Rule of Life, Part 2: How to Make and Follow One

A Rule is about planning or organizing your life around your goals as a Christian. It’s drawing a line backward from who you want to be to what you are doing now to become that person.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I introduced the concept of a Rule of Life and provided some examples. Here, I offer some practical suggestions and an important caveat toward making and following one. 

Practical Considerations

(1) The practices are for your freedom

Immediately, you’ll recognize that the practices of your Rule stand at the intersection of your competing desires: your base desires that tend toward idleness or sin or whatever else and your Spirit-given desire for holiness and maturity. Learn to see your Rule as helping you walk in freedom from the old desires. I like how Fr. Branson Hipp, a Catholic priest, puts it: 

One of the greatest gifts for my life as a priest has been the obligation to pray the psalms at different times of the day, because in the busiest moments of my day I am reminded of what matters, who God is, and how much I need Him. Rather than being a constant and painful obligation, this promise of prayer has rescued me, from my own selfishness, my distraction, and my pragmatism that can so easily exclude the Lord, the One who has created me, rescued me, and leads me to Himself.*

The goal of a Rule is formation and fruit-bearing. There is no way to do that without examining what needs pruning in your life.

I love that language of his commitment rescuing him from something. Think of your practices as rescuing you from the deforming power of your base desires and practices and ushering you into the freedom of life in the Spirit. 

(*Fr. Hipp also says something similar about being among the poor [emphasis mine]: “I have found that the more I stay close to the poor, to the beggars, the more they rescue me from my own selfishness and arrogance. We all need this rescue, the closeness with the poor, and using a part of our money as gift and offering.”)

(2) Think in two broad categories: engagement and abstinence

Dallas Willard encourages people to think of spiritual disciplines in two categories: engagement and abstinence—or do and don’t. John Mark Comer, in reflecting on this, suggests that you choose practices based on which muscles need the most exercise. Do you have a hard time saying no to temptation? Be sure to include practices that strengthen your abstinence muscle, such as fasting or turning off your phone for a certain period of time each day. Do you have a hard time saying yes to service? Include practices that work that muscle, like volunteering at the church. Comer wisely notes that in our modern age full of distractions, most of us need practices in the “don’t” category—we need to eliminate clutter and simplify our lives so we have fewer commitments and things vying for our attention. 

(3) Choose more downstream than upstream practices

This is another Comer suggestion. Some practices are going to be harder than others and will take considerable discipline to commit to. Those are upstream practices—they take effort, like swimming upstream. Whereas downstream practices are ones you are already motivated to do because you enjoy them, like reading a book or going on a walk. Comer suggests that your Rule, at least early on, has more downstream than upstream practices. 

(4) Start small

The general rule of habit formation applies here too: don’t be so grand and lofty in your Rule that it’s impossible to follow and you bail a week in. Choose a very simple Rule, like Earley’s Common Rule, and get that under your belt before you add to it.  

(5) Include self-examination

This will likely be an upstream practice, but it’s essential. Remember, the goal of a Rule is formation and fruit-bearing. There is no way to do that without examining what needs pruning in your life. In the words of Fr. Branson Hipp: 

If we took a few minutes every day to stand before the Lord, aware of the ways in which we have fallen away from Him with an amendment to do better, we begin to depend on Him more, and slowly become less attached to our sins. This is crucial.

(6) Try to follow a Rule with others

Lastly, don’t go it alone. See if you can get your spouse or a small group of friends to commit to a Rule together. Not only is it helpful accountability, but you’ll find that over time, as Christ is formed more and more in the people closest to you, your influence on each other only serves as fuel for formation. Again, Fr. Hipp has wise words on this: 

We need brothers, men who give us hope that it is possible to follow Christ in this life, men who challenge and encourage us. It is so easy to settle and swallow the proposals of our culture wholesale without the help of one who challenges assumptions. Find other men who are actively trying to grow in holiness, open to constant conversion, and stay close to them. The history of the Church does not lie; those that truly brought reform in times of corruption and difficulty were the ones that were constantly open to personal reform within their community. 

(7) Pattern your Rule after corporate worship

One way to closely connect your Rule of Life with the teachings of Scripture and to bring it into agreement with spiritual leadership is to pattern your daily practices on corporate worship. Here’s an example of how to connect corporate worship practices (left) with practices throughout the week (right):

• Call to Worship → Begin your morning with a reading from God’s Word, followed by prayer

• Singing → Sing the doxology after dinner or before going to bed

• Confession → Confess your sins with your spouse as part of your bedtime routine

• Offering → Give something away every week 

Doing something like this can bring a lot of consistency to your spiritual formation. 

One Caveat

With all of this said, there is some danger to this whole initiative. I mentioned earlier that a Rule of Life is traditionally communal. To individualize it is to remove some of the authority inherent in a Rule of Life. If I am free to make my own rule and stop following it at a whim, is it really much of a Rule? Does it control me in any meaningful way if I create it and can alter or discard it?

Professor of theology Brad East, in his overall positive review of John Mark Comer’s work, offers a wise critique of “DIY Spirituality”: 

The kind of liturgical formation presupposed in Christian history was neither self-starting nor optional nor individually directed. It was a matter of communal obligation imposed by ecclesial authority. It was nonnegotiable, on pain of mortal sin.

You didn’t discern meatless Fridays. If you were Christian, if you were obedient, you did the fast like everyone else. You didn’t decide when to feast. The calendar told you when to do so. Fasting and feasting, sacrament and confession—these were just obligatory. For many they still are. As it happens, this is far more faithful to Aristotle and his insights on the formation of virtue through habit than our present attempts to personalize daily liturgies. We run the risk of DIY spirituality, which is the very thing we want to avoid.

So should we avoid a personal Rule of Life? Not necessarily. But remember, Rules of Life were for monastic orders; they guided a community in how to live together, and there was real bite to them—consequences for not following them. Monks lived in actual submission to something. 

So then, while we would benefit from adopting, adapting, or creating a Rule for ourselves, we should be careful to anchor it to the local church. The actual spiritual authorities in our lives are the Word and Spirit of God and the elders of our local church. Everything else is supplemental. A personal Rule of Life, or perhaps one we adopt with a small group, should be more of a garnish—a way of carrying on the liturgical movements of corporate worship. Corporate worship and submission to elders are non-negotiable; personal Rules of Life are optional. 

Conclusion

In this podcast episode, Pastor Tyler Staton mentions a line in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters that perfectly encapsulates why our habits are so important. These are the words of chief demon Screwtape writing to his young nephew Wormwood, a new demon whose “patient” has recently become a Christian: 

I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian . . . . In the meantime we must make the best of the situation.

There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.

“All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.” And for that reason, Screwtape expects the patient’s faith to fade quickly. 

Let it not be so among us. Let us transfer our habits according to the kingdom to which God has transferred us: to the kingdom of his beloved Son! A Rule of Life is about organizing habits of the mind, body, and spirit—the whole person, the whole life—around our goal: love of God and love of neighbor, intimacy with Christ and imitation of Christ. Let us commit to the weekly rhythms of corporate worship and Sabbath and then supplement those with daily and other weekly habits that form us into always-worshiping, always-growing Christians.