Ordering Your Days Toward Jesus.

Today we have the privilege of welcoming a friend of Abbie, a friend of New Culture, Pastor Nick Ertz from Orchard Church right here in Madison. So, Nick, we would love to have you come up and welcome you to New Culture, a warm welcome.

I was here last about a year ago, so it's such an honor and privilege to be back with you here at New Culture. As Josh shared, one of my first friends in ministry in Madison was Pastor Abbie, and she's been super formative to our walk as a church. We just started gathering about a year ago on the east side. We're in an old church on Winnebago Street. And for those of you who've been around for a long time, or part of a church plant before, you know it's real work. It's something you need to struggle with and learn, that it's not about you. It's all about the people that God puts in your way and in your life, and the work the Lord does in you and through you on that journey. Abbie has poured out a lot of her heart and her experience and her encouragement into me, my family, and our church along the way. So just know you have a real one here. She's wonderful and amazing, as Josh shared. He actually, he didn't say this and he wouldn't say this because he's super humble, but he took photos at our opening service last October.

A lot of you have been part of our journey as a family too, so thank you for the investment you've made in me personally and in the life of our church. It's wonderful. So as Josh shared, my name is Nick. I live in Sun Prairie, I'm married to Leah, and our youngest daughter, Clara, is six years old. They decided not to come today, because last time, kids' ministry was still happening in this room right here, and the whole time I was teaching I could hear the kids, it was good, screaming like they were having fun, but the whole time I was thinking, they can probably hear this in the audio, they were having a blast back there. So they're home today. We actually meet at 4:30 on Sundays, which you guys used to do. So we took over that spot here in Madison in the afternoon, but just know they're praying for us and for you, and they are deeply invested in New Culture too.

So when Abbie asked me to share today, I asked, about what, and she said, you can teach on whatever you want. I said, that's not really helpful, but then she said, we're doing a rule of life series. For me, that was an amazing invitation, because rule of life, if you know what that is, we'll talk more about that today. If you don't know what that is, we'll talk more about that today too. If you do, just know it's a way to order your life along God's will and plan for your life, your personal life, not somebody else's, in a way that is fruit-bearing and brings the kingdom of God into your life and into the people around you. So we're going to talk about that today. As a community, we've done a lot of work in that same space, and I hope today is just an outpouring of some things I've learned along the way that you can take.

More than anything today, as Abbie shared last week, there's a spiritual invitation. The Spirit is inviting you into Jesus' plan for your life. What I'm going to reflect on today, to take your leave for you, is that there is something personal and practical about living out a rule of life. And my hope today is that you'll take something personal and practical as you live out a rule of life. So let me pray for us as we get started today.

Holy Spirit, you are with us. You are forming us into the likeness of Jesus. And as we seek after your face, your perfect and pleasing will for our lives, Lord, I pray that as the words I've prepared, and the text you've put on my heart, and the work this community has done around a rule of life, that it would be pleasing to you, and would allow us to hear your voice and your leading, as we seek to live out a life that is in line with your will and your kingdom, in our families, in our work, in our church, and in our city. We pray that ancient prayer, come, Holy Spirit, have your way. I pray that if something I prepared is not what you want me to say, Lord, give me the words. And I pray that as we listen and respond, we would have open hearts and open minds to live out the rule of life that you've given each of us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Competing forces shaping your days

All right, a rule of life. The rule of life is this: you need to order your life in a way that allows you to live into the life Jesus has made for you personally, as a follower of him. But here's the unfortunate truth about a rule of life: if you don't craft a rule of life, your life will craft a rule of life for you. There are competing forces that form us if we don't live an intentional life of following after Jesus's life for us. I'll list a few. You can probably think of ten more, but here are some competing forces that take us away from the life Jesus has intended for us.

