A Mind for God

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Title: A Mind for God February 28, 2010

Text: Romans 12:1-2

Ken Shigematsu

Props: books, seeds, journal.

Thomas Merton, in his book, Wisdom of the Desert, wrote that the early church fathers believed that society was a shipwreck from which any sane person would swim for his or her life.

Those words may sound like an overstatement, but if you have tried to live for God in the midst of the real world, you have likely experienced the subtle, but real undertow of the world away from God.

When you’re sailing, it’s not just the wind and the position of your sails and rudder that determine your course, but there is another unseen force that will affect your direction. While sailing, you might aim the bow of your boat toward a landmark on the horizon, and hope that if you simply lock the wheel in its current position, you will sail toward the mark. But, there’s a typically unseen force that will take you off course, and that is the current. In order to stay on course, you have to keep on my eye on the landmark and adjust your wheel (and your sails) to keep me on course. In our life with God, we may have also set our sights sailing toward a particular landmark on the horizon which we feel represents God’s intended destination, but may be experiencing the current of the world pulling us in a different direction.

When I was working as part of a large corporation in Tokyo, I felt there was a subtle undertow for me to define myself by the quality of my work and the money I made. People who had known me for a long time commented during that period of my life commented that it seemed like money and material things were becoming more important to me. I felt indignant and denied it at first, but looking back I see how I had drifted off center.

Also, while living in Japan, as in others places, I also felt the seductive pull to engage in sexual activity that was not linked to any kind of love or commitment. While I was a student in Boston, there was the tide to define myself by my education and grades. While living in Los Angeles area, each day I’d thumb through Los Angeles Times (Orange County Edition) with every other page having some kind ad for plastic surgery, and the of current of the culture pulling me to place excessive importance on a person’s outward appearance. In Vancouver, where I currently live we who follow Christ experience the pull (as Dan Matheson has observed) to not make God the center of our lives, but to place him on the periphery of our lives.

Part of the way we swim away from the current of the world is by asking God to renew our minds, and so that we can test and approve what God’s will is, his good pleasing and perfect will.

The Apostle Paul in Romans 12 writes:

“2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

J.B. Philips translates this verse: Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. The word for world is translated literally, “This age” and refers to the external, fleeting fashion of the world. So Paul is urging us to experience the renewal of our minds so that we are able to transcend the fleeting and superficial values of our age and discern God’s will.

A key part of our rule of life, our trellis, will include a rhythm to renew our mind.

We’ll be looking at this part of our rule this morning.

The words that precede Romans 12:2 are, of course, the famous words of Romans 12:1

1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship.

What is the motivation to offer our bodies, which for Paul would have been a way of referring to our whole selves—to God? God’s mercy. God’s stunning mercy demonstrated in his offering his body for us as a sacrifice for our sins on the cross (which is what this season of Lent invites to reflect on). In response to God’s great mercy to us, Paul urges us to our offer every part of our selves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

It is significant that the call to holiness precedes the invitation for us to experience the renewal of our minds as the two are linked. As our bodies need to have a certain level of health to benefit from food, so our souls need a level of health and purity to best receive the seeds that God is sowing in us.

Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation, writes:

Every moment and every event of a man [or woman’s] life on earth plants something in his [or her] soul… Most of these unencumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men [and women] are not prepared to receive them…

Merton, drawing on Jesus’ parable of the sower, says that in every moment of our lives some kind of seed is being planted in us.

Our capacity to receive the good seeds that are being sown in us by God is directly related to the quality of the soil of our hearts. We tend to think of renewing our mind primarily in terms of reading the right books, going to right schools, and both of these have value. But, renewing our minds as followers of Christ does not come primarily from enrolling in a superior school, but from a heart that is pure. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”

C.S. Lewis said that our bodies are the telescope through which we see God: “The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man [or woman’s] self is not kept clean and bright, his [or her] glimpse of God will be blurred—like the moon through a dirty telescope.”

The apostle Paul understood that self-centeredness and a lack of inner purity darken our understanding of God and the most important spiritual truths.

Ancient philosophers believed that there was a direct connection between our ability to know and the purity of our character. In our culture, we tend to equate being pure with being naive, but the ancient philosophers were right when they made the link between our inner purity and our capacity to know. We begin to experience the renewal of our minds so that we discern God’s will and so we can swim against the current of the fleeting age by praying that God would enable us to become holy people—people whose bodies are set apart in devotion for him as Paul speaks of in Romans 12.

As we ask God for a pure heart, we, it would also follow, would seek to avoid things that would pollute our hearts.

What does this look like?

Practically, part of the way we experience the renewal of our minds will involve our being discerning about the television, movies, and media we expose ourselves to.

We may assume that television doesn’t affect our values (just the values of others), but research from the RAND Institute demonstrates that television does influence our behavior. Teenagers, for example, who are exposed to more sex scenes on television are more sexually active and have higher rates of unwanted pregnancies than young people who watch less of that kind of television. The popular and engaging television show Friends, a show that many of my generation watched as young adults, has shaped both sexual attitudes of people in my generation, but also even the way we use intensifiers like very or so (give example and footnote).

Not only does television have the potential to pollute our minds, but it tends to make us more anxious. Robert Bellah, the professor of sociology at University of California at Berkeley, points out that people watch television in the evenings to relax, but this ends up making us more anxious and mildly (and sometimes severely) depressed . If we want to experience restoration, Bellah says we are better off finding an activity that is mildly demanding, but meaningful, such as reading a good book (or repairing the car, talking to someone we love or even cooking the family meal).

Television at its best can inform and uplift--but for the most part is the mental equivalent of junk food, in moderate doses it may not harm us, but on the whole it will not nourish us. It over- ingested it will cause us to become spiritually and mentally sluggish.1

In North America the average person has the TV or radio on 7.9 hours a day, so our rule of life will take into consideration the amount and kind of television (movies and media) we see—and some might even question whether to own a TV.

More positively, as we develop our rule of life, we will expose our minds to things that will nourish us, and pray that we will have an appetite for these things.

Just as our taste buds can be trained to acquire a taste for certain good foods, so our minds can become oriented to things that nourish us.

Renewing our mind will involve praying that God would give us a hunger for his Word. Jesus said, “People do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). We become what we eat. We know this is true in the physical realm of our lives—we become what we eat. We are constantly shedding off cells and producing new ones—so we literally do become what we eat. Occasionally, mothers of babies express concern that they are turning orange. There is condition called carotenemia, where skin, especially parts becomes tinged with orange. It is most visible in babies. The condition is caused by ingesting a large amount of carotene, a nutrient most often found in breast milk, but also in carrots, squash, sweet potato, pumpkin, and yams. We literally become what we eat.

This is also true of our minds. What we feed our minds will determine who we become so Jesus said feed on his word.

Ziggy (Tim at Kits) has acknowledged in the promotion for his course starting today on the Old Testament that people can find that part of the Bible boring. There are many people who regard the Bible in general as a book they can’t connect with.

Personally knowing the author of the Scriptures makes the Bible so much more alive. I have a few books on my shelf (show books as props) that are so much more alive to me because I know the authors. In a couple of cases, I was in the authors’ homes during part of their writing process. As I read these books I can hear the voices of the author speaking to me in my inner ear. My mind and heart are more engaged because of my connection with the writers. When we know God personally, reading his word will be much more than an academic exercise, but we will sense God speaking to us. When are in relationship with God, the Holy Spirit will also illuminate the meaning of Scriptures to us and apply it specifically to our life situation.

