A Key to Experiencing the Abundant Life is Rhythm

Living in rhythm—and the commitment to live life in a sustainable rhythm will help you avoid burnout, experience despair, and running your life on empty.In choosing to live in rhythm you are accepting a different cadence in life than the one which says: Get! Achieve! Acquire! Do! That kind of rhythm over the long haul leads to the front doors of burnout and failure. By developing a more life-giving rhythm, you will need to explore a few foundational realities: 

  1. Every living thing has a rhythm to it. The birds migrate. The sea ebbs and flows in tidal rhythm. A woman’s body has a biological rhythm and the farmer knows the rhythm of the seasons to plant the crops.
  2. Rhythm is found in the Bible in the opening chapters of Genesis when we read that God created the world in six days and on the seventh—he ceased from all his work. The kingpin of a system of living in rhythm begins with the Sabbath rhythm. Work six days and one day is totally off—completely ceasing from all work related activities.
  3. The Judeo-Christian faith was built upon a system of rhythm, festivals and experiences that allowed people to look FORWARD in anticipation because they knew Sabbath, or some festival or celebration was just around the corner. It also allowed them to reflect BACKWARD in appreciation of how good their time off was; how nurturing; how life-giving; how fun.
  4. The early church embraced this rhythm as is evidenced in the Apostles praying in rhythm at certain times and in observing special seasons and times that morphed into living in a liturgical calendar. For example, this Sunday is regarded as Pentecost Sunday. It’s the day Christians world-wide remember the coming of the Spirit and how the Spirit emboldens our lives and we now live with the Spirit of God living in us.

We've violated rhythm today. We're always on. We're always available. We're always working. Just yesterday two major news magazines featured articles on how Americans do not take their vacations because they'd rather work. Here's a link to one: Business Journal ArticleI discuss this more in The Jesus Life (Chapter 4). The reality of rhythm is this regardless of your experience in living in rhythm or having never heard of what I am discussing here. Rhythm was modeled by God, lived out in the Old Testament era, anchored by Jesus through his own life style as recorded by Luke and embraced by the New Testament church. By the time of the industrial and technological revolution, we are now always “on,” always, “available,” and always, “wired.” We never quit.It was life giving for me to take our dog Laz to the Vet recently due an ear infection. We arrived at 12:30 thinking we would be seen by the next available doctor. However the sign on the door simply said, “Our office is closed from 12:00pm-2:00pm each day” Please come back during regular office hours. I could have gotten mad and irritated thinking, “I’ll go somewhere else that really wants my money and will stay open in this 24/7 world we live in.” But I smiled. I imagined how nice it would be to be on staff of this large vet clinic who closed each day for lunch, allowing employees run errands and more.We have much wrong in our way of looking at reality. Rhythm is the key to living a sustainable, enjoyable life which we might learn to experience as the abundant life; not the exhausted life. ---------------------------Let me encourage to get and read The Jesus Life as one of your TOP summer reads. It's filled with practical suggestions and resources to help you foster and develop a sense of abundance in your life right now. We're offering a special right now. We'll pay the shipping plus send a free book, Embracing Soul Care--which is a daily devotional reading on how to care for your soul. ---------------Download for FREE the chapter on Living in Rhythm from the Jesus Life! Go to: www.myjesuslife.com

