Across Church Street
The Life Gauges through postures
A set of postures show us how our lived life should ripen.
Our understanding and discussion of the Life Gauges can be helped by practicing their associated postures.
HUMILITY
Fall to your knees. Bow before God. Raise your hands to the sky. This is a posture of humility. It’s a posture of surrender—we are thoroughly defeated by overwhelming love.
Confession: God is great. God is good. And God is near.
RESPONSIBILITY
Extend your arms forward with open hands, palms up, in a posture to receive. Now pull your arms toward your body and close your hands in a posture of grasping, taking hold.
Confession: Good stewards of God’s grace.
ACCLIMATION
Stand facing one direction, then turn 180 degrees and face the other direction. Reject what the world says about you (and others) and how the world wants you to live. Turn and accept what God says about you (and others) and the way of life he offers. This is a picture of ongoing repentance.
Confession: People like us do things like this.
IMITATION
Return to your ending posture of DISCIPLINE—grasping hands close to the body. Now reverse the DISCIPLINE posture, extending your arms forward, opening your hands and turning your palms upward. This is a posture of release, of generosity. Freely we have received. Now, we freely give.
Confession: We so love the world that we give.
MISSION
Extend your arms forward as if reaching around a barrel, about to give a bear hug. This is a posture of gathering—guiding people to the life they were created to live. It’s acting as a shepherd—corralling people into a place of acceptance and shalom.
Confession: Our story for God’s glory.
The Life Gauges have a priority
Expression comes out of formation. And encounter sources everything.
HUMILITY | Worship God
RESPONSIBILITY | Attach to Jesus
ACCLIMATION | Live from the Kingdom
IMITATION | Love the world
MISSION | Persuade others
The Life Gauges have a priority. Worship supports the weight of all the others. Ministry is supported by all the others. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus says “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. His command is not “Come be fishers of men”. His command is “Come follow me.”
As we encounter him,
He forms us,
And we express.
For a lifetime, our greatest concern must be our posture of worship and our connection to Jesus. Only then can we have confidence in our spiritual formation and ministry expression.
Summarizing the Life Gauges
An overview of five formation gauges, with Scriptures. The dashboard begins with Humility and passes through Responsibility, Acclimation, and Imitation, on the way to Mission. These gauges are covered extensively on this Life Made Manifest website and in the book Taking A Zero.
Imagine we are simultaneously enrolled in five discipleship ‘colleges’. The ultimate objective of our education is fluency in the culture of God’s kingdom.
HUMILITY | WORSHIP GOD
God is great. God is good. God is near.
We grow in our knowledge of God and our humble dependence on him.
(Mark 12:29-30, Acts 24:14-16, Romans 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 6:16, 1 John 5:21)
RESPONSIBILITY | ATTACH TO JESUS | CO-REQUISITE: HUMILITY
Good stewards of God’s grace*.
We grow in our readiness to receive and take hold of the God-given position, authority, responsibilities, and resources available to us only in Christ.
(Matthew 7:7-8, Luke 13:24, John 10:27, John 15, Romans 11:16-22, 2 Corinthians 9:8-11, 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, Ephesians 2:8-10, 1 Timothy 1:3-4, 1 Peter 4:10)
ACCLIMATION | LIVE FROM GOD’S KINGDOM | CO-REQUISITE: RESPONSIBILITY
People like us do things like this.
We grow into our God-given identity and we adapt to God’s ways.
(John 15:19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 4:4-7, Galatians 5:16-26, Colossians 1:13-14)
IMITATION | LOVE THE WORLD | CO-REQUISITE: ACCLIMATION
We so love the world that we give.
We grow in our expression of self-denying, others-oriented love.
(Matthew 5:43-45, Matthew 22:37-40, John 3:16, 1 Corinthians 13)
MISSION | PERSUADE OTHERS | CO-REQUISITE: IMITATION
Our story for God’s glory.
We grow in our discipleship influence on people and on every sphere of culture.
(Matthew 5:13-14, Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 18:4, Acts 19:8, 2 Corinthians 5:11, 2 Corinthians 5:20)
ALL BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
Not by might, nor by our power.
We participate in God’s government by his power and appointment.
(Romans 8:13-14, 1 Corinthians 2:13, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Galatians 3:3, Galatians 5:16-25, Ephesians 2:22, Ephesians 3:5, Philippians 3:3)
*The word 'grace' used here to mean: the unmerited God-given desire, ability, and resources to participate in God's economy (purpose, plan, activity) as His beloved.
- worship
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- hania rani
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- seth godin
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- john stott
I practice the spiritual discipline of rescuing earthworms on paved surfaces. It's a reminder to me that I can pause what I'm doing, get a little dirty, and help. Also, that I've been given the responsibility to care.