When we really know God, the author of the Bible, and when we know this book is written for us, we experience it differently, we experience not a dusty old wooden chest, but as the kids have reminded us through their wonderful mural—the Word becomes a treasure.

This is also true of our minds.

What we feed our minds will determine who we become, so Jesus said feed on his word..

Rhythms

As we construct our rule or rhythm of life for our mind, we will consider a rhythm for reading Scripture so that we will experience the renewal of our minds.

Over the years I have often used The One Year Bible which guides a person into a portion of the Old and New Testaments and Psalms and Proverbs each day. You can get One Year Bible reading guides online.

There is real value in getting a sense of the sweeping themes of Scripture.

This year I am on a Bible reading plan using a guide by the Navigators which gets me in the word 5 times a week.

Others take a longer section, once a week. Richard Foster says it may be better to take a longer shower once a week in the Word than to simply have a few drops each day.

Memorizing Scripture

I once asked Dallas Willard, a respected writer on the spiritual life, what was your most important spiritual discipline.

“As young Christian, it was solitude; now it’s Scripture memory,” he said.

I was surprised. I had the impression that Scripture memory was mostly for kids in a Sunday School program, not a spiritual discipline for a distinguished scholar. But memorizing Scripture and committing it to our (long-term) memory is one of the most powerful ways to make Scripture a part of who we are.

As a new believer, struggling with guilt over past sins of shop-lifting and a general sense of shame, I memorized Psalm 103 which assures us, “As far as the East is from the West so far God has removed our transgressions from us.”

When I traveled as part of a student mission to smuggle in Bibles and theological books into Romania while it was still behind the iron curtain of communism, I memorized Psalm 139, “Even if I travel to the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me; your right hand will hold me fast.”

When we memorize Scripture it rattles around inside us and becomes part of us, it renews us.

But, it’s not just the Bible. Uplifting books and movies can also renew our minds for God.

Charles W. Eliot, who served as president of Harvard for forty years, dreamed of a five-foot shelf of books that would provide an education for anyone who would spend fifteen minutes a day reading them. His vision became a reality when he became editor of the fifty-volume Harvard Classics (1909).

Susan Wise Bauer says that anyone who can read can adopt a rule for reading. “All you need is shelf full of books… and few ‘chasms of time not otherwise appropriated’.” She counsels us to start with short reading times (as with physical exercise, work yourself up into shape, beginning with no more than thirty minutes a day); and don’t schedule yourself every day of the week (aim for four days, giving yourself some days off for the other priorities and for the interruptions of life); schedule your reading time when you are free from distractions and guard this time (White, A Mind for God, 83.)

Arthur Schopenhauer said, “If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited” (quoted in Serious Times, White, 108).

Solitude and Journaling

Another way we can experience the renewal of our minds so that we can discern and swim against the current of the age is through solitude and journaling.

Each year at New Year’s we go back to Japan to celebrate with Sakiko’s family.

Two really frustrating things have actually helped me experience a most precious gift there. One is jet-lag. I am terrible adjusting to new time zones. So I used to just lie in bed wide awake at 2:00 a.m. Then I stopped resisting and got up at 1:30 a.m. (and went to bed about 7:30 p.m.). It was so quiet and still at that time of the night.

Then another frustrating experience was that my internet connection on my laptop doesn’t work there. I discovered my wireless connection didn’t work there, nor could I get online by plugging in at my in-laws’ place, nor at the neighbor’s house. My blackberry connection didn’t work either. At first this was very frustrating, but then I said, “Let’s just go with it.” (If I really want to use the net, I can use my father-in-law’s computer). But, for me in Japan, I am virtually unplugged. This has turned out to become such a gift. The gift of solitude and being unplugged

In times of quiet solitude, I can get perspective on what matters most.

If you want to get a definition of H2O, it’s best not to ask a fish. They are too close to it to be able to give perspective. We can become so immersed in the water of the world we often oblivious to how its currents can pull us away from God. Spending time alone in silence, alone, can renew our minds and gives us new perspective so we can test and approve God’s will. Solitude can become an anchor for us.

In times of solitude I may also journal. Some of us shy away from the thought of writing a journal because we do not consider ourselves writers. Or perhaps are afraid that what we write is going to sound banal when compared to diaries of Anne Frank or the journals or Henri Nouwen.

But writing can be a way to pray and discern what God is saying to us. A journal also helps us to retain those things that God says to us. When I journaled last month in Japan, I took time to read back through a number of journal entries from the previous year and write some new ones.

One of the Scriptures that really spoke to me last year was John 21:23 where Jesus intimates to Peter that he his lot will include suffering at the end of his life and Peter points to Jesus’ disciple John and asks, “What about him?” Jesus says, “What is that to you?” My life has changed significantly since being married and become a parent. I used to serve on more boards and travel and speak more often. My life in simpler now, that’s a gift, but it can feel at times like a loss. When I am tempted to compare my life with a peer’s in my field who seems more active or to be a more active, younger version of Ken Shigematsu, God seems to be saying, “What is that to you?” Don’t compare. Journaling helps me discern what God is saying and retain it. It helps renew my mind.


People

Have you ever seen salmon swimming upstream? I’ve been amazing how salmon can swim, jump, wiggle over the stones, against water, upriver. I imagine that swimming upstream for a fish is hard, but I also it would far harder to do it alone. So it is for us. Swimming against the current of our age is hard, but it’s much harder to do alone.

But, it is much easier if we do it with others.

Our minds can also experience renewal by interacting with people.

Like you, I’ve sometimes had people, who sincerely want the best for me and who really care for me, try to influence in a way would cause me to drift from God. But I’ve also had friends who have helped me maintain a Christ-like perspective.

One of the values of being part of some kind of small group or engaged in spiritual friendship is that you can learn from the others, experience renewal. I won’t say more, because Mardi will speak more on this next Sunday.

At the end of each message thus far, I’ve been sharing something to keep in mind as you construct a rule or rhythm of life that supports your growth in God. At the bottom of this half page sheet, I write a rule of life that should have a combination of being gentle, but also challenging.

If the rule is overly strict, it will likely not be sustainable over time. But, on the other hand if a rule is too gentle, it won’t push us to grow. Make the rule gentle, but also make it challenging-- something that will stretch you.

Beginning a new habit at first can be daunting. I remember when I moved back to Canada from California. At first, I was in White Rock, a small ocean-side community near the US border. My roommate Steve expressed a desire to lose weight, so I suggested we go running each morning. For years I had the practice of running each morning, but my friend Steve had never run on a regular basis.

“You are going to feel great,” I assured him with confidence as we jogged. “You’re going to have more energy today.” Returning to the condo at the end of the run, Steve just crashed on his bed, moaning, “I feel sick!” When he came home from work that day, he said, “I was exhausted all day long. I couldn’t concentrate.”

We tried running for a few more mornings, but my room-mate kept complaining that he felt so tired he couldn’t focus at work. I later discovered that you have to run for about 30 days before you start reaping the benefits of greater energy and strength. I had always been running, but didn't take that into account for my roommate.

And so it with certain habits and practices. There are times we need to stay with them in order for them to bear fruit in our lives. There are times obviously when a particular habit simply does not work for us, but we need to have enough patience to determine whether or not this is the case for us.

So it is with the renewing our mind—it takes some effort to establish a rhythm of renewing our mind through the Scriptures and Spirit, through reading solitude and journaling, through spiritual companions; but like exercise or eating well—which also take effort especially at first—we’ll experience priceless gifts of God’s presence and perspective, as well, and we’ll be able to swim against the tide.

