Journeying Home

I was reading Philippians 3 and planning to comment on Paul’s exhilarating obsession to be Jesus’ apprentice and his encouragement to embrace a similar passion and imitate his pattern of apprenticeship.

Then, almost instantly, the tone abruptly changed with this short passage:

For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.
Philippians 3:18-19

Paul starts weeping.

His mind turns from those who are following Jesus to those that aren’t. And his heart breaks.

He describes these people as “enemies of the cross of Christ.” I’m not sure if these were people outside the Philippian church or perhaps some who were part of the community. I’m wondering if Paul had a close relationship with them, since thinking about them suddenly evokes such intense sadness.

When I think of Paul’s description — “enemies of the cross of Christ” — I imagine people filled with malicious intent and violently opposed to the Christian community. But that’s not how Paul describes them. He mentions four aspects about their lives — their destiny, their god, their glory, and their minds.

The first aspect is their destiny, or their “telos”. Destruction is their ultimate consequence. Whoa! This assessment is severe. No wonder Paul is weeping as he thinks about these people. But what brings them to such a terrible end?

Their stomach, or their bodily appetites, is their god. They have surrendered control of their life to whatever cravings, feelings, and sensations flow from their bodies. And these appetites have sway over their decisions, thoughts, and behaviors. This is the foundation of our modern culture. And it’s prevalent both inside and outside the Church. Get what I want when I want it. Instant and constant gratification. It could be food, sex, possessions, comfort, distraction, entertainment, anger, motivation, or security. And most of this is easily accessible through the smartphones in our pockets.

Answering to bodily appetites then distorts what they glory in or boast about. They become proud of what is actually shameful. They boast in their “do whatever it takes” approach to being happy, promoting their entitlement to success, reputation, luxury, beauty, health, wealth, career, relationships, ambition, and indulgence. Bottom-line, they boast in self. They call the shots. They make things happen. They’re in control.

And that’s because their minds are thinking only about earthly things. This is the consequence of letting our bodily appetites run our lives. We believe we’re entitled to gratification, comfort and satisfaction. But, this actually feeds our neuroses — anxiety, worry, anger, sadness, regret, compulsion, obsession, addiction, manipulation, coercion, contempt, despair, envy, shame, and desperation. 

Paul’s description of thinking about earthly things sounds very similar to when Jesus called Peter “The Satan” because he was thinking the thoughts of men rather than of God (Matthew 16:23). It’s frightening that simply thinking about earthly things, human things, will set us on a trajectory that aligns us with “The Satan” and toward a destiny of destruction and ruin.

That’s one of the reasons why Jesus invites would-be apprentices into a life that no longer worries about “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or ”What shall we wear?” That’s what “normal” people focus on and pursue.(Matthew 6:31-32). Yielding to bodily appetites and thinking about earthly things is crushing and destructive.

No wonder Paul is weeping for these people. They aren’t wicked or evil. They are just normal people, carried along by the current of their culture. They actually would be seen as “good and decent” people — raising families, making a living, paying their bills, and trying their best to get through life. They are the barista that makes our coffee. They are the co-worker in the office next to ours. They are the shopper in the checkout line in front of us. They are our friend watching the game alongside us. They are our reflection in the mirror in front of us. 

Jesus’ answer to this is both profoundly simple and provocatively life-altering. 

Follow me. Become my apprentice. Live a life completely upside-down to how everyone else lives for God’s glory and the good of others.

God already knows what you need. You can set aside any worry and learn to pursue God’s flourishing activity and way of life (Matthew 6:32-33).

And as we become his apprentices and pursue him with an exhilarating obsession and practical pattern of living like Paul (Philippians 3:7-17), our trajectory is changed from destruction and ruin to thriving transformation as we learn to follow God’s Spirit rather than bodily appetites (Galatians 5:16-25) and have our minds renewed so we focus on things above and not on earthly things (Romans 12:2; Colossians 3:1-2).

Self-delusion is too easy. There is a phenomenon known as illusory superiority or the “better-than-average effect.” Most people overestimate their abilities, intelligence and positive traits. For example, in 2018 researchers reported that 65% of Americans thought they were above average in intelligence.

This phenomenon can easily occur in our apprenticeship with Jesus. We start practicing spiritual disciplines with some “success”. Interacting with God’s grace, we replace negative behaviors with positive alternatives. Over some time, we begin noticing improvements in our thoughts, feelings, decisions, and behaviors. This positive movement can then bring confidence and sometimes an overestimation of our progress into Christ’s likeness.

Then the trigger occurs. Something happens and the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we thought had been transformed come rushing out from the deep recesses of your life.

This happened to me last week. Debbie and I went out for dinner at a restaurant with limited parking. We drove up to an empty parking stall near the restaurant’s doors. Debbie has been experiencing severe hip pain and can only walk short distances, so this empty stall was extremely convenient. As I started to turn into it, I realized the car in the next stall had backed in at an angle. Its front end was hanging about a foot or more into the empty stall, rendering it too small for my car to fit. Annoyed, I let Debbie out near the restaurant’s doors and exited the parking lot to park on the street a couple hundred yards away. No problem. I’ve had to park on the street countless of times at this restaurant.

As I was walking to the restaurant to join Debbie, a young man carrying bags of food strolled out the doors and passed me. I turned to look and sure enough, he was headed to the offending car. In a flash, my head swam with thoughts of how this arrogant fool was too lazy to take 20 seconds to straighten his car and had just inconvenienced Debbie and me. And those thoughts were accompanied by a surge of rage. Not annoyance, but seeing-red rage. I clenched my fists to confront him, ready to knock his food to ground and tell him what an <expletive> he was. Yes, those were my thoughts and feelings in that moment.

Then I stopped. Where was this coming from? I hadn’t experienced anger, especially at this intensity, in years, even in situations far worse than this. If you had asked me five minutes before to rate my apprenticeship with Jesus as either below average or above average, I would have told you confidently that it was far above average. And here I was standing in a parking lot of a restaurant seething with fury, ready to inappropriately confront someone over a stupid parking spot.

Fortunately, self-control immediately reasserted itself. The thoughts and emotions evaporated almost instantly. And I joined Debbie for a wonderful dinner. But in the back of my head, I couldn’t shake the importance of that moment. It was a reminder that no matter how far I have come in my apprenticeship with Jesus into his likeness, I still have much, much further to go.

I think part of the issue is that transformation is not always a one-and-done experience. Over the past few years, I have genuinely seen my anger disappear. This is certainly a sign of God’s grace transforming a part of my life. Yet, I still deal with what I call “cluster emotions.” In this case, these would include impatience, annoyance, and frustration. These too are being transformed as I experience far more love, joy, peace and patience than ever before. But I’m still quite a ways from being fully free of these emotions.

As Dallas Willard often says, anger occurs when our will is being thwarted. My experience in the parking lot reminded me of my deeper issue — my desire to have my way still runs rampant in my life. And while Jesus and I have been training together in learning to not get what I want, that desire still resides deep in my body. A little stress. A slight inconvenience. A small unguarded moment. Suddenly my “wanter” wants its way. And when it doesn’t get it, the still-untransformed parts flare.

The good news is that God’s grace has been transforming me. Self-control and peace reassert themselves much quicker. The almost extinct moments of anger disappear almost immediately. And the emotional residue, which in years prior would linger for hours, is almost non-existent.

My dream, and I believe it’s God’s dream for me as well, is to eventually have my will transformed by God’s love so that I truly value others above myself and pursue their best interest above my own. My “wanter” will then only want what is good for the other person. And that transformation will also spread to my thoughts, feelings, and actions.

But I’m not there… yet.

Anger is only an example. There’s also pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, and sloth to name only the classical sins. Jesus and I have been working on those as well. But that moment of rage over an insignificant parking spot is a stark reminder that these other areas are only partially transformed as well. 

And frankly, as an apprentice to Jesus, “below average” and “above average” are irrelevant. I’m learning from Jesus how to be like him. So he should be the only true point of reference, not others. Or as the writer of Hebrews puts it:

“We must look ahead, to Jesus. He is the one who carved out the path for faith, and he’s the one who brought it to completion. He knew that there was joy spread out and waiting for him. That’s why he endured the cross, making light of its shame, and has now taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne.”
Hebrews 12:2

Perhaps that’s the remedy for self-delusion. When Jesus is our only reference point, we’re better aware of both what has been transformed and what still needs his grace. And that sober awareness keeps us constantly grounded. 

The writer of Hebrews precedes the previous verse with the following encouragement:

“What we must do is this: we must put aside each heavy weight, and the sin which gets in the way so easily. We must run the race that lies in front of us, and we must run it patiently.”
Hebrews 12:1

Like an athlete, we shed our sin and anything that weighs us down and we run the race of loyal apprenticeship to Jesus with patience. And over time, with our eyes only on him, we will become more like him. Yet, no matter how far we’ve come, we keep running the race. Because we have much further to go.

Christian spiritual formation is the focus of my life. Dallas Willard defines this as “the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.” When it’s all said and done, what really matters to me is that my life is being increasingly formed into Jesus’ likeness. I know that to the extent that this is happening, I will be a source of love, joy, and peace as a husband, father, and friend.

I’m a convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church. We have a word for this process — theosis. This is the transformative process of becoming like God. A popular quote by St Athanasius is “God became man so that man might become God.” He has called us to become by grace what God is by nature.

I mention being an Eastern Orthodox Christian because the primary influences in my understanding and practice of Christian spiritual formation come from Protestant sources. (Anyone who has endured a few of my blog posts knows I’m heavily influenced by Dallas Willard.) As much as I love Willard’s insights, I don’t think there’s a “right” technique or formula to practicing spiritual formation. God has been masterfully forming people into Jesus’ likeness from the beginning.

So while the wisdom of people like Willard has proven invaluable to me, there is no correct method to practicing spiritual formation. I believe there are, however, some general principles to keep in mind.

First, spiritual formation requires being Jesus’ apprentice. Jesus is the Master of life in God’s kingdom — God’s reign for the flourishing of his creation. And he is alive and present in every moment of your life to train you into his likeness. He will personally train you into submitting to God’s will. He will personally train you into cooperating with God’s transforming grace. He will personally train you into the full embodiment and practice of God’s love. Jesus is the Master and everything in your life is done in interactive relationship with him.

Second, being Jesus’ apprentice requires your effort. God does the transforming. But it requires your cooperation. This usually takes the form of spiritual disciplines easily practiced during the regular routines of your daily life. Nothing heroic is required since the disciplines themselves don’t transform. Simply practicing spiritual disciplines in and of themselves won’t transform you. They are to bring aspects of who you are and your real life into dynamic interaction with God’s grace.

Third, the goal of being Jesus’ apprentice is becoming like him from the inside-out. It’s not about simply changing your behavior so you act lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, or patiently. That’s just acting. Rather, it’s becoming increasingly permeated with divine love in every aspect of who you are, including your body. So like God, you are love, joy, peace, and patience. Then your behavior will naturally flow out of this reality within you.

As I write this, the global Christian Church is entering Lent. (Okay, I know us Eastern Orthodox are starting Lent a week later than everyone else.) These forty days before Easter is a time of repentance where we practice three classic spiritual disciplines based off of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount — fasting, prayer, and giving. Different Christian traditions will practice these disciplines differently. For example, some will fast from meat, while others dairy, oil, and meat, while others will “give up something.” One way is not more or less spiritual than the others. Frankly, someone can fast from food all forty days and remain unspiritual and unchanged while someone else could minimally refrain from something and experience incredible formation into Christ’s likeness.

Remember, the key is to follow Jesus as his apprentice. Listen to him. Let him show you how to fast and how to apply that fasting to specific areas of your life. 

Here’s an example. Maybe Jesus wants to use Lent to address the lack of contentment in your life. As such, he’s asking you to refrain from online shopping during Lent. But don’t just avoid Amazon, EBay, Etsy or other online platforms. When you feel the urge to visit those sites, go for a casual walk or drive and talk to God about what is causing that urge. Supplement this with memorizing and reciting a passage like Philippians 4:11-13 or 1Timothy 6:6-11. Also, intentionally make time to serve others as you fast during Lent. Take up something creative like drawing or writing. The key is to use the fast and any supplemental practices to interact with Jesus as his apprentice, letting him teach you about how to bring this aspect into the flourishing reign of God.

Here’s another example. Maybe Jesus wants to use Lent to address how you treat people. John Ortberg’s podcast, Become New, has started a Lenten series to help people “give up condemnation for Lent.” Commit yourself to listen to his short daily podcast in the morning and prayerfully practice some of the applications throughout the day. Do this in constant conversation with Jesus. Supplement this with memorizing and reciting a passage like Philippians 2:3-4 or Ephesians 4:1-3. Make a commitment to learn people’s names or to praise something about each person you interact with. Again, use the fast and supplemental practices to interact with Jesus as his apprentice.

These are only examples. Jesus is the Master Practitioner of life in God’s kingdom. Ask him how you should fast, pray, and give this Lent. Let him show you how to experiment with these disciplines. And let him show you how he may want you to creatively use other supplemental disciplines. Most importantly, constantly interact with him through Lent. Ask him to address aspects of your thoughts, feelings, decision-making, habits, and relationships in light of these disciplines. Use each morning to commit the day to following and interacting with Jesus and use each evening to reflect on what you learned that day. I think you’ll be amazed at what he shows you.

Apprenticeship to Jesus — being with Jesus, to learn from Jesus, how to be like Jesus in his character and power — is the art of synergy. We cannot become like Jesus without God’s transforming grace. But God will not transform us without our cooperative effort. We cannot do it without God and God will not do it without us.

Dallas Willard had a great expression for this collaboration — the with-God life. God has created humans for an intimate and cooperative friendship with himself — starting now and going on forever into eternity.

It’s all of life with God. Driving to work with God. Going shopping with God. Meeting clients with God. Changing diapers with God. Scrolling through social media with God. Going to the gym with God. Grabbing drinks with friends with God. Paying bills with God. Loving family, neighbors, and even enemies with God. Engaging in any and every aspect of daily life with God.

The foundation of the with-God life starts with the basic building blocks where your effort meets God’s presence and power. These building blocks are spiritual disciplines and God’s grace. Here are Willard’s definitions:

“A discipline is an activity within my power that eventually enables me to accomplish what I cannot do by direct effort.”

“God’s grace is God’s acting in my life to enable me to do what I cannot do on my own.”

Notice where these two definitions intersect — enabling me to do what I cannot do. The with-God life is built at this intersection. 

Spiritual disciplines are small, relaxed, and easy practices in the midst of our daily life that interact with God’s grace. They should be planned and practiced intelligently and experimentally with Jesus. He is the master of the with-God life. He is capable of training us in the use of spiritual disciplines so we are living and interacting with God.

During my 20+ years as Jesus’ apprentice, I’ve learned firsthand a thing or two about spiritual disciplines that I could only learn by walking with Jesus.

1. They should be easily implemented in your daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. They are not to be additional things to cram into an already busy schedule.

2. Don’t exert heroic effort. It’s easy to fall into the incorrect mindset of “more is better”. Spiritual disciplines do not control your transformation. So doing more disciplines or practicing more rigorous ones will not accelerate transformation. Usually the opposite happens.

3. Spiritual disciplines are not metrics of spiritual health or maturity. The goal of apprenticeship to Jesus is not mastering spiritual disciplines, but being formed into his character and power — divine love. Let me put it this way. When I watch the Super Bowl, I don’t care how much weight a player can bench press or how much protein is in his diet. I want to see him play football well. Likewise, no one should care how good you are at fasting, Scripture memorization, or church attendance. The only metric is becoming love like God is love.

