A More Beautiful Life Collective

Our daily actions affect everything we do. When we are consistent with choosing the best behaviors for our lives, we end up creating a storehouse of goodness in our hearts. Our last step in our method of Christian living is focused on creating this plan for everyday living. This plan is called a rule of life and will help you to have a fruitful, meaningful, impactful life for Christ.

S2E7 – Is it biblical to want to create a life you love? What does the Bible say about pleasure? – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are focusing on part 1 of our series, which is about creating a life we love and cultivating our hearts for God. Before we think about how to create a life we love, we have to figure out if we even should. Is it biblical to create a life we love? What does the Bible say about pleasure? We are going to be looking at some history and then turning our focus to the theology of pleasure in the Bible. Spoiler: Pleasure isn't evil. In this show, I'll explain why.  https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/is-it-biblical-to-want-to-create-a-life-you-love-what-does-the-bible-say-about-pleasure/ Get a copy of our FREE guide to creating a life you love here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/0398c49016 – Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode:  I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can ​learn a little bit more about me here​.  While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, ​A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast​, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​, or watch on ​YouTube​.  Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies.  I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at ​A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop​. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God. 

1. S2E7 – Is it biblical to want to create a life you love? What does the Bible say about pleasure? 34:06
2. S2E6 – What does the Bible say about man?: Christian Theological Anthropology 48:43
3. S2E5 – Creating 12 Life Questions to Declutter Your Mind 41:07
4. S2E4 – Angelology: Types and Characteristics of Angels 51:28
5. S2E3 – How to Set Goals When You are Feeling Burnt Out 42:36

Hello and welcome to Season 1 Episode 33 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. We’re right in the middle of our series on Why What You Believe Matters: Creating a Method of Christian Living. 

A Method for Christian Living

As we’ve mentioned before, this series is inspired by Charlotte Mason’s principles of education which she developed to guide her everyday life as an educator. Our Principles inform our practice, and so, we need to be diligent and thoughtful about the principles that we have in our lives. What beliefs are guiding the way we live? What are our boundaries? What are our guardrails? 

To make these wise principles, we need to have a solid foundation in biblical doctrines and virtues. What are our bible-based beliefs? What are the virtues that are good and righteous? From these doctrines and virtues, we create those principles that become the foundation for our lives. 

This method of Christian Living is a form of Practical Theology. And, to create this method, we’ve followed some basic steps: 

1. Create Your Personal Statement of Faith
2. Create a list of Christian Virtues
3. Create Principles based on those Doctrines & Virtues
4. Create a Rule of Life

Now, if you’ve been following along in this series, you may notice that the last step in this list sounds a little different… and new. We haven’t created a rule of life, and you may feel a little confused as to what it is. After doing all this hard work of sorting through what you believe, the last thing you need to do is figure out how to apply it to your everyday life. You need to “use discernment regularly to figure out if how you are behaving lines up with the beliefs that you’ve stated.” 

***If you have enjoyed visiting A More Beautiful Life Collective, please like, comment, share, and subscribe. Let’s make the world more beautiful together. This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through this link, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. It’s a win-win!***

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The best way to do this kind of daily behavior design is through…. You guessed it! Habits! I’ve talked about habits extensively on the blog and podcast throughout season 1, so I’m not going to go into depth on how to create habits that match your goals or how to create habits that stick. But, you can listen to those at the link in the show notes. 

Instead, today, we are going to talk about formulating a plan for all those habits that will help you to live out the method of Christian living that you’ve developed. This plan is called a Rule of Life. 

Check it out in the shop: Want to take a month to deep dive into the topic of habits while also cultivating spiritual disciplines in your life? Check out our AMBL Collective Morning Time Menus. These are the perfect complement to your quiet time designed to structure those quiet moments in your day to focus on the good, the true, and the beautiful. Get our first month’s guide here! 

What is a Rule of Life? 

