Tag: practicing the way

Inhabiting — Chapter Ten — Crafting a rule of life

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

Who — or what — is ruling your life?

We started this series in Athens — a very religious city (Acts 17:22–23) — where figuring out the answer to this question was obvious. There were temples and altars where you’d sacrifice time and money to show you were ruled by these gods.

This is where Paul announced that God had called all people to repent and be ruled by Jesus (Acts 17:30) — to meet the God who made us to inhabit time and space so we might find him (Acts 17:26).

We might not have altars and temples, but we’re all sacrificing our time and money in spaces that show what rules us. We might answer the question by looking at where we’re spending money — though everything seems to cost so much at the moment — or looking at where we’re spending time: more time than we need to, so we’re sacrificing other things. It could be work… or family… or the gym… or church… it could be what we’re working for that we don’t have yet.

We’re still very religious. We still sacrifice our time and money for whatever or whoever rules us — even if we rule ourselves.

But hopefully, for most of us, the answer to the question “Who’s ruling your life?” is Jesus.

And I guess I want to ask: how would you know?

Can you spot the difference between your life with Jesus and without Jesus? Does your life look different to your neighbour’s? Are you inhabiting space and time differently as someone who has found God?

Sure — we might hang out here once a week, or a couple of weeks a month, or once a month. And we might go to growth group, or even have a few spiritual practices we’ve incorporated into our daily rhythms, and we might try to do good stuff with a sense that God’s in the mix somewhere…

But are we living in a different economy — with different objects of worship and a different approach to time and money?

If we’re not, how are we meant to resist the pull of the idols of our age — resisting the rule and the promises of dead gods?

It may be that Jesus is ruling one part of our minds — the rational part — while our lives are playing catch-up… or still running the show.

Right back at the start of this series we looked at this idea of our minds being like a rider — the rational bit — and an elephant: our deeper, emotional self — our loves and identity and attachment and belonging.

And the elephant isn’t formed by knowing more, but by experiencing love and belonging and joyful connection that brings us into alignment with whoever or whatever it is ruling our hearts.

Who’s ruling your elephant?

Are we ruled by the patterns of this world — like the idols and architecture, the habitat, in ancient Athens — or by Jesus renewing our minds? If we want to be ruled by Jesus, we should probably set up our lives expressing that rule. This is where the idea of a rule of life comes in.

To be a disciple — to be ruled by Jesus — is to practice what he teaches and commands (Luke 6:46), and to come to him to learn his ways: to throw off the heavy burdens of self-rule, and self-justification, and sacrificing on altars of deadly gods… to find life in the one who sacrifices himself to give us life and rest (Matthew 11:28–29).

A rule of life is an expression of being ruled by King Jesus — the king of rest. Finding life in him, not the idols and temples of this world — not because you have to, out of some sense of legalistic obligation to earn his favour, but because he has given you his life and invited you to come to him and learn a way of life that is good and beautiful and gives rest to your soul.

And so, as we wrap up this series, I want to encourage you to carve out space this week to start building a rule of life — a guideline that shapes your habits in time and space — or to keep building on what’s already established.

We’ll recap some ideas, and it’d be great to turn those ideas into practices: to write some things down, schedule them in your diary or calendar, take notes on your phone — start the work of establishing, or building on, habits that show you belong to Jesus.

I’ve got some tips here from the world of habit-building.

First: start small. Don’t try to pull off a massive revolution of your life all at once. We know what it’s like to make big resolutions and then have them drop off a week or two later.

Second: start with habits you’ll enjoy. There are lots of disciplines that will feel hard and restrictive. These are good. But if we’re building a rule of life from scratch, let’s start by adding a thing that will bring joy — that we’ll want to stick to. This will be different for each of us because we’re all wired differently, and in different stages of life and circumstances, with different rhythms we’ve already established both to survive and to grow.

You might love the idea of solitude and a quiet time with God. Quiet times are an evangelical sacred cow. But I hate them. I want a noisy time. I want to talk about the Bible with other people. I chucked a little two-page thing about how different personality types resonate with spiritual practices differently in the Facebook group earlier this week.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever establish hard habits, or disciplines that hurt — but…

This is where tip three comes in. There’s this idea of stacking habits: connecting new habits to established habits. We all have habits already — regular routines. When we link new habits to existing ones, they act as cues. Something like: “When I get out of bed in the morning” — that’s a habit — “I’ll make my bed straight away.” But we can connect spiritual disciplines to these moments too: “Before I get out of bed each morning I’ll pray.”

Then, as you’re ready to add something new into your rule of life, we can build it on the last habit, or on another regular routine.

“One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

Tip four is kind of from the series already: habits follow cues — which often come from our habitat. Energy or effort we invest in controlling the environments where we want the habits to happen, to prompt these habits, will pay off by reducing the energy involved in fighting to make a choice.

“Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimising your environment.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

As we craft a “rule,” remember: this isn’t about legalism. It doesn’t save us. You don’t have to do this. This is about carving out space and time to know Jesus and become like him.

It’s also not a self-improvement exercise, where we’re discovering the realest and truest and best version of ourselves, or getting better at self-rule. It’s a discipleship exercise where we’re seeking to come to Jesus and learn his ways.

This means we’re not just deciding who we want to be, but discerning where we’re not like Jesus, and where we think God might want us to grow by his Spirit. And that happens in community, not in isolated introspection. You might want to talk with a trusted sibling in Christ about what this will look like in your present season of life.

And this isn’t self-improvement that we discern together, then do by ourselves. We live and belong and are formed in community: the household of God — which operates in our households, and in our growth groups, and as a church. We’re also practicing the teaching of Jesus who turns us out from ourselves and commands us to love God and love our neighbours as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39).

So the first step in this process will be reflecting on how you want to become more like Jesus.

Do you want to be more loving? More patient? Is there a fruit of the Spirit you want to cultivate? Is it something in how you see him speak or treat others — closer to our Father in heaven? More shaped by his word? More self-controlled? Wasting less time — resting more? Using this season well? Giving an inheritance worth something to the next generation?

Is there a habitual sin — an act of disobedience to Jesus — that you want to replace with a habitual obedience, where you can interrupt and redirect that process?

Identify how you want to become more like Jesus, and then pick a small step to take to head in that direction.