4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines with God will reveal further areas that need addressing. Failing at spiritual disciplines, and especially succeeding at them, has revealed levels of pride that I would not have seen otherwise.

5. Spiritual disciplines are like remedies or medicine that can help with a special difficulty. They can be used to target aspects of our person — thoughts, feelings, body, will, and relationships — to address specific issues like addiction, pride, greed, anger, and anxiety and to replace them with a posture of love, joy, and peace.

6. Any activity can be used as a spiritual discipline. There is not an exhaustive list of spiritual disciplines. There are classical ones that are important to one’s apprenticeship with Jesus. But simple tasks like driving to work, taking a walk, fixing your bed, and washing dishes can be used as a spiritual discipline when you interact with God’s grace.

Spiritual disciplines are building blocks for Jesus’ apprentices to live all of life with God so we can learn from him how to be like him. This is a lifetime of growth and maturity. This runs contrary to our preferences. We want life with God to be like The Matrix. In The Matrix, Neo learns martial arts simply by having the information downloaded to his brain. Within moments, and without years of training with a master, he possesses advanced skills. 

But that’s not life. God doesn’t download. Instead, we live our life with him. We submit to him. We learn from him. We practice with him. We fail with him. And we keep training with him. It’s more like the movie, The Karate Kid. Like Daniel, we spend time learning to “wax on and wax off” so we eventually habituate and embody the basic techniques in our body. And then we keep learning with our Master, both in his dojo and in real life. 

Like the Desert Father said in response to the question, “What do you do in the monastery all day?” “We fall and get up. We fall and get up. We fall and get up.” That’s a pretty good summary of the with-God life. Over a lifetime, we live and walk with God through all of live — success and failure, health and illness, gain and loss, laughter and tears, joy and sadness. And be assured, the with-God life carries scars.

If that’s the case, what’s the point of this life? My first response to that is what’s the alternative? We’re all going to live our lives no matter what. We’re all going to experience the joys and sorrows life brings. The alternative to the with-God life is the without-God life. And that’s a life centered on self — self-preservation, self-promotion, self-interest, self-gratification.

My second response is the reward of a with-God life is… well, God. I get to live my life with God in his kingdom. I get to live my life with the greatest, most glorious person that’s ever existed, immersed in his unquenchable flourishing activity for creation. And by doing so, I get to train with and be transformed by God into his likeness, into someone who embodies his character and power. I get to become divine love like God is love. And I get to live with God eternally into his future as part of a magnificent community of loving persons, who will eternally co-reign with him in his universe.

Simply put, life was designed to be a with-God life.

I have many quotes by Dallas Willard written on both my physical whiteboard at work and a digital whiteboard accessible through my phone. One quote that I constantly read is:

“You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your every day life with God.”

For me, this quote acts as a barometer of my spiritual health. Virtually every sinful and destructive thought, feeling, decision, action and habit can be traced back to an impoverished and dissatisfied life, one that lacks deep contentment, joy, and confidence in God.

So I know that when I’m experiencing fear, anxiety, anger, lust, pride, selfishness, greed, or any other sinful inclination, my contentment, joy and confidence in God is waning.

But simply saying “in God” may be too general. One key characteristic of God in which we must be content, joyful, and confident is his competence. We must truly believe he knows what he’s doing and is fully capable of implementing his good will.

I listened to a great podcast by John Ortberg this morning. He brings up John 3:16-17 and discusses God’s competence. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John 3:16-17

First, God is fully competent at creating his world. This is his creation, his world. It is the optimal creation to bring about what he intends — a community of love consisting of eternal beings who are trained to be like him so as to co-reign with him in his universe. His creation springs forth and is sustained as an act of his eternal goodness. And while corrupted by humanity’s rebellion, it is still God’s optimal creation. Ultimately, God will renew and restore his world. Yet, even now he fills everything and every moment with his good and capable presence. We live in his good world, his safe world.

Second, God is fully competent at loving his world. He is capable to promote the good of every living thing throughout history. This includes everyone you know and love. And then beyond to everyone around you. And then further to everyone who lives and populates this world. He capably loves everyone and is at work in everyone’s lives without fail. No one slips through his capable care. Nor is anyone too rebellious or willful to be disqualified from his capable care.

Third, God is fully competent at saving his world. God loves his world so capably that his ultimate expression of competent love is to give his son, Jesus. Jesus is the most intelligent master of life that has ever walked God’s creation. In him are found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In him rests all authority in heaven and earth. And anyone who places their confidence and loyalty in him will never perish. Absolutely guaranteed! If anyone is competent in saving God’s world, it’s Jesus. And he does this by training and empowering anyone who desires into his full life — his character, his faith, and his power — to easily live in God’s kingdom, here and now. It is God’s optimal plan.

When we’re not content or confident in God’s competence, we start questioning his wisdom and ability. We wonder if he’s truly good and loving. And if he is, we wonder if he’s aware enough or powerful enough to bring it about for us, our loved ones, or our world. Bottom-line, lack of contentment, joy, and confidence in God’s competence leads us to replicate the original sin — grasping for self-autonomy. If we don’t fully trust God and his eternal competence, then we start relying on ourselves to define our purpose and place in this world, to determine what is right, wrong, good, and fair, and to seize control and acquire what we think will make us happy, safe, and secure.

God is competent. Paul says he is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Sure, there are areas in his world that God currently permits to be other than what he wills. Yes, there is pain, disparity, and corruption. Yet, even all of that is within his competent wisdom and power to redeem and bring about what he ultimately intends for ours and creation’s good. God is neither worried nor distraught. As Bishop Todd Hunter has humorously stated, “God is not in heaven, pacing back and forth and wringing his hands, saying ‘Oh Myself! What am I going to do?’” Rather, God is as competent today as he has been since he joyfully spun his universe into being. 

We can trust in his competence to create, love and save. And by developing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in God’s competence, we know he will always do good by us. We can then lean into his capable process to train us into his likeness for his glory and the good of his world.

I would like to continue my thoughts on loving well with the following passage.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Galatians 5:22-23

The above list of virtues is one of the most beautiful depictions of what a human life can and should be. This is what a person who loves well looks like. And while Paul only lists nine virtues here, there are others that he lists elsewhere that could easily go on this list, such as compassion, forgiveness, humility, holiness, eagerness to do good, faith, generosity, and hope.

Interestingly, Paul uses the singular form of the Greek noun for fruit, karpos. I truly believe this is strategic. Rather than listing separate virtues as fruits to pick and choose, he’s saying there is one singular, comprehensive, unified fruit of God’s Spirit. So what is the one fruit of the Spirit? Some would argue that it is Jesus’ character. Others argue that love is the foundational virtue and the remaining virtues are facets of love.

Perhaps it’s both. Jesus invites us to come and learn from him how to be like him. I think it’s safe to say he wants to train us into his full virtuous character so we can live naturally and easily in God’s kingdom. Yet, Paul says that faith, hope, and love are the eternal, enduring virtues, of which love is the greatest. In fact, in that passage, Paul states love is the most excellent way.

So maybe a way to view this is that the single fruit that the Spirit is developing in us is Jesus’s overall character, which encompasses a myriad of interconnected virtues such as love, joy, peace, humility, compassion, etc. And his overall character can be described as love.

Therefore, in order to love well, we must embody all of Jesus’ character — all of his virtues. Remember, love is intending the good for another. It means knowing what is good for that person and being capable to provide what is good.

Think of it this way. Can you love someone without joy? Can you intend the good of another without the pervasive sense of well-being in God? Probably. But not well, especially when joy is the good that is needed.

Can you love someone without humility? Can you intend the good of another without valuing them and their best interest above yourself? Maybe to some extent. But you won’t do it very well if you keep putting yourself first.

We can do this exercise with every virtue. You might be able to provide some level of good to someone, even while being underdeveloped in certain virtues. But whatever might be lacking in you — patience, peace, goodness, holiness, forgiveness — will prevent you from loving well and competently if that virtue is needed for the good of that person.

Remember, love is not an abstract concept. It is real. Love is intending real good for a real person. It requires real wisdom, real time, and real energy. And how you love one person will be very different from how you love another person. Each person will require different facets of love.

When we love someone competently, we need Jesus‘ wisdom to know what is good for that person and we need Jesus’ character and power to deliver what that good. That’s why Jesus is training us into all the aspects of love so we can embody his whole unified character in our lives. Then when a person needs joy or peace or humility or compassion or forgiveness, we can naturally and easily provide it.

We are learning to love well like Jesus because we are being trained by Jesus into everything Jesus is.

“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human successes, but on how well we have loved.”
John of the Cross

“That’s a sobering thought.” So said my friend when I shared this quote with her. And it is. Our culture convinces us that success in life is measured by wealth, possessions, accomplishments, busyness, influence, power, health, sex appeal, and reputation.

But in God’s upside-down and others-centered kingdom come to earth, true human success (if such a word is appropriate) is how well we have loved. And notice it’s not just that we loved, but how well we loved.

Bishop Todd Hunter has often used the phrase “competent love.” Jesus loved competently because his intent to do good to another was always infused with wisdom to know what good that person needed and the power to actually bring about that good. Whether it was casting out demons, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the hurting, or confronting the unjust, Jesus always knew exactly what was needed and was capable of bringing it into reality.

Then I think of my own attempts to love others. Most of the time, I feel I’m just acting lovingly. Acting lovingly is just that — acting. It’s not coming from the reality of embodied divine love within me. It’s just behavior modification. It’s trying to do something I’m not truly prepared to do. It’s like trying to play the piano when all I know are three chords. Sure the three chords might sound nice. But they don’t always work in every situation. And I end up trying to force them into a situation where they’re not helpful. And that’s not love.

As I follow Jesus as his apprentice, I can learn to practice love. This is different than acting lovingly. Sure my capacity and ability to love are still lacking as before. But now I’m practicing. I’m doing what I’m capable of doing to meet God in such a way that I slowly become able to do what I currently cannot do by direct effort. When I perform simple acts of love, and other relevant spiritual practices, that are within my capacity and in interaction with Jesus, they create opportunities for God to slowly transform me. As Dallas Willard states:

“They enable us to receive grace in the ordinary events of life to keep our minds centered in the mind of Christ, and acting with the Holy Spirit to be the kind of person Jesus has called us to be and gives us to be.”

To return to the piano analogy, now the three piano chords I’m capable of playing, along with practicing new skills under a teacher’s skillful tutelage, begin to transform me into a more capable piano player. And the music I create will change from constantly hammering three basic chords to new melodies and harmonies. 

Will I ultimately be a world-renowned pianist? Probably not. But I will be capable of playing with greater diversity and competence than before. I will be able to play well. Or to return to John of the Cross, I will be able to love well.

Loving well. Competent love. Practicing love with Jesus as our Master and Teacher transforms our hearts and lives into embodied love. Our thoughts, feelings, will, and bodies become more poised and capable of love. We’re no longer acting lovingly. Like God, we are love.

This is extremely essential since the greatest commandment in God’s kingdom is to love God and love others. As citizens and participants in his kingdom, we cannot merely act lovingly toward God and others. Like God, we must be love in order to love well.

A young boy went to Sunday school, where he was voted “Most Humble.” He was awarded with a large badge displaying those words and the Sunday school teacher pinned it to his shirt. The next Sunday, the boy returned to Sunday school proudly wearing his awarded badge. The Sunday school teacher promptly took it away from him.

I have to thank my friend, Roger, for that funny anecdote. Recently, a group of my friends discussed humility. A lot of good and challenging things were shared, causing many thoughts to whirl about in my mind. What is humility? How do we develop humility? And, ultimately, why?

We know “God opposes the proud and gives grace to humble.” So humility is obviously important to God and to our flourishing as humans and as his image-bearers in his world.

So let’s start with Jesus. In a previous post on humility, I mentioned Dane Ortlund’s observation that there is only one place in the gospels where Jesus describes his own heart:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
Matthew 11:28-30

This intimate self-description accompanies an invitation to become Jesus’ apprentices so we can learn to live our lives in God’s kingdom. By learning to adopt his lifestyle and practices, we learn to have our hearts shaped into Jesus’ gentle and humble heart so we can become like him and live our lives as if he were living in our place.

Jesus’ heart is gentle and humble. Interestingly, a pairing of similar Greek words occurs in two other places in Paul’s letters.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love,which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Colossians 3:12-14

Here they appear in a cluster of virtues with which Jesus’ apprentices are expected to clothe themselves. These others-centered virtues are Jesus’ natural posture toward us and can become a natural part of who we are.

Humility and gentleness appear together in another passage:

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Ephesians 4:1-2

In this case, humility and gentleness are part of the others-centered calling we’re expected to live as Jesus’ apprentices. Similar to Colossians 3, humility and gentleness are clustered with patience and love.

In Galatians 5, Paul lists some of the Holy Spirit’s fruit that should be growing in our lives as Jesus’ apprentices. He includes, gentleness, patience and love. While not explicitly listing humility, we know this list is not exhaustive and Paul has included humility in other clusters of virtues as seen above. So I think we can safely assume humility would be another aspect of the Spirit’s fruit.

In Philippians 2:3-4, Paul describes the practical expression of humility:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Philippians 2:3-4

This quick survey is to show that humility is core to who Jesus is, and therefore core to who he wants us to become as his apprentices. Humility, along with the other others-centered virtues of the Spirit’s fruit of divine love, is something we can learn from Jesus so that it becomes second nature to us. As our hearts are transformed into humble hearts like Jesus, we are able to routinely and easily value others and their best interest above our own, just as God does.

So how do we develop humility. Like all the other virtues that form Jesus’ character, it’s not something that is magically bestowed upon us. Nor is it something we can squeeze out of ourselves. Like every aspect of our apprenticeship with Jesus, it’s developed through a synergistic, interactive, and dependent relationship with Jesus in the moments of our daily lives.

Our daily lives present many opportunities to train with Jesus into humility. Sometimes these opportunities may be painful. The psalmist writes of this experience:

It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I might learn your decrees.
Psalm 119:71

The Hebrew word for “afflicted” is translated in some Bibles as “humbled.” So it’s good for us to be humbled through painful moments of affliction or suffering, if we don’t resist them in pride and learn God’s instruction. Think about those humbling and even humiliating opportunities that we face. Making a mistake. Being called out by our boss. Being corrected by our spouse. Being misunderstood by a friend. Dealing with a sickness. Enduring a financial loss. Having our reputation discredited. 

But there are also many other gentler opportunities throughout our day to form humility. Holding a door open for someone. Letting another driver into our lane ahead of us. Letting someone go ahead of us in a crowded line. Listening to our child when we feel we have more important matters. Thanking our barista by their name when we buy our morning coffee. Listening to someone without thinking about what we will say next. Not having to correct someone or have the last word. Taking care of chores or tasks for our spouse without being asked and without fanfare.

Notice these opportunities value other people above ourselves. By lovingly putting other people first throughout our day, Jesus can use those opportunities to form habits and transform our heart.

These opportunities fit within three general practices that Dallas Willard says help develop humility

Don’t pretend. Be realistic about yourself. Only with the help of God can you make your life work. You are an apprentice to Jesus who is learning to live completely in God’s hands. Be content with that. Don’t pretend to be anything else. Don’t self-promote. 

Don’t presume. Willard says we are “to be who you are where you are.” Let go of assumptions and expectation about how you should be treated. Don’t grasp for recognition.

Don’t push. Willard states that you “should stand for what is right, stand for who you are, stand for God. But let him do the pushing.” Learn to wait for God’s timing. Don’t push your agenda. Don’t try to bring about change. And remember that all outcomes are God’s responsibility, not yours.

All three of these general practices, like the many daily opportunities, can be used by Jesus to train us to value others above ourselves and develop the virtue of humility.

