If we passionately modeled our life habits after those of our Lord Jesus, what would we find ourselves doing?

I dare say we would earnestly seek to live simply. Indeed, we would not live fattened with surplus, but with frugality. Our exceeding familiarity with God’s word would betray the fact that we often studied what God has revealed in written form. Prayer would be as natural and necessary for us as breathing, it being our very private and public way of living.

Exercising keen awareness of what was happening around us, we would process what we took in with reflection and meditation combined with God’s word. In that awareness, we would so pour out our life in service to others, that our selflessness would be a sign of wonder to those watched our lives. Though living public lives, we would deliberately spend no small amount of time in solitude, intentionally fortifying ourselves for living selflessly when with others. We would make sure nothing else comes to have our ultimate attention or come to own us, save God alone as our supreme. We would be found chaste for Him.

The same would hold true for our economy of words, so much so that others would say we seem to be often given over to silence. Why? For we know that with many words, comes sin. We would weld ourselves in fellowship with others, whoever others God brought our way, caring passionately that we all become like our Father. We would believe our body and spirit are directly linked and would so live out that belief that fasting would be a natural response from us when facing great trials. Our celebration of God in our life would come not from our mood or the moment, from a life carefully arranged to distant ourselves as far as possible from all possible forms of discomfort or pain, but from our enchantment with Him.

In effect, we would become worship in motion. Our daily life would be a living, zealous embodiment and expression of our contemplation of scripture and its Author. We would not advertise or seek to make known what good things we did with our life. Indeed, we would shun notoriety and be indifferent to visibility, knowing that our Father knows full well what we do in secrecy and that this is all that matters. And in all of our living, and even our death, complete sacrifice for God and others would be what we had come to be about.

In other words, we would live our life with clear boundaries and disciplines in place. We would deliberately refrain from some things in life while embracing other matters. In our seeking a life so structured, we would feed our ability to say “No” by fortifying our spirit with disciplines of solitude, simplicity, silence, secrecy, sacrifice, fasting, and chastity. We would fuel our ways  of saying  ”Yes” with disciplines such as fellowship, prayer, service, study, and worship.