Picking the small step to get you there might be tricky. You could look at someone else who has this characteristic and examine their lives, or dig into the Gospels and see how Jesus does something. There are stacks of practices you might slot in here.

We’re going to recap some of the ideas from this series, and as we go you might want to take note of ideas you could bring into your daily, or weekly, or yearly rhythms — and ways you might reshape your life. The ideas that resonate most with you. The low-hanging fruit.

As we recap, one of the other things we did back in week one was imagine how life might have changed for Dionysius and Damaris — these two citizens of Athens who met Jesus through Paul’s preaching (Acts 17:34) — and how they might have started to embrace the rhythms of the early church we see described at the very beginning of the church in Acts 2 (Acts 2:42).

There’s nothing radically new in any of the practices we’ve covered this series. They’ve mostly unpacked the way of life described for those who have repented and found life in Jesus’ kingdom, under his rule.

If you pick a habit from Acts 2, you probably won’t go wrong — whether it’s being devoted to the apostles’ teaching — the Scriptures — to the breaking of bread (which I take to mean participating in the body of Jesus and remembering the gospel together at our tables), and to prayer, and to generosity: to living a common life and sharing our possessions and wealth — what God has gifted to us — with each other and the world in a generative, life-giving way (Acts 2:44–45), habitually meeting together and praising God — gospeling each other (Acts 2:46–47). And look: as the church community takes on these habits, their life overflows to others. It’s contagious (Acts 2:47).

So here’s a chance to jot down some areas you want to build something different: where you might establish a new regular routine — a way of life where you’re seeking to be ruled by Jesus as you inhabit space and time.

You may not have picked this up, but across the series we thought about inhabiting space and time — and we started small in each category and expanded.

So — in space — the smallest thing that belongs to you, that is ruled over by you (or whoever rules you), is your body: your life. Jesus calls you to build your life like a house — to build wisely — by hearing his words and putting them into practice (Luke 6:47–48).

You might want to build a habit of engaging with God’s word in a way that leads to reflection and practice. Maybe “no Bible, no breakfast,” or “I’ll read the Bible with my household each evening at dinner,” or “I’ll listen to the Bible on my commute.” Or you could download the Lectio 365 app and start an ancient practice of reading, prayer, and reflection.

We don’t live alone. Some of us might be sole occupiers of our homes, but we live in a household: the household of God (1 Timothy 3:14–15). And we’re formed by relationships. Ideally, we learn to grow up connected to God and one another in relationships of joyful attachment and hesed — committed love.

Our brains are shaped by joy, which, according to the science, is transmitted through our faces and eyes as we experience others being glad to be with us. Not all of us grew up with this, but you might habitually introduce joyful connection within your relationships: make time and space for eye-to-eye, face-to-face connection.

“Our identity is built and formed by joy-bonded relationships. The identity center in our brain grows in response to joy… If joy is transmitted primarily through our faces and eyes, we need to practice letting our faces light up with each other.” — Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks, The Other Half of Church

We thought about shaping the physical spaces we occupy as habitats for true humanity.

Like tradies who have jigs for repeated actions, we can rejig our spaces — and I know some of us already have. If there’s a sin you feel ruled by, that you’re habitually struggling with, what are the environmental prompts that cue up that behaviour or enable it? How can you act to remove or cut out the source — the cue — and replace it with something that prompts godliness instead?

Part of being deliberate about our environment, and about pursuing love and good deeds, is about filling our environment with people — especially people who will encourage and spur us on.

Habitually meeting together to share the good news of Jesus with each other (Hebrews 10:24–25).

This life together in our spaces sets us up to live in spaces we don’t control — a world, like Athens, where the architecture, art, and culture primes us for false worship (Acts 17:22–23).

As we learn that this architecture expresses and enforces misfiring parts of our human search for God, we can reorient our response from being conformed, or taking offence, or culture war, to our calling to be living images of God — those pointing others to life, those engaged in culture care: bringing beauty into this shared space.

What’s a habit you might embrace of cultivating towards what’s good and beautiful?

“Culture Care is a generative approach to culture that brings bouquets of flowers into a culture bereft of beauty.” — Makoto Fujimura

It might even be time in the garden, praying and growing things that delight you. It might be a habit of generosity and hospitality: habitually living as someone who’s received a good and beautiful gift from God, who shares at his table. Volunteering in a community. Making space for others. Baking for your colleagues. Delighting in God with an eye to what you might bring into the spaces you move in.

Our shift into time meant considering how we’re ruled by the clock, or the calendar — learning to number our days so we live wisely (Psalm 90:11), redeeming the time (Ephesians 5:15–16).

This means — at least in Ephesians — carving out time each day to remind ourselves that we live before the throne of God, as those raised and seated with him. Making space for prayer and worship: praising God for his goodness, knowing God, living in his presence so that each moment becomes holy.

You might rethink how you structure your day — like the psalmist (Psalm 119:164) — and many Christians through history who carve out regular moments for prayer. There are apps for this, like Every Moment Holy; they can act as prompts. So can daily reminders in your calendar app.

Now, if this flood of ideas feels overwhelming, remember: we’re just trying to pick one or two.

When it comes to the shape of your week, as one following the King of rest, you might want to carve out deliberate time to do this with a practice of Sabbath (Matthew 12:7–8): setting aside time to stop, rest, delight in God, and worship.

So we learn to resist the pull of our version of Athens and its altars that demand sacrifice — or our version of Egypt and its slavedrivers — or even from living as slave-drivers in what the Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey, calls “the violent culture” that views our bodies as machines.

Carving out time to know God and receive rest for our bodies and souls will mean we work differently. It will mean we can approach the good works he’s prepared for us — and everything we do — as though we’re working for God.

“…this violent culture that wants to see us working 24 hours a day, that doesn’t view us as a human being but instead views our divine bodies as a machine.” — Tricia Hersey

Habits of time are trickier when it comes to seasons — but maybe as you figure out what habits to embrace, you might ask “When am I?” How does serving God not just in this moment, but in this period of life, look different?

We’re all working out how to make every moment count as heavenly: to always give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, in every season, because the resurrection means this work is not meaningless (1 Corinthians 15:58).

You might have a lifetime of great habits so this all seems silly — but have never stopped to consider how life in this season, where you’re older and more mature and facing ends not beginnings, can be used as a gift — and how to keep growing towards eternity as it feels like you’re finishing up.