Your employer has priorities for you. Some of them align with your plan and your priorities, and some don't. And yes, of course, you have to live into those and do the work your employer has called you to do, but it can take you away from living a moral, intentional, God-pleasing life. Social media, I don't need to belabor this, there are algorithms trying to form us into cultural norms, pulling us away from the life of Jesus into the life of culture. They compete with our intention. Consumer culture offers us a ton of promises, none of which will form us into the likeness of Jesus. There's the urgency of the immediate, right? If we don't have a plan for how we live our days and our weeks and our months, the tyranny of the urgent will pull us away from that and into the thing that's immediately before us each and every time. Without intention, we'll look back and realize we did nothing intentionally and everything reactively in the way we live our life.

And then, of course, there's expectations. Did you know the world, your friends, your employer, even your family, has expectations of you based on your roles? If you're a family with children in the home, those are good and important things to invest in. But also, if we let it, our kids' schedules, the sports the culture tells us we have to play when we have kids, all those things will pull us away from and form our lives toward that. All of these forces, and more, are designing your daily rhythms. You probably realize it, and sometimes you might not.

Last time we were here, Pastor Abbie taught us that Jesus has a Holy Spirit plan for your life, based on the text from Luke 10, that we, before anything, accomplish the goals Jesus has for our life out of the overflow of relationship with him. And so today, I want to get personal and practical, and take it a step further, and help you live into a rule of life that is meant for you. So we're going to continue that rule of life series, answering these questions the best we can. How do we actually live into a rule of life? And how do we stay connected to Jesus in the chaos and the tyranny of everyday life?

Remain in me

If you have a Bible, or a phone with the app, would you open with me to John chapter 15, starting in verse 4. In that text, Jesus gives us this picture of how to remain in and be formed by him. I'll start reading in verse 4. It says:

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.

John 15:4-8

So when we say the rule of life, or the words rule of life, we're not talking about a bunch of strict regulations. When Jesus says remain in me, that "remain in me" is the Greek word meno, which means to stay, to dwell, to make your home in. It's not a quick visit, it's living up, taking up residence in Jesus. Now here's where it gets really cool, and connects to the language of a rule of life. A rule of life, the word rule, comes from the Latin word regula, which means to straighten, or a ruler, and it isn't about rigid restriction, it's about straightening your life, ordering your life in a straight way toward Jesus.

Jesus used this agrarian language around a trellis, or a vine. And if you've ever tried to grow anything that grows on a vine, you know you have to give that vine a direction to grow in, right? If you let something grow on a vine and don't provide a trellis for it, it will grow all over the ground wildly. The fruit will grow every which way, it will become wild, it will become rotted, it will become diseased. But in the language of Jesus here, if we give this vine that we live in something to grow on, a trellis, then it will grow upright, it will grow toward the sun, it will bear fruit, it will become beneficial because of the fruit it bears, not wild and laying on the ground.

So the rule of life your church has created, and that you will create individually, trains your chaotic, sprawling days, where the tyranny of the urgent pulls you away from intention, into a connection with Jesus, straightening your life toward the vine, toward him, so that you can actually live out the life he's created for you and bear the fruit he's designed you for.

Rules, not laws

And if you're like me, the word rule might be a little off-putting, right? Like, I don't want to have a bunch of rules, I just want to have a relationship. That's true, and we'll get to that, but there's a difference between rules and laws. The law is, as I came here today, if I took John Nolen Drive and drove 60 miles an hour through a construction zone, I broke the law. I would be pulled over for speeding, and there would be a legal consequence for the actions I took. The difference with a rule, though, and don't check me on this, this might be an actual law too, but hold on a second, let me finish this: there's a sign that says merge here, take turns, right? When it goes from two lanes down to one, as you approach the lake. If a person doesn't take turns, there's no legal consequence. It's culturally out of order, someone might shake their fist or honk their horn, but there's nothing breaking the law there.

Think about it this way: you actually have a rule in your home, in how you order your day, whether you realize it or not, whether you're intentional about it or not. You do have a rule of life, not a law of life, but a rule of life. What do you do first thing when you wake up? Do you check your phone, do you get coffee made, do you eat breakfast? What time do you check your email for work the first time? What time do you take lunch? When people come to your home, do they take their shoes off or not? When you sit down together as a family or a couple to eat dinner, are your phones at the table, or not at the table? What are the norms you live into as rules, that if they're broken, there's no legal consequence, but if you break them regularly, there's a relational consequence? If you stop bringing your phone to the table at dinner, your spouse might look at you funny, and eventually you'll have a conversation about it, but there's no legal consequence to that. Breaking laws, bad, legal consequence. Breaking rules, social disorder, relational disorder, but not lawbreaking.