Prayer: the Spiritual Frontier

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Prayer: the Spiritual Frontier February 21, 2010

Text: Matthew 6:9-13

Ken Shigematsu

Prop: Trellis, sandwich, and Snapple, Rule of Life Sheet.

BIG IDEA: Prayer enables us to grow in our relationship with God.

When I was in grade 6, I had a crush on Kristy. During the summer between grade six and grade seven, I rode my bike to her house three or four times a week. We sat on the grass under the warm sun, jumped on her trampoline, and ate donuts and drank Coke at Tim Horton’s. It was a blissful, magical time.

In grade six, what did I know about relationships? Next to nothing. But one thing I did know is that if you want to get to know someone, you have to get on your bike, go their house, and spend time with that person.

In order to develop a friendship with someone—not just a romantic friendship—but any kind of friendship we need to spend time with someone. If you want to receive the spirit and wisdom of a mentor, you need to spend time with that person. If you want to turn a Facebook friend into a real friend, you need to spend actual face to face time with the person.

And if we want to grow in our friendship with God, we will cultivate a rhythm of spending time with God.

What a privilege it is to even have this opportunity.

Have you ever experienced a sense of “wow” because someone wanted to spend time with you?

On psychological tests, I tend fairly to score fairly high on task orientation, but I feel immense gratitude for the friendships I’ve had in my life.

This week I got a call from an older friend—a mentor. For the past nearly 18 years the door to friendship with his person has felt really open. I have sensed his welcome and love. I have friendships with peers that feel precious and that I don’t want to lose. I have experienced the gift of friendship with some younger people whose passion and desire to grow inspires me. I am grateful for my friendship members of my own family. The journey with my wife and son feel like gracious gifts of God.

If we look into our hearts, many of us—even those of us who consider ourselves task oriented-- would say that our most precious gifts are our relationships with friends and family.

But, the best of these friendships are a faint analog to the friendship we have can have with God.

We have the opportunity to experience the priceless gift of friendship with the God of the universe, with the one who knows us better than anyone else and yet who receives us more unconditionally than anyone else and who wants to spend time with us.

God is literally dying to be with us. In the book of Hebrews we are told that through the shedding of God’s blood as a human being in Jesus Christ on the cross—that is through Christ’s sacrificial death for us on the cross--the way has been opened for us to enter into friendship with God. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God (Hebrews 4:16).

If we want to grow in our relationship with God, we will cultivate a rhythm of spending time with God. This rhythm will become part of our rule of life, part of the trellis that supports our relationship with God.

Richard Foster says, “Prayer catapults us on the frontier of the spiritual life, of all the spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into the perpetual communion with the Father.”1

Prayer, like Sabbath as we said last week, is a foundational part of our rule of life, a key part of our trellis (show prop) that supports the growth of our relationship with God. It is through this rhythm of spending time with God in prayer that we grow in our friendship with God.

You've probably seen an older couple holding hands who have created this masterpiece of the relationship over 30 or 40 years. What is the difference between infatuation that fades after a few months and a love that lasts a lifetime? One key difference is that the couple whose love lasts has some kind of kind of trellis that has enabled them to continue to experience meaningful time together on a regular basis so that their love grows across the years. If we have a trellis that enables us to spend time regularly with God, we can grow our relationship with him over our lifetime.

I now want to shift and ask some practical questions. Like what kind of prayer rhythm might work for us? How do we pray? How does our life stage shape what our rule of life as it relates to prayer look like?

Prayer Rhythms

What kind of prayer rhythm would work well for us?

Mornings work best for me. My mind feels relatively uncluttered. I make a point of not checking email or phone messages first thing in the morning. These things will trigger my mind to travel down the path of all the things I feel I ought to do.

When I was single and married without kids, I’d really enjoyed getting up very early, doing a brief exercise routine of stretching and skipping, push ups and sits ups, a brief time of silence and waiting and then a time in Scriptures and enter into a time of prayer. I like to think of my time with God like a meal I would share with someone. My time with God then felt like a three-course meal at a restaurant. But, now with a son who is 1 ½ years, I find that if I try get up at 5:00 or 5:30 to exercise and to pray, I found that our son Joey would be aware of my physical and psychic movements… and he would wake up saying, “Daddy! Daddy!” So even if I wake up early I lie in bed, usually until 7:00. My morning time with God, feels more like I’m going to a counter at the Deli getting a sandwich and some Snapple (show prop). It’s still nourishing, but not as long and lingering as it used to be.

But this morning rhythm may not be suitable for you (some one on our blog said I’m not a morning person). Some people can’t focus well first thing in the morning—especially without coffee. Gordon Smith who will be speaking at our Tenth getaway weekend in May says, “I came to realize that a better guiding rule (than praying first thing in the morning) is that we should give the best time of our day to God; and by best I mean the time when we are most alert and capable of being present to God in our prayer.”3 Some people are more alert in the morning; others are better able to focus in the evening. Each person ought to decide for themselves which time of day works best for them. Part of this calculation, of course, will depend on our life stage in life.

When I was an undergraduate student, I enjoyed doing prayer walks or jogs late at night at about 10 or 11 p.m. At some point in my thirties, I found I was less alert late at night and that my life was more complex, so if I didn’t set time to focus on God in the morning, it wasn’t likely to happen the rest of the day either.

This past week, I heard of woman who looked at this half page sheet on the categories of the rule of life (which is available in the back) and said, I feel drawn to develop the area of prayer. Since she’s a nursing mother, she feels the best time for her to pray is while she’s breastfeeding.

Even if we are not a nursing a new born baby in the middle of the night, and we happen to wake up in the middle of the night (and can’t fall asleep right way), we can use that time to pray for what comes to mind.

In monasteries, monks speak of praying the hours or the daily offices at various times through the day as the bell in the monastery summons them to prayer. Most of us will not end up living in a monastery, but we can establish a rhythm where we are reminded to pray briefly at various times through the day. Many of us pray before meals. I sometimes use a watch that chimes to remind me to pray. We may be praying with a weekly rhythm in community in our small groups, or as we come to worship on Sundays, (Would love to hear about your prayer rhythms on our blog on our website).

Remember that prayer is a gift to grow your friendship with the God who knows you better than anyone else and the one who loves more than anyone else.

Erich Fromm, the famous social psychologist, was asked to give a simple recipe for psychic health in a culture that is as pressured as our own.

As humanistic, secular person Fromm said, “A half-hour of silence once a day, twice a day if you can afford the time. That will do marvels for your health.”

For those who know God, we experience not just silence. We can experience peace in the presence of a God who knows and loves us. We will grow our friendship with God and it will also help us become more centered, grounded human beings.

Structure and Words

Have you been in a conversation where you wanted to talk to someone and get to know them, but didn’t know what to say? When I was junior high (grade 8 I think), there was this girl that I really liked a lot. I was riding the bus on my way to school. I was sitting on the left hand side of the bus 2/3rds of the way down and there was a seat open beside me. This girl that I really liked, Michelle, got on the bus and walked down the bus and said can I sit beside you? I said, yuh. It was a day at our school, where we supposed to dress up. I was wearing jeans. Michelle, asks, “Are those your favorite jeans?” I said, yuh. She asked another question or two… I didn’t know what to say. All I could say, yuh. I know that a conversation with God is very different than a conversation with a girl you have crush in grade eight, but it can be similar in one way—it can be similar in that in both conversations you may find we don’t know what to say.