Humility is part of the ethos of God’s upside-down others-centered kingdom where the greatest commandment is to love God and love others. Our King Jesus is humble in heart and can train us to be like him. And we need to become like him so that life in his kingdom is easy and natural for the glory of God and the good of others.

We’re several days into another new year — 2026. This year, I will be turning 60 years old. I will have been married 37 years and been a dad for 34 years. Every new year, birthday, anniversary, holiday and milestone is a reminder that we’re all time-travelers, steadily moving forward in time.

In Psalm 90:12, Moses prays, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Moses isn’t saying to count the number of days we might have left. Anyone can do that. In fact, just a couple of verses before, he says, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures.”

Nor do I think he’s saying to remind ourselves of our mortality and fragility. Knowing we only have 70-80 years naturally reminds us that our time on earth is short.

Moses asks God to ”teach us” to number our days. In other words, there is a particular way of viewing our lives that is a revelation from God and not from our own wisdom. And this revelation produces a heart of wisdom, or the skill to live well.

I believe St Paul was very acquainted with this Psalm and prayed for God’s revelation. And while he doesn’t state he received direct revelation about Psalm 90:12, I believe God taught him how to “number his days” so that it produced genuine skill for living. And I believe he shares this revelation and wisdom in Ephesians 5:15-16: 

“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”

Many modern translations interpret the Greek “exagorazomenoi ton kairon” as “making the most of every opportunity”. I think this may miss the nuance of the phrase. Paul states that the days are evil. So I believe the King James Version provides a better translation, “redeeming the time.” Because the days are evil by default, we are to redeem, rescue, or buy back moments from evil and for good. So, whatever translation we might use, the divine revelation of Psalm 90:12 through Paul is to transform specific moments of our days for good because by default, they naturally drift toward evil. And we do this by carefully and diligently living as wise people.

Throughout his writings, Paul gives many example of how to live skillfully and wisely. And we find a perfect example a few verses above in Ephesians 5:8-10:

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.”

We are to live as children of light, who bear the fruit of light — goodness, righteousness, and truth — in the moments of our day.

So what does this mean from a practical perspective? First, I would talk with Jesus about specific moments in your life that can be redeemed from evil and for good. For example, how do you spend your time driving to work? Are you listening to the news, talk radio, or a podcast? Or are you worrying about specific details of your life? That’s a perfect opportunity to buy back that time for goodness, righteousness and truth.

As you drive to work, perhaps you can meditate on a passage of Scripture. Or you could slowly pray through the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 23. Or you could pray a short blessing on people you pass who are out jogging or walking. Or you can pray for your co-workers.

We are to live as children of light and rescue specific moments of time from evil’s grasp by overlapping the regular moments of our day with the pursuit of goodness, righteousness, and truth, along with whatever is noble, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). It’s not about adding more things to do in your busy schedule, but transforming what you’re already doing into moments of goodness with God. This is the way toward numbering our days and toward a heart of skillful wisdom.

In the opening scenes of Creation, on the first day of the first week, the ruach of God — his Breath or Spirit — hovered over the chaotic and formless water. And with infinite goodness and creativity, God began speaking creation into being. Each creative act was preceded by divine words.

And God said… And God said… And God said… Every word was carried and energized by the God’s Breath to bring order from chaos, light from darkness, life from emptiness, and beauty from formlessness.

With each day of the first week, God establishes functional order in the cosmos, inaugurating his creation as his cosmic temple. Creation was now his dwelling place from which he would rule as king. Creation was the place where the dual dimensions of heaven and earth merged into a singular creative, beautiful, and life-giving reality, enjoying God’s life and rule and increasingly growing into God’s fullness.

And the pinnacle of God’s creation was human beings. Mankind is made in God’s image and commissioned with the same creative vocation as his ruach. Mankind is to help realize the incredible potential built within God’s creation by multiplying God’s image through procreation and by cooperatively co-ruling over creation. And Genesis uses the picture of gardeners to show how humans are to co-rule over creation as God’s image. We are to nurture and cultivate further order, light, life and beauty in God’s temple. In fact, mankind is uniquely created to carry out the ruach’s gardening vocation as humans are formed from the dust of creation and filled with God’s ruach, his Breath. 

These ruach-filled image-bearing humans would bring about further order, light, life, and beauty in God’s temple-creation by creating families, neighborhoods, communities, cities, businesses, technology, and culture.

But calamity strikes as the ruach-filled image-bearers reject God’s rule, grasp self-autonomy, and set about shaping God’s creation into their now-broken image.

For the following centuries, God then works like a gardener, cultivating a hand-planted family into a thriving nation. And like any gardener patiently enduring destructive elements like weeds, pests, and drought in order to bring forth fruit, God keeps preparing Israel until fruit emerges at just the right time.

Jesus.

Jesus comes as Israel’s gardener-king. He is a new and true ruach-filled image-bearer. With incredible power and wisdom, he announces and demonstrates God’s kingdom, planting seeds and cultivating much-needed healing and transformation into the lives around him. And he calls everyone to follow him as his apprentices, to learn from him how to become like him so they too can be restored into God’s image as gardener-kings.

But then calamity strikes. Or so it would seem. Jesus is betrayed and killed. The gardener-king buried in the earth. The gardener becoming a dying seed falling to the ground to produce many seeds (John 12:24).

Three days later, on the first day of brand new week, God speaks forth his New Creation. Order from chaos. Light from darkness. Life from death. Beauty from atrocity. Jesus is alive!

It is the first day of the week, the first day of the New Creation. Mary Magdalene stands crying outside an empty tomb. A voice asks her, “Why are you crying?” She turns and a sees Jesus, but mistakes him for the gardener. A mistake ripe with incredible truth. For here stands the gardener-king, already cultivating the fruit of God’s New Creation in her. One word. “Mary.” And she’s overwhelmed with love, joy, peace, hope and faith! And she goes to Jesus’ other apprentices to tell them the news, planting more seeds and cultivating further order, light, life and beauty in them.

Later that evening, on the first day of the New Creation, Jesus appears to his apprentices and creates the restored humanity who will again co-rule in God’s New Creation. As in the first creation, Jesus commissions them with their image-bearing vocation:

“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
John 20:21

And then he breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Restored ruach-filled image-bearers who are commissioned to co-rule as gardener-kings alongside THE ruach-filled Image of God, THE Gardener-King!

Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the New Creation has come!” As apprentices of Jesus, we are learning from him how to be the New Creation in human form. And we are learning from him how to cultivate that New Creation around us. Whether you are a doctor, a project manager, a stay-at-home parent, a graphic designer, a machinist, an electrician, an accountant, an Uber driver, a barista, a student or anything else in between, you are first and foremost a gardener. Like God. Like Jesus.

That’s why Paul says:

“Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father.”
Colossians 3:17

Like God and like Jesus, we are cultivating order, light, life and beauty in the people and world around us as God’s ruach-filled image-bearers. We are gardener-kings.

“Make your top priority God’s kingdom and his way of life.”
Matthew 6:33

I’m fully convinced that apprenticeship to Jesus is the most essential thing to living a genuinely human life, now and eternally. It doesn’t matter your age, personality, gender, or any other facet of life. Jesus is both a master at living in God’s kingdom as well as training everyone else to do the same.

Frankly, it’s virtually impossible for any of us to live in God’s kingdom without Jesus showing the way. That’s because God’s kingdom is radically different from all the other kingdoms that exist in our world.

All of the other kingdoms are the broken and destructive results of the original transgression. The first humans decided they would be self-autonomous and define good and evil according to themselves rather than God’s wisdom. Every generation since that initial rebellion has contributed to a world filled with selfishness, contempt, violence, greed, and self-preservation. Every kingdom has been built upon this brokenness and every person living in the world’s kingdoms is both perpetrator and victim.

Jesus comes to rescue us from these corrupt kingdoms by bringing us into God’s kingdom — God’s rule and activity for the flourishing of humans, and through us to the rest of creation. Because it is completely void of the original transgression, God’s kingdom is completely upside-down from all the other kingdoms. So much so that after proclaiming that God’s kingdom had arrived, Jesus had to spend vast amounts of time teaching and showing people how God’s kingdom operated. 

This is summarized in the word “righteousness” — to live right by God and right by others. This righteousness is based on virtues such as love, joy, peace, humility, generosity, contentment, and compassion. It’s counter-intuitive to our experience in the world’s kingdoms where virtually any chance of success is based on money, power, prestige, fame, beauty, possessions, skills, education, and ambition.

This is why apprenticeship to Jesus is so essential. He is the master practitioner in God’s upside-down kingdom. He knows how to easily and naturally live rightly at all times and in all situations. And he is such a master, that he can teach this to anyone who chooses to join him as an apprentice.

God’s kingdom is not only upside-down to all the other kingdoms, but it’s also lived from the inside-out. Much of Jesus’ teaching addresses this. Israel were hand-picked by God to learn and embody God’s flourishing activity for the good of the world. However, by Jesus’ time, they had made a fatal mistake. They focused on outwardly obeying God’s commandments without addressing their inward brokenness. So rather than becoming an upside-down nation embodying God’s kingdom, their failure to deal with the inward brokenness formed them into a kingdom like all the others.

While they attempted to live rightly with God and others through outward obedience, this form of “righteousness” missed the actual target — the human heart. Our will — and all of the human aspects of our humanness touched by our will — need to be transformed from the inside-out. This is what Jesus meant when he said:

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:20

Our righteousness must go far deeper than the meticulous outward compliance to God’s Law. It must come from a transformed will, expressed through our thoughts, emotions, decisions, body and relationships. Only then can we live rightly in God’s kingdom.

Jesus shows that God’s kingdom deals with the inner brokenness that has plagued humanity from the beginning. Life in God’s kingdom flows from the healed and transformed “insides” of the human will and mind to the “outsides” of the human body and relationships.

Put plainly, we can become people who have learned the inward virtues of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, and humility. From that healed inward reality, we can live in God’s flourishing activity.

We don’t have to be angry. We don’t have to lust. We don’t have to lie, bully, or manipulate. We don’t have to be anxious, worry, or fret. We don’t have to slander or gossip. We don’t have to self-promote or self-protect. We don’t have to amass and protect wealth. We don’t have to manage our reputation or brand. We don’t have to lash out or pull away in our relationships. We don’t have to strive for influence or authority. We don’t have to retaliate.

Do you realize that all of those things were virtually impossible for Jesus, not because he was God, but because he was a healthily formed human being who had fully mastered life in God’s kingdom? For example, at the “worst” moment of his life — betrayed, falsely convicted, abused, and brutally impaled upon a cross — it was natural and easy for him to genuinely pray for his enemies, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

And Jesus can show us how to become like him in every way. Again, this is why apprenticeship to Jesus is essential. Only he can train and transform us into his character, faith, and power. 

He can show us how to live his way of life from the inside-out as we pursue God’s upside-down kingdom.

On Monday, our second grandbaby, Maximus, entered God’s good world and our lives! He is so precious and wonderful!

Welcome to an amazing eternal life, Max! Your mommy and daddy are incredibly loving people who will wrap you in their love and care. And you are surrounded by grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunts, and many others who love you deeply and will be here for you as grow in God’s good world.

Among this loving group of people you will find one who stands out above us all. Jesus. He made you, loves you, and delights in who you are. You being here is a sheer act of his goodness. And he will always be with you, showing you how to be the beautiful and good eternal person in his Father’s kingdom that he created you to be.

Welcome to God’s incredible universe and to our family, Max! We love you!

Over the past 20-plus years of intentionally following Jesus as his apprentice, I’ve had to relearn the place of willpower. I grew up with the notion that if I wanted to accomplish anything, I could simply decide that I would do what was necessary to obtain it. I wanted to excel in competitive swimming, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I wanted to have straight A’s in school, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I wanted to learn computer programming, so I set my will toward that goal and pursued it. I think you get my mindset.

And conversely, when I didn’t fully accomplish what I wanted, I simply blamed my lack of will power.

So when I decided to be Jesus’ apprentice, I applied the same perspective about willpower to my spiritual formation. I wanted to be like him in his character and power, so I exerted my will toward both a full regiment of spiritual disciplines and attempts to stop sinful behavior. I thought the more disciplines I practiced, the greater transformation I would experience. And while I succeeded in memorizing large swathes of Scripture, spending more time in prayer, studying theology, and stopping some sinful behavior, I was not being transformed into a person filled with God’s love for the good of others. I was disciplined but not transformed.

What I learned the hard way is that willpower may be strong enough to change external behavior, but it is never, never able to transform the inner life. As I’ve said before, I can act loving, but it’s still acting.

Imagine driving a car with bad alignment so that it severely pulls to the left. In order to go straight down the road, you have to constantly pull the steering wheel to the right. Your will has changed the behavior of the car. But the moment you let up on the pressure to the steering wheel, the car naturally pulls to the left again. In the same way, willpower can change some behavior, but it cannot transform the inner “misalignment” of our life.

What’s worse, when willpower succeeds in establishing discipline and eliminating some external behavior, we can become proud of that success. We begin to measure our spirituality or personal righteousness by the false metrics of spiritual practices and external behavior. That’s what Jesus called “the righteousness of the Pharisees.” They measured their personal piety by external metrics. 

But Jesus tells his apprentices:

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:20

True righteousness is measured by the health of the inner life. You may not commit adultery (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but if you’re freely lusting, then inwardly you’re an adulterer. You may not have killed someone (again the external measuring of righteousness by the Pharisees), but if you’re angry toward someone, then inwardly you’re a murderer.

As Dallas Willard used to teach, “The thief is not the person who steals, but the one who would steal if he or she could get away with it”. In other words, true righteousness is not determined by external behavior, but by a person’s internal character and posture. And that internal character and posture is untouchable by our will.

Our troubles occur when our will is captivated by our desires, when we want what we want. The gratification of desire, exerting our will to get what we want, gives us a temporary sense of completeness and power. When these behaviors become habituated in our bodies, our will becomes virtually powerless to stop the behavior.

So how do we apply the will in spiritual formation? Our will must fit into the overall psychology of spiritual formation. The first thing we can apply our will toward is where we will place our mind. I’ve written a little about this recently, but the first and most important thing we can do is learn to always keep God before our minds. Willard states, “The will to place our mind upon God and orient all our life around him is the primary role of the will in the good life.” Our minds must always turn to God and his goodness. Our vision and experiential knowledge of God must generate a constant satisfaction, contentment, and joy with God and all his dealings with us.

Willard then states:

“When this is done and has become a habitual disposition, we can then begin to reorder all of the other dimensions of the self around God and what is good. This is where Spiritual Disciplines come in, though they are not adequate in themselves for the reordering of life that goes into spiritual (re)formation. They are necessary but not sufficient.”

Our will can then be applied to simple routine practices (spiritual disciplines) currently within our power that will open moments of our lives and the aspects of our personality (thoughts, feelings, will, body, relationships, and soul) to God’s grace. In this way we joyfully cooperate with God as he transforms us internally so we are eventually able do what we currently cannot do.

Or as Willard states:

“Spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will interacting with constant overtures of grace from God. Such transformation is not the result of mere human effort and cannot be accomplished by putting pressure on the will (heart, spirit) alone.”

Rather than outlining an example of how this would work, I would like to direct you to more lengthy and well-thought discussion by Dallas Willard on the subject of pornography. The article linked below entitled, Beyond Pornography, is important for a couple of reasons. First, pornography is a wide-spread problem in our culture. Second, most people try to overcome this issue by willpower alone. So the article provides a vivid example of how the will and the other components of the human personality are essential to work with God toward transformation. And third, virtually everything discussed in the article can be modified to deal with virtually any other issue in our lives.

https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/beyond-pornography

In an article written to pastors entitled, The Secret to Ministry Satisfaction, Dallas Willard offers wisdom that is applicable to any apprentice of Jesus.