So rules are orders that, when used positively, allow us to live into fullness of relationship with our spouses, our kids, our church community, our neighbors, and ultimately with Jesus. So I'd like to deposit this to you: a rule of life is good. A law of life is bad, okay? Rules are good. That's what we're creating today.

Our goal is to create a structure of rhythms and practices that helps you remain connected to Jesus, so you can actually bear fruit. Because with a rule of life, a spiritual rule of life, you will live intentionally. You will have intimacy, a relationship with your friends, family, and Jesus. You'll bear fruit that actually lasts and benefits you in the long run. Without one, again, you will default to someone else's design. You'll be formed into whatever is loudest, most urgent, and most addictive.

So again, my goal for today is to help us do this, to use the framework of New Culture's rule of life to help you personally start to think about what your rule of life looks like. So without further ado, let's start to build one together.

Building a rule of life

Part one, here's the starting point. Before we go any further, you might have heard everything I just said and thought, I don't need more things to do, I have a lot to do, I have a lot of busyness, I have work, I have family, more things to do is not helpful for me. And I hear you. There's a quote by an English mystic and poet named Evelyn Underhill. She wrote, we mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs, to want, to have, and to do, forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb, and that is to be.

Most of you in this room are in a season of doing. Doing is happening a lot in your life. You're building careers, establishing relationships, building a family, proving yourself at work and in your neighborhood, achieving goals. None of that is bad. Here's where it rubs against a rule of life in the way of Jesus: Jesus invites us into a relationship with him, a rule, that if you remember the text from John 15, he invites us to be with him, not to do with him. So before I say anything else about these areas you might live into, do not hear that there is something to accomplish here, or something to do. This is about who you are becoming as you live a life abiding, dwelling, in Jesus. Don't take a resolution from this, or a bunch of things in your calendar that don't give you life the way Jesus designed for it. Take them as an overflow, a way to live out the life God has already created for you personally.

If you've been on the New Culture website, or heard this language before, you know your church has a rule of life. At the bottom of that page, newculture.com, is a be with Jesus, become like Jesus, do what Jesus did rule of life, an order, a way to live daily, weekly, monthly, annually, in those three areas. The danger, if you don't think about what your personal rule of life is, is that you could easily, as a follower of Jesus, write a bunch of really good things into your rule of life that would be okay and fine, but weren't meant for you.

So if you jump to the end, as some of us want to do as we accomplish our goals, if you start to write things you know are good, like, I'm going to pray every day at 8 a.m. for one hour, I'm going to go to church every Sunday even if I'm sick, if you start to do that without thinking about it first, you've created someone else's rule, you didn't create your own. There's a QR code on the screen, if there isn't already, that goes to the Rule of Life Workbook for New Culture Church. So if you want to follow along with where I'm going, you can do that from the website, but just know it's out there as a resource.

In that document, the rule of life for New Culture, there are seven areas, or categories, of your life that I think it's important to consider to make the rule of life personal. I'm going to spend a few moments with each one as we go along today. Here are the life categories to consider when you build a rule of life: personal and spiritual, relationships and community, physical and body, emotional and mental, work and vocation, service and outreach, and recreation and rest. I'm going to spend just a few moments with each of those today. My goal is to ask you probing questions that might help you start to think about how those seven areas might flow into a way to order your life around Jesus that is fruitful for you. I'll give some examples that might speak to you, and they might not, we're different people in different stages of life. But my prayer is that you'll start to kick these around and pray through them, these things you order your life around, and consider what Jesus might be doing in and through them, that help you live the best life for you over the next year and beyond.

