Rule of Life

So, all right, would you pray with me?

Let's pray together.

Father, it's fun to laugh.

God, I thank you for the staff that you brought us.

What an incredible, incredible group of people.

They are so key to how you've blessed our church family.

And I think about the worship and the sweet spirit.

It's just overwhelming this morning.

And I thank you for our team and our leadership and how they lead.

And so, God, we ask now, come, Holy Spirit, come, Holy Spirit.

And I do want to lift up Miss Margaret.

I want to pray, God, that you would have your hand upon her this week.

I know there's others probably that have things going on in their life.

God, would you be with them?

A sweet young lady named Charlie asked me to pray for her family in the midst of loss.

And so I pray for Kurt and Anne Marie and Charlie and Bertie as they experienced a loss in their family this week.

Others have experienced difficult things this week.

God, we pray.

We can't do anything.

We can't have influence.

We can't do the work that you call us to do without the power and the movement of your Holy Spirit.

So come, Holy Spirit.

Let's say it together, church.

Come, Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

So so you wake up in the morning.

I wake up in the morning, and I'm faced with a few decisions.

I know that I want to make it to my chair.

That's my place.

My place with God, right?

I've learned a couple of things in my walk with the Lord.

Pick a time, pick a place, stick to it.

Pick a time, pick a place, stick to it.

My time with God.

But but there's always there's always a pull to distract me.

There's a pull.

I want to know what happened overnight around the world.

What's happening in the Ukraine?

What's happening?

Is Syria and Israel about to break out into war?

I want to, I'm pulled.

I want to go, I want to go find, I want to go look at the score from the Braves game.

And so there's this pull of distraction before I ever get to my chair, and I am committed to my time with the Lord.

I want to be with Jesus.

I'm pulled away.

I'm pulled away.

And the next thing you know, the next thing you know is you is you find yourself scrolling, and five, 10, 15 minutes has gone by, and then you think, you pull back, you're right, ah man, I need to get back with Jesus.

I need to get back with Jesus.

And so you open up the word of God, you open up your devotional, you get your journal out, and all of a sudden, the baby starts crying.

Right?

The baby starts crying.

So you gotta go check on the baby.

You gotta make sure the baby's taken care of, and and and then before you know it, before you know it, all of a sudden is your spouse is now up, and the day has begun, and you have missed out on the most important part of your day.

Have you ever been there?

How many of you have been there?

You understand what I'm talking about?

And you say, well, you know what?

I'll make up for it later in the day.

And then the day happens.

Oh, I'll I'll I'll start, I'll, I'll, I'll get with the Lord tonight.

And whatever season you are in, all of a sudden it's gone, and you've missed the opportunity to do the most important thing that you're supposed to do in our life.

And so, and as I talk with people, their intentions, they have the best intentions.

We all have the best intentions, but we quickly get distracted from what is the best thing for us.

And in my conversations with people, I realize I'm not the only one that gets easily distracted.

It's one of the great challenges of our lives.

And in the culture and in the society that we live in today, you're watching with me online, you are bombarded with a lot of good things that distract you from the best thing.

And this is the challenge of the culture we live in.

It's the challenge of the church, it's the challenge of a spiritual person.

It's a person who's walking with Jesus.

We miss out on the best things.

We miss seeing the forest through the trees.

Now, Ronald Rolhauser is a guy that we've quoted a good bit lately, and I want to tell you who he's a Catholic theologian.

And yes, there are Catholics who walk with Jesus.

And I say that because a lot of people have this perspective that if you come from a different certain background, you can't have a relationship with Jesus.

But but here's what he says he says, we for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.

It's not that we have anything against God, depth, spirit.

We would like these.

It is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our any of these that we are that show up on our radar screens.

We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall and the fantasy life they produce in us than we are in church.

And everybody said together, ouch.

Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks within our spiritual lives.

John Ortberg says it this way.

He says, for many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith, it's that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

Now, when we started church at the grove, there was this intentional idea of making church simple.

I came to Christ in one tradition, and then I ended up in another tradition.

But both traditions, church was very busy.

And one of them, we had Sunday school on Sunday morning, and then we had church service on Sunday morning.

