Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

Hey, welcome to the pastor next door.

This is a podcast for honest conversations about faith, especially when faith feels complicated, uncertain, or worn down.

I’m not here to give you easy answers or to fix anything.

I am here to sit with you for a bit, maybe ask some questions and make room for grace and honesty along the way.

Wherever you’re coming from today, I’m really glad you’re here.

Let’s get started.

Now over the last handful of weeks, we have talked about attention.

We’ve talked about strength.

We’ve talked about flexibility, and we’ve talked about recovery.

And so the question that is before us here in this final episode of this little webinar on developing a resilient faith is this.

How do we hold all of it together?

How do we hold attention, strength, flexibility, and recovery together so that we might be able to develop this sense of having a resilient faith as opposed to a fragile faith?

So what I want to propose to you is that it’s wise and good to develop what historically has been known as a rule of life, which is simply a rhythm.

It becomes a rhythm of our lives that helps us to live out the kind of life we want to live.

It’s not a rule book, right?

We don’t create some sort of rule book that we try to live our lives by.

We’re just trying to set a rhythm.

It’s not a legal code.

We’re not creating a new spiritual law for ourselves.

We are simply trying to set a rhythm.

You might want to think about it as a trellis for growth, right?

Kind of how you might build a trellis to grow something like tomato plants or maybe grapes on a vine, something where what is growing is kind of growing vertically.

And so what a rule of life does is it provides a scaffolding, a trellis, if you will, for us to grow.

A rule of life is not about control.

It’s about alignment.

It’s about trying to create rhythms that help us to abide with Christ.

So let’s define this simply.

A rule of life really is nothing more than a pattern of habits and practices.

What we do is we identify some things that will help us to abide, will help us to remain present with God throughout our daily lives.

So we develop these various patterns and practices and what we might call a predictable pattern in our lives.

And as we set these things in place, they help us to remain rooted.

They help us to stay in a place where we are connected to Christ consistently.

And so the other thing that they do in the sense, again, of this idea of a trellis is that these habits and practices, this rule of life supports what we say we value.

So if we say that we value a resilient faith, then what we want to do is create some systems that support that.

Now, you go back into Christian history, you go back to some of the early church, and you find them talking about rules of life.

Many of the various orders, monastic orders, developed rules of life that their folks had to commit to.

So it simply means a way or a pattern, and it’s by practicing this rule that we are able to continue in our connection with God.

So, for instance, a few years ago, I wrote for myself a rule of interacting on social media.

It’s a pattern that I want to try to follow.

I sometimes am pretty good with following along.

Other times, I’m not.

But what it does is it gives me this touchstone.

It gives me this grounding that I can come back to on a regular basis and just do some evaluation and check some things out and make sure that I am interacting online in alignment with the values that I have.

So as we develop a rule of life for ourselves, we need to recognize that this is not about earning God’s love.

By practicing this or doing this, we don’t earn anything from God.

God’s love is unconditional.

God’s love is ours, and he gives it to us simply because he loves us, not because of anything that we do.

What I think practicing a rule of life does is it helps us to remain connected to that love.

It helps us to experience God’s love in a consistent basis.

We are able to live out of God’s love more consistently by engaging in certain habits and practices that help us stay grounded and connected to these values, and in particular, to the value of experiencing God’s love for us in our lives.

So why do we need a rhythm?

Why do we need a rule of life to help us grow in the sense of having a resilient faith?

Well, I think what it does is it provides us a touchstone for intention.

You see, if we don’t have intention, if we’re not practicing a sense of intention in our spiritual life, then what happens is our days get shaped by urgency.

Think about that for a minute.

Our days get shaped by urgency when we are not leaning into intention.

Whatever it is that we’re intentional about is going to really shape and direct our days.

If we don’t have anything in particular that we are giving our intentions to, then we are just going to give ourselves over to the tyranny of the urgent.

Whatever happens to fall on our plate that day becomes the thing that we do.

And when that happens, our attention can get hijacked.

We can begin to focus on all kinds of other things.

We can begin to focus on lesser things.

We can begin to allow our spiritual lives to really be given over to lesser things.

And this kind of goes back to that episode that we talked about, attention.

What we focus our hearts and our minds on really begins to shape our identity.

And so if the things that are urgent begin to get all of our attention, then the things that really matter will not get our attention.

The other thing that can happen when our days get shaped by urgency is that our energy gets scattered.

We can begin to give our limited energy to a whole bunch of things that in many ways are passing issues.

Things that at the end of the day probably don’t matter quite as much as they seem to in the moment.

When I was helping coach sports, one of the rules that we instituted on a regular basis was something called the 24-hour rule.

We asked parents to wait to ask questions or push back or what have you for 24 hours.