“Those who experience moral failure are those who have failed to live a deeply satisfied life in Christ, almost without exception. I know my temptations come out of situations where I am dissatisfied, not content. I am worried about something or not feeling the sufficiency I know is there. If I have a strong temptation, it will be out of my dissatisfaction.”

A few lines later he writes:

“The surest guarantee against failure is to be so at peace and satisfied with God that when wrongdoing presents itself, it isn’t even interesting. That is how we stay out of temptation.”

Willard offers an important truth to spiritual formation: Temptation and sin are symptoms of dissatisfaction with God. A life that is joyfully and peacefully satisfied, secure, and content in God finds nothing else to be appetizing or tempting. And conversely, a life that is dissatisfied, insecure and discontent in God will inevitably turn to something else.

In order to take advantage of this wisdom, I think it’s important to rethink how we view sin. But before we do, I want to say upfront that I am not trying to dilute or diminish sin. I believe the Bible is very clear about the severity of sin’s destructive and dehumanizing power. The damaging power of sin is evident from the first chapters of the Bible when the first humans plucked the forbidden fruit to seek self-autonomy, through the Old Testament’s narrative arc of humanity’s and Israel’s constant failure, and into the New Testament, ultimately resulting in the sacrifice of God’s own son. Only through Jesus is there full forgiveness and redemption from sin.

The shift in perspective I recommend is viewing sin more as a state of unhealth rather than a violation of God’s legal code. Sin is a disease of the soul more than a crime in a courtroom. This doesn’t diminish sin’s destructive power nor our need to confess, repent, and ask for God’s and others’ forgiveness, mercy and grace. 

But we shouldn’t stop there. If sin is a disease of the soul, a symptom of our dissatisfaction with God, we should use it in cooperation with God to diagnose where the unhealth lies and what steps might be needed to move toward health.

For example, if you’re prone to exploding in anger, then you need God to reveal where your dissatisfaction and discontentment with him lie. Are you dissatisfied with not getting what you want? Are you dissatisfied with your inability to control circumstances and people? Are you dissatisfied with how others act? Are you dissatisfied with your circumstances — career, health, finances, relationships, talents, unfulfilled dreams?

The same kind of analysis with God needs to occur with anxiety, lust, gluttony, consumerism, pride, hatred, fear, gossip, apathy, laziness and any other destructive quality that might plague us. These arise when we don’t believe we’re satisfied, safe, cared for, and confident with God in our lives. They are destructive forms of self-autonomy, attempts once again to pluck fruit from a tree that we believe will give us control over our lives because we don’t believe our God and Creator is able or willing to care completely for us like he’s promised.

Later in the same article, Willard offers the following sage advice for addressing our dissatisfaction.

“I encourage pastors to have substantial times every week when they do nothing but enjoy God. That may mean walking by a stream, looking at a flower, listening to music, or watching your children or grandchildren play without your constantly trying to control them. Experience the fullness of God, think about the good things God has done for you, and realize he has done well by you. If there is a problem doing that, then work through the problem, because we cannot really serve him if we do not genuinely love him.”

Notice he doesn’t say, “Try harder.” Since temptation and sin are symptoms of dissatisfaction and discontentment with God, the answer is not to try harder to resist temptation and stop sinning. Nor is the answer to try harder to pray, study scripture, and practice additional disciplines to force transformation. The answer is to make time to enjoy God, to experience the goodness of God, and to remember he has done well by you.

Upon that foundation, God may reveal other simple disciplines to practice that will bring our engrained habits of temptation and sin before his transforming grace. A good rule of thumb is:

Sins of commission usually need spiritual disciplines of abstinence (solitude, silence, fasting, etc) and sins of omission need spiritual disciplines of engagement (community, worship, prayer, etc).

But even these specific spiritual disciplines are simply practiced with peace and joy so that they immerse us in a deep satisfaction and contentment with God.

“Your will be done.”

It’s a famous line from Jesus’ prayer. Christians all over the world pray it. Some with passionate zeal, longing for God’s justice and mercy in their lives. Others pray it with trepidation, fearing that God will force them into decisions and situations they dread.

But what if there’s a greater dimension to the phrase, “Your will be done”? Here’s a startling thought from Dallas Willard:

“It is God’s intention that we should grow into the kind of person he could empower to do what we want to do. Then we are ready to ‘reign for ever and ever’ (Rev. 22:5).”
The Divine Conspiracy

What kind of person would we have to become for God to grant us that kind of power and freedom? A person whose will has been formed to match and embody God’s will. This is someone who has trained with Jesus so their will’s natural inclination is to always choose and do what God would chose and do.

Or to paraphrase Willard, God wants us to become people to whom he could give his power and then release into his universe with the same words we’ve prayed to him, “Now, your will be done.”

Such a thought is almost unfathomable. I barely understand God’s will throughout most of my life. And from what little I do understand, my will is nowhere near God’s will.

God’s will is funded by his divine love. So his will is directed toward the thriving and flourishing of every aspect of creation. Everything he wants accomplished is for the good of what he has made. And while every aspect and component of creation, from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy cluster, is easily within his knowledge and control, he also knows when not to let his will be accomplished for a time. But everything he decides and does is motivated by an immense love that is capable and competent to unleash his boundless goodness for everyone and everything so they thrive.

My will, on the other hand, is driven by my self-centeredness and directed toward my comfort, security, and reputation. Sure there might be times of true love and altruism toward other people. But what naturally comes out of my will is more about me. 

Bottom-line, God’s will is all about everything and everyone else thriving and my will is about me being in control.

And that’s why Jesus’ offer of apprenticeship is the good news of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom — his active will and reign in the here-and-now of our lives — is available in and through Jesus. He is a genuine human being that has learned to fully embody God’s will in the nitty-gritty reality of daily human life.

“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”
Hebrews 5:8

“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
John 5:19

“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
John 12:49-50

He invites us to learn the same thing from him. And if we are able to give up our own way and die to our twisted, self-centered will, then he is able to train us to become like him.

We see a teaser of Jesus’ training program. At one point, he empowers, instructs, and releases his twelve apprentices. At this point in their training, they were able to sufficiently understand and execute the Father’s will for the project at hand.

“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: ‘Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.”
Luke 9:1-6

And later in Luke 10:1-12, Jesus does virtually the exact same thing to 72 of his apprentices. All of this is to say, Jesus is capable of training people to become like him — a person whose will is being formed into God’s will so God can empower and release to competently do what they want because what they want is what he wants.

So how can we learn from Jesus to reform our myopic self-centered will into an others-centered will like God’s, one that is fully committed and capable to help those around us to thrive and flourish?

Frankly, this is the primary goal of Jesus’ apprenticeship project. And this project is lifelong and individualized for each apprentice. But I think there are several key components we are learning over the decades of our life.

1. Learn to trust Jesus to train you: He is fully capable to teach you regardless of your age, gender, personality, family of origin, ethnicity, education, career, wealth, and any other distinguishing factor of your life. He is brilliant and the true master of life. So you can let go of your own way to learn his lifestyle and the practices that formed him.

2. Learn from Jesus how to always keep God before your mind: This is the first and most basic practice of an apprentice. Jesus said in John 17:3 that the life from the age to come (eternal life) is an interactive, experiential knowledge of God and King Jesus. Therefore, we need to learn from Jesus how to stay in constant communication and interaction with the Trinitarian God.

3. Learn from Jesus true joy, contentment and confidence in God: Jesus is able to train you to find genuine, whole-life fulfillment and satisfaction in an interactive life with God, regardless of your life circumstances. Your faith in Jesus will develop into the faith of Jesus, confidently aware that you are always well-off and cared for by your loving Father in his good world. You are trained through experience that you lack nothing good and therefore, never need to feel any compulsion to pursue something you believe to be lacking. Your comfort, security and reputation are in God’s capable hands. You are content in God and truly believe he is doing well by you.

4. Learn from Jesus to release any and all desire to maintain control over people and circumstances: Because you lack nothing good and God is fully committed to your thriving and flourishing, you no longer need to steer people and circumstances toward what you want. Instead, your only concern is their thriving and flourishing. You act in love and goodness toward them and peacefully let God control all outcomes.

5. Learn from Jesus how to pursue love: Remember that we are not learning to act loving, as good as that might be. Acting loving is only acting. We want to learn from Jesus to be possessed by God’s love, the very thing that moves his will to the competent thriving and flourishing of his creation. We want to become like Jesus, a human being so permeated with God’s love that he always placed others above himself for their good. 

I’m sure there are many other important components to learn from Jesus as we train and journey towards becoming people formed into God’s will. But those are five key components that Jesus has been teaching me for several years.

Remember, we are ceaseless beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. That eternal destiny is to become people who will co-reign with God, people embodying God’s thriving and flourishing will toward his creation. Then he can empower us to do what we want to do and can say to us “Your will be done.”

In his Sunday homily, our priest, Fr Thomas, stated that most of us come to God wanting him to fix things when God actually wants to heal things. And he heals by offering himself to us.

This has a lot of good stuff to unpack in light of our apprenticeship with Jesus. Obviously, all of us are broken and carry baggage into our apprenticeship with Jesus. This is why Jesus tells us that we must be willing to give up our own way and take up our cross in order to follow him. This is the ongoing process of repentance that is essential in our apprenticeship.

I think if most of us were honest, we wish God would just take away the baggage. We want him to fix things in our life. Fix our marriage, our kids, our finances, our job, our health, our personality, our sins, our circumstances.

The problem with fixing things is that it bypasses the very thing that God wants to heal and transform — our will or heart. Our will is the core component of our self around which every other component — our thoughts, feelings, body, and relationships — properly functions. And our will is designed to submit into a cooperative union with God. By its very nature, the will cannot be fixed. It must be healed and trained.

For example:

• We want God to fix our marriage, but our will needs to be healed and trained from its selfishness, mistrust, or lack of intimacy and into valuing others above ourselves.
• We want God to fix our chronic illness, but our will needs to be healed and trained from our self-sufficiency, anxiety, or fear and into trusting our well-being in God’s grace and goodness.
• We want God to fix our debt, but our will needs to be healed and trained from the thoughts, feelings and habits that compel us to buy more and spend beyond our means and into simplicity, contentment and generosity.

Now I am not saying that God won’t fix a marriage, heal illnesses, or remove debt. Sometimes our merciful God fixes things. And it’s okay to ask him to fix things. What I am saying is that God’s end-game is healing who we are as his image-bearing people. And he heals us with his powerful and loving interactive presence. Remember, Jesus defined eternal life or “life of the age to come” as knowing God (John 17:3). This deep quality of life, eternal life, is an interactive relationship with God in which we grow in our experiential knowledge of him.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the will is influenced by our thoughts, feelings, and bodily habits. When our will struggles and we cannot do the good we know and want to do, we must work indirectly at retraining our will in God’s grace. While it may be a struggle, it is very doable because we are working in sync with God’s powerful grace that trains us:

“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”
Titus 2:11-12

We cooperate with God’s grace by indirectly influencing our will both by renewing our minds (our thoughts and feelings) and creating new bodily habits alongside our destructive habits. 

We renew our minds, first and foremost, by keeping God before our minds. We learn to redirect our mind back to God over and over throughout the day. Also, our increasing experience of God’s truth in Scripture and the wisdom of other Jesus-apprentices supplements our mental redirection and trains us to think well about God.

We create new bodily habits through the wise application of spiritual disciplines. These open our will and lives to God through our day and train us to do things we currently cannot do. Dallas Willard classifies spiritual disciplines into two categories that work in conjunction with each other — disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. The disciplines of abstinence teach us to refrain from certain activities and break our dependency on them and their control over us. The disciplines of engagement teach us to involve ourselves positively and properly with God, others and creation.

As Fr Thomas wisely observed in his sermon, God heals us by giving himself to us. This is absolutely crucial. While we interact with him and cooperate with his healing through the renewing of our minds and practicing spiritual disciplines, he is the source of our healing and transformation. Eternal life, and its accompanying healing, is knowing and interacting with him.

Today I would like to discuss a quote by Dallas Willard. In his book, The Great Omission, he states:

“The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds….This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in thus practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him.”

There are many tools and practices available for our apprenticeship with Jesus and learning from him how to be like him. But according to Willard’s expertise, the first and most basic practice is keeping God before our minds.

The entire point of things like spiritual disciplines and the process of spiritual formation is to remain in a moment-by-moment, interactive relationship with God. Without this foundational relationship, all of the tools of spiritual formation will devolve into what Jesus calls the “righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” and thereby completely miss the point of apprenticeship to Jesus.

So what does keeping God before our minds look like? Do we have to add more activities to our already full lives?

Not at all. In fact, this practice is a habit we can form through our normal daily routines. Think about all the ordinary parts of your day. Getting out of bed. Brushing your teeth. Eating breakfast. Standing in line for your coffee. Taking a shower. Driving kids to school. Answering email. Attending a meeting. Vacuuming the living room. Changing diapers. Exercising at the gym. Waiting for your car at the mechanic.

In all of these moments, your mind is already active with no effort. Perhaps it’s thinking of a recent conversation. Or thinking about last night’s cliff-hanger TV episode. Or ruminating over something you said or did. Or worrying about paying this month’s bills. Or planning your next vacation. Or simply daydreaming. The point is that your mind is continuously and effortlessly active during all of your daily activities.

Keeping God before your mind is gently nudging your thoughts towards God. It doesn’t require a lot of effort. Start with those small transitional moments between activities such as waiting at a stop light, hitting the send button on your email, putting your child down for a nap, sitting in the car waiting for the kids to be released from school, taking your 15-minute break at work, or waiting for your food to heat up in the microwave.

In those small moments, gently turn your mind to God with a simple phrase. I love you, Father. Teach me you ways, Jesus. Come, Holy Spirit. Lord, have mercy on me. I yield to you, God. Thank you, Father.

Now expand that into a small conversation expressing worship, devotion, gratitude, confession, petition, submission, frustration, confusion, or anything else you’re experiencing. Then ask God to help you be aware of his presence and quietly wait a few moments. All of this might take 10-20 seconds.

Willard’s quote continues with:

“In the early time of our practicing, we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. But these are habits—not the law of gravity—and can be broken.”

It may be a struggle at first. But over time, this practice will become almost second nature and begin spilling into other activities. You’ll find yourself talking with God during more active times like attending a staff meeting, watching the news, entering data in a spreadsheet, talking with people, or preparing for bed.

Willard goes on:

“A new, grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north, no matter how the compass is moved. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the polestar of our inward beings.”

Over time, let your mind begin to be filled with greater awareness of God’s grandeur, guiding your conversations with him:

• Awareness that God is directly available and supreme over everything
• Awareness that every thing and every event is filled with God’s glorious presence
• Awareness that his boundless goodness will always prevail, redeeming every and any circumstance in our lives so that this world is a perfectly safe place to be
• Awareness that God’s world is inconceivably beautiful because God is constantly and joyfully active within it
• Awareness that your life is a result of God’s goodness and it is good for you to be and good for you to be who you are
• Awareness that God’s unrestrained love is constantly directed toward you and that he relishes every moment he gets to spend with you

You may want to supplement this with memorizing a few Scripture passages such as Psalm 23, the Lord’s Prayer, Colossians 3:1-17, and Psalm 16:8-11. Intentionally pause throughout the day and let one of these passages guide your prayer and contemplation on God.

The point is to think increasingly well of God as we keep God before our minds. Then our longing for God grows and the immense gravity of his presence, goodness, and love will draw us further into himself.