When you first hear the term rule of life, it might conjure up images of a contract, constitution, or maybe classroom rules. You might hear in your head something like, “Don’t talk while the teacher is talking. Don’t get up without permission. Don’t be mean or bully others.” If this is the picture in your mind, you might be a little hesitant to jump into making your own rule. Who would want something so restrictive and soul-sucking as that to guide your life? 

Recently though, there was a popular book published by Jordan Peterson that described rules that you should follow. Some of his rules are more like principles, but it has popularized this idea. Now, you can look online and find people’s rules of living, a didactic and reductive cross between those classroom rules I mentioned before and a true rule of life. The quotes contain things like “Let it go, Don’t compare, and Be Yourself” which may sound good as a caption for an Instagram post but doesn’t really give much inspiration beyond that. 

So what is a rule of life really? 

“A Rule of Life is like a framework, a scaffolding, or a trellis over which a plant grows – something which gives support to us as we lead our Christian lives.” It “contains spiritual, relational, and vocational rhythms needed to sustain the life in Christ we’ve been called to, and it doesn’t change much year in and year out.” 

A Rule of Life is nothing new. In fact, it is an ancient practice that dates back to the sixth century. St. Benedict created the first rule of life for his monastery, and you can it here. The rule was “in short a schedule or set of practices that help us towards holiness in our vocation or state of life.

Kind of like what religious orders follow, it helps guide them towards holiness in their vocation.” 

In Father Lasance’s “My Prayer Book,” he writes, “One of the means’, says a spiritual writer, ‘of acquiring and perfecting in us the interior life, which raises a man above the merely terrestrial and animal life to the height of the divine life in Jesus Christ, consists in adopting and following a rule of life, which does not leave the employment of our time to caprice, but assigns to each moment its own proper duty.’”

If you listened to my podcast on creating your ideal schedule, these ideas may sound familiar. Through a rule of life, you are being intentional about how you spend your days. And, how we spend our days is ultimately how we spend our life. 

The Benedictine Rule became the guidelines for his monastery and has inspired Christians throughout the ages to create their own rules of life. Today, you can read The Common Rule by Justin Whitmel Earley or Habits for a Sacred Home by Jennifer Pepito to learn more about people who are seeking to apply the idea of a rule to their lives. You can also download Sally Clarkson’s 24 Family Ways here which shows how she created a mix of principles and rules of life to teach to her kids. 

St. Benedict begins his Rule with the lines, “Let us therefore now at length rise up as the Scripture incites us when it says: “Now is the hour for us to arise from sleep.” And with our eyes open to the divine light, let us with astonished ears listen to the admonition of God’s voice daily crying out and saying: “Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” And again: “He who has the hearing ear, let him hear what the Spirit announces to the churches.” And what does the Spirit say? “Come, children, listen to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Run while ye have the light of life, that the shades of death envelop you not.”

As you read through the Benedictine Rule, you can see how St. Benedict worked out his own method of Christian Living ultimately arriving at his rule. He begins with a strong understanding of doctrines and virtues. He quotes frequently from Scripture demonstrating his knowledge of God and doctrine. He establishes the virtues that describe monks early, like humility and obedience. Then, he lists out a series of principles “the first of which is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.”

As his rule continues, he begins to list out the specifics of what this looks like. It’s interesting to read through his directives and compare them to my own specific situation in life. This exercise makes evident why we need this fourth step in creating a method of Christian living. 

Moving From Universal to Specific: A Rule of Life for YOU

In this process, we’ve focused mainly on the universals. Doctrines, Virtues, and Principles of the Christian Life shouldn’t vary too much between Christian and Christian. Yes, I still believe that you need to do the work of developing your own list. But, the reason I say that it is personal is not because it is based on your opinion or should be unique to your situation. I can read the Bible and come up with similar doctrines, virtues, and principles as St. Benedict even with the 1,500 years that divide us because we are basing our beliefs on the same Bible, the same God. 

