Monthly Rhythms
Anticipating & Reflecting on the Month
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The Rhythm Tracker
The monthly rhythm is one of anticipating the month to come and reflecting on the month that has passed. This rhythm of anticipating and reflecting provides an opportunity to consider how you can bring your whole self before God in love; including your spiritual, relational, physical, and mental health.
Reflecting: The rhythm of reflecting on the month that has passed is designed to be completed at the end of each month. It provides space to see how God has been at work, to give thanks for his kindness and love toward you, and to consider which parts of your life you might seek to prayerfully grow in next month.
Anticipating: The rhythm of ‘anticipating’ is designed to happen at the start of the month. It provides time and space to thoughtfully and intentionally ponder how you can grow into a person of love over the month ahead.
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Practically, this often looks like taking time to prayerfully work through the ‘reflecting’ page followed by the ‘anticipating’ page as one month draws to a close and the next month begins.
As part of this, there is space to reflect upon how your weekly rhythms of Scripture, prayer, thankfulness and love for others are forming you, or how you may like to change them in the coming month. There is also an opportunity to contemplate your physical and mental wellbeing, relationships with others, rhythms of work and rest, and your generosity. We believe that as embodied, integrated beings there should be a holistic approach to our spiritual formation, so we’ve provided space to consider this each month.
Below is a short outline of how you could use these short sections each month, along with a recommended resource for developing rhythms not already covered in our ‘daily’ section. While we’re providing some guidance here, we also want to encourage you to use these short reflection spaces in whatever way is most helpful for your own relationship with Jesus and for growing in your love for others.
Rhythms for
Anticipating
&
Reflecting
Scripture
The space for reflecting upon the Scriptures is an intentional moment for you to pause and consider how God has spoken to you through his word over the past month. This is an opportunity to stop and meditate on what God has been teaching you so that you might take it to heart and respond in a Christlike way.
In ‘anticipating this month’, there is space to articulate what you will read in the Scriptures over the coming month. It can be helpful to note a plan you will follow or how much you will read each day. We hope this provides a fresh opportunity to begin a rhythm of reading the Bible each month!
Prayer
In the ‘reflecting’ section, there is space to note specific prayers you’ve prayed over the last month. It could be recording answered prayers, prayers you’re continuing to pray, or noticing what you’ve been especially prayerful about recently. Over time, we pray that you begin to see God at work not only in answering prayers but also in deepening your life of prayer with him.
The ‘anticipating’ section is an opportunity to name what you will be prayerful for in the coming month. Perhaps there are people or plans to commit to God, petitions and requests to be made, or laments to be cried. We’ve found that naming what you will pray for is often a helpful starting place for a life of intentional prayer.
Thankfulness
While there is an opportunity to practice thankfulness each day in our ‘daily rhythms’, this section provides a chance to reflect back on the past month and recognise what you’ve been particularly thankful for. You might like to read through your daily pages from the previous month, or you could simply spend time reflecting on the month as a whole and give thanks to God for the good gifts you’ve been given.
Similar to the space for prayer, taking a moment to name what you will be thankful for in the coming month is a helpful place to begin as you develop a rhythm and life of gratitude to God. Often we can be great at asking God for his help in prayer and then take less time to give him thanks when we receive his grace and mercy. This rhythm is an opportunity to pause and name what you will consciously give thanks for.
Love for Others
By reflecting on our attitude toward loving others over the past month, we’re able to take a moment to do ponder our hearts and consider both where we are becoming more like Jesus and where we need to ask for his help to continue growing. This may be by looking back at your daily pages over the past month, or prayerfully reflecting on the month as a whole.
In the ‘anticipating’ section, there is an opportunity to grow from your time of reflection and articulate how you will prayerfully seek to love others in the month to come. We’ve used the word ‘embody’ to describe your love for others, because loving others is something we do practically, not just theoretically. It often helps, then, to be as specific as possible with the ways you will seek to do this. It could help to look ahead at your calendar and plans for the month, consider the people you will interact with, or the ways you perhaps didn’t love as you hoped in the past month. These are all opportunities to express the love of Jesus to those around you in the month to come.
Generosity
The purpose of this section is to be recognise where we have been generous to others, or could be generous in the coming month. While it may sound strange to record where we’ve been generous, we believe that our response to God’s generosity in Jesus is to show generosity toward others. It’s important to notice this, not for our own gain, but for noticing the work of Christ in our lives. After all, we’re called to love others as we love ourselves—and generosity is one way to do that. It also means we can then prayerfully anticipate how we can grow in our generosity in the month to come.
We recognise that generosity comes in many forms, so there is some freedom with this section to mould it to your life. Below are three broad areas that we’d encourage you to consider as you reflect and anticipate, with some questions to prompt your thinking as well.
Serving: How have I generously given of my time, talents and energy to my local church or community in the past month? How can I generously give of my time, talents and energy in the coming month to serve the body of Christ?
Giving: How have I been generous with my material possessions and money for the sake of God’s kingdom in the past month? How can I generously give toward the work of God’s kingdom in the month to come?
Hospitality: How have I been able to show God’s kindness through hospitality and welcoming others over the past month? How can I demonstrate a Christlike spirit of hospitality in the month to come?
We’ve included these not to be burdensome, but simply to offer some ideas for how you could grow a rhythm of generosity in your life as an expression of love for others.
Recommended Reading: We recommend reading Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes us Just, by Tim Keller, for a deeper consideration of how to practice justice as an expression of generosity. We also recommend The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World, by Rosaria Butterfield, as a guide to showing generosity in the form of hospitality.