Our daily life will become a joyful whole-life expression of what David experienced:

I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Psalm 16:8-11

Her voice came across the phone, “You just don’t understand what I’m going through.” She had been complaining about a persistent issue in her life and I had offered some biblical advice. I stifled my frustration and the temptation to roll my eyes. I countered with, “Maybe so, but Jesus has some wisdom about this.” She quickly responded, “Yeah, but I’m only human.” And with two common, yet fallacious comments, she shut the door on any chance of learning from Jesus how to cope with her situation.

This person had basically disqualified Jesus from being able to provide any wisdom for her because 1) only someone who has experienced her specific situation could provide relevant counsel and 2) Jesus was divine so any counsel he gave was too difficult or even impossible for mere humans.

These arguments are common tactics used by people who don’t want to change. What is so sad, is Jesus truly is her lifeline. Paul states in Colossians 2:3 that in Jesus “lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” 

Along those lines, Dallas Willard writes of Jesus:

“He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life.“
The Divine Conspiracy

Jesus is brilliant! He is THE master of human life.

Even more amazing, he calls anyone and everyone to follow him as his apprentice. As THE master of human life, he is fully capable of teaching anyone to become an equal practitioner of human life like him. That’s why he invites anyone and everyone to learn from him:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
Matthew 11:28-30

Jesus is such a master of life that even though he was a single, Jewish man, who lived 2000 years ago, he is fully capable of teaching anyone throughout history how to live life as if he were living in their place. This is apparent as we look at the countless people throughout history and from various backgrounds who have learned from him how to live life.

Nothing disqualifies us from becoming his apprentices — age, gender, education, occupation, status, health, geography, ethnicity, family. Nothing.

Well, there is one thing…

The thing that stands in the way is our own unwillingness to let go of everything so as to relearn from Jesus how to live life. In other words, an unwillingness to repent — to rethink our thoughts, values, feelings, priorities, decisions, actions, and relationships — prevents us from learning from him.

This is why Jesus said, 

“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.” 
Matthew 16:24

In order to be Jesus’ apprentices, we must give up our own way. Our way gets in the way of learning Jesus’ way. That’s because our way is the wrong way to live life. But taking up our cross puts our way to death and prepares us to truly submit to Jesus’ masterful teaching on how to life his life.

So giving up our way and taking up our cross are prerequisites for following Jesus as his apprentices. Jesus is not being mean or arrogant when he says this. Rather, we simply cannot learn from him if we’re clinging to the very things we need to first unlearn. 

Years ago, when I took drumming lessons from a master drummer, he told me I had to stop striking the drum heads with my current technique in order to relearn his correct technique. This kind of thing is true in any form of teacher/student, mentor/mentee, or master/apprentice relationship.

At another time, Jesus said,

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” 
John 14:6

This statement is very similar to what he said in Matthew 16:24. If we want Jesus’ life (naturally embodied love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faith, compassion, goodness, etc), then we must first embrace his way (his unhurried lifestyle and practices) and his truth (how he understands and interacts with God, the world, life, and reality in general). And in order to embrace his way and truth, we must give up our way and truth.

Remember, our way and our truth have led to our life.

In his book, Practicing the Way, John Mark Comer describes his encounter with a Jesuit priest named Father Rick:

“Years ago, a Jesuit priest named Father Rick was kind enough to offer me spiritual direction. He was old and wise and full of insight, but the thing I most remember about our times together is how peaceful he was. When I was with him, I would literally feel my heart rate slow down, my body calm, and my anxiety dissipate. It’s like he set the atmosphere in the room, and just breathing the same air cleaned out my soul. Just being with him did something to me.”

Based on Comer’s description, Father Rick was someone who learned from Jesus how to embody Jesus’ life of love, joy, and peace. It was evident that he had embraced Jesus’ unhurried way so that his peaceful presence affected Comer’s body and emotions. And it was evident in that he had embraced Jesus’ truth, becoming a source of wisdom and insight.

So the choice that constantly faces us as Jesus’ apprentices is:

Our way, our truth, and our life? Or Jesus’ way, Jesus’ truth, and Jesus life?

Ever since I read Dallas Willard’s book, Life without Lack, Psalm 23 has been a daily source of prayer and reflection. This passage is such a beautiful description of God’s shepherding activity in our spiritual formation. It’s a shame that this passage has been relegated to funerals because it provides far more wisdom and promise for life than comfort at death.

So here are some of my current reflections on this Psalm.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.” Psalm 23:1-3a

Verses 1-3a form a powerful description of God as our Shepherd and his formational activity in our lives. In him, we lack absolutely no good thing in our life. Because of this reality, I am always safe in him, regardless of whatever circumstance I’m experiencing.

But this requires being trained into the ability to genuinely live in this truth. It’s one thing to give intellectual assent that I lack nothing in God and a completely different thing to actually experience it within my thoughts, emotions, will and body. Let me put it another way. Even though I may believe I lack nothing in God when a crisis hits, my stress, worry, raised blood pressure, sweaty palms, upset stomach, hurriedness, impatience, inability to sleep, and other symptoms betray that I don’t actually believe it deep within my emotions and bodily systems. 

Those symptoms expose a fractured soul. The soul is that part of us that integrates our thoughts, feelings, will, body and relationships into a whole and synchronized life. When those components are at odds with one another, our soul is fractured.

But verses 1-3a show how God is restoring our soul. He makes us lie down in green pastures and walk beside still waters. The image of the sheep is one of complete fulfillment and satisfaction. It is so satisfied that it ignores the grass and water, the very thing it would normally crave.

Its satisfaction does not come from the tranquil environment. It’s neither hungry nor thirsty because it has found its nourishment in the Shepherd. This is very similar to what Jesus revealed in John 4:32, “I have food to eat of which you know nothing.” 

I tend to find satisfaction in my tranquil environment. I’m fulfilled when my bank account is full, when my health is good, when my job is meaningful and successful, and when my family and friendships are free of conflict. In those times, it’s easy to be like the foolish farmer in Jesus’ parable (Luke 12:13-21) and think I’m safe and secure because of my perceived abundance and success.

This is the grounds for a fractured soul. Because when those things are removed, we perceive our security to be gone and our world to be in turmoil. But God is training us to see that we lack nothing because he is our Shepherd. He’s training us to find our nourishment, satisfaction, and security in him and not the abundant “grass” and “water” around us. And by doing so, he’s restoring our soul.

We then come to verses 3b-4:

“He leads me in paths of righteousness 
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, 
they comfort me.” Psalm 23:3b-4

Part of God’s training is how he leads us as our Shepherd.  He’s leading us on “paths of righteousness.” Righteousness in the Old Testament means “covenantal faithfulness and justice.” It means living in right relationship to the covenant between God and his people in the midst of daily lives.

God is showing and training us how to live our mundane and ordinary lives for his glory and for the good of others. When we go shopping. When we’re at the coffee shop. When we’re driving on the freeways. When we’re at work, in a meeting, caring for our kids, visiting friends, on vacation. Every single mundane moment can be lived in covenantal faithfulness for God’s glory and the good of those around us and in our lives. That’s because our souls are restored and we are living and experiencing God’s capable provision of every good thing in our lives.

Now notice that these “paths of righteousness” inevitably take us into the “valley of the shadow of death.” Our Good Shepherd, intentionally leads us into the dark valley. They’re part of the “paths of righteousness.” This is why God trains us and restores our souls. He has to take us through dark valleys. If we haven’t been formed into people who truly live in and experience the reality that we lack nothing in our Shepherd, we will succumb to fear. 

If my perceived security and safety is in the tranquil circumstances, then what happens when my bank account drains, when my health fails, when my job vanishes, and when my relationships crack. But if I’ve trained with my God to find all my sustenance in him and thereby he’s restored my soul, then I won’t fear evil. What I’ve learned in the tranquil times remains true in the tragic times. What is true of God in the light remains true of God in the dark.

We won’t fear evil because he is with us. And we’ve learned that he is everything we need, even in the midst of loss, tragedy, and perhaps death. We’re comforted by God’s shepherding rod and staff. These objects of protection and guidance are an extension of who he is as my Shepherd, which we will see at work in the next passage.

We come to verses 5-6. The metaphor changes. The dark valleys that our Shepherd guides us becomes a battlefield occupied by our enemies. But look at how we’re comforted by God’s rod and staff in the midst of constant threat:

“You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.” Psalm 23:5-6

Our Shepherd prepares a table for us smack dab in the midst of our enemies. God does not remove our enemies. Nor does he remove us from the presence of our enemies. He places a bountiful banqueting table in the middle of the battlefield. He doesn’t change the dire circumstances. Rather, he’s intimately present with us and abundantly caring for us in the midst of the dire circumstances.

And he anoints our head with oil. This is the ancient equivalent of a relaxing, hot shower. He provides us with peace during the desperate times. And he makes our cup overflow. He provides abundantly and generously in the midst of the chaos. In the dark valley and in the battlefield, God provides abundant protection, peace, and provision. It’s similar to what Paul wrote in 2Corinthians 9:8, “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

And in our Shepherd, in whom we lack nothing, we don’t have to worry about our enemies outflanking us and catching us by surprise. God‘s goodness and mercy follow us every day. His goodness and mercy are like his rod and his staff. They are an extension of who God is as our Shepherd. They guard us from behind so that nothing can surprise us.

And the Psalm ends as it begins. Our intimate friendship with our Shepherd will last forever. No circumstance, no matter how catastrophic, can change that. He is our shepherd, our sustainer, our satisfaction, our fulfillment, our nourishment, our protector, our guide, our peace, our provision. This world is a safe place to be because we lack no good thing in him. This is a promise for our day-to-day reality as he guides us through our ordinary, mundane life and it is a promise for our eternal reality that awaits us in God’s grand New Creation.

I would like to piggy-back on Dallas Willard’s quote from my last post. Interestingly, on NT Wright’s recent podcast, he answered a question about the New Creation described in Revelation 21. I will try to summarize his answer. You can also listen to the full podcast at:

Ask NT Wright Anything: What happens at the End of the Age?, Sep 27, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-happens-at-the-end-of-the-age/id1441656192?i=1000728763916

Beginning of Summary:
We’re not sure exactly what the New Creation will look like. The present creation is beautiful, powerful, vivid and full of color, drama and life. If this present creation is God’s “pilot project” of what is ultimately coming in the New Creation, then the New Creation will be far, far more than this creation. It will be like this creation but full of much more beauty, drama, and life.

Also, the New Creation is about heaven and earth finally coming together. We’re not leaving earth to go to heaven. The merging of heaven and earth will transform creation. The significant transformation is that corruption, decay and sin will pass away from the New Creation. The new world will be incorruptible and undecaying.

To build a vision of the New Creation, we need to put Revelation 21 alongside 1Corinthians 15 and Romans 8. And behind these passages lie the story of Jesus’ resurrection. This is because what we ultimately know about the New Creation is that God will ultimately do to the whole creation what he did for Jesus at his resurrection. While we don’t have many details of what Jesus was like when he stepped out of the tomb, what we do have are accounts that demonstrate that the resurrected Jesus was a physical human being. He could be touched. He could eat. He could cook. He walked with Peter. As Paul would describe in 1Corinthians 15, corruptible physical humanity was changed into incorruptible physical humanity. 

In Romans 8, Paul says the whole creation is groaning in travail and is waiting to give birth. When a woman gives birth, the baby is like the mother. So the current space-time-matter universe will give birth to a new space-time-matter universe that will be incorruptible and will last eternally and be full of endless potential and possibility. It is the supersession of that which is corruptible and decaying by that which is incorruptible and full of God’s life. And this is only the start.
End of Summary:

Now let’s read Willard’s quote from the last post in light of NT Wright’s summary of the New Creation:

“We should think of our [eternal] destiny as being absorbed in a tremendously creative team effort, with unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast plane of activity, with ever more comprehensive cycles of productivity and enjoyment. This is the ‘eye hath not seen, neither ear heard’ that lies before us in the prophetic vision (Isa. 64:4).”

These quotes excite me to no end about the eternal life that awaits us. Our eternal lives will exist in incorruptible, resurrected and transformed physical bodies, spiritually formed through apprenticeship to Jesus to be people capable of God’s self-giving love for the sake of others, living in an all-inclusive community of eternal love with God as the prime sustainer, premier member, and glorious leader, engaged in inconceivable activities with unending productivity and joy, all within an incorruptible, eternal, time-space-matter universe that incomprehensibly exceeds all this current creation has in size, beauty and life.

When I think of all this in the context of Jesus’ call to be his apprentices in our lives now, how can I say no to him? It’s absolutely ludicrous to cling to my small self-centered desires, trying to shape life through my own little will and meager resources for my own benefit. Even if I were to somehow accomplish all my goals, amass incredible wealth, power and fame, and somehow get everything I desire, it’s still only a drop compared to the vast ocean of beauty, joy and life that God has always intended for us. 

And Jesus is fully capable of training us and transforming us into his likeness so we can live fully as God intended in our lives now and in the eternal life that is waiting for us.

Life has been very full the past couple of weeks, so I haven’t had a chance to even think about writing. So I’m going to be a little lazy and post a quote by Dallas Willard from his book, The Divine Conspiracy.

Willard was fond of saying, “We are unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” This sentence always tickles my imagination of what lies in our eternal future. In the following quote, recently shared by John Ortberg in his podcast, Willard expands his vision of eternity:

“We should expect that in due time we will be moved into our eternal destiny of creative activity with Jesus and his friends and associates in the ‘many mansions’ of ‘his Father’s house. Thus, we should not think of ourselves as destined to be celestial bureaucrats, involved eternally in celestial “administrivia.” That would be only slightly better than being caught in an everlasting church service. No, we should think of our destiny as being absorbed in a tremendously creative team effort, with unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast plane of activity, with ever more comprehensive cycles of productivity and enjoyment. This is the ‘eye hath not seen, neither ear heard’ that lies before us in the prophetic vision (Isa. 64:4).”

I’ve mentioned before that I believe the Book of Revelation almost seems to end with the words “To Be Continued…” God’s magnificent story from Genesis through Revelation climaxes and resolves in such a way that it builds toward a new story. Willard’s quote beautifully teases what that story’s trajectory might be. And by doing so, provides fuller vision and meaning to our lives as Jesus’ apprentices here and now.

I was recently thinking about Philippians 2:5-8:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The New International Version and New Revised Standard Version translate the Greek word for “grasped” as “to be used to his own advantage.” The idea is Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to be held onto so as to exploit or use for his own benefit.

I remember Dallas Willard encouraging us to imagine the quality of love within the Trinity that let Jesus feel safe enough to release equality with God during his earthly life and ministry. Jesus knew he was lavishly loved and supported by the Father and Spirit and could easily let it go.

In contrast, reflecting on this highlights all of my fears — fears that compel me to grasp and seize what little I have. I clutch my finances, possessions, time, and reputation. Yet they are far, far less than equality with God. They can’t even compare. And I know there is little safety in what I’m clutching. Yet, emotionally they create a sense of security and control, albeit a false one.

The good news is that we are invited into the same quality of love that Jesus experiences with the Father and Spirit. Reflect on that for a moment. You and I may enter into and dwell in the same loving relationship within the Trinity that made Jesus feel safe enough to let go of his equality with God and fearlessly free fall into the nature and life of a servant among those who would neither recognize nor love him.

For Jesus, this world was an absolutely safe place because he knew and trusted the love of his Father. There was never a moment when he feared a need would not be met. And because Jesus had absolutely no fear, he grasped onto nothing. From birth to crucifixion and beyond, Jesus knew he was safe and cared for. This allowed him to love and serve freely. He wasn’t stingy or selfish because he didn’t grasp onto money or possessions. He wasn’t hurried or stressed because he didn’t grasp onto time. He wasn’t jealous or threatened because he didn’t grasp onto reputation.