I love the idea of the church being like a time machine that teaches hope as we come together in different seasons.

You — or us — older folks might help us — or you — younger folks navigate living in time in seasons that are present for us but past for you. Us younger folks — and especially our babies and kids — might help older folks focus on what inheritance we’re investing in leaving behind.

But all of this is about learning to see time differently: as eternal, and revolving around Jesus. So we might embrace rhythms across our year that embed us in the story of the gospel.

You might start following a church calendar, or a lectionary, or a Bible-in-a-year reading plan — even at the end of life — to learn to see that time isn’t getting away from us, but always going somewhere: taking us somewhere.

Which we saw means working to store up treasures in heaven; living as heirs who inherit eternal life as the household of God (Titus 3:6–7). So our habits now are about us seeing the long term, and building on becoming the people we’ll be forever, with the people we’ll be with forever.

Our relationships with each other aren’t temporary, but eternal.

So, as we build a rule of life, this is our horizon. Which means each moment, each step — they’re not urgent. But each habit we build — the lives we build together — that God builds by his Spirit — they’re important.

Important enough that I reckon it’d be great for you to spend some time this week making a start… building some habits as part of expressing Jesus’ rule in your life, and becoming like him.

You might want to take up one or two — or some daily and some weekly. But make them manageable. And when they feel routine, add another.

Take the time to set up your environment to make this something you do. Ask your growth group to check in. Take up a habit together. Put reminders or prompts into your phone, or your diary.

If this doesn’t feel like enough… if you want to go bigger… some of our growth groups have been working through the Practicing the Way course this term — which is where that video came from. They have an online rule-of-life builder you could try out.

But we don’t just want to think about our individual rule of life, but how we live together. Whether that’s in households — whether they’re biological or spiritual households — or in growth groups, or even here together.

But let’s start in our homes and where we meet together in homes, and ask what it looks like to have regular rhythms and routines where we cultivate joyful connection to God and each other, in households bound by God’s love.

For us to be deliberate, and calibrate what we do with our time: what we do routinely, how we meet together as those ruled by Jesus — to explore how.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series, and it would be overwhelming to do it all at once. But the goal has been for us to see our lives in time and space, minute-by-minute and centimetre-by-centimetre, be more and more ruled by Jesus, so minute-by-minute and centimetre-by-centimetre, we become more and more like him.

King Jesus promises to give rest for our souls, as he reconnects us to our good Creator who gives us life and breath and everything else — and promises to do this forever. Let’s be ruled by him together.

December 16, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter Two — Learning Jesus By Heart

There is something you do not know about me. Probably. I cannot tell you. But if you were there when I gave this as a talk, I tried to show people by playing a song on the piano.

As a kid, I learned piano. I reckon my parents spent thousands of dollars so I could learn — really — that one song. It is basically all I have to show for it — that, and I can still play most of the scales. Maybe I should have just done that.

I was not great at practicing, but I did learn — and practice — that one song, until it became part of me. I can play it without looking — or thinking — and I play it much faster than it is meant to be played, and probably much less well than it is meant to be played.

But I remember it. I know where my fingers are meant to be and what it is meant to sound like — and I know it without thinking. What the people heard when I played was automatic; it was muscle memory.

There is a phrase we use when we learn something that we can produce automatically, is there not? We talk about learning something by heart. And we know we have not learned it through some process of our heart — that organ — magically latching on to a thing. When we learn something by heart, when we get it to the stage of being natural or automatic, it is a product of practice. Of repetition. Of bedding something down deep into our bones.

And we think of this sort of automation as good when it comes to learning an instrument, or a sport, or how to drive a car — so that we are making those movements without deciding.

I stopped learning piano — practicing — because I did not love it, so only one song comes naturally to me; I only know one “by heart.” While I am almost 42 and still playing soccer; still practicing hoping more things might become automatic because even though I am uncoordinated and nothing feels automatic, I love it. I have given my heart to it, and I am hoping my body will automate some things if I keep repeating the actions. I wonder how we go though at following Jesus by heart; learning to live as a disciple of Jesus.

That is what we are thinking about this series — we are thinking about how we be who God has made us to be; those who inhabit time and space in order to seek God like he made us to (Acts 17:26-28). And we do this as those who have found God because he has revealed himself to us in Jesus so that we are now trying to be formed as disciples. Trying to be transformed as we saw last week, rather than conformed into the patterns of the world (Romans 12:2).

I wonder what your model for this transformation looks like — whether we think of learning to follow Jesus as like learning to pass an exam at school, or like becoming more like him from the heart. I wonder if our approach to discipleship should look more like learning an instrument, or a sport — something we do with our bodies — rather than something we do by thinking right. If you are doing the Practicing the Way course in your growth group you might have heard them talk about thinking about discipleship as more like an apprenticeship than a university degree.

Last week we looked at the metaphor of an elephant — where the idea was that the world and its patterns — the architecture and idols that surround us — are designed to shape us in particular ways, and to shape our hearts or minds in particular ways as we use our bodies in these spaces, pursuing what we love. And we talked about how often we slip into thinking about our minds as the bits of us that are conscious — we borrowed the analogy of the rider and the elephant from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. We think about our minds as the rider and about discipleship as informing the rider with the right information about God, but most of what we do is shaped by the elephant — our intuitions, what we have made automatic, our instinctive sense of who we are in the world. These elephants are shaped, like when we make piano playing automatic, by what we do, what we experience, who we are around, what we learn to love, and what we practice.

And this week we are picking up a different metaphor — it is one we will expand over the next few weeks — we are going to think of our lives — our bodies, our minds, our growth and formation — and especially our heart, the core of who we are — as a house.

And rather than examining the architecture of our city, I am going to invite you to think about your life and its structures — how you are being built and formed as a human house; what the plan is, what is foundational, what is load bearing, what is giving you a shape, and how you are building your life, piece by piece. How you are building not just the plans — which might be the rational thinking part of your brain — but the structure; your loves, what is automatic, who you are actually becoming.

We are going to do this looking at the teaching and example of Jesus — and then the teaching and example of one seeking to become like Jesus — the Apostle Paul.

