explains the path to change.
So let's just walk through this passage together, the first eight or nine verses of it. And then I'm going to give you two important components, the two important components, and a strategy for change. It's a one-two strategy. And without either one of these two things, change in your life will not happen. Chapter 15, verse 1, Jesus said, I am the true vine.
And my father is the vine dresser. Jesus here compares his... Disciples, us, to branches on a vine. He is the vine, and we are the branches, and the Father is the one who is shaping the overall bush. Verse 2, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.
And every branch in me that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear even more fruit. Many plants have to be pruned if they are going to flourish. For example, Rose bushes need pruning because if not, two things happen. Number one, the vines grow in on themselves and block the roses from getting the sunlight that they need. Number two, all those extra vines, if it's unpruned, will divert the plant's resources away from the few good roses.
And what you end up with is a bunch of little scraggly flowers rather than vibrant, healthy ones.
So a good gardener will constantly be looking for unproductive branches and pruning them away so that the branches with the good roses on them will be vibrant and healthy. In the same way Jesus says, our Father constantly prunes us so that our energies stay focused on the right things and our lives produce real, lasting, eternal fruit. Number three, Jesus says, already you are clean. Already you're clean because of the word that I've spoken to you.
Now, in Greek, there is a connection of words in that verse that go back to the previous verse that is missing in English. Jesus did not just switch metaphors from pruning a bush to now taking a bath.
Now we're going to talk about you being clean. No, clean in Greek implies something like stripped. or purged. It's actually the same word used in verse 2 that we translate as pruned. Jesus is saying, his words have Already pruned or already stripped a lot of the bad away from our lives just by believing the gospel.
When you believe the gospel, a lot of things in your life change, but like you know, There is still so much more in your life. that needs to change in conformity to the gospel. There are a lot of things, y'all, that I understand here with my head. That are just not yet realities in my heart or in my behavior. I know, for example, that God is the most important reality in my life.
I know He's the most important, most beautiful, most eternal. But, y'all, throughout the day, I get distracted by a lot of other things that I begin to act like are the most important thing to me. I know God's opinion of me is the only one that truly matters. But I'm still pretty obsessed with your opinion too. I know sin is futile.
I know that. But I am still sometimes so attracted to it. I know humility and service are the way forward in the kingdom of God. but I still have an instinct for pride and domination. The word of Jesus has already taught me a lot of things here.
that are not yet realities. Here or in my behavior.
So the father has to. Prune me. Martin Luther said that the word does a lot of the cleaning in our lives, but some things in our lives. can only be removed by suffering. and or discipline discipleship work.
So Jesus continues, verse 4, abide in me. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. A branch's life depends on its connection to the vine. Disconnect the branch from the vine.
I don't care how good it looked before you disconnected it, it will die. In the same way, we have no spiritual life in ourselves, Jesus says. Only as we abide in Him will the life of His Holy Spirit flow into us. Abide is the Greek word mino, which means literally to dwell in, to make your home in. Plant yourself into me, Jesus says.
Make your home me. Put your roots into me and never go away. And my life will flow into you. You see verse 5, I am the vine and 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.
Now, nothing here can't mean nothing. Nothing.
Because clearly, a lot of people who aren't connected to Jesus do lots of things. Elon Musk is not connected to Jesus. I'm pretty confident in that. I pray one day he will be, but it doesn't seem that way now. But he has revolutionized the energy sector and will likely be a first person to put a human on Mars.
That certainly sounds like something. No, what Jesus means here is that apart from him, we can do nothing of eternal value. Nothing we do will really have the life of Jesus, the abiding, abundant life of Jesus in it. Apart from Him, even the good earthly stuff that we do, even as Christians. Like providing for our families or raising kids or leading a small group or studying the Bible.