So for many of us, having some kind of structure to pray may be helpful for us.

As a new follower of Christ, I was a taught to pray using the acrostic ACTS whose four letters stand for adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication (in his book Too Busy Not to Pray Bill Hybels describes this pattern and his book is available at the book table), and from time to time, I still use this pattern in my prayers. The Psalms served as Israel’s ancient hymn and prayer book. They offer us wonderful prayers to pray either word for word or as patterns for prayer or patterns for prayer. They express a wide range of human emotion: joy, gratitude, hope, guilt, despair, frustration, anger, and lament.

When Jesus’ disciples asked, how should we pray? Jesus offered them what is famously known as, The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). It can be prayed as it is (Our Father who are in heaven… or as a structure for prayer.

Sometimes I will use this prayer as pattern for my prayers.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with Our Father in heaven, so we can begin our prayers with an acknowledgment that we are praying to our loving, good, strong Abba Father (the most personal word for God) who I know that many others have made this observation before, but I found becoming a father and the love I feel for my son, which is independent of any achievement on his part has given me a profound new sense of God’s love. And for me that is not conditioned by any achievement of my part. That’s a great place to begin prayer.

Who art in heaven—reminds me that God reigns over all the earth. God loves me, but God is also powerful.

The prayer continues, hallowed be your name. We acknowledge that God`s name is hallowed, honored, and revered, and we can also pray for God’s name to be recognized as such by us and by others… I might pray that I would recognize God as holy and great. I may pray that for others too.

We pray Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done. We ask for God’s good purposes to be fulfilled in each area of our lives: our work, our relationships, and submit these areas to God… (I know there have been times when I have really wanted something badly and prayed and God allowed me to have it, it wasn’t necessarily the best thing for my relationship with God… and so now I pray with more heart your will be done.) We pray not only for God’s will to be done in our lives, but also for that God’s justice and peace would spread throughout the whole world… in the city, in places Haiti, Darfur.

Give us this day our daily bread. We pray for our basic needs to be met and the plural our also suggests we are to pray that God would provide food for the hungry billions of the world. We live where about 40% of people live on less than 2 dollars a day, and according the UN, about 850 million people go to bed hungry each night.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Forgiving others is as necessary for the health of our soul as food is for the health of our body. I name sins and pray for forgiveness. As we pray we forgive those who have sinned against us.

Lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. Having prayed for our sins to be forgiven, we pray that we would not return to our sins. We pray that when we are tempted we would not be vulnerable to sin, and when we are vulnerable, to not have the opportunity to sin.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever, Amen. We conclude our prayer by acknowledging the Lord of heaven and earth and worshipping our great God! The Lord’s Prayer can help to guide and offer balance for our prayers.

If can be helpful to have some kind of structure in your prayer; it can also help begin pray for those things you truly care most about. Dallas Willard wisely says, “Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about ‘good things,’ things that honestly don’t matter to us.” The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. I lay out my prayers with themes across the different days of the week that correspond to things I really do care about… Many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of.

Dallas Willard describes prayer as, “Talking to God about what we are doing together… Prayer is a matter of sharing my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life.” I personally find it helpful to pray for different people and issues I care about on different days of the week… but praying for the things that are on our heart or come to mind may be a good beginning point for pray.

Sometimes we may feel like we ought to pray noble, lofty, poetic prayers, but this practice may be like a heavy burden, or impossible to reach or sustain.

It’s really freeing knowing that God knows all things and knows what we will pray before we pray it (whether we pray audibly or even consciously or not) we can trust that the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayers. We may not know what we ought to pray for, but, as Paul says in Romans 8, the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God (Romans 8:26-27). Pray as you can, not as you can’t.

Consider Your Life Stage

Our rule of life or trellis will take into account our stage of life. As I said earlier, when I was a single person, my rule looked different. When I got married, my rule changed. I have recently become a parent and again my rule looks different.

A rule for a single person and for a parent of young children will and ought to look drastically different.

Carlo Carretto, one of the best spiritual writers of the last century, spent many years in the Sahara Desert praying. Yet he once confessed he felt that his mother who spent nearly 30 years raising children was much more contemplative than he was, and less selfish.

If that is true, and Carretto suggests that it is, the conclusion that we should draw is not that there was anything wrong with his spending long hours of solitude and prayer in the desert, but there was something very right about the years his mother lived an interrupted life among the noise and demands of small children.

If you are the mother of a young child or a stay-at-home dad, as the priest from Edmonton, Ronald Rolheiser, observes, you are being forced against your will in some ways to mature. For the years while you are raising small children, your time is not your own. Your own needs have to be put into second place. Every time you turn around, some hand is demanding something. These years will mature you. You may not have the same need for prayer for an hour a day that some people might have. (And if we are not raising small children, we truly need that time of private prayer to get outside ourselves and to experience maturing.)

Monks and contemplative nuns withdraw from the world, in part, to try to become less selfish, more tender, and more in harmony with God. To achieve this, they pray for long hours in solitude. Mothers of young children are often offered the identical privilege—withdrawal, solitude and removal from the centres of worldly power. They do not need the long hours of private prayer. It may that their conscious times of prayer are while breast-feeding or taking a shower. The demands of the very young are as, Ron Rolheiser rightly observes, a functional substitute.

Our rule of life and our prayer will look different at different stages of our life, but if we want to grow in our relationship with God, like any other relationship we deeply want to pursue in our lives, we will discover a way to be with God.

A relationship with God is very different from a relationship with a girl you have crush on in grade six, but it’s the same in this regard, if you want to grow a relationship with a classmate or with God, you’ll spend time together. You’ll enter into the gift and joy of the other person’s presence.

Sabbath: A Sanctuary in Time

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Rule of Life M2 Sermon Notes February 14, 2010

Title: Sabbath: A Sanctuary in Time

Text: Exodus 20:8-11

Testimonies: 9:30 a.m. Karla Falk and Louise 11:30 (& Phil?) Reilly…

Props: pointer, Trellis, blackberry, bell

The season of Lent (the forty days before Easter) begins on Wednesday. Many followers of Christ voluntarily give up something during the season of Lent. Some people fast from meat, dessert, or movies or something that is significant to them. (Others give by devoting themselves to more passionate prayer or will donate more generously to the poor during Lent.) When you have fasted in some way you can truly feast and celebrate. Saying no for a while can enable you to say yes. So perhaps consider giving up something during Lent, so that you can celebrate Easter more fully.

For athletes to maximize their potential, they need to alternate between periods of active training and rest. This concept was advanced by Flavius Philostratus (A.D. 170-245) who wrote the training manuals for Greek athletes and was resurrected by Russian sports scientists who applied the concept in the 1960s and achieved stunning results with their Olympic athletes.

Today, elite athletes around the world recognize the need for work-rest ratios. They know that their body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training for seven days a week without resting actually weakens them as athletes. This is why high performing Olympic athletes train typically train hard up to six days a week, but then have a day for rest and recovery.

Woven into the fabric of our beings is a need for regular rest and recovery. God calls us to honour our design by living in synch with our need for rhythmic rest.

We’re in a new series on what it means to live by a rule or life (show trellis), or a structure that supports the growth of our relationship with God, so that we embody more fully God presence in the world (if you missed the intro message last Sunday you can download an MP3 from our website and there are more handouts Rule of Life handouts in the back—if you weren’t here last Sunday). Sabbath-keeping is a foundational part of a rule of life for a follower of Christ.