Relationships
The monthly rhythm of reflecting with gratitude on your relationships is intended to prompt not only thankfulness to God, but also deepened commitment to the relationships we’ve been blessed with. Through intentional reflection on this, we pray that your love for those for around you is strengthened.
In ‘anticipating the month’, there is space to consider how you will intentionally invest in relationships in the coming month. This could be anyone from any sphere of your life. These five areas below are some that we recommend considering, but you may like to choose one or two to begin with.
The Body of Christ: How can I invest relationally in those within my local church context? This could happen in a number of ways, like on Sunday’s, during the week in a small group context, or through meeting one-to-one with other men or women.
Discipleship: How can I invest in discipling someone in their faith in Christ? How can I allow myself to be discipled by someone? This may take time for some you to identify ways to disciple others, or an appropriate person to be discipled by. We’d encourage you to consider this in your local church context!
Missional Relationships: How can I intentionally and genuinely invest in relationships with those who I’m praying will come to know Jesus? This also may take time to identify people, as well as appropriate avenues for sharing the gospel, but we’d encourage you to consider this as regularly as you are able.
Family: How can I love and serve those in my family unit this month? We all have different family contexts, so this requires wisdom and nuance for each situation. Often the relationships with those in our family unit are the ones which God has given us the most responsibility for, and who we spend the most time with, so taking time to pray through this each month is invaluable.
Friendships: How can I thoughtfully and lovingly invest in my friendships this month? Friendships are one of God’s greatest gifts to us, but they also require intentionality and effort. Taking time to prayerfully consider which friendships you can and should invest in over the next month is a great way to love those you are friends with.
Work & Rest
In the Scriptures we see a pattern for our work and rest: six days of work (both vocationally and in the home) and one day of rest. We believe this is a pattern to live into as intentionally as possible—where we work hard and diligently in the spaces where we’re called to work and rest well in the time we’re granted to rest—and all to the glory of God. This is a big topic and lots could be said, but rather than providing a theology of work and rest we wanted to present some questions for prayerful reflection and anticipation each month.
Reflecting Questions:
How did I honour God with my work and in my workplace in the past month?
How would those closest to me describe my balance of work and rest this month?
Did I have meaningful and sufficient time to rest and be present to God and those closest to me in the last month?
Anticipating Questions:
How can I honour God with my work and in my workplace this month?
Where do I need to be aware of my rhythms of work and rest being misbalanced?
What practical steps can I take to ensure I rest well and remain present to God and those closest to me this month?
Recommended Reading: For a deeper understanding of work as worship, including spiritual disciplines for the workplace, we recommend Kara Martin’s ‘Workship: How to Use Your Work to Worship God’. For considering rhythms of Sabbath, rest and simplicity, we recommend The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer.
Mind & Body
We are all embodied people, meaning we live in a physical body that has both limitations and needs. If we want to honour and love God with our whole life, that has to include stewarding the gift of our body and mind by acknowledging the ways that we need to care for ourselves. This is both an expression of gratitude for what God has given us and a way of serving others by prayerfully taking responsibility for our wellbeing.
While we felt that considering our mental and physical health was an area we needed to create space for in the journal, we also recognise that this is a deeply personal space. For that reason, we’ve decided to provide less guidance here than for other rhythms at this stage. Instead, we want to encourage you to consider how you can honour God with your mind and body each month with wisdom, prayer and in community.
Recommended Reading: Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships by Curt Thompson, M.D.
Reflect
This reflection space is an opportunity to write about ways that you grew in your relationship with God over the past month or would like to grow in your relationship with God that aren’t specified in the journal.
We recognise that we are all unique and there are countless ways that God will shape us into people who love him and love others. Know that there is freedom to use this space as you feel led!
Recommended Reading: If you’re interested in reading about how to incorporate each rhythms into a ‘Rule of Life’, we recommend reading Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way by Stephen Maccia. For considering other spiritual disciplines, we recommend reading Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster.
Rhythm Tracker
One of the unique elements of the Resilient Rhythms Journal is our ‘rhythm tracker’.
The rhythm tracker is designed to help you visual the frequency of your rhythms by allowing you to track any rhythm that you are prayerfully developing across a one-month period.
You can choose any rhythm—bible reading, prayer, love for others, generosity, rest and so on—by putting a tick in the box for the days you practiced that rhythm. You could also colour the box in or write a short note on how your chosen rhythm is progressing.
We think of the rhythm tracking as a way of noticing growth by the grace of God, not a guilt-inducing process if it doesn’t go to plan.
As you begin to use the rhythm tracker, we recommend going through these five practical steps;
Choose a rhythm you want to grow in over the next month.
Decide on how often you want to practise this rhythm.
Pray and commit it to God.
Mark each day that you practise this rhythm.
Review your rhythm at the end of the month.
Below you can find two worked examples of the rhythm tracker—one for a daily rhythm and one for a weekly rhythm. In the example on the left, there is an example of tracking a daily rhythm of Scripture reading. You’ll notice there is a specific time chosen each day—the morning—as well as missed days (because that shouldn’t deter you!).
On the right side, there’s an example of a weekly rhythm; a phone free Sabbath. This is an example of how you can continue to grow and develop your rhythms over time. Imagine you’ve been able to take time each week to rest, but your phone continues to distract you from resting in Jesus and enjoying the relationships around you that you’ve been given. You could use the rhythm tracker to log the use of your phone during the Sabbath over a period of one month to try and grow in this way.
Remember, the purpose of the journal is to anchor you in your love for God and grow you in your love for others—so anything that helps you grow to that end is worth tracking in this space!