And you and I can live in that. But it means knowing and experiencing the God that Jesus knew and experienced.

As Dallas Willard said, “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your every day life with God.”

So here’s a thought. What if every commandment in Scripture and every event in your life is designed to train you to enter into the Trinity’s love and life. Commandments are not arbitrary rules to obey, but a way of living that ushers you into Trinitarian love. Hardships and stressful moments are not random occasions to grit our teeth and suffer, but portals to experience the safety and security of God’s goodness and love. And over time, fear and its subsequent grasping are replaced with confident trust in the unending love, goodness, and safety that is the Trinity’s eternal experience with one another.

Jesus has eternally known the love and life of the Trinity. It allowed him to let go of equality with God and plunge into the nature of a servant so he could lead us back to that same Trinitarian love and life. In him and through him, we can experience the Trinitarian reality he experiences. And in the safety of that love and life, we can be formed into people who naturally embody it like he did.

Look at these few passages from that viewpoint:

“Show me your ways, Lord,
teach me your paths
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.”
Psalm 25:4-5

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
Romans 5:10

“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’”
Matthew 28:18-20

God’s ways and truths are designed to train us into the Trinitarian reality. Jesus’ death reconciled us to God. Now he saves us through his life as we apprentice ourselves to him and interact with him. As Jesus’ apprentices, we are to help others become the same. Surrounded by Jesus’ authority and presence, we make disciples by immersing them in the Trinitarian reality within Christian community and teaching them to become people who naturally do everything Jesus did.

And we can’t forget Paul’s reason for discussing Jesus’ example in Philippians 2:5-8, which he states in verses 3-4:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Becoming immersed in the Trinitarian reality is not primarily for our benefit. It’s to replace all fear, so like Jesus, we can easily embrace the nature of a servant for the good of others. With nothing to fear and nothing to clutch onto, we can consider others more important than ourselves and look to their interests over our own.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus…” Hebrews 12:1-2

A lot can be unpacked from Hebrews 12:1-2. but I want to focus on the Greek word used for “throw off.” The author of Hebrews is using an athletic metaphor of a foot race. During biblical times, Roman athletes would strip off their clothing to run their foot race unencumbered. So Hebrews is encouraging us to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles as we run our race.

This Greek word is used in other places in the New Testament:

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”
Ephesians 4:22-25

“But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
Colossians 3:8-10

“Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you,which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
James 1:21-22

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
1Peter 2:1-3

While each of these passages contains valuable truth to explore, I only want to make one observation about all of them, including Hebrews 12. Each exhortation to “put off” or “get rid of” or “throw off” sin is coupled with an exhortation to embrace counter practices that will replace sin. I think this is a foundational key to our spiritual formation.

So how do we “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles?” Here, I’m going to lean heavily on what I’ve learned from Dallas Willard.

“Throwing off” requires the practice of indirection. At the risk of being overly simplistic I’ll try to explain why. Our lives are made up of various components — soul, thoughts, feelings, will, body, and relationships. In a healthy functioning life, our will is directed by our thoughts and reinforced by our feelings. Our will then directs our body’s actions and how we relate to others. Knowing God (John 17:3), and the profound life and truth that experiential knowledge brings, shapes our thoughts and feelings so our will is submitted to God’s will. Then God’s will, cooperatively through our will, is naturally and easily expressed through our body.

Unfortunately for all of us, sin and brokenness have corrupted our thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts and feelings have malformed our will to be self-oriented, which is then expressed through our body and our relationships. Over time, our self-oriented will builds sinful habits into our body that are primarily triggered thoughtlessly by our feelings.

This is our experience of doing what we don’t want to do and not being able to do what we know we should do. When we try to directly “throw off” these sinful practices, we have very little success because the habits are so engrained and the will is powerless to change them. 

Imagine a car with a severe misalignment issue that always pulls toward the left. You can apply force to the steering wheel (the will) to manually adjust the direction. You might even have limited success steering the car straight down the road. But once you let go, the car returns to its default misalignment.

That is the description of simple behavior modification. Through gritted teeth we might be able to do what is right for a time. But because we’re internally misaligned, the next time the appropriate trigger comes, the misalignment takes over.

Indirection focuses our efforts, empowered by God’s grace, to the areas of our life that we can control. And our thoughts are the primary aspect of our life over which we have control. In turn, our thoughts determine our feelings. So when we focus effort through spiritual disciplines on our thoughts and feelings, they reform the will to surrender to God as well as begin forming new godly habits that retrain our body. Combined with God’s powerful and abundant grace, we experience transformation, ultimately expressed through our bodies and into our relationships.

This is Jesus’ lifestyle and practices that he promises to teach us in Matthew 11:28-30. It’s simple. Not necessarily easy. But doable and successful.

So let’s take an example — the compulsion to buy things you don’t need. Is this sin? Maybe. Maybe not. But I think for most of us it falls into either 1) something that hinders or 2) a sin that easily entangles depending on the underlying issues.

For some of us, we’re able to just change our purchasing patterns. But for others, it has become a severe issue expressed in always needing the next model or a specific brand, overspending, debt, wasted time and energy, and conflict with loved ones. Usually entwined with this issue is our distorted identity as well as a warped view God, enforced by the rush we experience when buying something new.

As Jesus’ apprentices, we interact with him and allow him to diagnose the underlying issues. We also let him prescribe the appropriate and sensible spiritual practices that will indirectly address the issue.

Most likely, we need to start in the area we have the most control — our thoughts. We need to address how we think about and experience God’s immense goodness and love. We need to learn to think well about God. This in turn will deeply affect how we feel about God.

I shared the following quote from Dallas Willard in a previous post, but I believe it’s worth repeating here:

“Those who experience moral failure are those who have failed to live a deeply satisfied life in Christ, almost without exception… The surest guarantee against failure is to be so at peace and satisfied with God that when wrongdoing presents itself, it isn’t even interesting. That is how we stay out of temptation.”

This peace and satisfaction with God starts with how we think about and experience God. So, directing a majority of our effort into changing our thought life is essential to moving toward this reality. We would do this through reading, memorizing, and prayerfully reflecting upon specific Scriptures. We would also incorporate the teaching of those who have skillfully ventured into this area.

We also need to embrace and live Jesus’ unhurried and relaxed life. Some of the effects of hurriedness are stress, anxiety, irritability, and exhaustion. This internal environment causes us to react thoughtlessly and selfishly to feelings, which in turn creates new habits or reinforces existing habits of sin and selfishness. 

Learning to live unhurriedly creates a relaxed internal environment from which we have ample room to practice spiritual disciplines throughout the moments of our life. 

Jesus would need to guide us into which disciplines to practice. But here are some sample disciplines he might have us practice throughout our day at home and work:

• Solitude and silence so our current malformed thoughts and feelings are able to slowly bleed away. 
• Fasting so we learn to depend on and be satisfied by the nourishment of God’s word rather than on what we can easily obtain ourselves.
• Service so we learn to regularly care for and love others through our time and efforts rather than focusing on ourselves.
• Generosity so we learn to regularly give to others rather getting what we want.
• Memorization so we constantly keep God’s word and guidance in our thoughts.
• Worship so we remember God’s love and goodness in our lives.

He may also lead us to practice specific things that are not “classical” spiritual disciplines. For example, he may have us put aside some money to give away every time we want to buy something we don’t need. Or he might have us develop a new creative hobby so the rush of buying something is slowly replaced with the satisfaction of creating something beautiful. Or he might have us limit our media consumption so we’re not bombarded by the advertisements and influences to buy new things.

In all of this, we must remember that the disciplines themselves don’t bring about true transformation. Nor are they signs of piety or godliness. 

All of us live our lives each day with routines and practices. Why not develop simple routines and practices that open small windows throughout our daily lives to God? This is what Jesus meant to seek God’s kingdom and faithfulness in Matthew 6:33. We create small windows throughout our day where we can interact with and experience God’s activity and faithfulness.

This is how we throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles so we can run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Paul uses such rich language about God’s grace that it’s easy to think he’s simply being poetic or overly optimistic. Even the passages we’ve explored in the last three posts sound far too good to be true.

I believe Paul’s teaching on God’s grace came from a deep intimate experience with God’s grace over many years in all aspects of his personality, life and ministry. Over and over, he experienced God’s abundant overflowing grace to all areas of his life. Over and over, he experienced remarkable strength in the midst of weakness. Over and over, he trained in the energy of God’s grace to renounce the darkest areas of depravity and to embrace Christ’s character and power in his thoughts, feelings, decisions, bodily habits, and relationships. Over and over, he shared with others with stunning life transformation the knowledge of God’s grace, based on his thoughts and experience. Over and over, he saw what God’s limitless, unending, and immeasurably powerful grace could do in his life and others lives.

So Paul’s language was reality, not poetic embellishment.

I believe if any of us could talk Paul, he would say so himself.

You: So you’re saying God’s grace can touch my struggling marriage?
Paul: Not just touch, but overflow within it and transform it!

You: How about my kids and the mess I made raising them?
Paul: Yes, God’s grace can saturate that as well.

You: My career and finances?
Paul Yup.

You: How about my addictions?
Paul: Absolutely! Especially those. God’s grace permeates deeply into the brokenness of our lives.

You: You don’t know how bad my sin is or how deep my shame goes.
Paul: More importantly you need to grasp how boundless God’s grace is. It is far more wonderful and powerful than your worst sin and goes far deeper than your deepest shame. Remember what I wrote” For when I am weak, then I am strong.

You: Wait a minute. Don’t you mean “When I am weak, then he is strong?”
Paul: No, that’s not what I wrote. I wrote, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

That is the crux of Paul’s experience with God’s grace. Because of God’s grace, he could say, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Now you say it, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Yes, because of God’s infinitely strong grace, YOU are strong.

Yet Paul knew that a lot goes between the phrase “For when I am weak” and the phrase “then I am strong.” 

Grace isn’t magic. It doesn’t automatically change you from weak to strong. It doesn’t work like that. As we saw in Titus 2:11-14, grace trains us. It’s like a coach that trains you from weakness to strength.

Grace is God’s present, active power training us for transformed lives in this world.

I’ve mentioned before that I was a competitive swimmer. When I struggled with a particular technique, I would go to the coach so he could train me. But I had to practice. I had to take his coaching and unlearn my deficient technique and learn a more effective one. Over time and with his instruction, I would go from weak to strong.

Similarly, that’s the process that lies between the two phrases based on the passages we’ve explored. The main difference is that God’s grace both trains us and empowers us in that training. It provides every thing we need in every circumstance.

For when I am weak…
…I practice trusting God’s grace is immeasurably sufficient.
…I practice trusting God’s power is perfected in weakness.
…I practice trusting God is powerfully able to overflow all of his infinite …grace upon every aspect of my life, especially the deepest and darkest areas.
…I practice trusting God’s grace provides all sufficiency, in all things, at all times for all good works.
…I practice training in God’s grace to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
…I practice training in God’s grace to live a self-controlled, upright and godly life.
…I practice training in God’s grace to become part of Jesus’ eternal community of love.
…and as I trust and train, fueled by God’s grace, I am transformed into Jesus’ character and power in this life I am living here and now.
…then I am strong.

When I am weak… <God’s grace is abundantly and powerfully sufficient to save and to train> …then I am strong.

“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch; like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”

“’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!”

During the early years of being a Christian, I was taught that grace is “unmerited favor.” That makes sense. But that’s a fairly impotent definition, especially when describing something so grand as God’s grace.

In the last two posts, we’ve looked at Paul’s intimate experience of God’s grace and how this same grace is overflowing to Jesus’ apprentices for all sufficiency, in all things, at all times for every kind of beneficial activity for people and the wider community.

In light of these passages, God’s grace is something far more powerful and potent than “unmerited favor.”

While this may lack theological accuracy, I like to view grace as the powerful and dynamic fuel of God’s kingdom that works in our lives to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own.

So let’s take a look at another passage from Paul describing grace’s power.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Titus 2:11-14

God’s grace has appeared, unveiled to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and bringing deliverance to everyone. We did absolutely nothing to initiate or deserve this unveiling of God’s grace. It truly is unmerited favor. But we start getting hints that it is also far more.

God’s grace engages us. It teaches, instructs and trains us. That requires effort on our part. We don’t passively receive grace. We actively engage and interact with it.

God’s grace trains us in two directions. First it trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. This is worth pausing over. In order to train us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, God’s grace must meet us in our places of deepest shame and humiliation. 

Think about your addictions, failures, missteps, rebellion, selfishness, and depravity. At the lowest, darkest, and most humiliating aspects of your life, God’s grace has appeared. God loves you so much that he’s willing to get dirty and join you in your muck. 

In 1Timothy 1:14-15, Paul applied Titus 2:11 more personally when he told Timothy, “The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” I suspect Paul had tears in his eyes and deep gratitude in his heart when he wrote those words. The overflowing grace we looked at in 2Corinthians 9:8 overflowed on Paul in the midst of his incredible sin and shame to save him.

So how does God’s grace save us? Again, by training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and by training us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. This juxtaposition between renouncing one way of life and embracing a new way of life is replete in Paul’s writings. In Galatians 5, Paul tells us to crucify the works of the flesh and to walk in the Spirit. In Colossians 3, he tells us to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature and to put on the new self and its virtues. Moving from one way of life to another requires training under God’s grace.

We have discussed this training program, as introduced by Jesus, in previous posts. To summarize, we are to rethink our entire lives and enter God’s kingdom or activity in the here and now (Matt 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15). We do this by becoming Jesus’ apprentices — being with him and interacting with him, to learn from him how to be like him. The foundation of this program is to adopt his relaxed and unhurried lifestyle and his practices (Matt 11:28-30), also known as spiritual disciplines. These disciplines are sensibly and wisely practiced through the direction and power of the Holy Spirit through the moments of one’s day. They open up windows of God’s presence so he can transform us. The spiritual disciplines engage us in the “art of indirection” — eventually learning to do what we currently cannot do by doing things we currently can do. So by practicing things we can do — solitude, silence, Bible study, memorization, prayer, community, confession and so on — God transforms us so we ultimately can do things we currently cannot do at this point in our lives. This art of indirection retrains our thoughts, feelings, will, body, relationships and soul in God’s activity and grace so that over time we become people who can naturally and easily do what Jesus did. We become like Christ. Or to borrow Paul’s language in Titus, we have learned to naturally and easily renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to naturally and easily live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.

Earlier I mentioned that I think of God’s grace as the fuel of God’s kingdom. When we engage God’s grace in Jesus’ apprenticeship program that I just summarized, we’re like a rocket taking off from its launchpad and breaking earth’s orbit. We are consuming incredible amounts of salvific grace and being propelled further and higher as we train with Jesus into his likeness. This is the salvation God’s grace brings to all people.

Yet, if we’re passive and simply wait for him to do something to us and in us without effort on our part, we’re simply sitting on the launchpad with tanks of unused fuel. His grace surely meets us in our lowest place. But this same grace must be ignited through training to continually propel us into a transformed life.

But wait, there’s more! God’s grace trains us so Jesus can “redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Jesus is building for himself an eternal community of people. People he has met in the darkest and shameful places in order to buy them back to himself. People he has purifyed by training them to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to embrace a new self-controlled, upright, and godly life. Now get this. Through that redemption and purification, Jesus is forming a people who are eager, excited, and enthusiastic about doing good works! Remember that phrase “good works” from the last post? These are the beneficial activities of love, joy, goodness, mercy, and compassion for the good of people and the wider community. God’s grace is creating an eternal community trained and formed into a people who are naturally and easily capable of all good works in this present age and the one to come! 