Building the Scaffolding for the Abundant Life

Lesson #2.Have you ever noticed on new construction that the first thing builders build is the necessary scaffolding. The scaffolding is necessary. It's the beams, planks and poles that are erected both around and inside the new construction. There, the workers ascend the planks and build the building.Rhythm is the necessary scaffolding we need to build a sense of abundance into our lives. Without a sense of rhythm--every day is the same. The days turn into weeks and the weeks morph into years. But when we build the scaffolding of rhythm into our lives, we have the necessary structure to build our lives--to "work out our own salvation" as Paul says and to live not in drudgery but with meaning, satisfaction and a sense of abundance.In our time we called the Great Experiment, we purposed to live a life of rhythm. We had been doing too much. We had violated our own souls but accepting too many invitations and to try to say 'yes' to many times instead of saying 'no.' In our new rhythm, we worked hard but then took the time to come back to life. We gave our hearts away but then took the necessary time to de-tox; to rest, to reflect; to enjoy; to have fun and then we worked again.The scaffolding we began to build was to embrace a rhythm of engage--then disengage. Do our work. Pour our heart out. But then come back for a time of renewal, refreshment, rest and reflection. Without these four "R's: renewal, refreshment, rest and reflection we would only be on the treadmill of doing more; burning the candle at both ends and entering a sense of hamster wheel living.By imposing a scaffolding of rhythm, we are having the time to evaluate the trajectory of our lives; make small adjustments and live with hope and a renewed sense of calling which is deep and life-giving. It feels like blessing, not drudgery. It feels like life, not death. It feels like glimmers of abundance not endurance.In my book, The Jesus Life, I am hearing from people all over the world who are fascinated with what I unpack there in two chapters about rhymthm. Here, though, I want to go further. Say a bit more and share more personal insights and reflections.Using the scaffolding metaphor, envision how you want each day to look, each week, each month, each quarter and each year. What do you want to do each week that is life giving. What can you implement that is life giving every single month; every quarter.What kind of scaffolding do you envision for a sustainable rhythm?How many hours a week are you working currently and how much time would you like to disengage each week?What would disengagement look like?What does rhythm look like from where you are RIGHT NOW?

Taking the Time To Shed the Socks and Shoes of Worry and Scurry

We're back now from our "experiment" to spend some time on the east coast. While there, we based out of Holden Beach and traveled with our ministry speaking to churches, organizations and leading retreats. We had some much needed time off and it was in the time off that insights, epiphanies and dare I say, revelations came to us. I want to share with you some of these insights because I feel they will be valuable for you as you read The Jesus Life and focus on establishing a healthy rhythm for your own life.Lesson #1:Coming down takes time.Just as it takes time for us to get wound up; to speed up to 5th gear living; to run our lives on empty--it also takes time to wind down--to "come down" where we ought to be, as the Quakers say in their beautiful song, "Tis, a Gift to Be Simple." No one shifts into 5th gear in an instant. You rev the engine up and just the opposite is true. To slow down, it takes time. There's no substitute for it. It takes time to come down where we ought to be. Only time ministers to the soul in a way that nothing else can ever do. To scoot pass this invaluable lesson is to by-pass the secret of entering the rest we need.We rush and cram in our vacations and think we are taking "time off" but sometimes--perhaps even often, taking the time off makes us feel guilty, shameful and it's actually hard for many of us to take time off. Let's face it--do you even know how to take a vacation that your body longs for and your soul is thirsty for right now? Would you cram into too much fun; too much adventure and return even more exhausted? Many of us do this. I'm convinced that many parents today are setting their children up for disaster because the parents themselves can't really learn to live in a rhythm of grace. We do. We do too much. We do too much in our one week away.During our experiment, Gwen and I sat at the ocean for two weeks and and during the first week, our heads were still spinning at the speed of life we were moving in--which was too fast. Sitting on the beach; watching the waves and being quiet helped us de-tox from the speed of our lives. But what's important is this: it took us 2 weeks to have a decent thought about this. It took time to un-clutter our heads and allow our hearts to resurface. For the first week, we were so deeply bone tired that we couldn't think clear. The second week, we felt ourselves coming back to life. It took a full, whole and other week for us to regain the vital connection we had lost in our hearts and with each other.It is enough to make you re-think a one week vacation...or even taking one or two days off. What good will they really do if you don't invest enough time to enter the true rest you really need.It takes time to shed the socks and shoes of worry and scurry. It takes time. And if you don't take the time, you'll still be wearing the smelly socks of preoccupation, day dreaming, feeling quilty, living in the shame of taking time off altogether!As you plan your vacation here are some things to keep in mind and some questions to ponder: 1. How much time would you like to take off from your work and every day routine? How much do you need? How much can you take? What do you feel when these questions stare at you right now?2. Is it possible to have a buffer day before you go and leave and another buffer day when you return so that you're being nice to yourself and giving yourself some transition time--time to unpack. Time to take it easy rather than rush, rush, rush and hurry, hurry, hurry so you can finally relax.3. What lessons might Americans learn from the European brothers and sisters who take an entire month off? Is that even possible?4. What would it look like for you to be able to shed the socks and shoes of hurry and scurry?