Walking the Path of the Rhythms of Jesus

Last year we uncovered the devotional page of Veterans United Home Loans (VU). Although a business — with over 3,000 employees in 28 locations — VU has a Faith & Community “department,” “formed in 2013 to allow people opportunities to have their lives enhanced through deepening faith and improving community—hopefully experiencing greater peace on both vertical and horizontal relational planes.” This time around the author is Brock Bondurant.

Go Back to Go Forward

Jeremiah 6:16 – Thus says Yahweh: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. …”.

Around the end of 2020, a friend of mine wrote a post on taking a slightly different approach to the New Year with a Scripture focus to guide her throughout the year instead of the usual setting of goals and resolutions. This really resonated with me. After reading her post, I set out to find that which would enliven me to personal renewal in 2021. So, when I read the sweet words of Matthew 11:28-30 on the eve of 2021, I found what would be my focus.

Come to me, Jesus said (Matt 11:28). I was extended an invitation to rest, to the renewal that my soul had been longing for. The question still echoes: What if I started from a place of rest? Thus my year began.

My mind and heart have long been captured by the essence of practicing the way of Jesus. In a culture of busy and hurry, practices or habits of Jesus provide rest and renewal through the ways of old instead of the anxiety that we’ve become accustomed to. The spiritual disciplines of the early Church seemed to provide that which my soul was thirsting for – rest and nearness to God – as I began to participate in habits that stir my affections for Jesus. Through the ancient practice of flipping your bible open to read whatever your finger lands on, I found this verse in Jeremiah:

Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.

I set out on my personal study of the way of Jesus and invited my church small group along for the ride, adding a new practice every couple of months. We asked for the ancient paths, where the good way is and found our answer in Jesus. Now, we simply need to walk in it – to practice the way of Jesus – to find rest for [our] souls. Because to accept Jesus’ invitation to come to him, to take his easy yoke upon us means to change our ways. We cannot continue in the way of the world and expect to find the rest that we long for. We must look back, to Jesus himself and live lives renewed by following his life rhythm. We have to go back to these ancient paths to go forward.

Jesus – God in the form of man – walked these ancient paths. He came to not only grant us salvation, but to show us a new way to live. He came as a human to show us the way that we were intended to be human. To become like Jesus, bearing all the fruits of the spirit, we must commit our lives to this way. To be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, and so on, we must walk in His way. But what does that look like? Practices like prayer, Scripture study, time in silence & solitude, Sabbath, and worship with a community of believers. This is the new way – the easy yoke – that Jesus establishes and invites us into. These practices are, as Eugene Peterson describes them, unforced rhythms of grace (Matt 11-28-30 MSG).

I invite you to receive Jesus’ invitation to the new way. I invite you to stand, and look; to ask for the ancient paths – the ones where the good way is – and walk in it with me, with others – together. Looking to Jesus, let us go back to go forward.

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Bonus devotional: At the same site, the same author looks at the prodigal son parable and that older son who, “although he was near in proximity, his heart was bent more towards earning his inheritance than it was towards loving the father.” Check out Homecoming.

The Work He Began: Our Part

Readers at Thinking Out Loud have met Jeff Snow previously on a few occasions, including a book review, a story about his day-to-day ministry on a university campus, and his 3-part series on divorce, which we ran twice. But he’s only appeared once before here in 2012. Jeff is a half-time pastor in Canada, and spends the other half of his week as a campus worker with Mission Canada, for which he depends upon donations. He’s also a longtime friend who has been incredibly faithful to doing ministry mostly in one particular small town in Ontario.

I attended his church on Sunday. (Full disclosure: My wife is on staff.) His sermon was based on Philippians 1:6

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (NLT)

For the first part of the sermon, he talked about what God has done for us in beginning this work, through the process we call salvation. And then…

by Jeff Snow

…Which brings us to the question, what part do we have to play in accomplishing the work that God has for us. We are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are told that faith without works is dead. We talk in church about the importance of committing ourselves to times of prayer, times of reading and studying God’s Word. We talk about the importance of coming to church, of worshipping and fellowshipping together. Is the completion of the work God wants to do in us dependent on our success in doing all these things?

Well, yes and no. We can’t earn our salvation. And any of these things listed done without a heart of surrender and obedience to God simply becomes an intellectual exercise or an act of earthly community rather than divine community. Our verse tells us that HE, God, will complete the good work done in us.

Neil Anderson, in his devotional Who I Am In Christ, writes using a boating analogy, “If we think getting to the other side is a question of how hard we row, we may never get there. We must never forget that it is He who began the work in us, and it is He who will carry it to completion.”

So does that mean we do nothing? Going to church and reading the Bible and praying don’t matter? Well, if they are seen as ends in themselves, probably not. But when we see them as a means to an end–placing ourselves within reach of God so that he can finish the work in us–then they do matter. These spiritual disciplines in our lives put us in a place where God can complete the work He has begun in our lives…

…Continuing with his boating analogy, Neil Anderson asks, “Are you running against the wind? Is a storm about to swamp your boat? Have you failed in the past? Do you believe God has given up on you? I don’t believe He has!” Later in the book of Philippians Paul, confident in God’s desire to complete His work in our lives, makes this statement of determination. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” God through Jesus Christ has taken hold of your life. He has called you for a purpose. The challenge this morning is to be confident in that fact. The challenge is to realize that God has a hold of your life. The challenge is to press on and reach out to grab hold of Him, grab hold of His purposes. As you do, know that you will be pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called you heavenward in Christ Jesus.

For the promise is that God will bring the work to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. This day of Christ Jesus is the day when He returns, the day that there will be a new heaven and a new earth. This tells me two things. One is that the work God is doing in us is a lifelong process, only completed at the end of our days. And second, that the work that God has planned for us transcends even beyond our time here in this life.

The work of God in us through Jesus Christ begins at our salvation: Justification. It continues through our lifetime as God accomplishes His purposes in us and molds us into the image of Christ: Sanctification. And it comes to full completion when we see our Saviour face to face in eternity: Glorification. The work is complete when he brings us Home to be with Him.

So know that God has begun a good work in you by saving you. Know that he will never abandon you, that he has a good purpose for your life, plans to give you a hope and a future. He will mould you until you are brought to that day of completion in the arms of Jesus in heaven.

So stop struggling. Stop trying to be self-sufficient. Stop believing that you don’t matter to God. Stop crawling off the potter’s wheel. Be confident of this very thing. That He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.