How To Build A Rule of Life (Step 1 of 4) 📓

I bet the student ministry at your church has a retreat. But do you?

Do you have a set-aside time to get away from the office, from Slack, and from the never-ending ministry emails actually to retreat and hear from the Lord? We usually prioritize these moments for students, all while forsaking it for ourselves.

Before you begin building your rule of life, you have to do STEP 1 of the spiritual practice I call “The Year-End Reset” to build your rule of life.

The Year-End Reset is a four-step process where I am able to:

RETREAT - Retreat to hear from God.

REFLECT - Reflect on the previous year.

REBUILD - Rebuild my rule of life.

REVIEW - Review in community.

In this article, I want to focus specifically on the retreat step of the exercise:

Step 1 - Retreat To Hear From God

I love the quote from Joy Dawson that says:

“Anything not born in prayer is born in pride.” - Joy Dawson

But I also believe the same is true for your year. Meaning that if your year is not born in prayer, it will be born in pride.

I’m sure you agree, but I want to walk more deeply in the Spirit in the upcoming year and less in my own prideful strength. I want to love Jesus on a more intimate level. I want to follow the Father’s will more courageously. But those things don’t just happen.

What I’ve learned is that in order to grow, I need to set intentionally aside time to retreat with God so that I can advance my life for God.

In December or January of each year, I spend intentional time evaluating and rebuilding my self-leadership system for the new year. Some years, I may set aside a day or so to do this, and other times, I work through this process over several early mornings. Of course, the more undistracted and uninterrupted time you can spend on yourself, the better.

Strategic Plan of Action:

Here’s what I want to challenge you to do:

1 - Find some blank space.

Sadly, most people have lived at a hectic pace. Unfortunately, the pace often doesn’t slow down in December due to the Holidays. Whether you do your retreat in December or January, find some blank or “blank-ish” space on the calendar to spend intentional time in prayer.

Remember, I have three small children. Therefore, finding a weekend or even a night to get away is not always feasible. If that is true for you, still retreat. Instead, block out two ministry work days to retreat or spend a week from 5 AM-8 AM retreating before the day gets started. It does not matter where you find your blank space; just find some uninterrupted space to set aside for God intentionally.

2 - Hang up to hang out with God.

Have you ever heard the term – “hang up to hang out?” This is the phrase my wife tells me when I’m on my phone too much at home. You are going to want to do the same while on your retreat.

Delete social media apps.

Activate your e-mail away message.

Delegate responsibilities while you are gone.

Maybe turn on airplane mode?

3 - Process before progress.

While you retreat, I suggest that you spend time with God to confess sin, read His word, and ask him to give you a vision for a more God-centered life. But we also want to ask the Holy Spirit to help us process the previous year, before making progress on the upcoming year. During my retreat, I usually:

Review my camera roll

Read through my five-year journal

Scroll my social media profile feeds

Each of these actions helps me remember my previous year as I pray for vision for the next year.

My point is - before you advance into a new year, retreat and hear from God. Because I know from His word and His ways in my life that these moments with God can redefine your entire future.

It’s worth it.

To help you get started, I’ve put my self-leadership system into a downloadable resource for you! It’s called the Year-End Reset.

There’s no catch or upscale; it’s literally - FREE. I’ve used a version of this for the past ten years, and I’m finally sharing it publicly.

I hope this is helpful.

Landon Reynolds ⚡️