That stuff, apart from him, will not have his eternal, fruit-bearing, abundant life within it. If anyone does not abide in me, Jesus says. He is thrown away like a branch and withers. Those branches are gathered and then thrown into the fire and burnt. The sobering reality, listen.
is that there are only two categories of Christians. There are disciples who are growing. And those who are dying. You are either one or the other. And to grow, Jesus says.
requires constant Vigilant. Pruning. I read recently that the painting of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco literally never stops. Painting crews start at one end. And by the time they get to the other end, it's time to start over.
And that is because the salty air coming in from the Pacific Ocean eats away at the paint. And if they don't keep the metal of the bridge properly sealed with paint, the salt air corrodes it and compromises the bridge's structural integrity. In the same way, the Heavenly Father and I are constantly going back through different parts of my life. We will focus on one area of my heart for a while, and we will get it painted over with the gospel. And then I will turn to another area to focus on.
But after I work on that new area for a while, the old one will start corroding again, and I'll have to circle back and put a new coat of gospel paint on it again. John Calvin said that the human heart is like an idle factory. constantly manufacturing new idols. Moments you're not thinking about it, there is making new idols that will take your focus off of God. To keep your heart in line with God requires constant vigilance.
My heart often feels like a spiritual whack-a-mole game sometimes. New idols constantly popping up. That I gotta whack back down with the Holy Spirit. And when I focus on this one over here, well, another one pops up over there. And then I turn there, and one pops back over here.
And by the way, An olive branch for you cat lovers, okay? There, I did it, I did it, there it is. Verse 7, if you abide in me, if you abide in me, Jesus says, and my words abide in you, you will ask whatever you wish. And it'll be done for you. You see, by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.
And so prove to be my disciples as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in that love. What do we learn from this passage about growing as a Disciple. Let me give you one statement. that I'm going to spend the rest of our morning unpacking.
Here it is. Christian growth. is a combination of resting in Jesus and a disciplined, active pursuit of him. Those things sound like a contradiction. Let me say it again.
Christian growth is a combination. Of resting in Jesus and a disciplined, active pursuit of Him. If those sound like a contradiction, Hopefully by the end, they will not.
Okay, let's start with resting in. Jesus. All life. Comes from the vine. And the way a branch bears fruit.
It is to stay connected to the vine. The branch doesn't really have to work to produce fruit when it's properly connected to the vine. Fruit just happens. Tim Keller explained that there are two ways that we can attempt to grow spiritually. The first he called mechanical growth.
Think of mechanical growth as how you would grow a pile of bricks. If I had a pile of bricks up here on this stage with me and I wanted to grow the pile, the only way to do that would be to. Add more bricks. When my oldest daughter, Karis, was very young. I walked outside one afternoon to find her on our patio with her mom's watering can watering her sandbox.
So I said, what are you doing, sweetheart? You're making a mess. And she said, we need more sand, Daddy. The sand's almost gone now. A lot of it had splashed out on the patio around it.
And she'd heard her mom explain that the reason we watered plants was to make them grow. And so she assumed that was how we could make the sandpile grow, too.
So I just waited until she was done, went out, secretly bought some more sand at Home Depot, and dumped it in so as not to dispel the magic. But you understand, of course, for non-living things, the only way to grow them is by mechanically adding to them. Mechanical growth is how a lot of people attempt to grow spiritually. They're constantly adding things to their spiritual lives. Do this over here.
Oh, now do this over here.
Now back to this. More of this. Oh, some of that. Oh, you forgot about this. Bible study, attendance, D groups, tithing, witnessing, fasting, serving, volunteer work, mission trips.
And the result is. Exhaustion. Or to go back to our rosebush metaphor. I am a pretty lazy yardsman. To my wife's chagrin.
I do not willingly plant flowers. I don't fertilize. In fact, I know some of you will lose respect for me here, but I pay somebody else to cut the grass. All I care about as it relates to the yard is that I don't get complaint letters from my neighbors. My wife, on the other hand, she loves a plush bright, neatly manicured lawn.
Well one day she she complained that our flower beds had too many weeds in them And that I needed to do something about it because I was the man of the house.