And then we would come back and we would do church training, which really was another word for discipleship, at 5 o'clock, and then we would have a whole nother worship service at 6 o'clock.

That's all in one day.

And then if you were really spiritual, you would come back either on Monday or Tuesday for what was called church visitation.

And that's when you would just go to people's houses, sometimes with an appointment, sometimes without an appointment.

And that's really what increased my prayer life.

I would pray all the way up the sidewalk, sidewalk.

God, please don't let them be home.

Please don't let them be home.

Please don't let them be home.

And I and I'm being a little bit honest, but it was it was still good for me to be out, share my faith.

But but then you then you had Wednesday night.

And if you were a good Baptist church, you had a Wednesday night meal, and then you had a Wednesday night prayer meeting, and then that's not counting the other activities that were going on during the week, and we wonder why we didn't have time to be in the community with the people that didn't know Jesus.

And so we started church at the Grove.

We're gonna be a simple church.

We're gonna free up our time so we can not just walk with Jesus and be with Jesus, but we can love people that need Jesus.

And so we've done a really great job of maintaining the simplicity so we can reach people rather than filling up all that time with other things.

Insert sarcasm.

We're not using the extra time to love God more deeply and to love others sacrificially.

We've simply filled our lives with other things that keep us busy.

And so it's not that we have anything against God.

We want more of God, but but the practical part of it is we don't discipline and plan.

This is why we're doing this series.

We want to follow the words of Dallas Willard, who is uh he, along with a handful of men back in the 50s and 60s, that they they were trying to bring the church back to a place where we had spiritual disciplines, and they became the foundation on which we would be the church for the world to see something significant.

And Dallas Willard says this you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.

You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.

He said, you can't be a spiritual person and have depth and be busy at the same time.

And so our heart is that we would press into the Lord and that we would, as a church, listen, listen, I've shared the first half of the the first part of the life of this church, it was all about let's reach, let's reach, let's reach, let's go after people, let's go after people.

And I and I got to a point and I realized, okay, we got some people.

What do I do with them?

What do I do with them?

And and so Rollheiser, again, he says this, and so we end up as good people, but as people who are, and so we end up as good people, but as people who are not very deep.

Not bad, just busy, not immoral, just distracted, not lacking in soul, just preoccupied, not disdaining depth, just never doing the things to get us there.

And author and and and modern writer Tim Chalys, he says it this way.

He says, with the ever-present distractions in our lives, we are quickly becoming a people of shallow thoughts.

And shallow thoughts will lead to shallow living.

And so we're called to diminish the distractions in our lives.

We're called to become people of depth.

People of depth.

The life that Jesus has called us into is not one that is based on shallow faith or a hollow relationship, but it's one of abundant life.

The gospel, listen, the gospel, the gospel is simple.

But the gospel is not shallow.

Jesus came and he demonstrated what it was like to live a life with death.

Loving God fully, loving others sacrificially.

And what did he do?

He invested in a group of men and women that followed him, and then he gave his life to be an atonement for our sin, to provide the forgiveness of our sin.

In his death, in his suffering, he took upon himself sin.

It's the gospel.

They buried him, and then on the third day, on Sunday morning, he was bodily resurrected to prove that he had power over sin and death.

And then he spent the next 50 days investing, preparing his followers for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And so we want that, right?

Jesus says, I've come that you would have life.

The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

I've come that you would have life and have it to the full, the abundant life that Jesus and the gospel provides for us.

Listen, we want revival.

I want to see God move.

I want to see God bring revival.

I want more of God.

But here's listen, we say amen.

Amen.

If we see a move of God, what are we going to do with the people that respond?

We've got to get the teaching that we're trying to teach, that God is teaching us, and that we are sharing with the church.

We've got to get this down.

Let me tell you something.

Let me preface what I'm going to say.

And the church will be triumphant.

The church is flourishing on places, on places on the planet and other places in the world.

But let me tell you something.

There is a dangerous decline, fast decline of influence the church is facing in our culture.

Larry shared it.

87% in Walton County.

I mean, this is the this is the the kind of I mean this is the right central culture of conservatism.

I mean, people, everybody believes in God.