Number one, personal and spiritual. The invitation here is this: when will you spend time with God? When will you make it a priority to give some of your life and your time to your relationship with Jesus? The thing about time that's critical is this: time is the only commodity I'm aware of where, once you spend it, you can't get it back. You might miss a day at home with your kids, you might miss a dinner, you might go over your budget one month, and those things do hurt the relationship, but you can reinvest yourself in them to hopefully recover what you lost. Time is not one of them. Time, once it's passed, is over. So consider, as you start to order your life around a relationship with Jesus, where do you give time toward that spiritual relationship? Do you pray or read your Bible in the mornings? On a weekly basis, do you take time of rest, a Sabbath, with Jesus? Do you ever spend extended time in listening prayer, either at the end of the day or weekly? Do you have a personal retreat day you get away for, and just spend time intentionally listening to Jesus?

And I think it's important to consider, again, not to live someone else's rule of life, but this: what part of your day, your week, your regular calendar, are you most available and alert, to have that intimate time with the Lord? If you're somebody who struggles to get out of bed in the morning, and you barely get yourself together for work, don't start putting an hour of prayer into your morning. Put it somewhere else, where you have the time and capacity for it, and consider where you have capacity, where you're alert. Can you give some more of that time intentionally toward Jesus? What does your calendar look like? Open up your planner, your calendar, consider, where do I have space, and where can I sacrifice a little, or a lot, of that toward my relationship with Jesus? That is personal spiritual.

The second, relationships and community. Who are your people? Who are your friends, your family? In the busyness of building a life, and even building a life with Jesus, the relationships God has given you can get neglected. And ultimately, as we know, we become like the people we spend time with. There's this old thing, I don't know where it came from, it says, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. That is absolutely true. I have people I've walked with in my life who, when I spend time with them, I feel like I need to perform, I feel like I need to spend money to fit in with. I start saying and thinking things I know are unhealthy for me, and I can have this inclination toward destructive, not awful, but destructive behaviors, that I know are pulling me away from my relationship with Jesus. But I've also had genuine community with other followers of Jesus, times when you spend time with others and you feel closer to the Lord, growing in healthy, Christ-honoring relationship with other people. This matters a lot.

So when you consider how you spend time with your friends and the people in your life, are you investing in the most important, godly relationships in your life? Do you have a regular cadence of having a meal with your roommate, your spouse, your family, where the phones are put away and you're just sitting together, investing in one another? Do you have a community group or a small group you're giving yourself to each and every week, where those relationships are forming you into the person Jesus designed you for, not into something else? Do you, on a regular basis, have intentional time with a mentor, a coach, or a close friend, who knows you really well, can speak truth into you in a way that's edifying, and not taking you away from the life God has designed for you? Do you need to have a healing conversation with a broken relationship in your life, a family member or friend, where there's unresolved conflict, and you know that brokenness is keeping you away from wholeness in that relationship? So how we consider our time when we look toward these relationships is really important. My encouragement, as you consider those, is to think about the maybe three to five closest friends who are helping you walk closer to the Lord, and how you invest more into those. What time are you spending together as a family that allows you to be closer to Jesus? Those are the patterns we encourage you to invest in.

Number three, physical and body. Your body is not a tool to use up. No matter what the culture in this world tells you, we don't just have this group of cells that our goal is to feel good with and utilize for our pleasure. That's not the point of our physical body. It says in 1 Corinthians 6:19, don't you know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? Your body is not a tool to use up, or a means to pleasure, it is a temple God has given you to care for, to steward his presence into the world around us.

There are four R's here that I'll go through quickly, they're probably mostly self-explanatory, but just consider them as you consider how you use your body toward a rule of life: do you rest, do you go to bed on time, do you exercise regular self-care, actually pouring into the physical body God has given you, or do you do destructive things and then eventually crash at the end of the week, sleep until noon, wake up and do it over again? That really matters. Considering your diet and exercise, do you know that the way you live, in terms of how you care for yourself, is actually making you a healthier person, or an unhealthy one? This is probably more for the guys in the room than anybody else, I think generally speaking, this might be a stereotype, but I think women are better in terms of their regular preventative care, having relationships with their doctors, getting their checkups done. For the guys in the room, when's the last time you've been to the doctor? When's the last time you sat down with your doctor and shared how you're feeling, let them do their panel of tests and whatnot? Do you have a regular cadence of preventative care that helps you understand how you're doing physically, and how you might change your lifestyle to live a healthier one? Have you gotten away on vacation recently, even for a day? Do you do something that allows you to be creative? If you're a painter, when do you paint? If you're a writer, when do you write?