Now, you probably know this, you might know this, but there are two ways to kill weeds. You can get on your knees and spend several hours pulling them up one by one by the roots. This is the correct way. Or You can napalm them with Weed Killer. This is the lazy way.
This is my way.
So multiple times that summer, I blasted our flower beds with Weed Killer. and all of our weeds died. Just like the advertisement promised. And just like my wife had requested. And So did all of the rose bushes in that bit.
I ended up soaking the beds with so much weed killer that everything in it died. Beautiful, lush rose bushes with budding scarlet flowers turned into tumble beets. Ta tumble weed, sorry. My wife, of course, complained about that also in her usual spirit-filled way, of course. But let's just say let's just say that to make her happy I went down to the florist and I bought several dozen roses, brought them home, and began stapling them to the dead branches of the rose bushes.
Would that have fixed anything?
Well, for a while, those dead rose bushes would have looked alive, at least from a distance. But of course they wouldn't really have been alive and I would not really have been out of the doghouse. This is where a lot of people are spiritually, constantly trying to add spiritual fruit to their lives, constantly going back over dead bushes to staple new fake flowers onto them. And I can tell you from first-hand experience, it is. Exhausting.
Well, good news. There's another kind of growth. Organic growth. And that kind of growth comes from just being alive. Rose stems that are properly connected to the rose bush naturally grow roses, no stapling required.
So to grow, Jesus says, verse 4: abide in me. And I and you. And you'll bring forth fruit. There are two sides to that verse, and both sides are very important. Do not overlook either one.
Us abiding in him or he abiding in us. Those are the two sides. First, us abiding in him. Specifically, verse 9, Jesus tells us, abide in my Lord. Love rest in my love.
His love was given to us freely as a gift. His love was not earned by us. His love was not given to us as a reward for being spiritually fruitful. His love was given to us as a gift, and that gift makes us spiritually fruitful. Do not reverse the order.
Many of us think that we have to get ourselves in a spiritually healthy condition before Jesus will love us.
Well, I got to get my life together. I got to get my morals cleaned up. I've got to get my family fixed, got to get my marriage back together, and then I will go back to God. But that is not how we receive Jesus' love. Jesus loved us when we were spiritually dead, separated from Him, and in that spiritually dead condition, that lifeless condition, He plugged us in, He grafted us into His love.
And Jesus said, I just need you to remain in that love. You didn't start the Christian life by earning my love. You're not going to sustain the Christian life by earning my love either. Abiding in that grace-based gift love is what produces spiritual life in you. God's love.
is not the reward. For you having worked up spiritual fruit in yourself. God's love is the power that creates spiritual fruit in you. Remember the Martin Luther statement that I gave you last week? Luther said God's love is different than all other kinds of love in the universe.
Every other love in the universe finds something lovely and loves it because of the thing's loveliness. But God's love is different because God's love does not find, Luther said. God's love rather creates That which is pleasing to it. You don't make yourself lovely to earn the love of Jesus. You just receive his love, and it makes you lovely.
In fact, write it down this way. Love for God grows in us. Only as we abide in the love of God for us. Only by resting in the love of God for you will love for God and others be produced in you. The only way spiritual life grows in you is for you to realize that you can never produce it in yourself and letting him do it.
The irony of the Christian life is that the only ones who ever bear spiritual fruit are those who realize that their acceptance by Jesus has nothing to do with how much fruit they bear. Spiritual fruit comes only from intimacy with Jesus. Only by knowing him intimately, only by swimming in his love, resting in his love, will spiritual fruit ever grow in you. In fact, there's an analogy here in how we humans create biological fruit. Think about this for a minute, okay?
And I promise I will keep this G-rated. How do a man and a woman produce physical fruit? They come together in a moment of intimacy. with each other thinking about each other. And the fruit of that is another human being, a child.