Everybody has a cousin who's a deacon or a granddaddy who's a pastor.

But none of them are going to church.

They're done.

Why?

I don't know.

Maybe because we're shallow.

And so we we need a move of God to reverse the decline.

But let me tell you, if God moves, we not only need to see a move of God, we need to be prepared to teach a generation what to do once God has won their heart.

And that's why we're teaching what we're teaching.

How do you become like Jesus?

And if you want to experience, here's the big idea: if you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you've got to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

And so last week we looked at Luke 10 and we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan.

We've called to be men and women of love, not to be in such a hurry, but to, you know, love has a pace, and the pace is slow.

We talked about how God moves.

Jesus walked at a slower pace.

There's a Japanese theologian that wrote a book called The Three Mile an Hour God.

And he says that's just that's kind of just the normal pace that we walk at when we are walking with people that we love.

And so to walk the way of Jesus is to slow down.

How do you spell love?

T, spell it with me.

I M E.

Spell it.

Do you know how to spell time?

You know how to spell love?

How is love spelled?

T I M E.

Slow down.

Love has a speed, and the speed of love is slow.

So today, this next passage, Luke 10, same chapter.

Luke 10, 38 through 42.

As Jesus and the disciples continue on their way to Jerusalem, they come to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he taught, but Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing.

She came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to tell you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?

Listen, listen.

Tell her to come and help me.

But the Lord said to her, My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details.

Listen, there is only one thing.

Say one thing.

One thing worth being concerned about.

Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.

I was taught, there had been a time in my life where I was taught Mary and Martha represent different personalities.

There are some Marys and there are some Martha's.

Martha's are busy people that do the work, and Marys are contemplative people that have spiritual depth.

That is not true.

It's not true.

These are two sisters.

They show up other places in the scripture.

They are the sisters of Lazarus, and they would see Jesus raise their brother from the dead.

And so they're introduced to us, and it's a very unique story.

Jesus is in their home.

What an incredible story to have Jesus in your home.

All the disciples are around him and he's teaching them.

Martha is busy scurrying around.

I've got to make sure there's a meal prepared.

And some of us are Martha's.

We think we've got to be busy.

The house has to be right.

Everything's got to be perfect.

One of my best friends, he was in my wedding.

His name was Randy.

Whenever I went to his house, this is not, I'm not making this up.

Whenever I went to his house, I would knock on the door, I would hear the vacuum cleaner come on.

Every time, every time, before his mother would come answer the door, she she she she she she wanted to vacuum.

And I would wait patiently at the door.

Some of us are like that.

Hey, before we have a small group, I can we can't have a small group.

We got three kids here now almost a grown, but but we we would start cleaning on Sunday.

They'd say, you know, if we if we start cleaning, the first thing they ask is who's coming over?

And so Martha is busy, but Mary is the younger sister, and she's sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Now, there's several layers of understanding here.

Number one, she is choosing the best thing.

She's choosing the one thing that will really make a difference in her life.

But let me give you a couple of other things to think about that are awesome, that are that are really cool, because you it was very common for a rabbi, a Jewish rabbi, would choose, he would choose followers, come follow him, and we know he chose the 12 apostles.

They were apostles, but there were other disciples that were following him.

And so Mary is one of those disciples that is following Jesus.

She's a woman.

No surprise, she's a woman, Miriam.

Her name might have been Miriam, Mary, Miriam.

She's fit sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Only disciples, or another word that you might understand or that we use on occasion.

Apprentices.

Jesus had apprentices.

They're apprentices.

They come and learn what it means to live the life of Jesus, to be like Jesus, to learn to do what Jesus would do if he were you.

And Mary, this was a bit scary.

This would have been a major topic.

Jesus, who is a Jewish rabbi, has allowed a woman to sit at his feet while he's teaching.

Just an interesting note.

Jesus changed the landscape and the culture he was in.

But back to the main point.

Martha begins to complain.

Jesus, you see, I'm doing all this work.

And Mary is simply sitting there at your feet.

Now let me say, let me say something here.

Busyness outside the work of the Holy Spirit will always lead to a critical spirit.

Busyness often leads us to be critical in looking at other people.

Why aren't they doing something?