We create a personal statement of faith (as well as virtues and principles) to have the sticking power of those beliefs. Through this process, you are working on making your faith your own. Making it your own does not mean making it uniquely yours. It just means doing the work in your heart, soul, mind, and strength to transfer the beliefs you have from your parents and faith community and place them in your ‘inner sanctum.’ 

I was recently at a homeschool conference and one of the presenters talked about learning as being a copy of the picture of the temple. You have the outer courts, which are your mind, the holy place, your soul, and then, the holy of holies, which is your heart. This heart is your inner chamber. You must do the work of bringing God into this inner chamber. If you don’t do this – don’t take ownership of your faith – your faith will never be truly yours. 

This being said, you don’t take all of your doctrines, virtues, and principles and make them whatever you want them to be. You do the work to understand why, but it is all based on the Bible. 

In this way, your doctrines, virtues, and principles should be somewhat universal. Our study may result in differing conclusions. (You can get my systematic theology study if you want to see some of the ways that people disagree on doctrines.) But, there are still core central truths that will be universal to all Christians. 

A Rule of Life however is not universal. Instead, it begins to apply everything we’ve done to your specific circumstances. Through a rule of life, you are seeing how you can work out the best way to live for God with the lot you’ve been dealt in life. 

What should a rule of life include? 

After St. Benedict details some basic principles on humility and obedience (like, “Same obedience, though things hard and contrary and even injuries, no matter of what kind, have been inflicted, he keep patience with a quiet conscience and enduring grows not weary nor gives in, for Scripture says: “He who perseveres to the end, the same shall be saved.”), he then goes on to describe some basics of worship. This is where the real Rule of Life begins. He describes which psalms should be sung at night, in the winter, and in summer. He describes the way that they should sleep (in a dormitory-type room with separate beds with a candle burning until morning). Monks were not to have anything of their own, and they were to receive whatever they needed equally whether a lot or a little. The Rule of Life took the principles and then applied them to the specific situation of the 6th-century monks. 

What does this look like for you? Well, first off, your rule of life should not look like St. Benedict’s, unless you are planning on joining a Benedictine monastery yourself. You can’t just copy someone else’s rule and then assume that it will work for your specific circumstances. You have to be mindful of what your situation is, what you struggle with, and what your goals are in life. Then, you figure out the puzzle piece of life with your statement of faith, Christian virtues, and biblical principles as the basis. 

The Common Rule

Justin Whitmel Earley wrote about creating a rule of life in his book, The Common Rule. He recognized certain struggles he was facing in his life, including burnout, technology addiction, and loneliness. He wanted to make a system of habits that would address those issues while helping him to live a godly, purposeful life. 

He divided up his habits between two sets, daily habits and weekly habits. Then, he tried to divide and sort them based on 2 spectrums: (1) habits that focused on devotional practices and those focused on relational practices AND (2) habits that focused on adding behaviors to your life and habits focused on limiting behaviors in your life. 

Here are some of the habits he discusses in his rule: 

• Scripture before phone every day
• One meal with others every day
• Kneeling Prayer 3 times a day
• Sabbath once a week 
• Fast for 24 hours once a week 
• Curate media to four hours a week 
• And more 

As you can see from this list, his rule of life is based on similar ideals as the Benedictine rule. But, he has applied those principles differently to create something more applicable, appropriate, and unique to his situation. 

Our doctrines, virtues, and principles are somewhat universal. Our rules of life will be very unique and can change based on our circumstances and seasons of life. 

If you would like to walk through the process of creating your Rule of Life, get our workbook on the shop. You can also get a bundle of all of the workbooks we mentioned in this series in the shop. Don’t forget to check out our newest resource: Building Our Foundation. This walks you through 10 core doctrines of the Christian faith. By the end, you will be able to articulate your beliefs with confidence. 

This is the end of part 1, but you can find part 2 on the blog next week to get some practical tips to create a Rule of Life that works for your specific situation. Until next week, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.