That's God's little genius plan right there. At that moment of conception, they're not usually thinking about the science or the mechanics of making a child. Or at least they shouldn't be. No, what happens is they get caught up in a moment of loving intimacy with each other, thinking about each other, and the fruit of that is a child. We'll see in the same way, spiritual fruit.
is produced. Not by thinking about the mechanics of the fruit. Many of you, when you're thinking about producing spiritual fruit, you concentrate on the mechanics. You're thinking, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, patience, patience, patience, goodness, goodness, goodness, serenity now, or whatever it is you're trying to produce. That's not the way to produce spiritual fruit.
Spiritual fruit happens when you get caught up in moments of loving intimacy with Jesus, and the fruit of that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, mercy, and self-control. Get caught up in loving intimacy with Jesus, and spiritual fruit will come as naturally to you as roses on a rosebush. One more time. Dwelling on the love of God for you. is what produces love for God and others in you.
Here's the other side of that coin. We don't just abide in Him, Jesus said. He abides in us. Again, verse 4 and verse 5, whoever abides in me and I in him. Both sides of this, that's the one who's going to bear much fruit.
Last year, I reread one of my favorite books from my early days of ministry: Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. Written posthumously by his son. Hudson Taylor was the legendary missionary of the 1800s whose bold labors single-handedly opened up inland China to the gospel. This book is a biography of sorts, but the title advertises a secret. A secret to learn, and I am all into learning Christian life secrets and life hacks.
But you've got to read two-thirds of the way book to get the secret. Every single page I turned, I thought, is the secret on this page? is the secret on this page. And finally, two-thirds of the way into the book, I finally got to the secret.
So I did the work for you, and I'm going to tell you what it is. Hudson Taylor had spent several decades as a pioneer missionary in China, accomplishing more than any of us could ever probably dream of accomplishing for the kingdom of God. But Hudson Taylor, very late into his ministry career, came to a point where he felt exhausted. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that was still in front of him, frustrated. at what he felt like his lack of success was.
Frustrated even at the lack of spiritual growth in his own heart. He was at a breaking point, he said, when God revealed to him the secret. The secret of the Christian life, he said, not I for Christ. He said, but Christ in me. He said, and I quote: for years, for years I've tried to imitate Christ.
But there was no thought of imitation anymore. It was the blessed reality of Christ liveth in me. Oh, and how great the difference instead of bondage, liberty. Instead of failure, quiet victories. Instead of fear and weakness.
A restful sense of sufficiency in another. Not even a striving to have more faith. but are looking off to the faithful one. Two is all that we need. There are three different ways that we tend to think about our relationship with Christ in this regard.
Two of them are wrong. One of them is right. The first wrong one is me for Christ. That is, you think of the Christian life as you doing a bunch of things for Jesus. And then he rewards you and blesses you for those victories.
This is how most Christians think. Even when you understand you're saved by grace, you receive Jesus, you understand all that, but it's still how most of you think. Christianity for you. is about what you do for Jesus. You work, he rewards.
This is wrong. It's what we call do-do religion around here. Because all the focus is on what you do do for Jesus. It is artificial and it is exhausting and it stinks. The second way that you can do this is Me and Christ.
Now, this one might be a little bit better than the previous one because, in this one, you've at least learned that you can't successfully live the Christian life by your own strength, but you still think of the Christian life as if it's some kind of hybrid where you and Jesus work together. You think of it as his power rescuing you when you fail. You see the Christian life like it's a wrestling match, like pro-wrestling. You're wrestling with the world, the flesh, and the devil. And Jesus lets you go in and wrestle for a while.
And for a while, you're doing okay. But then the devil hits you with a camel clutch and comes down on you with a flying elbow drop from the top rope. And you're about to go down for the count when, at the last second, you reach out for Jesus and you say, Help me, help me, help me. And you tag in the Son of God. And the Son of God comes off the top rope with a power bomb and brings a chair down on Satan's head and then puts him in the figure four and just wears Satan out for a while as you rest and sing worship songs.