Thomas Merton, the deeply perceptive writer on the spiritual life, has said the most pervasive form of violence in the modern world is busyness… not drugs, not guns, but busyness…1

The Chinese character for busy combines the pictographs for death and heart, suggesting that busyness kills the heart. (Show character).

Perhaps you agree that Sabbath is a good thing—even important. But when was the last time you stopped work and really unplugged from all your electronic gadgets for a day? We assent to the idea that Sabbath is a good thing, but we feel we won’t be able to get all we need to get done if we take time for a weekly-24 hour Sabbath.

But “Sabbath,” as Wayne Muller (hold and SHOW BOOK on powerpoint—confirm with Jo) wisely says, “is not dependent upon our readiness to stop. We do not stop when we are finished. We do not stop when we complete our phone calls, finish our project, get through this stack of messages, or get out this report that is due tomorrow. We stop because it is time to stop. Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished, we will never stop—because our work is never completely done.”2

Some us feel that if were independently wealthy or retired we would have the time to take for a Sabbath. David Steindl-Rast has wisely said that leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant the time it deserves.3

In a monastery life is regulated by a bell (use bell). A monk or nun knows that time is not their own and when a bell rings, they must stop what they are doing and move on to what is being asked of them. Saint Benedict (who in effect coined the term rule of life in the sixth century) said, the monk must put down his pen without crossing his “t” or dotting his “I”. Monks recognize that there is a proper time and place do things: sleep, eat, pray, work, rest, and to play. Now I realize that we are not monks living in the cloister, but the beauty of living by a rule of life (a sacred rhythm) is that we have a bell that enables us to give each instance of life the time it deserves (not necessarily the time we feel like giving it). In the midst all of the time pressure in our lives, our we use a monastic bell to call us to stop for the Sabbath.

And God calls us to stop for the Sabbath, one day in seven (it may not be on Sunday as people such as doctors and firefighters may have to work on Sundays.).

In fact, God commands us to stop. Eugene Peterson rightly observes nothing less than the force of a commandment has the power to make us stop.4 In Exodus 20 vs. 8 God says: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work. The seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, our God. On it, you shall not do any work. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.” Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (BTW, the Sabbath day of rest, predates both Christianity and Judaism, it is something we can trace back to the very beginning of creation, and it’s the first thing in Scripture that God calls holy). Sabbath is not just good advice, but it is a practice that honours a need for rest that is woven into the very fabric of our being.

The Sabbath is a gift to us. The Rabbi’s called Sabbath God’s most precious gift to us.

I hope the Sabbath doesn’t feel like an “ought to,” but a gift you fall in love with.

The Sabbath provides us with what Rabbi Abraham Heschel has called a “Sanctuary in Time.”

In his book The Sabbath he writes, “The modern man does not know how to stand still, how to appreciate a moment, an event for its own sake.…

… Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space (physical architectural structures, transportation, mountains, rivers, the things we see and lay our hands on in our daily lives); on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon…to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world… The Sabbath itself is a sanctuary which we build, a sanctuary in time… The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”5

Providing Sabbath Space

Sometimes we cannot get away to new space for a vacation or even a retreat. We may not be able to experience Sabbath in a new space, but no matter where we are, by creating a sanctuary in time we enter into a safe, sacred place where we experience rest and joy in the presence of God.

If Sabbath is part of our rule of life, it will become our Sanctuary in Time where we become people who trust God. Have you ever felt, “I want to trust God more.”?

Sabbath is the perfect space for us to grow in our trust of God. The reason we don’t take Sabbath is because we feel with all we need to get done, there’s no way we can take a day off and hope to keep up.

If we set aside a day each week for God and the restoration of our soul, we are trusting that God will provide all that is truly needed.

We began our existence as human beings on the Sabbath. Theologian Karl Barth observed that while Sabbath occurred on the seventh day of creation, Sabbath was the first day for human beings. Eugene Peterson, in his book on the Psalms, Answering God, points out that the Hebrew concept of the day begins with evening, not with the morning and so we begin the day in rest. When we wake we find that God has been working…making cherry blossoms, maple leaves, and puppies… When we know that even before our day begins, God has been at work, we can rest. When we know that God doesn’t sleep—we can.”

In Psalm 127 we are reminded that God provides for us while we sleep. In Hebrew the best translation in the context of Psalm 127:2 is that God provides for us while we sleep. Solomon, who was the author (or at least the subject) of Psalm 127, received his greatest gift, his legendary wisdom, while he slept! When we understand that God provides for us in our sleep, we can sleep.

Sabbath gives us an opportunity to turn from our work and our productivity--things we are tempted to depend on--over to God and experience A Sanctuary in Time.

Sabbath is a Sanctuary in Time because it’s a Sanctuary from Work.

Sabbath for a Student

I’ve shared this story before, but it bears repeating: Marva Dawn, a woman who has preached here at Tenth and is the author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, learned how to trust God and rest during a period of time as a student in a demanding PhD program at Notre Dame. Her graduate degree required her to take French, German and Latin all at once.

(She says, “The only way for me to keep the three languages straight was to devise an arduous study schedule beginning each morning at six. I was not a morning person… I worked on Latin till Latin class at nine, after which I studied German till that class. Studying French and class took half the afternoon and then I would swim a while to stay in shape (and cool my brain!). Returning home, I continued working on French till dinner, and then studied German till I went to bed at eleven. Each night I dropped into bed utterly exhausted, but the intense pace was necessary since, after only six weeks of class, I had to be able to translate a thousand words in a two-hour test in each language…)

What enabled me to keep following this absurd schedule every day was my anticipation, celebration, and remembrance of the Sabbath. Toward the end of the week, the knowledge that Sabbath would soon come gave me incredibly powerful comfort and courage to persist, even as, at the beginning of the week, memories of the Sabbath delight I had just experienced motivated me to begin again. And on Sundays ceasing to work at languages set me free for lots of fun…

Every Sunday I enjoyed worship and Bible study, ate different foods than I ate during the rest of the week and engaged in relaxing and creative activities. Sometimes I played the organ for worship, went to the beach or swimming pool, took long walks, or played in the parks in the afternoon with friends or by myself. Most of all, Sunday was a day for enjoying God’s presence.”

Even now though things are not as intense, Marva says, each week she experiences a lovely moment of release when she goes to bed on Saturday nights. She says, “I sleep differently on Saturday nights because the Sabbath has begun.”

When I was in graduate school I had not read Marva’s book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, but I felt convicted to honor the Sabbath commandment by taking a 24-hour period away from study once a week. Because I from time to time would have exams on Monday morning, I decided I would take Sabbath from dinner time on Saturday to Sunday evening dinner. Sabbath enabled me to study more effectively the other six days and made school a more enjoyable experience.


Whether we are student, or working, at home, part of our Sabbath rule of life--will mean we do something different on our Sabbath than what we do the other six days of our week.

I have a professor friend whose work involves a lot of mental effort. He teaches, he researches, he writes. For him, on Sabbath (though he might not use the term) means go fish. It is very restorative for him. He tempted… Now if this person were a fisherman, fishing probably wouldn’t be restorative for him. So part of what Sabbath involves us doing something different from what we would normally do the other 5 or 6 days of the week.

What does Sabbath keeping look like for a mother with young children? Jennifer Tong raised that question on our Tenth blog.

(Karla Falk 9:30, Louise Reilly 11:30 a.m.)

Karla:

How do you keep the Sabbath as mom with young kids?

