We seem to be experiencing a national epidemic—an epidemic of exhaustion. We live in a cultural moment of constant fatigue. No amount of sleep takes it away. It feels like an exhaustion we cannot recover from, an unrelenting busyness that squeezes all the excess air out of our schedules.
Our culture has made a chaotic lifestyle the norm.
- No margin.
- No space.
- No time.
Jesus invites us to a very different lifestyle.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
The disease of a chaotic lifestyle comes from three different realities:
Internal Hurry
External Distraction
Lack of Spiritual Discipline
Internal hurry
There is much that has been written about the disease of hurry.
“Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.” Dallas Willard
Hurry can prohibit us from actually following Jesus. We are too busy to give time and attention to Jesus. Hurry is the issue underneath so many other issues of our day and age. Even the psychologist Carl Jung, who was not a Christian, said this:
“Hurry isn’t of the devil, it is the devil.” Carl Jung
Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch Christian who risked her life-saving Jews during the Holocaust, once said:
“If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” Corrie Ten Boom
Psychologists actually now diagnose people with Hurry Sickness, which psychology today defines as follows:
Hurry sickness: a malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time and so tends to perform every task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of delay.
Does anybody in the room relate?
Have you ever found yourself doing one of the three signs of hurry:
- You move from one checkout line to another because it is shorter
- When you come to a stoplight, you count the cars ahead of you and change lanes
- You multitask to the point that you forget one of the tasks
This is why Thomas Merton concludes: “Hurry ruins saints.” Here is the challenge.
“Be still, and know that I am God!” Psalm 46:10
Scripture tells us we must be still to get to know God. Being still does not happen when you are in a constant hurry. Internal hurry is one factor in our epidemic of chaos.
External Distraction
There is also the factor of external distraction. We live in a day and age where the amount of things beckoning for our attention is endless.
We are distracted by our phones that are constantly buzzing. We are distracted by notifications in our pockets from apps. We are distracted by the text messages that always seem to come at the most important times. We are distracted by the email we often check late at night.
You can’t do big things if you are distracted by small things. Many of us are exhausted by the intrusion of media and technology into every corner of our lives, resulting in constant overstimulation of body, mind, and emotions. There is basically nowhere we can go that is distraction-free.
It reminds me of the verse from Genesis 28 when Jacob has a supernatural dream from God, and he awakes and says:
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” Genesis 28:16
Now that is being distracted! God is in the living room with us, but we are too buried in our Netflix show to notice him. God is with us while we sit across the table with our friend, but we’re too distracted by the constant buzzing of the phone in our pocket to notice. God is with us in the workspace, but we are too distracted by email and tasks to realize it. How many moments is God in this place, but we are too distracted to be aware of it? How often do we miss him?
There is a great story about Jesus visiting a home in Luke chapter ten:
As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came 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 you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? 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! There is only one thing worth being concerned about.” Luke 10:38-42
Distraction causes us to miss God! Chaos has become our norm because of internal hurry. Chaos has become our norm because of external distraction.
Lack of Spiritual Discipline
Chaos has become our norm because of our lack of discipline. I do not mean the lack of the ability to follow the rules. By lack of discipline, I mean the lack of ability to practice spiritual disciplines. We don’t like spiritual disciplines because we see them as limitations rather than pathways to freedom. And we have always been like this.
Adam and Eve were placed in the garden and given total freedom. They only had to practice one spiritual discipline. Stay away from this one tree. Complete freedom with one boundary. One fence around one tree in their entire world.
So what do they do? They climb the fence! They refuse to keep the one spiritual discipline upon which their freedom depended. Check out what the Bible says about discipline.
“People who accept discipline are on the pathway to life.” Proverbs 10:17
True freedom comes from choosing the right spiritual disciplines. Some of us really hate the word discipline. So let me give you another way to think about it. Think about it as a rule of life. Or better still – a rule that gives you life. Put all three of these factors together, and I get why we are in an epidemic of chaos:
Internal hurry
+ External distraction
+ Lack of spiritual discipline
= Epidemic chaos
Which of these three do you struggle with most?
When the pathogens of the internal hurry and external distraction meet the reality of the lack of spiritual discipline, the result is a chaotic lifestyle. We need help! We need order and peace! We need a rule of life. Practicing a Rule of Life is the antidote to the disease of a chaotic lifestyle.
Many of you are scratching your head right now because a Rule of life isn’t something you’re familiar with. And when you hear the word “Rule,” you immediately shudder because it makes you think of legalism.
A rule of life helps us to incorporate spiritual discipline into our everyday lives. So let’s get a definition of discipline first, then define rule of life. Discipline is choosing what I want most over what I want now. All of get choosing what we want now. And all of us know it is harder to choose what we want most.
What Is a Rule of Life?
A rule of life is a term first used by early church Fathers. A rule of life is a practice we live by to keep Jesus at the center of our lives.
It is a practice you live by in order to keep from ignoring Jesus in the chaos of life. It is a discipline you follow because you want to include Jesus in your life every day. It is a rhythm that keeps you from spinning out of control and away from Jesus.
Our English word “rule” comes from the Latin word “regula,” which means trellis. In the same way, a vine needs a trellis to lift it off the ground so it can bear the maximum amount of fruit and keep it free of predators and diseases; we need a rule of life as a kind of support structure to organize our life as Jesus imagined.
To guide and direct us so that our life isn’t chaotic but is ordered instead so that it can bear the maximum amount of fruit possible. A rule of life is simply a tool to help us follow our values. Rather than a rigid, legalistic to-do list, it’s a life-giving structure meant to lead you to freedom, growth, and joy. It is a habit or practice you commit to in order to grow in your love of God and neighbor.
Ruth Haley Barton defines it this way.
“A Rule of Life is a way of ordering our life around the values, practices, and relationships that keep us open and available to God for the work of spiritual transformation that only God can bring about. Simply put, a rule of life provides structure and space for our growth.”
Let me give you one of my husband’s rules of life.
He calls it chair time—an hour a day where he gets alone and sits with Jesus. Dan will tell you that it restores his soul, reclaims his peace, and reprioritizes his life.
The point is that chaos will take over our lives if we do not learn to practice some rules of life that keep us centered on Jesus. The word ‘rule’ makes us wants to tune out. We don’t like rules. But here is the history of that word. We can see three rules of life that Jesus practiced:
Regular rhythms with spiritual disciplines lead us to experience more rest.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
One Final Prayer
“Jesus, today I come to you. I am weary. I am burdened. I need your promised rest. Help me keep your priorities. Help me learn from you the rules of life – the rhythms of life – that will lead me to find rest for my soul.”
Mary Southerland is also the Co-founder of Girlfriends in God, a conference and devotion ministry for women. Mary’s books include, Hope in the Midst of Depression, Sandpaper People, Escaping the Stress Trap, Experiencing God’s Power in Your Ministry, 10-Day Trust Adventure, You Make Me So Angry, How to Study the Bible, Fit for Life, Joy for the Journey, and Life Is So Daily. Mary relishes her ministry as a wife, a mother to their two children, Jered and Danna, and Mimi to her six grandchildren – Jaydan, Lelia, Justus, Hudson, Mo, and Nori.