And then eventually you come off of your sabbatical and you tag back in, you're feeling great, and you go back in to fight until you're exhausted again. And then you tag Jesus back in. He's like, I'm here to help. He comes back in, he rescues you, and he wears Satan out. And then you come back in and then you work for a while, you get tired, you tag Jesus back in, and this cycle is your spiritual life.
You and Jesus. Though entertaining. This also is wrong. The third option, the only right one, is Christ In me. I am crucified with Christ, Paul says, but nevertheless I.
Liz. It's not I. It's not I, he says, but Christ liveth in me, Christ in me, Paul says. That's the hope of glory. It's not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, only by my spirit, said the Lord of the prophet Zachariah.
Or Jeremiah, cursed is the man who trusts in man. And makes the arm of the flesh his strength, his heart will turn away from the Lord. He's like a shrub in the desert dwelling in an uninhabited salt land. Ah, but blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He'll be like a tree planted by the water that sends out roots by the stream, that does not fear when he comes, for its leaves remain evergreen.
And he's not anxious in the year of drought, because he never ceases to bear fruit. Listen, the Christian life. is hard. Anybody tell you that? Nobody told you this, it's not all sunshine and prayer koozies and warm fuzzies.
Christianity is hard. It was so hard that only one person in history has ever been able to do it. And he was so good at it, by the way, we named it for him. And now he offers to come and live that life through you. I am crucified with Christ, Paul says, but nevertheless I live.
Yet it's not I, it is Christ who lives in me. Amen. I remember early on. The three of you that understand this, I'm grateful for that, okay? I remember early on in my Christian life feeling very, very discouraged.
I was discouraged. At all the jealousies and the selfishness that filled my heart toward people, I could force myself to be kind to them. I could force myself to be nice to them, to be polite, but inwardly, I knew I didn't love them. And I remember one day kneeling down beside my. My bed in my dorm room.
Feeling utterly defeated. Feeling like there's no way I could ever be a successful Christian that maybe I just wouldn't cut out for it. Certainly wouldn't cut off from ministry. And y'all, it was one of those moments where I heard God speak to me, not in a voice that was audible, though it might as well have been, it was so clear. God said, finally.
Finally, you are in a place that I can work with you. Because at the end of your I can't is where my I can begins. You will never hear him say, I am, until you become thoroughly convinced of your I am not. Let's go back to our statement. Christian growth is a combination of resting in Jesus.
And resting in Jesus means abiding in him and yielding to his power in you. It means there's two things. And here's the other side of the equation. It's not just resting in Jesus, it is also a disciplined, active pursuit of him. In this passage, Jesus talks not only about our need to abide in him, he also points to the importance of pruning in order to grow.
Now, some of the pruning that he's talking about is what the Father brings into our lives through suffering. And that is super important. But I'm not really going to talk about that today. Instead, I'm going to focus on the pruning and the cultivation that we bring into our own lives through the inculcation of the right habits into our lives, because that is also present in this chapter. For example, Jesus says in verse 7: If my words abide in you, you will bear much fruit.
Well, how do we get his words in us? Through the discipline of Bible study and learning. Also, verse 7, he points to the importance of prayer in all this. Ask whatever you wish, he says, and it will be done for you, the discipline of prayer. Later on in this chapter, he'll talk about loving others as a way of abiding in him.
He will talk about the importance of obedience and abiding in him. These are all very active things, things you do to help you abide in Jesus. I mean, the very verb for abide in me is active, not passive. Abiding is not a passive thing that happens to you, abiding is something that you actively pursue. It takes work to rest in Jesus.
Think about the analogy of the vine. It is true. The branches on the vine grow naturally, but every vine needs a trellis. to grow properly. They need some kind of support structure.