It's not much that we do to keep the Sabbath--there are a couple of key points from my perspective. The first is to limit the amount of housework (no laundry, no cleaning, no grocery shopping) and the second is to use the kids’ nap time for personal rest--either an actual nap for me or reading for pleasure. I like to cook, so I don't find it onerous to cook on the Sabbath but we do often order in on Sunday nights. Then there's less work for clean up after supper. The other item is that sometimes, depending on how our weeks have gone, Kevin will get up with the kids--I'm usually awake, but to not have to be the first response for diaper changes and breakfast is a welcome rest.

Other little pieces of Sabbath come on a weekly or yearly basis. Kevin and I hire a sitter once a week for a date night. We either take in a play at a local playhouse or go out for supper. For the next few weeks we’ll be taking some French tutoring together. We find this time of connection with each other essential in a busy week, especially when meal times are very child-centered and we have commitments in the evenings.

Another wonderful way to have a Sabbath on a yearly basis is the Mom’s Retreat that the Thursday morning mom’s group organizes. I’ve been leading the mom’s group for 2 years now and have attended 3 retreats. Even when I lead and have preparations in terms of worship, I find the weekend to be a wonderful break from the demands of my work of motherhood and household management. Our next retreat is coming up on the weekend of February 26-28 and we have spaces we need to fill, so I invite you to join us for a weekend of fellowship, worship, rest, and perhaps best of all, someone else cooking for us. Please talk to me after the service if you are interested—as I said, we need more people to sign up or else we’ll have to cancel this wonderful event.

Louise:

When did you first begin to intentionally observe Sabbath as a family?

It really began for us when my husband Phil started here at Tenth as Pastor of the Third Service. As some of you will know, Phil was also working a full-time job in business while pastoring the Third Service, the combination of which (though incredibly life-giving for him) was also quite all-consuming. We have two young children, at that time very small, and more and more we were realizing that a lack of boundaries on both of our parts was leading to us having less and less time together as a family. In addition to being a full-time Mum, I also work part-time from home – generally either very late at night or very early in the morning while my children are asleep - and so there was always the feeling that I was never quite away from my work, even at weekends. As we began to recognize this, we sought to change it … and without even really recognizing it, we began to observe Sabbath together.

So, how does Sabbath look for you as a family?

Well, given the nature of Phil’s work when we first began this journey, it made sense for us to set Saturday apart as our day of rest, and we have continued to do that even after Phil stepped down from his pastoral role here at Tenth. For me, the key difference on a Saturday is that I put the laptop away, and do not, under any circumstances, do my (paid) work! I am able to set both my work aside, and the worry about if and when it’s going to get done. This is very freeing, and allows me to be fully present to my family & to enjoy the time I have with them. Having children certainly redefines the meaning of “rest” though, and so while Saturdays may not involve as much pondering and reflection as Phil and I might like, there is a lot of focus on fun, and on simply being together. We often take day trips, or more often than not we wander around Granville Island together eating sausage rolls and watching street performers! We take the opportunity to connect with friends too, and enjoy the freedom of doing this without the pressures that week-days bring. We also try to avoid cooking wherever possible on a Saturday – just little things like this make the day more restful and refreshing.

How has this impacted your lives individually and as a family?

I know that for Phil and I, we now really understand Sabbath as a gift from God. For me, the dynamic of my part-time work is incredibly tiring, but I now have a day in my week where this is set aside and replaced with physical refreshment and rest. Our boys, though still very young, know that we will have a day together each week and they look forward to this. By intentionally taking Saturdays as Sabbath, we are accepting this amazing gift, and are already beginning to wonder how we survived without it!


A friend of mine grabs a little rest from parenting by finding another mother with kids who are close in age and get together—letting kids take care of themselves and experience a Sabbath from the routine.

Sabbath for almost all of us will mean—unplugging from this (show laptop or backberry).

It means we won’t be creating our to do list (unless it is to just dump something from our brain so that we can be free of it), we won’t do wedding planning, taxes.

What about shopping?

On my Sabbath day my wife, young son, and I may go to a store we can walk to not far from our home, pick up some food at the deli for dinner. A little shopping feels permissible, but if I say, “Well now that we are at the store, I might as well generate a list of all the things we need this week”... then shopping starts to feel like work for me and I feel like I am violating the Sabbath. We can sense intuitively when something crosses the line and becomes work.

But I would say in general, without being legalistic, we ought to do away with our stock up at Costco or getting all what we need at London Drugs shopping on our Sabbath and minimize our shopping in general and savour the gifts we cannot buy—the priceless gifts of God, his son Jesus, our friends, family, to rest and enjoy our bodies and use them in ways that bring joy.

Our Sabbath is meant to be a gift A Sanctuary in Time (not a Sanctuary in Costco).

As a new parent, I revised my rule of life. I thought more about how I could do my “ought to” shopping on days other than my Sabbath… It’s a good thing that many people have 2 days off each week. One can be a Sabbath and other can be a day for getting the things done we need to do: shopping, paying bills, laundry. (It takes some work to enter the Sabbath. Busyness can be a form of sloth because we neglected plan for rest. The book of Hebrews chapter 4:11 make every effort to enter into God’s Sabbath rest.).

Do What Brings Life

Some people grew up in strict homes where as children the Sabbath was a dreary day of don’ts: don’t play baseball, don’t play games, don’t chew gum. The only thing they were allowed to do on the Sabbath was stay in the house and read the Bible…

How do we honor the God’s intention for the Sabbath?

We honour God’s intention by choosing things that draws us to God and things that bring life.

The Rabbi said that Sabbath is God most precious gift. It’s a Sanctuary in Time.



Jesus in response to the teachers of law who so multiplied the rules and regulations around the Sabbath so that it was no longer a joy, but a burden, no longer a delight, but a duty, said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”

Vancouver Island pastor Mark Buchanan says on the Sabbath, Embrace what gives life.

(I may use this)

“Sabbath… is a reprieve from doing what you ought to do, even though the list of oughts is infinitely long and never done. Oughts are tyrants, noisy and surly, chronically dissatisfied. Sabbath is the day you trade places with them: they go into the salt mine and you go out dancing. It is the one day when the only thing you must do is to not do the things you must.

What is life-giving for you? (a moment to reflect on that.)

Like for many of you, being outside is restorative for me. Walking, trailing running, hiking, or sailing are centering life-giving experiences for me.

Sabbath to a great day eat different foods, to take a nap, to spend time with people you love, to make love for married couples, and most important to celebrate and worship God and to give thanks for his gift of life. Sabbath is a day to delight in God, in people, in the gifts that God has given you. Sabbath is a day to connect with God, ourselves, with others and all that ennobles.

The fourth commandment says that the Sabbath day is to be a day where we stop and set apart a day for the Lord, it is to be kept holy (emphasis added). It means we are to set apart Sabbath for a sacred purpose.

We’re in a series on a rule of life. A rule of life isn’t just about adding things (use the sheet). It’s also about subtracting things. “Spirituality is not about addition, but about subtraction,” said Meister Eckhart.

Some of us need to create a ‘to do’ list, and some of us need to create or a ‘stop-doing’ list. A healthy spirituality includes pruning, cutting some good things so that what is most important and enduring flourishes. Sometimes we need to say no to say yes.

Everyone says, “I’m so busy.” But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, Our busyness is like the weather. Everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it. We can do something about it by pruning and by committing to stopping on the Sabbath. Why not during Lent, for the next 40 days before Easter, commit to honour a 24-hour Sabbath?