And here's another one that's really important, I'll speak more on this in a moment, letting go of an unrealistic self-image. If you look to the world for a mirror, it will give you one, but it's not going to give you the one that will help you live into your best health. So releasing this idea of an unrealistic self-image, and living into the image of an image bearer of the living God, that he has given you to steward. Practically speaking, again, get some sleep at night, move your body, have an exercise routine, meal prep, get a checkup, go to the doctor when you're not feeling well. All of this should be considered when you live out your rule of life. If you're sacrificing all of this to do something that's maybe good but not helpful for your physical body, where are you taking time for this temple? What descriptive words come to mind when you look in the mirror, and is it true? If there's something you consider yourself to be, or a way you describe yourself, is it God-honoring, or is it not? And how would you order your life to change that for the positive?

Number four, emotional, mental. If I were to pick one of these that I would love to preach on more than anything, I would spend about 45 minutes doing this. I will say this, your inner world and your mind can be the most destructive thing. On the way here this morning, I was running late, because I run late, that's what I do. I grabbed my coffee, I grabbed my water, I got my backpack, and for Christmas this year I got this water bottle. Are there any Premier League soccer fans in the room? For Christmas this year, we do four gifts: something I want, something I need, something I wear, something I read. That's what we do as a family. And for my want gift, my wife got me this Arsenal Football Club Stanley mug. This thing is so nice, I don't even want to bring it anywhere, because I'm going to lose it or break it. And in a hurry, pulling out of the garage, I ran over something I thought was ice, I didn't think much of it, and I'm driving here.

It's not as bad as you think, hold on. So, I'm buried the lead, okay? I had this panicked moment, as I get on the Beltline, that I think that noise in the driveway was my Stanley mug falling off my car, and me running over it with the car. I call my wife, and I'm telling you, I'm almost in tears, because of two things: number one, I love this mug, and number two, my wife got it for me for Christmas. And mental thought, right, I'm like, babe, I think my Arsenal mug got run over in the driveway, do you want me to go check? I'm like, would you please. I'm no joke, I'm crying. And she's like, I don't see it. And I'm like, okay, well maybe it's in the back seat, but I can't really look right now. In the time between that conversation and when she texted me a picture that it's on the counter at home, I had all these thoughts go through my head: Nick, if you weren't so late, you wouldn't have messed up. Why don't you get your life together in a way that allows you to have time to do things more healthily? Why don't you take care of things? You always mess up, you always forget things, you always break the things that matter most to you. Don't you care enough about your wife that you would honor and cherish your gift more, that you didn't run it over in your driveway.

I had this five minutes of negative self-talk, where the enemy grabbed a foothold of that and said every negative thing I already believed about myself. I know that none of that is true, but in that moment, all of it was true. Your emotional health can tear you away further than anything else I'm going to say today from a relationship with Jesus. Mental health is not an emergency plan, it's not someplace you go when you're at the end, it's a way you live into, taking those thoughts, holding them captive, letting Jesus, the God of the universe, speak truth into you, with the help of the scriptures, your community group, this church, a professional therapist. God didn't create the health and medical field so we'd pray harder and not use it if we don't need to, because that's not really Jesus. God gave us these people who can speak truth into us, and allow us to understand our identity, the real one, the one Jesus went to the cross for and died, that's how valuable your life is.

So maybe the thing I want to leave you with most today is this: when you sit with yourself and your thoughts, what are you saying to yourself? And if it's not the truth about you that's revealed in the scriptures, read Psalm 139 if you need to, then I would implore you, please, talk to somebody about that. At the end of the day, do you spend time replaying your day and asking God to show himself, where was he in the day, and where wasn't he? It's called the prayer of examen, if you want to look that up. Do you journal? Do you go to therapy on a regular basis? Do you have honest conversations with yourself and the people who love you the most about how you're really doing? Does somebody know how you're really doing? And I love the chart on New Culture's website, how do you go from a life of hurry to a life of solitude, from anxiety to breath prayer, from isolation to community? All of those shifts are going to be maybe the most formative that you'll take this year.