To lift it up off the ground, to guide its growth in the right directions, and to keep it untangled. A wild vine out in nature without a trellis only bears a fraction of the fruit. That it is capable of, and the little fruit that it does bear is vulnerable to predators like coyotes or rabbits or the rot of bacteria and disease. Think of the trellis. As those active disciplines you put into your life to create the space.
and the opportunity for the life of the vine to grow into you. Let me teach you an ancient term here called the rule of life. The roots of that phrase go back to the second century AD. in the very first Christian communities, though the term was popularized by A guy named Benedict in 527 AD when he wrote a rule of life for his new monastic order that he was launching. What's really interesting, by the way, is that some scholars say the concept was taken from the idea of a trellis.
A rule of life is the trellis along which your life can produce maximum fruit. Your rule of life is how you order your life so that you stay connected to the life of Jesus. It's your rhythms of life, so to speak.
Now, before you object, And you're like, this is what I don't like about religion. It's too many rules. You already have a rule of life. You have rhythms around which your life is set up. You have daily routines, you have weekly routines, you have yearly routines.
Those are all a kind of rule of life for you. You probably have a set of things that you do to start and stop each day, for example. Most of us have a set of things that we do at least weekly. For most of us, our wee goes in a cycle and we build in weekend time for fun and family and faith and hobbies. Yearly, you probably take time for a vacation or a family travel or a hunting trip.
So you have a rule. You have a rhythm of life. My question. Is whether your rule of life is sufficient for producing the kind of spiritual life that you want to have. Think about your daily rhythms.
Think about your weekly rhythms. Think about your yearly rhythms. Are they designed to infuse you into Jesus? and to open up your life to him. What things are part of your day, every day?
What are the big rocks? for you each week. What things are a part of your yearly calendar? If I were to talk to somebody who knows you really well, What would they say you never miss doing? What would they say is really important to you?
What do you put in your schedule first? Is your rule of life sufficient for accomplishing the objectives that you have in life?
Some of us have a rule of life. But practically speaking, we allow the chaos of life and that little instrument of Satan. that we carry around in our pockets to run our schedules. And so we will have whole days, be honest. whole weeks, whole seasons.
where we don't really make any progress in the things that matter to us. I've done a decent amount of reading on a rule of life. From everybody from Justin Early to Stephen Covey to John Mark Comer to James K.A. Smith to Jordan Peterson.
So people are all over the ideological map. They don't all agree on what a good rule of life is, but they all agree on what a good rule of life does. A good rule of life will do at least three things, and this particular list comes from John Markhamer. Number one. And when a good will of life will turn aspirations into reality.
Or just like we often say, it's never the big dreams you dream, it's always the small decisions you make. It's not dreaming about being healthy and in shape that changes your life. I've had that dream for years. It's making a small decision to create space in your calendar tomorrow to work out. It's the small decision to plan out your meal so that you eat healthily.
Otherwise, it's going to be pizza, chips, and a night in front of the TV as usual. Number two, a good rule of life will help us live in alignment with our deepest desires. Developing a good rule of life is you taking control of your life. Again, every day we carry around in our pockets a little device that beckons us onto everybody else's agenda: the app formerly known as Twitter. Or X.
Has an agenda. And that is to keep in front of me all the people that I am irritated by.
so that I will reply to them and get into a Twitter spat. My friends have agendas for me. My coworkers have agendas. My boss has an agenda for me. Your boss has an agenda for you.
And of course, I'm not saying all those agendas are bad. But see, I'm the only one who can determine what is most important to me and how to order my life. A rule of life, I've heard said, is an act of defiance against a digital empire that seeks to cultivate you as a consumer. It's you taking charge of your life again, saying, This is how I'm going to live my life. You don't decide how I'm gonna live my life.
I'm gonna decide how I'm gonna live my life, and I'm gonna do it because I'm a disciple of Jesus, which brings me to number three. A good rule of life will help us experience peace. Stephen Covey says that we achieve, get to this, I love this, we achieve inner peace when our schedule is aligned with our values. You think peace is found by lowering the number of things in your schedule, going on vacation. That is not true.
