By Carmen Andres

In Rocky Balboa, a film that follows the aging fighter in his return from retirement to fight one last match, the boxer forms a platonic relationship with Marie, a young woman he meets in a bar she works in. Even as Rocky is still dealing with the pain of his wife’s death, his age has bequeathed him wisdom and compassion. He senses Marie’s woundedness—and he responds. It’s small actions mostly: a ride home, inviting her and her son for dinner at his restaurant, changing a burnt-out light bulb on her stoop, spending time with her son on the weekends and offering her a job at his restaurant.

As I watched the film, it dawned on me that essentially Rocky pays attention—and he does it almost by second nature. He pays attention because that is who he is. He has become the kind of person who responds, who automatically picks up on what’s going on around him—be it a light bulb that needs changing or a teenager that needs some time. He has become a person for whom love is a natural response.

That strongly echoes the call we have as followers of Jesus—to become people who love. I want to be a person like that. I want to be the kind of person who pays attention and responds with love because that is who I am. But how do we do that? How do we become the kind of people for whom love is like breathing—sometimes gasping for air, but nonetheless breathing?

I think that is where the spiritual disciplines come in—things like learning to pay attention to and respond to people we encounter (OAs), talking with and listening to God (prayer), reading and wrestling with Scripture (study), regularly admitting my struggles and missing-the-mark to a girlfriend (confession) and a slew of other ways God gives us. These are actions we can take and efforts we can make to deny ourselves and follow Jesus or to put Jesus in the driver’s seat. These are things we do to place ourselves before God so he can change us into the kinds of people who act and react with love, right-ness, and light.

Folks like Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Walter Brueggemann and Eugene Peterson put it like this: 

“The Spiritual Disciplines in and of themselves have no merit whatsoever. They possess no righteousness, contain no rectitude. Their purpose—their only purpose—is to place us before God. After that they have come to the end of their usefulness. But it is enough. Then the grace of God steps in, takes this simple offering of ourselves, and creates out of it the kind of person . . . . who automatically will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”

The disciplines aren’t the goal or end in themselves, but ways that help us connect, attach and relate with God—and that’s what he wants. He wants us to trust and walk with and work with him as we were originally created to. And as we do that, things like paying attention to those around us and responding with love will become more and more part of who we are because we are becoming the kind of people who live that way.

Rocky didn’t have an agenda to draw Marie into his way of life or “community”—he just did what he did because he cared about her. As Rocky pays attention with no other agenda than this, Marie starts to trust him; and when Rocky offers her good counsel or guidance, she takes it. And then as they go, Marie is drawn into the authentic and real family that’s grown around Rocky.

And that’s a good image of Kingdom life. That’s how it works in God’s rule and love. We don’t need a program, agenda or plan to draw people to Jesus. As we love (and become the kind of people who love), people are drawn to the family and the God in which we live. That’s how we were created to be in this world—and it’s a good life.