Number five, work and vocation. How does your work fit with God's unique design for you? You're going to spend, if you work a regular nine to five job starting around college age, you're going to spend 90,000 hours working in your lifetime. When you get to the point I am in my life, you're going to spend more time working than doing anything else, hopefully sleeping is close, but it might not be sometimes. I understand you can't just quit your job because you don't like what you're doing, that's not the real world, but here's the thing, when you're thinking about how you live in your workplace, how you live in a calling God's made you for, what gives you passion around work, I will tell you from experience that the more you're living into something God's given you passion for, in calling and influence, the more you're going to find fruit in your work. Even if the things you do on a regular basis are super boring and you don't like it, I look at too many spreadsheets, that's okay. How do you honor God with it? Do you show up to work with excellence and investment? Do your coworkers, the people you see every day, know that you're part of this church community, that you are following Jesus with your life?

There's a difference between gifts and work. If you've done a spiritual gifts test, you know this, I'd encourage you to do one if you haven't. But what are the spiritual gifts God has given you, and how are you aligning them to your work in a way that's living into your best calling that Jesus gave you? When you get a professional development plan, or a skill growth plan, at your workplace, maybe before you fill that out, maybe you sit with your spouse, with the Lord in prayer, and actually pray over what you ought to do at work over the next year that honors God with your work. Are you using your gifts? Are you using them well? Where do you sense an invitation to grow? Work and vocation, 90,000 hours, how are you using and stewarding it toward the Lord?

Number six, service and outreach. How will you love your neighbor with your life? This is the third part of your rule of life as a church, the do what Jesus did part. In Luke 10, there's the parable of the good Samaritan. As you know, a man is beaten on the side of the road, three people walk by, the first is a priest, the second a Levite, the third a Samaritan. The priest and Levite don't help the man, the Samaritan does. As Jesus reflects with the teachers of the law in the story, he says, which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise.

I would say your neighbor, and the way you pour yourself out in the community, is toward people who need mercy. That can look a lot of different ways. There are people who have physical, immediate needs, you're going to walk by them on the street, you're going to see them in the community centers, in your kids' schools, in your workplace. There are going to be really obvious things, people who need mercy and care. And there might also be lonely people in your life, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, people who need to hear God's truth and your love for them, not what the world is telling them. So care looks like physical and immediate, and it looks like long term. My heart is broken for this person, or these people, and my investment into them is going to be formative for them and for me.

So practically speaking, are you giving yourself away to those who need mercy? Are you on a contributor team here at church? Do you serve in your neighborhood, through the Neighborhood House, the residences at Enzo? Do you participate in a city renewal project, like Love Dane? Talk to the team here at this church if you need help serving in some way. You're doing it at profound and loving ways in this community, so please, please plug into them. Who is your neighbor, those who need mercy? Who is your heart broken for in this city? How can you walk toward them this next year?

Number seven, the final one, recreation and rest. What brings you delight? God has actually given you hobbies, creativity, and joy, those are not extras. You're not a monk or a nun. There are things you can do for your life that give you a ton of joy, and they're essential for your spiritual and mental well-being. Practically speaking, do you have activities that restore you? Do you wake up on a Saturday morning and watch Premier League football with your big mug and cheer? Do you go for a run? If you want to travel, do you travel? You don't have to have a ton of money. Do you go for a day trip to New Glarus, they have hobbits there. There's a ton of stuff you can do. If you like adventure, having new experiences, where can you do that for free, or cheaply? If you like to paint, or draw, or write, or sing, do you think that's superfluous, something you'd maybe indulge but don't have time for because you feel bad, because you have to work? Where do you find time? If you have a family, you can be creative and figure that out too. There are ways to find joy in the way God's created you to be, and live that out.

