By Casey Tygrett
Let”s face it. We can”t dance. Most of us, anyway.
Perhaps you are one of the chosen few who can actually dance, but that takes rhythm. And the kind of rhythm involved in dancing is a gift I was not blessed with.
There is no rhythm in this overcommitted and under-paused culture, either. But Jesus offers a solution for that.
The rhythm we create for ourselves is fragile and broken and built on selfish foundations that turn and fade with the seasons of our lives. It”s not that our seasons aren”t important, but when we travel the peaks and valleys of our lives with nothing to ground us, we have nothing to sustain us. Following such a path not only will not satisfy; it may kill us.
The great goodness of following Jesus is that the weight of guesswork has been removed from us. With Jesus, there is a plan and a mission. There is a story to be told, a world to be rescued, a life to be inherited, and a character to be developed. There is very little uncertainty regarding the type of life God desires for his people, because his Son acted out the entire drama in fast-forward during his three years of public ministry.
In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we find not only the teaching of Jesus, but also the lived activity of Jesus. One of the most beautiful things about the Gospels is the writers weren”t content just to catalogue the bullet points from Jesus” sermons. They talked about dirt and spit and walking and talking and eating and playing in a way that gave the divine a human smell so we could clearly sense this was not just God in facts””this was truly Emmanuel, “God in skin.”
The way Jesus conducted himself clearly shows us his priorities, and because Jesus himself claimed to be carrying out the mission of God, we have to believe that Jesus” actions also reflect the desires of God for us. Jesus lived as God desires every person on earth to live. He lived with hope, wisdom, and peace, and he brought reconciliation to the broken and correction to the misguided and misdirected.
We desperately need his priorities today. There is no one person on the planet immune to the challenges of a life out of balance””out of rhythm. We struggle to assess what matters most, where the most important next step will take us, while Jesus constantly seemed to be on a divinely greased track into the goodness and beauty of Beatitudes in action and the death of death.
What makes up this so-called rhythm? For that we turn to Luke.
On the Move
Luke”s Gospel presented Jesus on the move, but in the midst of his movement we find a day-to-day activity that is revolutionary:
“Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16).
This verse is critical not only because of what it says, but because of where it is in Luke”s writing of the Jesus story. This first mention of Jesus going off to lonely places comes after Jesus spent a ton of time healing and teaching. Jesus has come into conflict with people””namely the religious people of his time””and has been pressured by his success to lead some kind of revolt or violent opposition with his miraculous power. Luke”s use here of the word often is no accident. It means this was part of Jesus” identity””part of his way of living and conducting himself in the world. You could translate this verse even more directly as, “It was just like that Jesus to go to lonely places and pray by himself.”
We need to grasp the central reality of what was happening in the story when Jesus went off to the lonely place to pray and get some clarity: the time when Jesus went off to quiet places and prayed was directly linked to heavy periods of ministry work. It was a rhythm””Jesus advanced toward those who were broken, those who were in literal and spiritual exile, and then he retreated to be energized and guided by his Father toward the next step in his journey.
If that pattern is good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for you and me.
Retreating and Advancing
In the past, churches have primarily taught their people about retreat“”the practices of the inner life, such as prayer and personal Bible reading, and possibly more complex spiritual practices, such as fasting””but have left the advance aspect up to the missionary organizations or one- or two-week summer mission trips to other states or countries. We can guess at the reasons why, but most likely it is because retreat is much easier to understand and apply.
But you can”t spend time in retreat with God without his mission””his desire and dream””for the world rubbing off on you. Jesus was coming back to the source of the mission and the dream of God so he could be reminded and restored for the journey that was yet to come. Advance was the slingshot that threw Jesus into brokenness and aching””retreat is the slingshot that sent him, aching, back into solitude and silence to seek the direction and strength of his Father for the next step of the journey.
Jesus was kept alive and in the flow of God”s kingdom mission by this rhythm, and without it he may have self-destructed under the weight of the task ahead of him.
And in turn, so might we, and so will we.
What does the rhythm of your life look like today? What piece are you lacking and how can you see your life in Christ hindered by it?
This article is adapted from Casey Tygrett”s e-book, The Jesus Rhythm, available at www.caseytygrett.com.
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