An eternal community of dynamic and transformative love.

Okay, so now I’m going to ask you to imagine something that may take this “theology train” right off the rails. I started this post with the first two stanzas of “Amazing Grace.” Here’s the last stanza:

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years, 
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, 
Than when we first begun.”

Imagine being immersed and fueled by God’s immeasurably powerful and unending grace for the next ten thousand years, being part of an eternal community with Jesus at the center and that is eager and capable of doing unfathomable good in Jesus’ character and power throughout God’s universe.

What will you be like as that kind of person? What will you be doing with Jesus and others in that eternal community?

What about a million years from now? How about a billion years? Right now our minds struggle to comprehend anything beyond a few decades, let alone beyond “this present age.” But God is eternal. So is his grace. And so are we.

Last time, we saw that when Paul asked God for healing or deliverance, his request was unexpectedly upgraded to God’s abounding grace and perfected power. This wasn’t a consolation prize for unanswered prayer. Instead, it was a startling answer that was immeasurably more than Paul could have asked or imagined.

And fourteen years of intentionally immersing in and interacting with God’s grace and power resulted in a man formed into Jesus’ character and power. 

So Paul desires to share with others the incredible realities of God‘s grace he has learned through intimate experience. Three chapters before Paul discloses God’s revelation about his grace, Paul encourages the Corinthian apprentices:

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” 2Corinthians 9:8

I truly believe this encouragement was the direct application of Paul’s experience with God’s grace and power described in 2Corinthians 12:8-10.

In this passage, Paul uses some Greek words worth highlighting. First, Paul says God is able to make all grace abound. The Greek word for “able” is dynateo. This is a rare verb that emphasizes being powerful and mighty. In 2Corinthians 12:9, God revealed that his grace was everything Paul needed because through it, God’s power is perfected and fulfilled in weakness. Here, Paul says that God’s power makes God’s grace abound.

But it’s not just some of God’s grace. God is powerfully able to make all of his grace abound. “All” is the next Greek word worth highlighting. It’s the Greek word pas and Paul uses it five times in this one sentence. All grace, for all sufficiency, in all things, at all times. When Paul says “all” he means all. Nothing is excluded with this word. All of God’s limitless, boundless grace is powerfully given so we have everything we need in every circumstance in every moment.

There’s another Greek word that repeats in this sentence. Paul says God’s grace abounds or overflows (perisseuo). He excessively overflows grace upon you, like pouring a full pitcher of water into a small cup. God keeps pouring and pouring and his grace keeps flowing and flowing. That’s because God isn’t stingy. God isn’t a “just enough” kind of God. He’s powerfully able and ecstatic to be generous and unrestrained with his grace in every and any situation.

Think about that for a moment. As God pours and pours and pours out his grace into our lives, every aspect, every nook and cranny is saturated. No area is excluded or out of bounds. Remember God is an “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” kind of God! The amount of grace God is pouring into your life is far more than you can ever imagine.

Now look at how 2Corinthians 9:8 ends. The word for overflow isn’t used only for God in this sentence. It’s also used for you and me. Everything Paul describes so far is so we may abundantly overflow in good works. The Greek phrase for “good works” doesn’t mean to “behave yourself.” It was used in Roman culture to describe philanthropic works. So God’s overflowing grace is so we have everything we need to overflow in generous and beneficial activity to people and the wider community. What kind of beneficial activity?

In our brief discussion above of “all” or pas, I said Paul used the word five times. But I only mentioned four things. Here is Paul’s fifth use of pas — in all good works. God overflows with all grace so you and I can overflow with all good works. Again, nothing is excluded. Jesus’ apprentices are to be immersed and interacting with all of God’s overflowing grace so we have everything we need in every circumstance so we can overflow with all beneficial activity of love, goodness, mercy, compassion, and joy for the good of people and the community.

And as we learned last time from Paul, weakness or lack isn’t an excuse. All of God’s grace overflows especially to our greatest weakness and God’s power is perfected and fully completed in our weakness. So when we are weak in our capacity and resources, then we are actually strong in God and his kingdom capacity and resources.

So how does this happen? And what is God’s grace? And how do we experience God’s grace so that we’re able to become this kind of people?

Those are for next time.

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2Corinthians 12:8-10

This is a famous passage from Paul’s personal experiences. It is often quoted as consolation when God doesn’t answer our prayers. We say something like, “I’m sorry God didn’t answer your prayer. But look, God didn’t answer Paul’s prayers for healing or deliverance. Instead, he told Paul that his grace was enough.” Grace is treated like God’s second-best when don’t get what we asked for.

However, I would like to offer a different perspective.

In 2Corinthians 12:1-6, Paul alludes to receiving amazing revelations and hearing secret things from God fourteen years prior. Then in verse 7, he states that in order to not become conceited for receiving these visions, he was given a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan.” Paul is ambiguous about this “thorn,” but it was bad enough for him to call it a “messenger [or angel] from Satan.” This is not a mere annoyance, but something evil.

Paul then prayed three times to have this “thorn” removed. And then God spoke to him. Let’s pause. Don’t let that fact pass by too quickly. God spoke directly to Paul. It was similar to the secret revelations he received. While he couldn’t share those revelations, he could share the following.

God tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s word to Paul is not a door-prize. It’s not God’s second-best in response to Paul’s prayers. In fact, I don’t think it was even a “No” to Paul’s prayers. Rather, it was an amazing upgrade!

Here’s how I understand this conversation:

Paul: “God, please take away this painful messenger of Satan.”

God: “I will do something unfathomably better! I’m going to overflow you with my grace so that my unlimited power will be completely perfected and fulfilled in your life through this weakness. And you will learn how to live immersed in as well as be an instrument of that perfected power.”

God’s grace is an incredible upgrade not a downgrade. It’s the crown not a consolation-prize.

I don’t think Paul was disappointed with God’s upgrade. He was elated! He could have had this weakness removed. Instead, God gave him something far better! By embracing and interacting with God’s overflowing grace in this weakness, Paul would gain a deep and dynamic understanding and experience of God’s boundless power that would transform his life and ministry.

No wonder Paul exclaims in verses 9-10, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Those are not the words from a disappointed man or from someone who was told “No.”

You see, God wasn’t saying, “I’m sorry I can’t heal you, Paul. But the grace I’m going to give you will be enough to help you endure this affliction.” Instead, this experience of God’s grace and power over fourteen years is what allowed Paul to write in Ephesians 3:20-21, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Paul’s experience of God’s unexpected upgrade to abundant grace and perfected power was immeasurably more than he could have asked or imagined. But, God did it! And God allowed Paul to share that experience as encouragement and hope to Jesus’ apprentices in Corinth.

We’ll look at that next time.

When I was a teenager, I was a competitive long distance swimmer. My preferred race was the 1500 meter freestyle. I trained with the Industry Hills Aquatics Club. I was part of a smaller subset of swimmers who trained with the coach who specialized in long-distance events. Our training was longer than most of the other swimmers. Where their workouts were 1 1/2 to 2 hours long, ours was 3 to 3 1/2 hours. We trained seven days a week, twice on weekdays.

The foundational goal was to build endurance, which would then enable us to compete successfully in long-distance events. But the process to gain this endurance was painful. I remember days when I could barely move from the soreness and exhaustion of the long hours of training.

Jesus seems to have a similar training program for his apprentices. Look at this familiar passage from James’ letter:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4

The Greek word for “perseverance” can also be translated as “endurance.”

James encourages Jesus’ apprentices to face all of their trials with joy. This is key. 

Remember, joy is not an emotion. Joy is primarily a posture in life. Dallas Willard defines joy’s posture as “a positive outlook of hopefulness based upon a pervasive, overall sense of well-being”. He then says, “Joy maintains a positive posture in life that assumes that good will be supported and eventually triumph over any apparent obstacle.” So whatever type of trial we may encounter, we can remain hopeful, knowing God is caring for our well-being and his goodness will always prevail.

Why is joy so important? Because trials test our faith. It’s similar to testing precious metals to show their purity. Trials are the fire that heats up our faith so impurities can be revealed. It exposes our hidden fears, anxieties, doubts, selfishness, and their corresponding actions and habits.

Then in humble repentance, we work with Jesus to remove those impurities and train into greater endurance. Over time, increasing endurance produces a mature and complete faith so we can interact with God and his kingdom in every aspect of life with full competence and sufficiency.

But the entire process can be unpleasant, painful, and even excruciating. Joy — the pervasive sense of well-being in God’s care — is the salve for this painful training process. It soothes and protects our faith as it’s tested and as we develop further endurance.

Now overlay James’ encouragement upon the competitive imagery in Hebrews 12:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance [or endurance] the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:1-3

The testing of our faith, and the subsequent training into ever-increasing endurance so that our faith becomes mature, well-developed, and sufficient, is the essential conditioning we need to run the race and keep our focus upon Jesus. And notice, our focus pinpoints on Jesus’ exemplary example of enduring the greatest trial of the cross with joy. Pondering our Mentor’s joy-fueled endurance energizes us toward the same.

The joy-filled testing of our faith trains us into joy-fueled endurance so we can run the distance like Jesus did.

So name your trial. We all have them. They’re part of life. 

Now face that trial with joy — the foundational truth that regardless of how frightening and painful it is, your well-being is in God’s competent care and that regardless of the outcome, you will be okay in him. 

Let the fire test your faith. Don’t be afraid of what is exposed. It’s okay when crap is squeezed out. That’s the purpose of the testing. Don’t cover it up or rationalize it. Own it. God loves to forgive, so you’re safe.

Now talk with Jesus. Let him share wisdom and activities that will replace your current thoughts, feelings, and actions with new ones to address what was exposed.

Now back to joy. This process is painful. You’re going to hurt. Let joy be the soothing balm. You are safe in God. He has done well by you.

And get ready. New trials will come. And they’ll expose more of the same. Some of our crap runs deeper than we imagine. But cling to joy. Cling to Jesus. Like a good coach and mentor he’ll walk you through it. He’s been there himself. He endured the worst with joyful endurance and can show you how to do it as well.

He is the expert at endurance training

Last time I mentioned how Jesus’ immersive interaction with God’s kingdom and life allowed him to live without self-concern and thus forgive freely, fully and without measure. As his apprentices, this is a core lesson he’s trying to teach us. A life that fully engages with God’s kingdom and faithfulness will experience less self-concern as it experiences God’s faithful care (Matthew 6:33).

The Apostle Peter puts it this way:

“Humble yourselves, then, under God’s powerful hand, so that he may lift you up at the right time. Throw all your care upon him, because he cares about you.” 1Peter 5:6-7

I’ll be honest, I really struggle with this. I’m always calculating. I think it’s part of my personality. And the two things I’m always calculating in almost any situation are time and money. I can tell you how long certain aspects of my daily routine will take. If you ask me what time it is, I can estimate the time with fair accuracy without looking at a clock. I can calculate the amount of time to accomplish a task. And don’t get me started on money. I’m always calculating income and expenditures. And now that retirement is only several years away, it’s gotten worse.

The problem with my ability to calculate is that it then leads to stress, anxiety and worry. Because let’s face it, for most of us, there’s never enough time and money. My constant calculating can lead me to feel hurried to accomplish more than time allows or to fret unhealthily over how to save more and spend less. 

To take it back to where I started, this is self-concern. And self-concern is a significant obstacle to embodying God’s love. You can’t love someone freely, fully and without measure if you’re worried about yourself and what this will cost you in time and money.

But humbly immersing oneself in God’s kingdom and character, allows us to cast all our cares upon God. We can enter a carefree life that can put others above ourselves and completely and competently love them.

Jesus was carefree. When the paralytic’s friends tore up the roof to lower their friend before Jesus, he didn’t care about the roof. (Some scholars believed this was Jesus’ house.) I would have immediately started calculating cost of repairs and missed the opportunity for healing.

When there’s only a handful of fish and bread to feed a crowd of thousands, Jesus’ disciples are worried about their severely limited resources. Jesus doesn’t care. He prays and watches his Father multiply it so everyone is well-fed.

When Jesus and the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee during a storm, he’s asleep carefree while they are quickly calculating their shortening life expectancy. And when awakened, he stills the wind and the waves with a command.

Jesus was very aware of the stressors these circumstances posed. The difference between the disciples and Jesus is that they calculated based on only what they could see while Jesus calculated based on what couldn’t be seen. His calculations factored in what he knew about his Father.

Here’s how Dallas Willard puts it:

“Jesus knew and acted on the fact that Yahweh is limitless, boundless, and unrestrained in power, grace, mercy, peace, joy, hope and love. All things are possible. All things. Jesus knew his Father’s name, and he knew when to invoke it to do his will, creatively, adventurously, and joyfully, for himself, for the well-being of others, and ultimately for the entire world.”

Jesus was carefree because he truly knew his Father.

But carefree doesn’t mean stress-free. Jesus’ life was filled with external stressors just like ours. Stressors are part of life. In fact, stressors are essential in life. As we live immersed in God and grow in our experiential knowledge of him, our calculations in any stressful circumstances will begin to account for God’s powerful and faithful provision. Then we can act upon that knowledge in the midst of stressful circumstances. And because we lack self-concern, we can be carefree and not let the external stressors become internal stress.

Then we can love freely, fully and without measure.

The local church is to be a living outpost of God’s kingdom, a colony of God’s New Creation in the midst of this current creation. This happens when the local church is a community of Jesus’ apprentices, learning together from him how to be like him.

In Colossians 3:1-17, Paul provides a local community of Jesus’ apprentices one of the best summaries of spiritual formation into Jesus’ likeness. There’s so much good material to mine from this passage. But one verse stood out recently.

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13

I think this is huge.

Here is a local community of Jesus’ apprentices. They’re learning to focus their hearts and minds on Christ, who is their very life (vss 1-4). They’re learning to kill everything that belongs to their corrupted earthly nature (vss 5-9). They’re learning to put on their new selves, which is renewed in the image of their Creator and clothed with beautiful virtues (vss 10-12).

In verse 13, Paul is telling them that as they learn to become like Jesus, there will be ample times when they will have complaints or grievances against one another. While learning to embody the virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, they will still offend and be offended and need to forgive one another.

That’s liberating! No matter where you are in your journey toward Christ’s likeness, you’re going to offend others and you’re going to be offended by others. We’re going to mess up. There will be mistakes and conflict among Jesus’ apprentices.

In fact these moments become opportunities for transformation into Christ’s likeness as the community of Jesus’ apprentices learn to “forgive as the Lord forgave you.” As with all aspects of our apprenticeship to Jesus, Jesus is the standard. We are learning Jesus’ lifestyle and practices. We are learning Jesus’ perspective, character, virtues and faith. And we are learning Jesus’ forgiveness. We are learning to forgive as Jesus forgave us.

So how does Jesus forgive you and me? He forgives immediately. He already forgave you before you even asked him to. He forgives freely. You didn’t have to earn it. He forgives fully. He didn’t withhold anything from you. He forgives joyfully. Jesus loves to forgive you. He doesn’t do it begrudgingly. Like everything Jesus embodied and offers to teach us, his forgiveness is boundless and unrestrained because he lives fully within God’s kingdom and fully interacts with God’s limitless life and power. 