The cost of a rule of life

Okay, those are the seven. I hope they prompted something in you as you consider those three ways of living a rule of life. So to get started, I want to touch on one thing that isn't written out in this rule of life curriculum, but I think is critically important. Here it is: the world is really expensive. Taking on new hobbies is expensive, going on vacation is expensive, getting your kids the care or sports they need, doing something that's a hobby, I do this middle-aged white guy thing where if I want a hobby, I buy all the stuff for it and then start doing it. Life is really expensive. And here's the reality, Jesus said this in Matthew 6, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The world around us is ruled by money, I'm not going to rail against capitalism, but it's true, everything costs something financially, except for just sitting at your house, and even then you're paying rent or your mortgage.

You cannot serve two masters. I grew up with nineties hip-hop, that's a formative part of my life. There's a line about how cash rules everything. Don't listen to it, it's not okay, but here's the thing, they're right, in a way. Cash is how the world's pulling you toward, spend more money, buy the thing, live into this new supplement or whatever, you're going to live into a life that's really expensive unless you intentionally serve Jesus over the master of money.

So as you review this, I'd encourage you, don't make this something where, well, this guy came and taught at my church and told me to do a bunch of expensive things because I'm going to be happier if I do. That's not what I'm saying. Practically speaking, do you have a budget, as a person or a family? Do you know what's in it? Do you look at your bank statements, have an app that helps you track your budget and live in a way that's God-honoring with your money? Do you give to the church and to nonprofits first, or do you give what's left over? Maybe, practically speaking, if you don't already have one, maybe the calling is to get a budgeting app, there are some pretty inexpensive ones. Maybe one boundary you can set with the rule of life is this: I'm going to take one less overnight trip this year, I'm going to cancel five subscriptions, I'm going to eat out one less time a month. There are ways you can incrementally walk toward a God-honoring life with your money. It isn't going to cost you a bunch of money, in fact it will grow you healthier and allow you to serve the master, not to serve mammon.

Next steps

So your next steps. My goal is to take us again from Abbie's invitation, that the Holy Spirit has a plan for your life, to actually having one on paper. So here are four steps I'd encourage you to live into over the next week or so, as you start to sketch this out for yourself.

Number one, start small. Are there two or three practices? If you fill this up with a bunch of things in every single box, you will fail at it, you just will. It's hard to change everything about your life. But are there two or three things you can live into over this next year, that you can start small with, maybe do two or three in the next weeks? As you fill out a daily, weekly, monthly, annual rule of life, I would encourage you, like I'm one who's going to go to the end first and say, I'm going to take a vacation this year and read 400 books, you might, but if you start with the daily, where can I give Jesus ten more minutes in the time of day I'm already available to him? Can I give him an hour and a half on Tuesday nights to be in a community group? Those are small changes you can make that will compound into more formative changes over your year.

Step two, be specific. Don't write on your weekly rule of life, I'm going to pray more. Write, I'm going to pray for ten minutes at 7:30, and tell somebody that you wrote that, or put it in your calendar. Don't say, I'm going to start exercising, say, Tuesday and Thursday I'm going to go to the gym at six o'clock, put it in your calendar. Don't say, I'm going to take a Sabbath, we all need a Sabbath, maybe you could say, from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening, I'm blocking social media, and the only movies I watch are going to be with my family, or I'm going to invite some friends over and watch a movie together. How do you rest in a way that's intentional, instead of this idea that you'll never do this stuff if you don't plan for it?

Step three, write it down. Use the chart on page four of the workbook, if you're looking at it or going to look at it this week. If this is something you talk about in your community, if you're married, don't write a rule of life and start doing it without telling your spouse. Sketch one out with pencil, or on notes, or whatever, show your spouse, your accountability partner, or a trusted friend, and say, here's what I'm thinking, am I missing something, can you help me pray into this and help me form this in a way that you know what I'm trying to do, and you think it's something that maybe you see in me that I don't see, that you can give me some ideas about. So share it with a friend or a spouse, and if you share it with a spouse, share it with a friend too. Revisit it in a couple months, don't just put it away. I did this last year, we reviewed ours, and I looked back and I'm like, I don't even know where it is. We fail at this stuff too, okay, look at it regularly, put it somewhere you're going to see it.