So Jesus, in our reading, he is located on the plains — a level place (Luke 6:17). This is interesting, right — because there is a parallel between what Jesus says here in Luke, and his teaching from a mountain top in Matthew (Luke 6:17, Matthew 5:1). What we are hearing from Jesus is like his stump speech. I heard this week that President Biden gave basically the same radio interview to stacks of different stations around the country; reporters are given pre-vetted questions so he can stick to his script. Well, here is Jesus sticking to his script — this is a core part of his teaching about what the kingdom looks like, and how we should think about being formed as disciples.

Both Luke and Matthew have this first metaphor of a tree producing fruit — it is literally making fruit — this will be important as we roll on. But Jesus says good trees make good fruit (Luke 6:43, Matthew 7:17). You can tell if a tree is good from the fruit, and if the fruit is good from the tree.

And just like that, humans are trees. If fruit is being made, it is coming out of the heart of a person (Luke 6:45). The good things are stored there — literally, treasured there. Our lives that we live, what we make and what we say, are a product of our hearts.

Jesus is picking up an Old Testament idea here — one you will find in the wisdom of Proverbs — that we should guard our hearts because everything else flows out of this part of us (Proverbs 4:23).

And straight up, the next bit in Luke — well — it is a shift in metaphor, but I think Jesus, as he talks about building a wise life as building a house, is talking about building a wise heart that will produce this sort of fruitful, kingdom-shaped life. There are a couple of links we lose in our English here — Jesus literally says “and do not ‘make’ what I say” (Luke 6:46) — it is the same root word for what the tree produces — and then in the next verse where we get “practices” — which I think is a great word — it’s the same word again, this “making” word (Luke 6:47, Luke 6:43).

A tree makes good fruit when it is a good tree. Jesus is asking why do you speak as though I am Lord if you are not producing the fruit, the practices, the way of life that comes from his words. It is not just about belief, this discipleship caper — the link between who we are and what we do is about this link between our heart and our actions.

And to be a disciple — someone who calls Jesus Lord — is to take Jesus to heart; to learn his way by heart — through practice — where our practices reflect his practice and his words (Luke 6:46, Matthew 7:24). Jesus is the ultimate good tree — his words and actions come from his heart, and for us, fruitful, wise life looks like being like him because he is our Lord.

There is this formative cycle between doing what Jesus says and our hearts being fruitful, so that our actions then reflect our hearts.

And here the stump speech continues with this metaphor of a house — of our lives as a house (Luke 6:48, Matthew 7:24). Those who hear Jesus’ words and put them into practice — having them shape what we make, what we do with our bodies — these people are humans, wise humans, who build a house on a secure foundation. A rock.

So that when flooding waters come they do not shake the house — the life of the person — because it is well built (Luke 6:48).

The point of this metaphor is to construct a well-built house, right? To build wisely — starting with the foundation you build on. Starting not just with listening to Jesus’ words but putting them into practice. It is almost like the well-built house is about a heart that has treasured up and stored goodness so that it produces goodness and is not destroyed.

The alternative to the wise builder is the one who hears the words of Jesus and does not put them into practice (Luke 6:49). Just pause there — he does not say the fool does not hear the words of Jesus. The fool is the one who hears — perhaps even believes. Perhaps, to throw back to the model of our ‘mind’ in chapter one, this is the person who just thinks life is about the rider, where you just have to hear and believe, but where that does not translate into wise building, into elephant training, into treasuring and being formed by the words of Jesus as we practice them and make fruitful life.

The person not building a house on the rock — but just on any piece of ground, with no foundation — their life gets swept away when the storm hits; it is destroyed (Luke 6:49).

If we want to be wise builders — houses that are formed as good, disciples of Jesus, truly human — we need not just a building plan, but to build well. Not just a foundation — Jesus — but the practice of doing what he says, which is how we store up treasure in our hearts; how we learn by heart to live with the new hearts he gives.

Jesus teaches plenty of stuff in the Gospels that his stump speech — whether it is the Sermon on the Mount or the Plains — invites us to practice; to make our way of life. There is another consistent message across the Gospels — a summary of what we are invited to practice; to take to heart and learn by heart as we build our lives.

In Luke it is recorded as Jesus meets a guy who reckons he has got it all together — an expert in the law — who asks what must I do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him, “What does the law suggest?” (Luke 10:25-26).

And this bloke says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and mind” (Luke 10:27). This is a command to treasure God; to have our heart shaped; to learn his ways through how we honour him with our bodies. And this flows through into how we love other humans. Our neighbours. Jesus says, “Yep. Do this” (Luke 10:28). In Matthew he calls this the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38), and that all God’s word hangs off these two commands (Matthew 22:39-40).

So I guess we could start there.

But I reckon there is one other bit of Jesus’ teaching that is worth having in mind here as we think about our hearts and becoming disciples. And it is that we do not do this as people disconnected from Jesus, not as individuals left to our own devices, our own ability to work our way into new habits.

If we are calling Jesus Lord and our hearts are longing to, and treasuring him — then this itself is an act of God’s transforming, heart-changing grace in us. We are not earning our way in as we seek to be disciples. This is a pattern of life for those who have listened to what Jesus says and are seeking to put his teaching into practice because he is our Lord, our foundation, and we are in the process of being transformed not just to be like him, but by him as we live with him and listen to him.

A disciple — an apprentice — has a teacher. And we also have this picture from Jesus of coming to him to have our hearts transformed not just by habits of working to improve ourselves, but the life-transforming habit of not relying on ourselves, but coming to him. Jesus invites us — those of us tired and overwhelmed by the world and its patterns; those of us buffeted by the storms and recognising that anything we build will never be strong enough to hold us secure in the storms, or in the face of death — who feel the constant gnawing sense that we need to do better, work more, build a better us on our own. Jesus invites — commands even — us weary ones to come to him, to learn his ways as we rest (Matthew 11:28-29), as we pass him this burden and learn from him, like a trainee learns from their trainer as they carry the load, and as we learn to be like him — gentle, humble in heart, good — while we find rest for our souls; rest from the relentless pressure to do better.

This is why he can say his yoke — the bit of wood on the shoulders of a beast of burden, connecting them to the one walking beside them so they would share a load — this is why he can say his yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:29).

Even as we also embrace the paradox of denying ourselves daily and taking up our cross — dying — and following him (Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24). But note, part of this dying is dying to the idea that we are kings or queens of our own lives; that we are Lord; that we have to save ourselves and build our own security and always be better. And it is hard to write that story into our bones; to die to the false gospels that say be better, do more, self-justify, self-improve, self-satisfy, and to the bits of our heart that still believe that deforming lie. We have learned that story by heart — some of us — from the world, from our families, from our inner voice, and our loves for false gods.