Maybe you should lower things, maybe you should get less busy, okay? I'm not disputing that. But it is less about the number of things and more about the alignment of those things. When our schedule is not aligned with our values, that's when you feel this low grade hum of anxiety that just never goes away. And to quote John Mark Comer again, a nagging sense that our life is more reactive than it is proactive.
And when your life is reactive, not proactive, you will feel constantly behind, burned out, exhausted, and never like you're getting to the things that matter most. A rule of life. It means organizing the structure of your life around the things that are the most important to you. Stephen Cobby teaches a really helpful principle called the principle of the big rocks. The analogy that he uses is this: if you get a bowl of rice, and then these red ornament looking things.
And you try to put them all into one container. If you put the rice in first, you'll never be able to fit the big objects, the big rocks. But if by contrast you put the Ornaments in there first, the big rocks in first, then when you add the rice on top of that, Magically, same stuff, same container. It all fits. Stephen Covey says the Big red ornaments, the big rocks, let those represent your priorities, the things, the identities that are most important to you.
Let the grains of rice represent all the little niggling things that just pester your day every day. The tyranny, the urgent, the emails, the assignments, the He says, you got to do them both. But put the big rocks in first, otherwise. You'll never have time for the other things because if you put the little stuff in first and let all that do it, you'll never have time for the things that matter most. A rule of life means putting the big rocks into your life first and letting the day-to-day rice grains fit in around them.
Some of you just let the price of your life drive things. Day-to-day urgencies and tasks. You're like, but I'm a mom at home. That's all my life is. I'm a job where I'm not a boss, so I don't get to determine that.
I understand that. We all have rice grains. The point is put the big rocks in first. Otherwise, it's going to feel like it does right now that life is out of control and you don't have room for important things. Which again is why you go whole seasons without any growth in the things and the relationships that really matter.
And it's why you're going to end up with all this regret in life. Because you had all these good intentions. that never turned into realities. It's never the dreams you dream, it's always the decisions you make. Which brings me back to the five identities.
I showed you last weekend that being a disciple meant shaping your life around five identities. Five identities that Jesus lived by. And growth as a disciple, I explained, means growing in each of those five identities. And then I gave you a couple of action steps in each identity that would help you get started. Listen, doing these action steps is not the sum total of living out the identity, but think of them as the first stages of a trellis.
to get your growth started. Identity one was Worshipper. The idea that God comes first in your life. The worship is not part of the Christian life. It is the Christian life.
And I... I gave you two disciplines. But I encouraged you to Built into your life in order to accomplish worship. What were they? One was a daily quiet time, daily time of worship, and the other was weekly corporate worship.
I for years I've done the 15, 15, 15. Basic strategy. 15 minutes in the Bible, 15 minutes in prayer, 15 minutes in some kind of devotional enriching book. I also personally use an app called Lekio365 to get me started in the day and end it at night.
Sometimes I'll use Kenneth Boa's Handbook of Prayer. It's also a great pattern for that. Also, the ESV Study Bible that I preach from, if you get the app version of that, it's got the most amazing. Bible reading plans, all different kinds of shapes and sizes, some long, some short, some take Three minutes a day, some take 30 minutes a day, and you can find one that really works for you. It costs money, but it's definitely worth the investment.
Identity one is worshipper. Identity two is family member. On that one, I encourage you to join a Join the church and to be a part of a small group. Believers, we said, should be belongers. They're no Lone Ranger Christians.
Jesus considers your commitment to him as equal to your commitment to the local church. Those are the two trellis rungs in that identity. Identity three was servant. For your action step there, I encourage you to volunteer in some ministry. Make it a part of your weekly or monthly rhythm.
Don't just do it once a year when I yell at you about it and you feel guilty. Build it into your weekly, monthly, or yearly rhythm. Build a mission trip into your year. If you're parents and you got kids, instead of going on beach vacations every single break, build in a family mission trip. Identity 4 is steward.
