Rule of Life | A Rule for Life

Practices to pursue the presence of Jesus in our daily lives

RCL — Rule of Life digital resource

In John 15, hours before his death on the cross, Jesus taught his disciples core truths about the Christian life. One of the images Jesus used was branches being rooted in their vine. A branch is healthy and fruitful insofar as it abides in the vine. This, Jesus was teaching, is a picture of the essence of the Christian life: he’s the vine and his people are the branches. Being a Christian means remaining, dwelling, abiding in Jesus. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this picture.

Everything flows from this relationship. Good works, deep and meaningful friendships with other people, life-sustaining purpose, glorifying God—it all flows from our abiding in Jesus. Jesus extends the picture by reminding us that a branch can only produce fruit to the extent it is connected to the trunk. If we aren’t abiding we simply cannot bear godly fruit in our lives.

‘Abiding’ communicates the continual, moment-by-moment reality of the Christian life. A Christian is constantly dependent on Jesus. The spiritual writer Francis Schaeffer calls this internal reality of the Christian life ‘active-passivity’.¹ I love that. My responsibility as a follower of Jesus is to actively pursue passive rest in God.

But pursuing active-passivity is, in daily life, incredibly challenging. In a world that is incessantly demanding of time and attention, we must develop skills and practices which keep central our abiding in Jesus. Think about physical fitness: if you want to become strong, you need to go to the gym and lift some weights and you also need a good routine to structure your workouts. A rule of life is, like that gym routine, a crucial tool in helping us cultivate our active-passive relationship with Jesus. It’s like a trellis that supports a growing vine.

Here’s one of the better definitions I’ve come across on what a rule of life is:

A rule of life is a schedule and set of practices and relational rhythms that help us create space in our busy world for us to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what he did — to live “to the full” (John 10v10) in his kingdom, and in alignment with our deepest passions and priorities.²

As such, we at RCL have put together this resource to help you cultivate some of these rhythms. You’ll find content about four spiritual practices and how you may implement them into your daily life. We encourage you to start small, realistically, and intentionally. And we encourage you to consider how you may grow and develop in these practices over time. Above all, we pray that through these rhythms you will encounter the living, reigning, God and that you may grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, to know his love which surpasses all knowledge, and that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Suggested Resources:

1. Reality Church London | Rule of Life — Digital Resource
2. Donald S. Whitney | Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
3. Richard Foster | Celebration of Discipline
4. Dallas Willard | The Spirit of the Disciplines

Sources:

1. Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020). 93.
2. Quoted from this website: https://practicingthewayarchives.org/unhurrying-with-a-rule-of-life/workbook