Jesus offers a different foundation, one that will last, one we can build on differently as we inhabit his life and take on new habits that we learn by heart.

I reckon we see a pattern of discipleship in Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3. Paul picks up the words of Jesus and calls himself a wise builder (1 Corinthians 3:10). At this point he is talking about the way he has taken the words of Jesus and not just used them to form himself as a house disconnected from others, but to produce fruit — loving and serving the folks he is writing to. He has laid a foundation for them and now he wants this church to build with care; to produce their own wise lives.

Jesus is the foundation not just of the church — as a corporate reality — but for Christians. And this passage keeps the corporate and the individual in tension. Each one should build; each one is a house (1 Corinthians 3:11). But we all together are God’s house — his temple — where the Spirit dwells in our midst (1 Corinthians 3:16).

This week we are thinking about the individual part — how we live in the world in our body and pursue a wise life with a heart that produces fruit because we practice what Jesus teaches ourselves. Next week and the week after we are going to expand to think about the corporate realities we are part of as we inhabit space together.

Paul will take this idea of being a temple of the Holy Spirit to apply it to how we use our bodies — reminding us that Jesus, our Lord, redeemed us. We — the church — are the fruits of his life, his listening to God, what he is building. That we have the Spirit is part of God’s plan to recreate humans; giving us new hearts that can love and obey God as fulfilment of the prophets. So as those bought at a price, we are invited to honour God with our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

This is what it looks like to build with care on the foundation laid for us by Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:10); to learn the life of Jesus by heart so that what we treasure in our hearts brings forth good, not evil, as we practice what Jesus teaches (Luke 6:45).

Building with care is not just about thinking, it is about creating this way of life in the body that honours God — that means good things come out of a heart that treasures Jesus and a life built on him (1 Corinthians 3:11, 23). Paul is a wise builder, building on the foundation of Jesus toward the reality that we are now of Christ, just as he is of God.

As Paul unpacks this idea in the next chapter, he urges the Corinthians to build this life by imitating him, and in his absence, by imitating Timothy — who is also faithful in the Lord, who is an imitator of Paul following in this chain of imitators (1 Corinthians 4:16-17).

Timothy will remind the Corinthians of Paul’s example — his way of life in Christ Jesus, which lines up with what he teaches (1 Corinthians 4:17). Timothy is a disciple of Jesus and an apprentice of Paul. Paul’s way of life is not just words, it is this visible pattern. He will say later they should imitate his example — what they hear and see in his life, and Timothy’s — as they imitate Jesus. This is part of how discipleship happens: finding wise people who are imitating Jesus who will teach us. But it is also about following a way of life that lines up with the message of Jesus, and with his life.

I asked earlier what the model of transformation you have in your head is — how you would go about learning a new way of life by heart — and what that looks like when it comes to discipleship. A lot of the resources I have been reading for this series are from a guy named Dallas Willard, or a second generation of pastors and counsellors deeply impacted by him. Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart sketches out his basic idea that discipleship is about character formation that comes about as a result of our inward renewal — a renewal brought about by the Spirit as we connect with and imitate Jesus; as we become apprentices of his way, those yoked to him who do what he says.

One of his offsiders was a guy named James Bryan Smith. He came up with a shape to summarise both Willard’s framework and the New Testament. It is a kind of picture of the building blocks that seem to lead to this sort of transformation. If you remember that triangle from the video last chapter of unseen forces shaping us, these are a kind of antidote.

He suggests our path to transformation involves embracing the story of Jesus as our story, so that we learn how Jesus lived and what he calls us to, and having this enacted and embodied in communities where we find examples that we want to imitate and where we act as examples for each other. This formation is not just about introspection, it actually happens in relationships where we experience and practice the love of God and love of neighbour together. And the third corner is about practicing things; exercising — learning Jesus by heart, becoming who we aim to be by imitating Jesus repeatedly, practicing his commands as we encounter them in the Gospels and the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit is at work in each of these activities.

This seems to me to be a reasonable shape. We will look more at our community and relationships over the next few chapters. But I wonder what practices you might adopt to learn the way of Jesus by heart; what rule of life or way of life you might build to be a wise builder who is treasuring him in your heart.

His book has a bunch of suggestions for soul training, but so do some of the other books I will mention like The Other Half of the Church and the Practicing the Way course. Over the course of this series we will be thinking about the rhythms and structures — how we live in space and time. We want to build into our lives so we are practicing the way of Jesus, glorifying God with our bodies.

This starts with us. It starts with how we feed our hearts through the way we use our bodies, which is a question of who we serve, who we are ruled by. Are we going to be people ruled by Jesus, who call him Lord and practice what he says, who build our life-as-a-house on him as a foundation, shaped or structured by his rule at the level of our practices?

Or will we be ruled by someone or something else, serving someone else, having our hearts — our habits — shaped by the habitats set up by other masters who are not as gentle, or forgiving, who place heavy burdens on our shoulders?

If we are not deliberate about embracing a rule of life where we are ruled by Jesus, then other people — other rulers — will fill that vacuum. Or we will be practicing some other way and being formed accordingly. This sort of practice — taking on new habits, shaping the elephant, writing things into our bones so they become automatic, building our house wisely — it is not easy. It is not easy to learn to put off the heavy yoke of the world, what we are used to, to replace it with the easier burden of Jesus. Automating godliness.

It is hard work to unlearn things, and at times you might feel like I do on the sports field or at the piano. But hopefully it will be life-giving and liberating. And at its core the idea is to build on Jesus, to be planted in him, yoked to him.

Discipleship is about practicing the teaching of Jesus, imitating him, imitating those in our lives who imitate him, so that we learn him by heart. But it is not about self-mastery, it is about finding life loving God and knowing his love wholeheartedly so that we can love others. It is about making time and space to spend time with Jesus, in prayer, in listening to his word, so that we can put it into practice. It is about learning and experiencing that he is good, that he is humble in heart and gentle, learning to stop striving to carry our own burdens, being overwhelmed by busyness and the burden of self-improvement or self-transformation, coming to him for rest, taking up our cross and dying to those false gospels and the patterns of the world they create and that sustain them while destroying us daily.