Why are they doing something?

Do you see what all I'm doing?

Why are they doing something?

They need to get up off their, they need to get busy.

They need to do something.

But Peter Schizero says this.

He wrote a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.

He says, in our efforts to serve God, most of us actually end up skimping on our relationship with Him.

We're in a perpetual state of hurry, battling to make the best use of every spare minute.

We end our days exhausted from trying to meet the endless needs around us.

And then our free time is filled with more demands than an already overburdened life.

Some of us are actually addicted not to drugs or alcohol, but to the adrenaline rush of doing.

We might read about the need to rest and recharge, but we fear how many things might fall apart if we did.

So we just keep going.

And in this hurried and exhausted state, we have little time or energy left to invest in our relationship with God, ourselves, or others.

As a result, our own lives remain largely unchanged.

And the only thing we have to give away to those that we lead is our shallow discipleship.

Jesus doesn't condemn the actions of Mary and tell Mary to get up and help his sister, but instead he says this.

So he's praising Mary for choosing the best thing.

Not giving in to busyness, not giving in to the distractions.

Many of us would say we love Jesus.

And I believe you do.

But I believe that many of us haven't experienced what it means to be close to Jesus.

It's sad to have all the promises of God at our disposal, but never experience the power of those promises.

Corey Russell says this, he says, We need a new breed of people.

Listen.

Who, like Mary, refuse to worship the God of busyness.

They refuse to worship the God of distraction.

These people are courageous in that they refuse to miss the moment.

So they choose to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen.

We want to see God work.

We want to see fruit.

We want to see the fruit of our fruit of the Spirit, fruit of God in our lives.

Fruitfulness flows from being, not doing.

Let me say it again.

Fruitfulness flows from being, not doing.

It's why we need to look closely at the life of Jesus and adopt his lifestyle.

John 15, 5.

Yes, I am the vine, you are the branches.

Those who remain in me, and I in them will produce much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Last week we shared this verse.

It's one of the one of one of my favorite.

Matthew 11, 28 and 29.

Jesus says, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens.

How many of us are a little bit weary?

I mean, life is tough.

How many of you have some heavy burdens?

How many of you are lying?

Look at what he says.

I will give you what?

Rest.

He says, take my yoke.

And you know what a yoke is?

A yoke, let me make sure you understand this because it's completely out of our cultural understanding.

A yoke, when you would have two oxen who would plow a field.

See, we're we, hey, if you want to plow a field, you you crank up a tractor today.

But in that culture, you would have two oxen, and they would be held together by a yoke, either made of wood or leather.

But also in the spiritual world, in the world of a rabbi, the rabbi had a certain type of yoke that he taught from.

And the yoke was his authority or his specific style of teaching.

And so Jesus is saying, take my yoke, my spirit, my teaching.

Take my yoke upon you, and I will give you rest.

You'll find rest for your souls.

I'm humble and gentle at heart.

You'll find rest for your soul.

So if you want to experience the rest for your soul, if you want to be fruitful, we've got to be attentive to learn how to apprentice to Jesus and to apprentice to other people who have learned how to follow Jesus.

It all comes down to these three real simple goals.

Number one is be with Jesus.

Be with Jesus.

So this morning I'm praying.

I'm I just part of my Sunday, you know, I usually don't need an alarm clock on Sunday morning.

But I'm up, but I want I really want to give the first part.

And and I'm I'm beginning to think, today is Jonah's birthday.

How can I make fun of him?

How can I celebrate him?

I was there's some good intentions.

And the Lord just he just kind of gripped my heart with the love and a thankful spirit for Jonah.

And he just said, There is something, Jonah, that I want you to share with Jonah.

There is a multiplied inheritance that awaits you.

I think that could be your ministry.

It might be with the number of kids you have.

Reese shakes her head.

God has a way of taking our plans and laughing.

The question we must ask, how would Jesus live if he were me?

21st century.

We want to be the church.

We want a fresh move of God.

We want to see God work.

We want to see people attracted to Jesus and to his church.

So listen, we've got to, listen, we've got to, we've got to keep the main thing, the main thing.

We've got to, we've got to, this, this, this ball, this represents, this is me with Jesus.