And the reason for that is in the midst of kind of an emotional response in the moment, something that seems really, really big after 24 hours ends up not being quite as important as we once thought.

It might even be something that we don’t have to give any energy or attention to.

And so having a rule of life, having an intentional rhythm of life that’s formed by habits and practices allows us to focus our energy on things that really matters.

And so creating the structure creates freedom for us.

It helps us to know the things that we can say yes to.

It helps us to know the things that we say no to.

It helps us to know the things that we say, well, let’s wait on that.

We’ll come back to that later.

Because a rule of life that consists of some specific habits and practices, it allows us to anchor our attention.

The rule of life helps us to really spell out the thing that is most important to us.

The thing that we want to give our attention to first.

So it anchors our attention, helps us to know what it is that we are supposed to be setting our hearts and our minds on.

When we do that then, we are able to build strength, right?

Because in a sense, that’s what these habits and practices will do is they are kind of like going to the gym.

They are the exercises that we do to help us build strength, which helps us grow in having a resilient faith.

So we might think about this rhythm as from like a 10,000 foot view, right?

So when I go to the gym, I have a rule.

I have a weekly rule of life when it comes to my exercise.

Mondays, I do push exercises.

I do presses, chest presses, and those kinds of things that are focused on pushing weight.

On Tuesdays, I spend time working on my cardio.

And then on Wednesdays, I do pull exercises.

So I’m pulling weight, curls, and those kinds of things.

And then on Thursdays, I do more cardio to build stamina.

On Fridays, I do lower body.

So I focus on doing exercises that build up the lower part of my body and my legs in particular.

The infamous leg day.

And then on Saturdays, I do more cardio.

So you see what happens is I have this rhythm.

And that helps me to build strength physically.

And we need that spiritually as well.

One of the other things that if you think about this in terms of that rule of life for my physical world, it also protects rest, right?

Because I have this rhythm of lifting weights and cardio, it protects rest.

So on Mondays when I’m lifting weight, I’m not doing cardio.

I’m resting there.

On Tuesdays, I’m doing cardio, but then I’m resting my muscles from lifting.

And it goes back and forth so that I’m resting different things, different parts of my body intentionally.

And again, this allows us to be intentional about rest.

We can put specific times of good, healthy rest into our rule, which will help us spiritually remain resilient.

And then it also allows flexibility, right?

We can move things around.

It helps us to remain flexible and responsive when the world throws hard things at us.

Because our attention has been anchored, because we are building strength, because we’ve been able to protect rest, when the world comes at us with the difficulties that will inevitably come, we can remain spiritually flexible.

So structure creates freedom.

So what might a simple rule include?

Well, I think the way to think about this is going to be kind of granularly, I don’t know, I’m screwing up that word, small.

We think about the small, we think about the medium, and then we think about the big.

We kind of maybe think of this as an inverse It’s like giant.

And this is what I do so often.

I make these big, robust plans, these big, robust ideas that are heroic.

And way too often, I fall really, really short.

That was physically, for my physical health, man, that was always my M.O.

And a number of years ago, and I shared this, I think, at the beginning in the first episode, but there was a point where I just needed to start exercising.

I needed to start moving.

And I had to identify the friction point, and that friction point was driving to the gym.

And so what I did is I started walking.

I opened up my door, and I just walked.

I committed to walking 15 minutes a day intentionally.

And what that did is it was small, it was realistic, and it was something that I could actually accomplish in a very timely manner.

And it removed the friction.

And as I did that, I got stronger, and that turned into longer walks, and then that turned into wanting to go to the gym, and that, you know, and it all began to snowball onto itself.

It wasn’t heroic.

It wasn’t big.

It was just one small, tiny thing.

So you start small, and you start, and you do something that’s realistic in your life.

And that’s going to look different for all of us.

And as we go through different seasons of life, we have to adjust, right?

If you have small children, it’s going to look differently than for someone like me who, whose children are grown, and I am an empty nester, and I have just so much more flexibility, so much more space in my life.

And so I can do different things.

I can adjust.

So we start small, we make it realistic, and we adjust as life changes, and we remember that as we seek to develop this rule of life for ourselves, if it’s heroic, it won’t last.

And so we’ve touched on this already a little bit, but as we structure this, we have to hold on to flexibility.

We have to have flexibility within the structure, right?

And so a healthy rule is going to adapt to seasons.

Seasons, whether that’s weather, you know, maybe your rule of life is going to look differently when the weather’s nice outside as opposed to when the weather is brutal.

Maybe, you know, various seasons of life or life stages, right?

There’s going, there’s just going to be so many different things that we walk through in life, and a healthy rule will adjust with those changing seasons and life stages.