And because we know Jesus is good and that he is leading us to life, being prepared to suffer when we reject those patterns and experience the cost, or even being prepared to suffer like Jesus as we engage in costly love for our neighbours because we are learning the goodness of God. This is what it means to produce fruit — fruit that comes from a heart shaped by Jesus and practicing his commands.

September 27, 2025 Add Comment

Inhabiting — Chapter One — The Architecture of our Lives

If Being Human was about who we are (or whose we are) and Before the Throne was about ‘where we are’ — on earth but also ‘raised and seated with Jesus in the heavenly realm,’ this series is about how we live in time and space; how we inhabit the world as humans, and as followers of Jesus.

The idea is that if we want to be disciples of Jesus — people being formed by him because his love and Spirit are transforming us — this happens as we inhabit time and space, and this happens at the level of our habits.

Forming these habits that form us is tricky, because the world we live in — our habitat — has been set up by humans to deform us with an entirely different set of habits; leading us to worship entirely different gods and so forming different habits in us; habits we have to combat and unlearn.

We are not always good at spotting our habitat and how it shapes us. In fact, often we do not think about habitats or habits. We can slip into the modern, western way of thinking where we do not really reckon with the power of habits — unless we want to change to be “super successful,” where we might buy a self-help book about ‘atomic habits’ or ‘the power of habit.’

Right from school we are taught that we change — we are formed — by thinking the right thing; having the right ideas so we can choose how to live. This is true for how we think of church too — we emphasise content, listening to sermons, reading the Bible, talking about ideas — hoping education about God will transform into our character.

I know we have been combating this idea as a church for a while; thinking about what it means to live before the throne, and to see God’s kingdom on display at the table as we eat together in unity as a family or household united in Jesus. But this has been stuff we have thought about. What does it look like to change the architecture of our lives — our habitats and habits — to reflect these ideas? To move ‘ideas’ into ‘habits’?

And how much is the habitat we live in — our city, our homes — priming us towards different habits; forming us to worship different gods? There is an idea in our world that religion is a private thing best left for church spaces or your home — where the architecture of our world would be “neutral” — nothing like the Athens in our reading — and not like somewhere like Sri Lanka.

If you were the apostle Paul walking through Kataragama last year you would have recognised a community that is very religious — and then you would have seen a procession of elephants getting out of control and trampling the crowd, injuring thirteen people.

This will be a bit of a parable for us this morning. I think there are two principles to pull out: all space is set up to produce behaviours — habits — and these habits are a kind of worship that form and shape us. It is just easier to see how that is true in the stomping foot of a living elephant than in the architecture of our lives. We can try to stop that impact by grabbing the elephant by its tail — but it is better to be consciously deciding where that formation is happening.

Let’s jump into Athens, where the religious architecture is made of stone rather than flesh, and set the scene by looking at the end and beginning of our reading. At the end, Paul has given what looks like a pretty compelling sermon to the council in Athens whose job it is to decide whether a god will get space in their assembly of gods — symbolised by the Parthenon, that massive building that still dominates the skyline in the city of Athens today.

When he is finished, there are a few people who are convinced to change the architecture of their lives; to alter their altars, so to speak. Some want to hear more, some believe, but it seems most of the crowd sneered (Acts 17:32). They are entrenched in their beliefs; their habits. They have been formed as worshippers of the gods of their city; their convictions align with the convictions carved into the architecture of Athens.

What Paul sees in the opening of our reading as he wanders through this city is that it is full of idols (Acts 17:16). I do not know if this is your experience when you wander down the Queen Street Mall, or Boundary Street, or West End, or in Garden City or your local Westfield — can you spot the architecture of these habitats and what it is designed to do to human hearts and minds? The trampling elephants?

It is more obvious for Paul in Athens because it was a city filled with statues and altars and temples — full of things designed to pull people away from the worship of Yahweh, the creator; to form them — or deform them. Paul’s heart is attuned to this, and to the impact of this sort of habitat. He is distressed.

He starts inviting people to meet the living God — he is preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18). He ends up with an invitation to the Areopagus, this council — and there is some evidence he crafts his speech according to the rules they used to accept or reject new gods as he speaks to them — but he is also drawing on his observations of their habitat.

“I see that you are in every way very religious”

— Acts 17:22–23.

Now, let us suspend for a moment our belief that our city is not religious; that religion is a private matter — and let us imagine that religion is about what we give our lives to; what we serve because it is what we see as ultimate and powerful. Let us take a moment to consider how our city’s architecture is just as contested and confusing as the polytheism of Athens, and how religious we still are. Our cities are full of monuments to human ingenuity — our capacity to shape the world using technology and technique; to money — banks and skyscrapers named after banks; our belief that education transforms — and so our universities, where the architecture is often similar to the architecture of the Athenian forum — and our belief that we can buy or consume our way to the good life, through pleasure and purchasing. This is before we get into the ground-level architecture of our own lives.

Athens, though, is so religious it has every box ticked — even an altar to an unknown god — which is an opportunity Paul cannot pass up. There is not much architecture in their city pointing to this God — no church buildings, and not many Christians living lives that model the gospel yet.

One of the criteria Athens had for introducing a god via this council was to address the question of what sort of physical architecture they would need — what sort of temple and altar and cycle of sacrifices. Paul challenges this category — not so much by saying “do not think about habitats,” but by claiming that the whole world is meant to be geared to the worship of its creator. The Lord of heaven and earth — the God who made the world — does not live in temples built by human hands (Acts 17:24–25). This is part of the game-changer that happens in the start of Acts, where God’s Spirit comes to dwell in humans who receive life from Jesus as his gift to us. This life is not a thing we earn through ritual; but it is a life that comes with new habits as we are transformed into living temples. We do not serve God the way a pagan god is served through sacrifices on various altars, because the living God has served us through his sacrifice. He is not a taker, like the other gods of Athens — but a giver — even to the Athenians who are not worshipping him. He gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25).

An Athenian believes their prosperity — if they have any — comes from the specific collection of gods they have chosen to serve; to worship; to sacrifice to — that their prosperity is earned through getting the mix right between their efforts — their habits — and what those efforts trigger as they engage in their habitats — these religious spaces. But Paul says everything they have is actually a gift from a God they do not even know, let alone worship.