This is me keeping my focus.

This is this is the main thing.

It is me with Jesus.

But what happens in our life?

What happens in our life is we we we're keeping the main thing, the main thing.

But but hey, I've got a big project and at work.

I've got a big project at work, and then I've got to get that project organized, and I've got to recruit the right people.

I mean, I've got a lot of responsibility at work.

And then I've got kids.

My kids, kids need raising.

They need food.

They need to be fed.

I've got to give them some food.

I've got to, my kids have activities.

They're playing baseball.

They're playing softball.

They've got I've got then I've got to change their diapers.

And we've got, no, we're out of diapers.

We gotta go to get diapers in the middle of the night.

And then I've got I've got to prepare for a meeting, and then I've got to carry out that meeting.

And then do you see how?

Do you see where this is going?

Going too far.

Exactly.

Going too far.

And so what do we need?

Dallas Wheeler says, Christians generally don't have a plan.

He says, generally, Christians don't have a plan for teaching people to do everything that Jesus commanded.

So what do we need?

We need a rule of life.

Do you have your paper there?

We need a rule of life.

Now, thank you, Jonah.

Jonah.

Multi-talented.

You need a rule of life.

What is a rule of life?

It's a set of disciplines.

It's a set of practices.

The idea came from the early church fathers, specifically after Christianity was legalized.

What did they start doing?

They started building buildings and cathedrals.

They started making the pastors and priests part of the rich nobility.

And so no longer is the church on the margins.

Now the church is legalized, and to be honest with you, the power is taken away.

And so these group of followers of Jesus, they move out into the desert.

It's like, this is not the way of Jesus.

They move out into the desert and they begin to build monasteries.

And Saint Benedict is probably the most famous.

Saint Benedict created what was called a rule of life, and it's a set of practices, a way to slow down.

It was a way to keep from getting sucked into the hurry and the busyness and noise.

And it put the priorities on being with Jesus.

The word comes from a Latin word regula.

Regula.

And think of this.

Here's what it means.

Think of a trellis.

So my daughter gets engaged a few weeks back, and she got engaged at a vineyard.

Beautiful vineyard.

And so we get there early.

It was a production.

So I mean I when I asked Jill to Marion, it was only me and her.

That way, if she said no, there was nobody else to be, nobody saw it.

I wouldn't be embarrassed.

And you walk around and you see how they have built these beautiful trellises for the vine that would produce the grapes to grow and not be on the ground where they would spoil and rotten.

And so the word regula is the idea of a trellis.

Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

There needs to be a trellis.

There needs to be a rule of life.

There needs to be something that you are living by, a structure that will hold up your life, that you would abide by so you can grow and bear fruit like the vines in the vineyard.

And so we this is familiar language to us at Church at the Grove.

The triangle, right?

We love shapes, simple shapes.

The triangle, up, focused on the Lord, in.

We have relationships in the body, out, we exist for others.

We love God, we love one another, and then we love others outside the church sacrificially.

And so this here's what we're gonna do.

Come on, Brandon.

We've got a few minutes left.

And here's what we're gonna do, because I'm gonna be honest.

I know what's gonna happen to this piece of paper.

It's gonna either be in your Bible or on the floor of your car.

Hang on, Chris, I'm talking.

All right.

My turn.

So right now, right now, we're just gonna spend three or four minutes.

I want you to go ahead and begin to fill this out.

Now I hope you'll take it home and you'll work on it some more.

You said somebody asked, do I have homework this morning?

And so, yeah, your homework is to be with Jesus.

But but you've got to work out your your trellis, your rule of life.

You've got to work out how you will bear fruit.

Disciples, true disciples of Jesus, bear fruit.

How do you keep the main thing?

How do you keep this focused first?

So let's take a few minutes.

As Brandon plays, I want you to start feeling it in.

Father, speak to us.

Speak to us.

God, help us to learn how to be with you.

Help us to learn how to become like you.

Help us to live in such a way that when people see us, they see Jesus.

Let us think about the question: what would I do if Jesus were me?

God, but you lead us.

Amen.

Won't you take a few minutes?

Start filling that in.

Take it home.

Continue to work on it.