Part of way we develop our rule of life will include pruning so that we can enjoy what the Rabbi’s called God’s most precious gift, Sabbath, our Sanctuary in Time.

Practicing the Presence of God

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Practicing the Presence of God February 7, 2010

Texts: 1 Corinthians 9:25; Daniel 6:1-11

BIG IDEA: We become like Christ by practicing the presence of God through a rule of life.

Props: trellis, bell, pointer.

(Disclaimer about attire and nature of the sermon)

Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian education psychologist, made a public appeal for a woman—any woman—to marry him. He had a written a book in the 1960s called Bringing Up Genius!, a book that expressed his conviction that great performers are made not born. He wanted to prove his idea by raising some kids of his own. So, he broadcast his need for a wife. Amazingly, Klara a school teacher from the Ukraine agreed to marry Laszlo and conduct this experiment.

They had three daughters Susan, Sophia, and Judit. Although Laszlo was only a mediocre chess player and Karla showed no ability at chess at all, they devoted their lives to teaching their girls how to play chess. They quit their jobs and homeschooled their daughters—prioritizing several hours each day to chess instruction.

What happened? At age 21 Susan became the first woman ever to be named a grand master, the highest rank in the world of chess. Not long afterwards, Judit became a grand master at the age of fifteen, the youngest person of either gender to win the prestigious designation. Sophia, who was considered the least committed to the chess of the sisters, did become the sixth-ranked woman in the world. When Susan, Sophia, and Judit competed as team in the Women’s Olympiad, they achieved Hungary’s first ever victory against the Soviet Union and became national heroes. The Polgar sisters had devoted their lives to the game, and emerged as world-class players. But when the sisters were in their twenties, all three sisters independently decided that there was more to life than chess. “It’s not that chess was too much for me,” Sophia said, “it was too little.” The sisters got married, had kids of their own, and eased up on the chess-focused work.1

As accomplished as they had become as chess players, each of the Polgar sisters became aware as young adults that chess for them was not a pursuit worthy of their entire lives.

Is there something you feel is worthy of your entire life?

Something you deeply want to pursue with every part of you?

Many people admire Olympic athletes because of their focused dedication to sport.

Perhaps you dream of becoming an accomplished athlete (maybe not a world-class athlete, but great in some sport); or maybe you long to be a skilled artist.

It could be you want to truly distinguish yourself in your work as a teacher, doctor, or business leader. Or become a loving spouse or wise parent.

Or maybe you have yet to discover that one thing to give your life for.

Some of feel us that if God were to appear to us as he did to Moses in the flames of a burning bush, or if he sent us a message typed out in the clouds, then we too might have something truly worthy of giving our entire lives for. But, if we are followers of Christ we already have a call so lofty, so all encompassing, that it is worthy of all that we have—we have a call from God to build our lives on the cornerstone of his son Jesus Christ: A call to become like him and to embody God’s life-giving presence in the world for others.

But how do we become a person who reflects God’s life-giving presence for others? An important ingredient in becoming this kind of person is practice. Paul told his young protégé Timothy (1 Timothy 4:7), “Train yourself to be godly.”

1 Corinthians 9:25, Paul using an athletic image says, “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” Paul had likely been in Corinth during the Isthmian Games, second only the Olympics, during the games of A.D. 51.

We know how absurd it would be for someone to try win a race in a tournament by simply “trying” on the day race and not “training.”

Passion is very important in succeeding in something, but passion is not enough. Let’s say you’re a huge hockey fan and more than anything else you want Canada to win the Olympic gold medal here in Vancouver. And let’s say the coach of Team Canada men’s team, Mike Babock, phones you this afternoon and says, “Our top two goalies, Roberto Luongo and Martin Brodeur, have just sustained injuries and are unable to play for Team Canada. I understand you’re one of most enthusiastic hockey fans ever, would you wear the team Canada jersey (show jersey) and play goalie for team Canada?” There’s a part of you that really wants to do this for Canada—and God knows you’d do your best—but you also know you’re not ready to play at that level because you haven’t been training for that kind of competition. You say, “When I roll off the couch and move the fridge, I get a little short of breath.” You’re not ready.

Every Olympic athlete knows that excelling in your game begins with good old-fashioned hard work. There is no magic pill, no such thing as effortless grace. In sports we see how practice leads to growth.

Shikuza Arakawa (show photo) a figure skater from Japan won the Olympic gold medal in Turin at the last winter games. Arakawa’s specialty was what some called the Ina Bauer—bending backwards almost double with the feet pointing in opposite directions—and then moving to a three jump combination. Perfecting such a move takes a huge amount of practice. For Arakawa, it took almost 20 years of practice (she began skating at age 5). A conservative estimate, Arakawa’s path to gold meant she fell on her butt, on the cold hard ice, about 20,000 times.

This is also true in music. People simply don’t become accomplished musicians without practice. A famous study of music students in Berlin’s elite Academy of Music has shown that no elite professional musician floats to the top without effort. Those of the persons who emerged as elite musicians—without exception— practiced 10,000 hours. What about Mozart? Wasn’t he simply endowed from on high? He was no doubt extraordinarily gifted, but more current scholarship has demonstrated even Mozart didn’t compose original work that is now considered a masterwork until his was 21; that is, until he been composing for 10 years. Many people believed for 200 years that Mozart could compose major pieces in his head and then write them out complete. That belief was based on a famous letter which has since proven to be a forgery. Mozart was extremely talented, but also had to practice like everyone else.

Great athletes, accomplished musicians, skilled teachers and carpenters, and wise parents have a path (conscious or unconscious) to prepare them to thrive in their roles.

Sometimes we believe our spiritual life is an exception to this rule. We may think we can grow without effort—that it will just happen, perhaps by luck or through a zap from God.

But, those who flourish in their spiritual lives with God have a “rule of life”--some kind of “trellis” and a set of practices that enable them to become who they are. They train themselves to be godly (1 Timothy 4: 7). We cannot attain inner transformation apart from God’s gracious work in us. Apart from Christ indwelling us, we can bear no fruit (John 15:5). But, we are also called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, precisely because it is God who works in us to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose (Phil 2:11-13). Grace, as Dallas Willard reminds us, is not opposed to effort, but earning.

A farmer cannot grow corn on his own, but he can cultivate the soil, sow seeds, and water the ground and trust that powers beyond his control will enable the grain to grow.

A sailor cannot produce the wind to sail a boat. But a sailor can raise and trim the sails, and position the rudder so that when the wind comes the boat will move.

It it’s very attractive to believe that accomplished athletes, skilled musicians, and professional people are simply gifted from God, because that lets us off the “hook.” But if we have a role in our spiritual development, then it means we are called to take ownership of our spiritual lives.

One of the practical ways we do ownership of our spirituals—to live a life where we “practice the presence of God”-- is through a rule of life.

The word “rule” has negative connotations for many people, but don’t let the word “rule” intimidate you. The word “rule” comes from the Greek word that means “trellis.” A rule of life is simply a trellis that enables us to grow upward and become freer and more fruitful (show image of the trellis—use pointer). For a grapevine to grow and to produce its best fruit, it requires a trellis (or some kind of support system) so it can be pruned and guided in its growth.

So, it is for us. In order to grow and flourish in our relationship with God, we need some kind of trellis, some kind of structure (like an athlete or musician) that will enable us to organize our lives so that Christ is at the core.