Here are the key verses for our whole series. Paul says all nations — all the peoples of the earth, who have built all the cities of the earth — all our habitats — all people are made by this one God so that we might inhabit the whole earth. This is a throwback to Genesis and the idea of being God’s image-bearing people who are fruitful and multiply and fill the earth — and it is God who locates each nation — each person — in time and space, marking out the time and the space we will inhabit (Acts 17:26) — with a purpose — so that we would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him (Acts 17:27–28).

Maybe this is why idols are so distressing for Paul — they get in the way of this purpose; they stop people being truly human; imaging the God who made them. These images and the habits that come with them — the habitats we build around idols — stop us inhabiting the world the way God created us to; they deform us; they keep us from reaching out for him and finding him; they blind us to how proximate he is, and even how much he wants us to know the source of our life and breath and being.

And look — maybe you are here with us this morning still searching; maybe you have come along to church because you have noticed that the architecture of our city still includes these spaces and these communities offering some sort of answer; some sort of meaning — and pointing to some sort of God amidst all the other choices you have. I hope you can find meaning and purpose with us — not in us — but in God — the God who wants you to find him, and who gives life.

Maybe you are here this morning as someone who is a Christian but you feel this gnawing sense; this lack of meaning and purpose; or like you are caught between so many choices; so many options; a habitat that is confusing and a set of habits that do not align with who God wants you to be — sins, addictions, wired-in responses to the world based on what you have done, or what has been done to you. This series is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the architecture of your life and to let God do some reforming.

Paul’s message in Athens is a message for us — whether it is about our idols, what we look to for meaning or purpose; or our self-help — our self-actualisation or self-idolisation — where we work on our self-image through sacrifice, even harnessing the “power of habit” out of some legalistic desire to be better.

We are God’s children — this is all humans, not just Christians — and so we should not think that being more human is a matter of human design and skill (Acts 17:29), whether that is idol-building or harnessing the right power of atomic habits. It would be easy, as we talk about inhabiting time and space and the way our habits form us, to become Christian legalists who think nailing good works is a path to the “better us,” the “truer us” — to focus on self-improvement and make us the drivers of our destiny. This is a tension Christians have grappled with for the entire history of the church.

That is not the gospel though. The gospel liberates us from legalism, and from false worship, and from self-reliance because it liberates us from human rule — whether the rulers of the cities we live in, the architects of our behaviours and our slavery to sin and to deforming powers and deadly idols — or just our need to master ourselves through skill — and places us as children who are invited to learn life from our heavenly Father and from his Son — our king — Jesus. This comes with different habits, and it helps us to think about the architecture of our life differently — but hopefully in a way that is liberating and life-giving and re-humanising and good for us, rather than destructive — because we are pursuing what we are made for; not on our terms by discovering the “true self” within and never being sure if we have quite understood ourselves — but by understanding the nature of the divine being in ways that mean we begin to reflect his life in his world.

There is some fun stuff in the background of this Acts sermon around the nations and their gods — and God overlooking ignorant worship (Acts 17:30). I will not go super deep into it, but there is an interesting thing where, if you dip into the Old Testament, the nations do not tend to be condemned for idolatry — they have been given to powers and rulers who are not Yahweh — and you can kind of pinpoint this moment in the story to the story of Babel when the nations are given their boundaries (Genesis 11:9), or to this idea in Deuteronomy that the nations have been given to other powers — “sons of God” — while Israel have been marked as God’s children (Deuteronomy 32:8). The story, though, is that all of these nations are human; all created by God, and that God is greater than all these powers one might worship. In Jesus — and his victory over sin and death and Satan and these powers — God now commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30); to come back to him and find their humanity in his kingdom; in reflecting him. As we saw in our last series — this is the turning point in the Lord of heaven and earth’s plan to bring heaven and earth back together as one.

This day — this future — is where he will judge the world with justice through the man he has appointed — Jesus — the one raised from the dead (Acts 17:31). This day — this future — is now the guidepost for life inhabiting time and space; a reason to seek out and perhaps find the God who sought us in Jesus.

And if we are those who hear Paul’s message and believe, this comes with a new architecture; because the architecture of the city of Athens — its idols — is a dead end and will not last. You have to wonder what life was like from here on for Dionysius, who was a member of this gatekeeping council, or Damaris (Acts 17:34). Luke, who writes Acts, often does this thing where he names people along the way, where I think he is both indicating they are a source in his investigation and description of the life of the church, and that they are people in these church communities; living, breathing witnesses for his first readers. You can imagine Dionysius going home and cleaning the idol statues out of his home, and maybe renouncing his job deciding which idols do and do not get worshipped, and Damaris rethinking who she turned to in prayer to secure her fortunes — and even what “fortune” looked like — as she worked out how to serve a living God of heaven and earth, not a statue contained in a temple. That this came with new habits and a change of habitat as they discovered what it means to live as children of God; and, hopefully, a sense of liberation from the need to get everything right in order to live.

Their challenge in their city is our challenge in our city: inhabiting God’s world as God’s children. Inhabiting our time as the time God has appointed us to exist in — in history, within the boundaries of our lands. Inhabiting time and space is not a choice; it is a given — given to us by God.

Habits are not just atomically powerful tools for transformation; they are not just areas for legalism and self-actualisation or self-improvement; they are also, to some extent, givens. We are creatures of habit; shaped by the habitats we operate in and our vision of the divine, and what we work towards and serve with our bodies.

The architecture of our lives — the space we inhabit — whether our city, like Athens, or our homes, and how we structure our time — is full of idols. It is geared to produce habits and rhythms, and if we are not deliberate in our choices, or fortunate enough to occupy spaces deliberately shaped to form us in godliness by others, the habitats we operate in deform and trample us like elephants.

In Romans, Paul talks about this architecture as the patterns of this world, and he invites worshippers of Jesus, as we engage in worship — the habitual use of our bodies — in view of God’s sacrifice, his gift of life for us, to not conform to the trampling elephants of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2). For Paul, this is a product of God’s Spirit being at work in us, transforming us into the image of Jesus.

It is this idea of our minds I want to zero in on today as we begin this series. Preachers get into big trouble trying to sound like experts on brain science — in part because the science itself is always developing and is pretty contested because we are complicated.

One study suggested just using a picture of a brain scan in a news story — and probably a sermon — means you can make just about anything seem plausible; that the image provides a physical basis for something abstract, and that we tend to want simple explanations of cognitive phenomena — brain stuff.