Stuart, your first action step, the first place, the first rung of the trellis. we say is the tithe and the steward. Which means giving the first 10% of your income to your local church for God's work in His kingdom. As I said last week, your responsibility as a steward doesn't stop there. But it does start there.
Identity five is witness. Two immediate action steps that I gave you with witness, two rungs on the trellis. The first is to have a one. Oh, one, somebody you're reaching out to, somebody you're praying for, somebody you're looking for chances to share Christ with. Do you have someone in your life like that?
By the way. The greatest ministries in our church, the ones that are really thriving. are doing this. Second action step, second run on this chalice I gave you is go on a mission trip. Either locally or internationally.
You said, hey, you mentioned that under service. That's right, two for one. You can do one of these things and get two rungs at one discount just today. You will pray for mission so much more effectively once you've had a chance to be there and to see things with your own eyes. Those actions are a trellis.
They are the beginning of a rule of life. On which the rest of your spiritual life can grow. They are how you make space to abide in Jesus. and to let him abide in you. Growth as a disciple is a combination.
of abiding in Christ. and doing really active trellis work.
So I want to encourage you. If you are serious at all. about your spiritual growth. I want to encourage you to take these action steps and really press in. If you're not serious, if you're like, I'm just here.
To check off a box that I went to church this week or this month, I'm not talking to you. But if you're actually serious about growing in Christ, And I want you to press in on these action steps because they are the trellis. And if you are already doing them, I want you to think about what your next steps in each of these areas might look like. And if you make a decision to build these things into your rule of life, your rhythms, can I encourage you? real quick, there's some real practical.
Commit to it for a set amount of time. Don't just do it for two weeks. And say, well, I didn't feel any different. And then just start. Real change takes place, Eugene Peterson says, real change takes place only through a long obedience.
in the same direction.
So, commit to do it for more than just a few weeks. But let me also encourage you, okay? not to make an unlimited amount of time commitment. Because you will just get overwhelmed and quit. I know I've done this a bunch.
Make a three-month commitment. It was down like this, from now till Easter. Every morning at 6.30, I'm going to read a chapter from the Gospels. Or, I'm gonna commit to being a small group until April. Even when they say wacky, crazy, socially awkward things in that small group, I'm just gonna stick it out until April.
Give it a certain amount of time that you'll commit to it. Christian growth. is a combination of resting in Jesus. And a disciplined, active pursuit of Him, it takes work to rest in Jesus on the one side. Friend, rest in Jesus' love for you.
Yield yourself to him for his life to flow in you and through you. On the other, Pursue the long, slow work of change. When I served as a missionary overseas, I was able to learn the language relatively quickly over there. It's not because I was a genius. And it wasn't because of a long, intense...
Training class. When I got there, I'd had one week of language training. And that was the only person, me and my roommate, for like 50 miles that could speak English. When they dropped me off in the air, I could say, Hi, my name is JD. Where's your bathroom?
My house is on fire. That was the extent of my language mastery. I didn't even take any classes after I got there. But I added in some disciplines to expose me to the language. I forced myself to go shopping so that I could interact with the store owner.
I took a walk every evening with some of the local kids in the neighborhood, and they would point out objects to me, and I would identify them. They were so patient. I'd watch TV with their language subtitles on, so I could always be learning, y'all. And in six months, I had it. What am I saying?
To grow as a Christian, yes, take classes. But just as importantly, build into your life the rhythms. That'll teach you the language of the kingdom of heaven and the activities associated with those five identities will do that for you. Engage in the disciplines and put yourself in environments where God can weave his language into you. Christian growth is a combination of resting in Jesus and a disciplined, active pursuit of him.
It takes work to rest in Jesus. Thanks for listening. Don't miss next time when Pastor JD wraps up his teaching series on what it means to be the whole disciple. And in the meantime, it would mean the world to us if you would rate and review Summit Life on whatever platform you use to listen. And if this message made you think of someone else, share it with them as well.
I'm Molly Vitovich. We'll see you next time here on the Summit Life podcast. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