And what it does is it makes room for grief and joy.

And so if we are walking through a season of grief, then our rule, our rule of life, our rhythm of life is going to look, is going to look differently than if we’re going through a season of joy, right?

Things might have to get smaller, might have to get less, because we don’t have the spiritual reserves even to practice some of the things that we want to practice.

But if we can keep it small, if we can keep it simple, if we can remember that a rule of life is a servant, not a master, then what it does is it will help us to persevere through the difficult seasons, and it will help us to fully be present in the joyful seasons.

Now, as you’re leaning into this, as you begin to practice a rule of life, if this rhythm increases shame in your life, then you need to adjust it, because a rule of life that is helping us to build a resilient faith is not something that needs to create shame in us.

It needs to be something that helps us to tap more deeply into grace and mercy and love.

And so if we find ourselves feeling shame because we haven’t lived up to our rule that we have developed for ourselves, then we need to adjust it.

We need to make it more realistic.

We need to make it fit better with the particular season of life that we find ourselves in.

A rule of life really should feel grounding and not crushing, because remember Jesus said that His yoke is easy, and so we are able to bring to Him our burdens.

We are able to come to Him weary.

And so what developing a rule of life for ourselves in the spiritual realm really ought to be doing is helping us tap into those storehouses of grace and mercy and love that comes from abiding closely with Jesus.

It helps us to ground ourselves there.

So some things to remember as you develop this.

God is not measuring your streak, okay?

So you create, you know, let’s say you create a few daily rhythms.

God’s not keeping score.

There are no tick marks up in heaven next to your name where God says, oh, they did it today.

Oh, they did it today.

Oh, they failed.

Failure.

Streak broken.

Like that’s not how this works.

God’s not measuring your streak.

God just is glorying in the fact that you are being intentional to show up and be present spiritually with Him.

You’re not building spiritual leverage, right?

This is not some sort of trade-off kind of thing where you can say, hey, I lived out, I lived up to my rule of faith.

I was intentional.

I did X, Y, Z and A, B, C.

And so now God, you owe me.

That’s not what we’re doing here either.

We are simply seeking to be present with God and trying to tap more deeply into His covenantal love.

And that I think is really where a good rule of life comes from.

And what it’s born out of is a response to covenantal love.

It’s a response to knowing how deeply loved we are by the divine.

And so we want to build some intentional things to set our attention on Him.

We want to grow in our strength, our spiritual strength, so we can be resilient in the face of pain and suffering and heartache, in the face of this difficult world that we find ourselves in.

A rule of life is simply a way of staying available to grace.

The goal is not productivity.

The goal is presence.

Now I want to read you something that Jesus said in John chapter 15.

This is one of those passages that I think is beautiful and I think it’s one that would be good to go back to on a regular basis.

To let it kind of wash over us throughout our days.

Jesus said, I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

Remain in me as I also remain in you.

No branch can bear fruit by itself.

It must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine.

You are the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me you can do nothing.

If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers.

Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Now remain in my love.

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

I love this because it is this reminder that what really matters is staying, remaining, and living connected to Christ.

And that there really is, you think about the branches of a vine, you think about the pieces on a vine.

They didn’t attach themselves.

They come from the plant, right?

They come from, the branches come from the vine.

And so the vine is what matters.

Jesus is healthy.

And the way that we stay spiritually healthy is by staying connected to him, by remaining with him, by living connected to him, to this Jesus.

And as we do, he says that we will bear much fruit.

And what is the fruit?

Well, Paul tells us what the fruit is in Galatians.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

When we live connected, when we remain, when we stay with Christ, we will see those things grown in us.

You see, a rule of life is not about climbing.

It is about abiding.

It is about staying connected.

It is about staying connected to Jesus.

That is my hope for you as you craft a rule of life for yourself.

I would love to know what you do.

And so feel free to shoot me an email and tell me, hey, this is my rule of life.

And I’ll be praying for you.

Or comment what your rule of life is.

However it is you go about it, I would love to know if you go about developing a little rule of life that you find helpful.

So we began this season by redefining spiritual fitness.

Talked about how it’s not hustle, it’s not intensity, but it’s about developing a resilient capacity by developing a capacity to trust, a capacity to endure, and a capacity to remain.

My hope for you is not that you leave this season necessarily with a better plan, with some strategic thinking.

My hope is that you leave this with a deeper permission.

A deeper permission to move slowly, honestly, and faithfully.

And so maybe some things for you to reflect upon.

Maybe ask yourself what practice that we’ve talked about felt most grounding to you?

Or maybe what is something that needs to change in your life so that you can be more grounded, so that you can remain more deeply connected to grace and love and mercy through