Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-informed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 The Message

Fix your attention on God and you’ll be changed from the inside out. God is the one who brings out the best of you. That’s a truth worth pursuing with our whole hearts. God lovingly invites us to pursue our shared calling as a Christian community and our unique vocation as individual disciples. There is only one Moses, one Ruth, one Peter, one James, one John – and only one you.

We are all on a common pursuit of loving God, loving one another and loving others in Jesus’ name. We do so in slightly different ways – reflected in the tens of thousands of denominational niches worldwide – but more importantly, we call ourselves Christian and mean it from the bottom of our hearts. Our commonality is a beautiful gift to reflect on and is our delightful inheritance. We are set apart and called to be the people of God, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we we may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). But even though we all live our lives in a wider community, we also find ourselves in daily pursuit of a life that’s uniquely set apart for God’s distinct purposes – evidenced in our personal rule of life.

Consider crafting a Rule of Life early in the New Year – and be assured that it’s a worthwhile resolution to keep! Go to www.ruleoflife.com for more information.