Peace by Practice: You Are Already a Disciple of Something

In his memoir “We Did Ok, Kid,” British actor Anthony Hopkins reflects on his life from his Welsh childhood into his eighties. In the final chapter, he writes: “I look at my life and remember that hapless little boy, and I think, How did all this happen? This is the thing that puzzles me about the mystery of life. I could never have organized any of this, or even imagined it. My life has been written by someone else, not by me.”

“My life has been written by someone else, not by me.” That seems to be how most of us view spiritual formation. Life just kind of happens to us and we make the most with what we get.

All of us are aiming our lives at something. We have a vision of who we want to be in the final chapters of our lives. But if we’re honest, we don’t really know how to get there. We either assume we’ll get there eventually, or we wait for big dramatic moments—the miraculous healing, life-changing sermon, or powerful moment of worship that will rid us of our remaining anger, lust, impatience, or greed.

As poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “I’m so distant from the future hope of myself…”

The Question of Change

At the end of your life’s story with friends and family gathered around to celebrate your life, what do you imagine they’ll say? How do we get from where you are here and now to there? How do we get a little closer to that hope of ourselves, that future version that looks less like we do now and a little more like Jesus?

In other words: How do we change?

That’s the question we’re answering in our Peace by Piece vision series at Passion Creek Church. This year, we’re focusing on how we change from people who are anxious, hurried, and isolated into people of peace.

Our theory is that there are five pieces to change: Teaching, Community, Practice, Holy Spirit, and Moments & Marathons. Today we’re focusing on Practice—the daily, weekly, and lifestyle habits that reorient us back towards the presence of God.

Everything Around You Is Forming You

In Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul writes to a church in the city of Ephesus. In the first century, Ephesus was known for three things: power (it was the magic capital of the world), commerce (the second largest city next to Rome), and sex (home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven ancient wonders).

What the culture around the Ephesian church called power, commerce, and sex, Paul called promiscuity, impurity, and greed. Paul’s point: In Ephesus, this is the default. This is how those who resist God live. It’s the cultural waters the church is swimming in.

Everything around you is forming you. The narratives you believe, the community you surround yourself with, and the habits you engage in are all predetermined by the cultural waters you swim in.

For the Ephesians it was power, commerce, and sex. For the East Valley it might be comfort, control, and convenience—or political tribalism, consumerism, and hustle culture. The point is, there are cultural waters around us that are just as potent and powerful as the ones Paul warned against.

But notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell the church to judge the world, take over Rome and Christianize it, or get a better emperor in power. He says, “Don’t walk like them.” In other words, orient your life around something else entirely. Live out a better story.

Practice Is About Counter-Formation

Every choice to fast is a choice to say “no” to the indulgence we’re told to give into with every Instagram ad. Every choice to pray is a choice to say “no” to the lie of self-sufficiency, comfort, and convenience. Every choice to be generous is a choice to say “no” to the false allure of “more.”

In Rome, early Christians were often persecuted not because of their belief in Jesus, but because of their refusal to integrate the practice of their faith with pagan worship. When they refused to worship other gods, they were blamed for famines, droughts, and military losses. It wasn’t their teaching or their community that put them at odds with the Greco-Roman world—it was their practice.

What truly sets us apart from the world isn’t our intellectual belief in Jesus, our doctrine, or even our church attendance—it’s our practice, how we live. It’s how we spend our time, how we respond to chaos and anxiety, how we prioritize our finances, how we manage our schedules and what our relationships look like. It’s how we mark our days and address our worries, how we work, play, and rest.

You Are Already a Disciple of Something

In Ephesians 4:20-24, Paul says this isn’t the life you were designed to live. You know about Jesus, you were taught about a better way. But you have to choose that life. You have to take off your old self and put on the new. That’s practice—the embodiment of our belief.

One of the greatest threats to the church today isn’t politics or individualism or even secularism. It’s the false belief that Christianity is just about belief, not embodied practice. But our discipleship isn’t proven from our doctrine. Our discipleship is proven in our daily lives, the insignificant choices we make when we wake up.

You are already a disciple of something. To be a disciple is to aim your practice at someone or something. By default, we aim our lives at the same thing as the pagans around us: deceitful desires, power, greed, and futile thoughts.

Your energy, thoughts, affection, time, schedules, calendars, hopes, dreams, and relationships are already aimed at something. The question is not: am I really a disciple? But rather: who or what am I following? If nothing changes between now and the end of your story, who are you in the last chapter?

The Good News

Here’s the good news: you already have an alternative. Paul tells you clearly you have a renewed spirit, you have a new self, you’re made in God’s likeness, you carry his righteousness. All you have to do is put it on.

Alongside good teaching, honest community, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and over the long haul, you need routines and habits that challenge the default waters of culture and help us swim against its current.

At Passion Creek we’ve identified nine practices that place us against the current of our culture and in line with the way of Jesus: Sabbath, Scripture, Simplicity, Hospitality, Peacemaking, Generosity, Fasting, Prayer, and Witness.

These are intentional habits and spiritual rhythms that put us at odds with the culture around us. Every choice to engage with one of these is a choice to say “no” to the default way of our city and say “yes” to the power of God to transform us.

A Critical Warning

The practices are a means to an end. There’s a world where we sabbath perfectly, read bibles daily, pray fervently, fast ascetically, witness unashamedly, give generously, and make peace courageously yet still miss the plot of the story God is writing. Where we nail the practices every week yet still remain bitter towards our enemies, helpless towards our sinful indulgences, and ultimately far from God Himself.

When asked about his fears for the future of spiritual formation, Dallas Willard answered: “The spiritual formation movement will degenerate into technique. It will focus on practices and not on the soul.”

These practices aren’t life hacks for a more optimized life. They’re strategies in the battle for our very souls. If the end goal of our practice isn’t communion with God that forms and shapes us into his image, then we’re no better than the pagans in Ephesus.

The practices must form us and challenge us. Form us—put us in positions to say no to cheaper, less fulfilling goods to say yes to things that truly satisfy. Challenge us—confront our false selves and rub against the default grain of our lives.

Walking, Not Sprinting

According to Ephesians 5:15-16, discipleship looks less like a dramatic jump into the deep end of the spiritual pool and a lot more like walking. Paul doesn’t mean the literal day you live out is evil. Rather, the day is full of opportunities for evil. By default, we make choices, big and small, to cooperate with evil through our doomscrolling, gossip, indulgence, distraction, impatience, and everything else that makes up the small sins of our days.

That’s the thing about formation and practice—it’s slow and unimpressive. But it’s often the slow, unimpressive, unnoticeable choices that move us away from God. It’s not the big dramatic moments that ruin us. It’s the small, seemingly insignificant choices we make every day. The affair doesn’t happen in a moment; it happens in the marathon, at the end of a string of choices that start small, like walking in the wrong direction.

Few of us sprint away from God. All of us drift.

The days are evil, so make the most of your time and pay attention to how you walk. Not sprint, not run, not even lightly jog. Walk. Walking is boring. It’s routine. It’s a means to an end. But if we want to be formed by Jesus through good teaching, honest community, open to the Holy Spirit over the long haul, we have to learn to walk.

Your Rule of Life

Saints throughout history have structured their lives for sustainable formation through what’s called a Rule of Life—a pattern of daily, weekly, and lifestyle habits that make space to be formed by Jesus.

But here’s the truth: you already have a Rule of Life. Your days are ordered around something—work schedule, kids, school, meals, vacations. The markers and anchors of your days are doing more than just keeping you organized. They’re forming you.

What daily habits, routines, and rhythms are you engaged in? How are they forming you? And who are you becoming because of them?

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.