“We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people’s affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.”

— McCabe and Castel, ‘Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning’

But another study debunked this one; they tried to replicate the experiment and found that brain images exert no influence on people’s agreement, but that “neurosciency language” can make bad explanations seem better.

“We arrive at a more precise estimate of the size of the effect, concluding that a brain image exerts little to no influence on the extent to which people agree with the conclusions of a news article.”

— Michael, Newman, et al, ‘On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image’

With all that in mind — and with us thinking about transforming our minds as we inhabit time and space — Daniel Kahneman was a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist who wrote Thinking, Fast and Slow about how our brains work.

He brought in this idea of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking. System 2 thinking is the kind of stuff we aim at in churches when it comes to formation — thinking; rational decision-making where we are conscious and applying principles of logic and agency.

He reckons System 2 accounts for about five percent of our actions, while System 1 does most of the work — it is our intuition and instinct; what we do on autopilot.

Jonathan Haidt is another psychologist — he is going a bit viral at the moment because of his book on social media and anxiety — but before that book he wrote a couple of books about how our brains work and how they shape our moral actions and judgments.

He used a metaphor that is a bit easier to grasp for System 1 and 2 thinking: the rider (System 2) — the conscious part of our brain — and the elephant (System 1) — the automatic part — where the idea is that it is nice to think that the rider is in control; that we steer our elephants towards goodness and truth, but really so much of who we are, and what we believe is right and wrong, happens at the level of our emotions and guts.

I reckon this is true of our discipleship too — the question of what god we serve and how we live that out. I do not know if this is your experience with sin, but I reckon I can be believing, in my rider-brain, all the truths I get up and preach and read and speak, while at the same time feeling pulled again and again into anger and lust and all sorts of patterns of this world and passions of the body — ruts, addictions, bad habits — that deform me and harm others without conscious thought.

The battle to be in control feels like a battle to steer an elephant before it tramples me, or others — trying to grab its tail while it is stampeding.

So here is my theory: the architecture of our idolatrous world is set up to feed our elephants and steer them in destructive ways.

Idolatry and worship work not just on the conscious mind, but our whole minds — our intuitions and instincts. These are the patterns that need renewing and transforming, not just our thinking. While it is great to get our brains in control and try to steer the elephant, maybe we also need to work at training the elephant with a new architecture — to pull us towards godliness; to keep in step with the Spirit so God produces fruit in us, rather than us producing destruction.

One of the ways we feed this elephant is through habits. It used to be a criticism of churches that did lots of ritual stuff that, over time, the repetition became less meaningful — but I wonder if that is because it moved from being conscious to automatic, and whether we live in a culture that puts a disproportionate amount of importance on the conscious bit of our brains because we like the idea that we are masters in control with the right information.

The Other Half of Church — a book about brain science and how we think about church and discipleship — is worth grabbing if you are interested in thinking through some of this.

We will dip into it throughout the series. The authors take the same model — the slow and fast parts of our brain — and suggest we have built churches to cater just for the bit that is impressed with good arguments and logic and stories and strategies, at the expense of shaping our intuitions and relational depth.

They reckon this part of the brain — the elephant (though they do not use Haidt’s model) — is shaped through attachment; through schooling our emotions and our intuitions by feeling secure, and connected, and attached to God — like children to a loving, nurturing parent — and in a community where we are being shaped and nurtured.

The problem is that often how we approach church is about our rider; the slower system — and we live lives that are hurried and almost constantly on autopilot — another function of our habitat. We can try to put the rider in charge but, to do that, we need to be slow and unhurried, and not anxious or panicked. That elephant stampede happened when loud noises startled the elephants.

“We were pursuing discipleship by focusing on strategies centered on the left brain and neglecting the right brain.”

— Jim Wilder, Michel Hendricks, The Other Half of Church.

So this series is an invitation to slow down, to be deliberate; to try to get the rider in control — to use our time and space to make conscious decisions aligned with the truths we believe, but also to bed down habits and security into the elephant so it does not get panicked and crush us or others; so we automate godliness rather than sin.

It is to discern some of the habitats we live in — the idols in our architecture — the patterns of our world — and their deforming power, and to make decisions about our habitats and our habits. It is to take up this search we were made for; reaching out for and finding the God who lives; who is in heaven; who is not destructive like a rampaging elephant, but a generous giver — who gives us life and breath and everything else — because we are his children (Acts 17:28). When we find him we find a good Father, who is also seeking and reaching out for us, delighting in a relationship with us.

Repenting means turning from the gods and patterns — the elephants — who stomp us into their image, and returning to him as our Father, the giver of our life, and being shaped accordingly. It means restructuring our lives — how we inhabit time and space — as those who have found life with him.

Justin Earley has written a couple of resources we will look at this series for how we live together in time and space. In his book about building habits of purpose for an age of distraction, he talks about realising how the shape of his own life was a bit like Athens. His house might have been decorated with Bible verses and imagery — Christian content — but the underlying architecture of his habits, his habitat, was like everyone else’s.

Repenting involves transforming not just the decorations in our life, but our structures and rhythms — how we live in the place and time God has put us, with our bodies and our time, as children of God; knowing what he is like and experiencing joy through our attachment to him as those who can come before his throne.

“While the house of my life was decorated with Christian content, the architecture of my habits was just like everyone else’s.” — Justin Earley, The Common Rule.

When we are imagining what life might have looked like from then on for Dionysius and Damaris in Athens, I reckon it is safe to assume the pattern of the first church — its habits and habitats — might have shaped their lives. Those who repented and found life in Jesus devoted themselves not just to learning — shaping the rider through the apostles’ teaching — but to connection: fellowship with God and each other, the breaking of bread, and prayer (Acts 2:42). They met together as a rhythm; not just in the temple — which they could do in Jerusalem — but in homes, around tables, eating together, praising God, experiencing joy and security and connection (Acts 2:46–47). Inhabiting time and space together with God; learning to be like Jesus.

The final resource we worked through in small groups during this series was the Practicing the Way course. We used their material in Growth Groups — meeting in homes — where we are not just learning information, but experiencing this connection. We used this video as an introduction to assessing the architecture of our habits; trying to spot the way elephants are stampeding us.

September 26, 2025 Add Comment