Without some kind of rule of life, some kind of trellis, we can have the best of intentions—even great passion, but like someone playing hockey who desperately wants to play well, but has no rhythm for practice--we will find ourselves running out of gas on the ice or find ourselves tripping and crashing into the boards…

Without a rule of life we can find ourselves running out of gas, feeling spiritual burned out. Without a rule we can find that we don’t have capacity to stand with Christ-like integrity in a particular arena of life… (We’ve all had some kind of integrity collapse). I have a friend who is a devout follower of Christ who was unfaithful to his wife. When he was asked about it later, he said that he had (among other things) become so busy with his work, and his traveling, that he felt that he could not afford to honor God’s commandment to take a Sabbath each week. So instead of taking a Sabbath day once a week, he said he would take a Sabbath day once every ten days…or 12 days…or 15 days. Without being fully aware of it, his soul was leaking and he was become spiritually weak; and, in that state of vulnerability, he violated his code, God’s code for him. A rule of life helps a person. A create a kind of rhythm where we are resting and receiving life and strength from God.

A rule of life helps us build a trellis so that we experience each part of our lives: our work and rest, our study and play, our times of solitude and times with people as prayer … as prayer. A rule enables us to receive the life of the Spirit in each part of life so we become like Christ and embody more of God’s life-giving presence in the world for others.

In a monastery, a monk’s life is guided by a certain rule, a certain rhythm —that is literally dictated by a bell (use bell).

A monk or nun knows that time is not their own and when a bell rings, they must stop what they are doing and move on to what is being asked of them. Saint Benedict said the monk must put down his pen without crossing his “t” or dotting his “I”.2 Monks recognize that there is a proper time and place to do things: sleep, eat, pray, work, play and recognize that each part of their lives helps to form them in the life of Christ. The beauty of living by a rule of life is that we have a bell that enables to give each instance of life the time it deserves (not necessarily the time we feel like giving it). In the midst all of the time pressure in our lives, our monastic bell can pause, and experience Christ in each part of our lives. A rule of life allows us to pray without feeling guilty that we’re not working, and to work in a way that enables to see our work as a prayer.

Daniel was a person in Scripture who lived by a rule and bell. As a young man, Daniel’s homeland of Judah was besieged by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (in about the year 600 B.C.). Daniel and a number of his contemporaries were deported to Babylon. As a young man Daniel was cut off from his family, his friends, his teachers, his culture, and his language. A potential leader in the Babylonian Empire, he was sent to the elite university of his new land; and he was immersed in a completely pagan way of viewing history, science, philosophy, and religion. He was also being exposed to astrology, sorcery and magic—all things that were considered idolatrous in his homeland Israel. Yet, rather than being carried out to sea by the cultural wave of Babylon, Daniel is able to resist. He puts his life at risk by choosing to not swear allegiance to the King of Babylon (shown by his refusal to eat at the king’s table).

But, he prays—even when praying is a crime punishable by death at the mouths of ravenous lions. In his work at the government, he distinguishes himself as a person with an excellent spirit and unassailable integrity (Daniel 6). How does he do it? Daniel does not leave this to chance his life with God to chance. He has a plan to develop and sustain his life with God. Daniel was not a cloistered monk, nor of clergy, and precisely because he was very much in the world, he felt like he needed to live by a rule of life. Daniel made it his practice to kneel and prays three times a day (Daniel 6:10) even when he knows this may cost him his life. Through this daily rhythm of praying toward the temple, Daniel centers his life on God and receives the life-sustaining presence of the Spirit which empowers him to live a life faithful to God.

When we become people who structure our lives so that we spend time in the presence of the living God--in prayer meditation, the Word, in nature, with people, through service—and see some secular things as prayer.. work, study, recreation and the unique places where we are meeting God--we become people who bear the life of God and are able to live with a new kind of energy in the world.

So what does a rule of life look like?

Some of the categories that we might think about in a rule of life may include:

(Please reach for the sheet)

§ SABBATH: Taking time to rest, worship, and embrace life.

(If you have stories about Sabbath or other spiritual please share your story on our blog… for the encouragement of others).

§ PRAYER: Finding a daily rhythm of seeking God.

o FAMILY: Honoring our family relationships. (We all operate consciously or unconsciously with some kind of rule. If spending time with family is important to you, you might have rule that says we eat dinner together. You think of it as a rule, but it’s a rule.)

§ STUDY: Learning about God, ourselves, and the world.

§ WORK: Seeing work as part of our worship.

§ SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIPS: Walking with spiritual companions.

§ FINANCIAL LIFE: Using our income in a way that honors God.

§ CARE FOR THE BODY: Getting adequate sleep, exercise, and practicing healthy eating habits.

§ SEXUALITY: Using our sexual energy in healthy ways that honor God’s design for us. (Vancouver is a gateway city)

(This is going to sound like we’re going on bit of a detour, but stay with me… Vancouver is a city where women and children are vulnerable to being trafficked into the sex trade. With the Olympics here there will be more demand than ever for purchasing sex. We believe that buying and selling of sex is a violation of a person's dignity, so we supporting this (show T-Shirt) campaign: Buying Sex is Not Sport. If you’d like to support this campaign advocating on behalf of women and children at risk of being coerced into the sex trade, then please considering buying one of these shirts in the back.)

§ RECREATION: Having a life beyond work and doing things that re-create us. Play can be a form of prayer.

§ MISSION: Participating in God’s mission to redeem the earth spiritually, socially, and environmentally. (The rule is not a self-improvement but it’s a quest become like Christ and to embody more God’s life-giving presence in the world for others.

(Over the next several weeks we’ll be looking at some of the pieces of this rule.)

Is there ONE part you feel led to work to start on?

So how do we actually build a rule of life?

How do we begin? (Let’s give a word here and unpack others later).

Build Slowly

A sustainable rule of life will be built slowly one section at a time, tested and continually revised.

It won’t be helpful to hear about a rule of life and conclude, “I have been a lazy bum. I haven’t been very disciplined about prayer, eating, and exercising. Starting tomorrow morning I am going to get up at 4:00 in the morning and spend an hour in prayer, an hour reading the Bible, and then I am going to go to the park, run 10 k, come back, have a nutritious breakfast. Then I will go to work, come home by 6:00 p.m., eat dinner with the family, do my e-mail, watch part of the hockey game on TV, and start reading The Brothers Karamazov.”

What will happen? First of all, you are probably going to arrive late at work--all hot and sweaty because you did not have time to take a shower. And then you are going to be up until 2:00 a.m. in the morning trying to get everything done. And the next morning when the alarm goes off at 4:00, you are going to hit the snooze button repeatedly and pray while you are going to work.

So it’s important to build a rule of life slowly one category at a time.

What part of the rule would be most fruitful to begin with for you?

I was just with someone last week in Toronto who heard me teach on this rule of life in Mexico a couple of years ago. Jacob told me he took this outline and has kept it in his journal. And the one he’s been working is care of the body: getting enough sleep and exercise and this has helped in all the other areas of life. For you it might be something else.

What part of the rule would be most helpful for you to begin with? Where do you feel the greatest amount of need, or energy or joy?

We who follow Christ have a call that is worthy of our entire life.

We have a call so lofty--so all encompassing that it is worthy of all that we have—we have a call to become like Christ and to embody his life-giving presence in the world for others.

With a such a great, lofty call—doesn’t it make sense to have a pathway to fulfill this call?

Doesn’t it make sense to have a trellis, some kind of rule of life?

There is no short-cut to becoming like Christ. This is the business of our whole lives. So let’s begin.