And step four, this last one, embrace grace. Remember the language around the trellis, the vine growing, this is a trellis, a leading, a straightener, it's not a cage. These are rules, not laws. If you break them, it's okay. Give yourself grace, ask for help, and go back to it. You're going to miss something, you're going to miss a day, you're going to run over your Stanley Cup in the driveway, right? It doesn't define who you are, in a relationship that is loving, the person in this way, Jesus and your spouse and the people who care about you most, and don't think you're what you do, but who you are. They're going to receive you time and time again, if you have a contrite heart in the way you live this out.

Remember, the Spirit of God and his plan for us leads us, and the rule you develop for yourself reflects who you are and who God made you to be, and it supports you living into that life and that truth. I'm going to land the plane, then I'm going to pray for you. I invite Princess to come back up, we're going to have just a couple of prompting questions, and then I'm going to pray that you'll start to actually take action on this this week. Here's the reality: you're being formed. Right now, you're going to be formed when you walk out of here today. The question is not if you're being formed, but by what, and how, you're being formed. Over this next year, 2026, are you going to be formed more by Instagram and TikTok, or by Jesus? Are you going to be formed by your boss, or by your partnership, in a way that honors God in your work? Are you going to be conformed to consumer culture, and use your body and your money and your time in a way that dishonors Jesus, and turns you into a person that looks more like the world and less like the living God? Or will you respond to Jesus' invitation of abundant life?

This is not the law of life, this is a rule of life. And how you say yes to it is to say yes to Jesus' design for your life, not somebody else's. So my challenge for you is this, and I pray the questions I asked, in the areas I offered, those seven areas, allow you to start to think about and contemplate how those things would flow into your personal rule of life.

So this week, my challenge for you is this: open that workbook if you don't already have it, print it off, use your phone, whatever makes sense for you, and spend 30 minutes with that workbook this week. Start to sketch in the daily and weekly rows. And once you have something there, share it with your spouse, share it with a friend. Start to say yes to the rule of life in a way that allows you to bear fruit Jesus created you to bear. Let the life you've been given honor God and grow toward him, maybe one that's pleasing to him, that you have grace for yourself in, as he will have grace for you, and allows you that, maybe when I'm back here in a year again, you can look back and say, I started something that has formed me into a person I know God made me to be over this last year. My prayer is that may that be so.

Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you that you love us so much, that you came, as we just celebrated at Christmas, that you came to be with us and understand us, and walk with us, and cry with us, and laugh with us, and work in the way that we work, and pray in the way that we pray, and go to the temple on Sunday the way that we do. And God, I just pray that as we live a life out that you understand intimately, and you actually made us for, that we would honor you with how we live it. That the way the church has tried to be intentional over time, to live out a life that we're intimate with you in, our prayers, our scripture, our community, our worship, in a way we've been given gifts of money and time and relationships, in the way you've given us gifting, spiritual and otherwise, and passion, and you've made us want to paint and draw and travel and laugh and run around with our kids and spend date nights with our spouse and come to church on Sunday morning and worship with a community of believers. I pray, Lord, that over these next days, as we start to write this down, we would hear that as an invitation of love from you, not a cage or a barrier, to live a life that's much harder, but one that is much easier, because as you said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So Lord, may we experience you in a new way, that we would walk in your pace, walk with your love and grace and truth covering us in a lifestyle that is so honoring to you, that each day, as we consider and examine our life, you would remind us, yes, I was here, yes, I was there, yes, you honor me with that, yes, I created you for that, yes, you are generous this way, thank you, well done, good and faithful servant, you are looking more like me. So Jesus, help us to be a people who honor you with the way we're with you, with the way we're like you, and the way that we do what you did. Jesus, thank you for giving us that example. I pray, Lord, that we'd honor you and honor this kingdom that you are inbreaking and ushering in, that people would see us and see you in the way we live our lives. Thank you, Jesus, we love you, we worship you. Be with us as we go, and help us to live into your likeness. We pray and ask all this in your most precious and holy name. Amen.