What Is a Rule of Life and Why It Matters

“Karl Barth, a devoted apprentice of the Kingdom of God, emphasized the lived reality of the Christian life. He listened attentively as God revealed Himself—not by dissecting the Christian life in a laboratory, but by entering into God’s action, creation, and ongoing work of salvation. He chose to participate. He wasn’t indifferent to getting it right, but his passion was getting it lived.”

—Eugene Petersen

“First, God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don't have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last; God, God, God.”

These are the opening words of Petersen’s evocative invitation to consider how we might begin to enter into the sacred scriptures.

As we find ourselves today in a Story already in motion—being invited to play an essential role—we must begin afresh with God, we are being invited to turn our affections and our attention back to Him.

It is from that posture that we can revisit this operational question: What are you practicing that is helping to consistently re-align your soul to this reality amid the precarious circumstances in which you find yourself?

We must lean into compassion, remembering Dallas’s reminder that there are, indeed, no ordinary days. With that in mind, what we choose to do shapes the days given to us. Our days shape our decades, and our practices shape our days.

The question isn’t whether we are apprentices, but whose apprentice we are. Make no mistake: we are being formed by our daily practices. Whether chosen with care or dangerously shaped by the current of culture, whether life-giving or quietly corrosive, these practices are not neutral. They are the sculptors of our souls. The real question is, how is that formation going, and how is it being led? What shifts might the Spirit be inviting us to make—shifts that, over time, could bear dramatically different fruit?

Living the Christian life—right where we are—is both our intended place and the primary way we access God. Let us take a fresh look at the ancient practice of a rule of life—a framework that helps us arrange our everyday rhythms around practices we can trust to lead us toward greater wholeheartedness and deeper union with God.

Join me for a deeper dive and a conversation with like-hearted allies Ryan Ruebsahm and Chris Rice, as we recover more of the ancient path together as a global community.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan and Cherie