So to forgive as Jesus forgave you means learning to live like that as well. It is learning to pursue God’s kingdom and faithfulness, first and foremost, so that we are free of any self-concern (Matthew 6:33). Or as Eugene Peterson translated this verse:

“You know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”

This is key to learning Jesus’ forgiveness. In fact, our forgiveness is a great barometer of how steeped we are in God’s life. Disconnected from a daily with-God life, our own forgiveness will run out quickly. You know when that happens. You replay conversations in your head, thinking of what you should have said. You’re easily irritated by the unrelated things that person does. You want to say or do something so they know how it feels to be treated the way they treated you. You can’t wait to tell another friend what happened, hoping to find validation. You lay awake at night replaying the situation. Hurt, irritation, anger, resentment. It’s all self-concern.

But a God-steeped life, a kingdom-seeking life, is connected to God’s unlimited life and power so it is becoming free of self-concern. That’s the life Jesus embodied. And his forgiveness is full of abundant love, joy, and peace. 

The writer of Hebrews says, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

Do you know what the joy was that allowed Jesus to endure the cross? You. Me. Us. The very ones he forgives. The very ones he loves and delights in. The very ones he loves to call brothers and sisters and friends. And the very ones he wants to teach how to be like him so we can enter into the same rich, overflowing, and unrestrained life of God.

Filled with God’s life, Jesus’ lack of self-concern allows him to focus on us and to forgive us freely, fully, and beyond measure. 

After following Jesus for over 40 years, I still struggle with prayer. In fact, I think most Christians do. When I think of what prayer should be, I usually envision sweet and constant communion with God filled with eloquence and power.

But my prayers seem more like mumbling the confused and jumbled thoughts bouncing around in my head.

What I do know is that prayer is not prompt engineering nor feeding some divine algorithm or machine. Rather, prayer is the genuine conversation between friends. And like anything with God, it’s part of his overall desire to shape us into persons of love that he designed us to be — eternal co-reigners in his magnificent universe.

So what if prayer is about the slow, messy process of learning to reorient our lives to God within an environment optimally designed by God for that messy and mysterious process.

John Mark Comer provides a insight into this process.

“God’s will is one among many. And he’s patiently sorting through the messes of our lives, giving ample space for our free will and decisions, but graciously drawing good out of evil.”

With so many variables involved, including billions of active wills vying for their own interests, surely prayer specifically and spiritual formation generally are a messy and lengthy process as God provides the “ample space for our free will and decisions” to be slowly and humbly formed into his.

In that light, prayer isn’t simple. I talk with God about what he’s doing with people. But I’ll confess, I don’t have a clue most of the time.

For example, I have friends with different chronic illnesses. I love them and I keep praying for their healing. I don’t know all the variables that are involved. I don’t know if it’s God’s will to heal them now. But I do know my love for them that moves me to pray for their healing is God’s will. So I keep asking God to heal them, loving my friends and expecting their healing at any moment, while trusting God’s wisdom and timing in their lives. And I’m also praying that while they struggle through their disease, God will powerfully and abundantly meet their needs and extract good from everything they endure. Praying like this is confusing and frustrating at times.

But the alternative is simply to pray the generic “Your will be done.” While the words ring true, that kind of prayer lets apathy build in my heart. I become accustomed to their conditions and accept them as “normal.” I stop collaborating with God, seeking him for what he’s doing and what he wants to do.

I’ll be honest. I’ve prayed for people and they’ve gotten worse. Some have even died. It used to bother me that my prayers would go “unanswered” like that. But then I learned that God is responsible for outcomes, not me. I’m to apprentice myself with Jesus and learn from him how to be like him. And the murky waters of prayer are part of that apprenticeship.

There are so many theological and philosophical questions around prayer that I’m too tired to ask any more. But as I said above, I do know that prayer is not mechanistic or algorithmic. It’s a conversation with God, so it’s inevitably going to be wrapped in mystery. 

When I talk with God, it’s not to get something out of him. I just like being with him. Similarly, I don’t talk to my wife, kids or friends to get something out of them. I talk with them because I enjoy their company. Sometimes the conversations do lead to certain tasks being accomplished. But that’s a small part in a much larger conversation of love. My conversations with them are about sharing life through speaking, listening, understanding, empathizing, and mostly being present to each other.

That’s how I try to view prayer. I’m sharing life with God by being with him and talking with him, even if at times it’s just mumbling the confused and jumbled thoughts bouncing around in my head.

This woman is my best friend, my truest love, and my wife of 36 years as of today! I can’t believe I get to share my life with her. What a joy it has been to learn to love each other, to raise kids, to trust God, to experience each day side-by-side with her. Debbie is such an amazing woman and I’m so blessed that she chooses to be my wife. Because of her love, faith, prayer, forgiveness, compassion, humor, and long-suffering, I’ve become a better man. I can’t thank God enough for her! She is truly a gift from God!

March 21, 2003. Seems like a long time ago. That was the day I wrote my first post on this blog. Over 22 years ago. There aren’t too many other things that I have been doing for such a long time. I’ve been a dad for 33 years. I’ve been married to the same amazing woman for 36 years. And I’ve been following Jesus 41 years. Oh, and I’ve been breathing for almost 59 years.

So why do I blog? Writing is a spiritual practice for me. I’m not a quick thinker. I need time to reflect and process. Writing provides that space for me. I don’t work with my hands. But I think what I try to do with words is similar to what others do when working in their garage or shop. I have a bunch of jumbled thoughts that I place on the “workbench.” Then I start tinkering with words as my tools. Some words are like a saw, slicing ideas into smaller pieces. Some words are like a hammer and nails, fastening concepts together. Some words are like sandpaper, methodically smoothing out the rough edges.

Order, flow and cadence begin to emerge as I tinker. Sometimes, I know where my words will lead me. Other times, I’m surprised by where I wind up. But each time, I love the journey.

So, why do I post my writing on a public blog rather than keep my thoughts in a journal. I used to journal quite prolifically. But journaling was very different than blogging. I think it’s due to the perceived audience. Journaling was very personal. I presumed only God would see those entries, so they were raw and disjointed. Whatever was on my mind and heart would come spilling out. It was helpful the several years I enjoyed it, but I don’t find it as beneficial now.

Blogging is much more public than journaling. Granted not many people visit this site. I’m very content with that. I view this blog like a message in the bottle, bobbing along the digital currents until an unknowing Google search washes it up onto someone’s screen. Maybe they’ll find the message relevant or even helpful. Or maybe they’ll view it as part of the noisy chatter generated by our online culture and toss it away. Either way, knowing there’s a chance someone might read these words motivates me to craft something fit for others. I want my words to be simple, positive, and reflective. I want to highlight God’s immense goodness and the mystery and beauty of following him. 

Over the years, I have read words written by many people. There are a lot of gifted writers in the world. I’m humbled by what they can do, how they connect words in such a way to fuel the imagination, inspire great deeds, coax new innovation, and evoke intense emotions. I have read words by others that have made me smile, laugh, sob, rage, praise, cheer, and ache. And I have read words by others that have made me reflect, ponder, reason, brood, reconsider, and assent.

The power of words is amazing! It’s staggering that God allows us to wield such power. But words is how God works. He speaks into nothing and creation is birthed. He keeps speaking and creation is sustained. He keeps speaking and creation is renewed. Worlds upon worlds in a vast universe. All by his words. 

All by his Word.

Jesus is the Word of God. He is the fullest expression of God. He is the whisper of God. The exclamation of God. The mind of God. The order of God. The whimsy of God. The joy of God. The love of God. 

God keeps speaking his Word. Stilling the storms. Raising the dead. Healing the sick. Feeding the hungry. Finding the lost. Forgiving the fallen. Encouraging the despairing. Transforming the broken.

As we apprentice ourselves to God’s Word, learning from him how to be like him, we are becoming God’s words. Smaller expressions, yet spoken by the same God.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “repent and believe”? Is it a young Jewish army commander in AD 66 trying to persuade some Galilean rebels to stop their revolt against Rome and to trust him and other Jerusalem aristocrats to work out a better solution? No? Well it should. Because that is what a young Josephus, who would later become the famous Jewish historian, did according to his autobiography. When he confronted the rebel leader, he told him to “repent and believe in me”. 

Does this make you tilt your head in confusion. Is Josephus telling the rebel leader to stop sinning and believe in him for some religious experience? Nope. The phrase “repent and believe” carried a non-religious political meaning.

So when Jesus of Nazareth, the one with whom we usually associate this phrase, goes around Galilee declaring, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:13), it’s important to keep this in mind. Jesus, as Israel’s king, was telling his fellow Israelites to give up their agendas of how to be Israel, God’s chosen people. He was urging them, similar to Josephus, to give up their dreams of violently revolting against Rome in the attempt of ushering in God’s kingdom. Instead, he was encouraging them to trust his way of bringing God’s kingdom, which was available here and now through him. By doing so, Jesus injects the political meaning with an essential spiritual meaning.

Centuries later, many of us carry a different understanding of repentance. We often think of repentance as some sort of religious or spiritual transaction. We feel remorse for something bad we did. We confess it to God and maybe to a pastor, priest, or a trustworthy friend. We decide to stop doing that behavior. Then we receive God’s forgiveness and mercy. But repentance is more about one’s entire life than specific behavior.

Alexander Schmemann taps into this when he writes:

“It is easy indeed to confess that I have not fasted on prescribed days, or missed my prayers, or become angry. It is quite a different thing, however, to realize suddenly that I have defiled and lost my spiritual beauty, that I am far away from my real home, my real life, and that something precious and pure and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of my existence.”

Last night, a friend shared our priest’s definition of repentance. “It’s the ongoing process of reorienting myself to God.” This is a more holistic understanding of repentance and seems more in sync to Jesus’ message. In this definition, repentance doesn’t necessarily involve specific sin. Rather, it describes the larger process of being formed into Christ’s likeness. 

And in that larger process, repentance is not selective. It’s not only for “bad” behavior. Jesus was not calling “bad” people to repent of “bad” behavior. He was calling all people — both “good” and “bad” — to rethink their entire lives — again everything they would consider both “good” and “bad” — and reorient every aspect of themselves to God by apprenticing themselves to him.

My thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions, words, relationships, values, beliefs, politics, aspirations, attitudes — simply put, everything “good” and “bad” in my life — needs to be retrained, reshaped, reformed, and reoriented into God’s design for human life within his kingdom. Even my “good” may not be God’s good.

Bottom-line, I need to become like Jesus to become the person God designed me to be. And that means rethinking and reorienting everything around God.

I recently heard Dallas Willard make a comment in a talk he gave in 2003. He said:

“Jesus never healed anyone’s character… you don’t change persons by miracles.”

I had to stop and think about it. He healed the sick, cast out demons, even raised the dead. Willard was correct. Jesus never stretched out his hand to make an angry person more patient. Nor a lustful person chaste. Nor an anxious person peaceful. Nor a person filled with hatred a person filled with compassion.

Instead, he spoke about the essential need to become a person of genuine good character. For example, in Matthew 5, Jesus discusses the internal human brokenness of anger, lust, divorce, verbal manipulation, vengeance, and loving one’s enemies. He then summarizes this discussion with, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We are to become people who embody God’s character of love.

But notice Jesus didn’t miraculously impart this character to people. I mean, the perfect ending to his discussion would be to say, “If anyone wants to be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, and gentle, come forward and I’ll heal you.” But he didn’t do it at this time or at any other.

In fact, the discussion in Matthew 5 is preceded by this summary:

“News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” Matthew 4: 24-25

I think it’s safe to say that many of the people listening to Jesus discuss character were the same people that he previously healed of physical diseases.

So if Jesus could heal physical diseases, why doesn’t he heal character? Frankly it would be nice if he would miraculously take away my anger, anxiety, lust, selfishness, vanity, pride, impatience, and other character flaws that plague me. I think the answer is that at its core, spiritual formation — the process of being shaped ultimately into God’s character as embodied by Jesus — has to do with the human will. You have to choose.

I think our current character is the product of our self-centered will choosing over and over and over until deep habits have been formed in our thinking, feeling, body and relationships. These habits then reinforce and empower our self-centered will so it’s virtually incapable of choosing differently.

Have you ever decided to act in a positive way in a moment, but when the moment arrived, you acted in a completely different way? Think about dieting. Or trying to quit smoking. Or trying not to get angry at that co-worker who always pushes your buttons.

The entire goal of human history within this creation is to be formed into a community of love, where each person is capable of easily and routinely choosing to love as God loves, and then is able to competently and powerfully carry out that decision. In other words, to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

This cannot be miraculously imparted to a person. Core to a life of embodying God’s love is a will that chooses to surrender to him moment-by-moment. That’s how the human will is designed to function. It has to choose, to decide constantly to surrender to God. But as I mentioned above, we have learned to constantly choose self over God. The direction of our will is converted into deeply ingrained habits in our thoughts, feelings, bodies and relationships. And these habits now reinforce our self-focused will. Therefore, our entire person needs to be retrained under Jesus’ tutelage and the Spirit’s power. 

The good news is that this can be done! Jesus is the most intelligent person who has walked this planet and is the master of all aspects of human life. He knows how to retrain a person into God’s character. And he invites you and me to come and learn from him.

Early in my apprenticeship to Jesus, I learned a valuable lesson the hard way. I learned that there is no room for heroic effort in spiritual formation.

For most of my early life, until I graduated from high school, I was a competitive long distance swimmer. (You couldn’t tell by looking at me now. But it’s true.) So I knew that working hard would lead to success. On top of that, I was a type-A personality. So I believed that if working hard meant success, then working even harder meant greater success. I arrogantly applied that perspective when I started learning about spiritual formation. As I adopted spiritual disciplines into my life, I believed the greater volume and intensity of spiritual disciplines meant greater transformation into Christ’s likeness.

Boy, was I wrong. Really wrong. Spiritual formation does not work that way.

In my zeal, I did more damage to myself and others than any good. I practiced a fairly intense regiment of spiritual disciplines. I would then measure my spirituality by how well I performed them. This fostered pride. I also tried to convince others to practice spiritual disciplines and judged them if they didn’t. Guess what. That’s being a Pharisee!

In my attempts to become like Jesus, I became a successful Pharisee!

Lord, forgive me.

While my effort is essential in spiritual formation, I am not in control of my transformation. Only God is. My transformation is solely in his hands. My effort in this collaborative endeavor is to gently and routinely open the moments of my ordinary daily life to God’s presence so I am aware of him, interact with him, surrender to him, and become more satisfied with him. And I’m doing this under Jesus’ coaching as his apprentice.

Sometimes we are inspired by other Christians, either historical or contemporary. And rightly so. We read about how they followed Jesus and want to emulate their spiritual practices. If they prayed for hours, we try to pray for hours. If they fasted for days, we try to fast for days. If they read through the Bible twice a year, we try to read it twice a year. We fall into a subtle trap believing we’ll become like them if we do what they did. But many times, what they did is currently out of our reach.

As I mentioned above, I used to be a competitive swimmer. At the peak of my athleticism in high school, my average workout was three hours, twice a day, seven days a week. I also ran and lifted weights. During our workouts, our coach would give us sets that stretched and increased our capacity.

If my friend decided he wanted to become a swimmer and tried to adopt my level of training, he would immediately fail. And most likely he would give up thinking he could never become a swimmer. My friend needs the essence of my training, not my actual training regiment. He needs the essence of my training applied to his level of expertise and ability. As a beginner, he would need to get used to regular workouts and just learn to swim several laps. Nothing heroic. He needs to train at his current ability and skill with intention and wisdom. His coach would provide the proper level of training and then assess and increase the regiment as his ability and skill grew.

That’s how apprenticeship to Jesus works. If he calls us to fast, he doesn’t expect us to engage in a forty-day fast like he did. Especially, if we’re beginning. Maybe it’s just fasting between breakfast and dinner so you become accustomed to seeking God’s kingdom and learning how to feast on God while you fast from food.

If he calls you to memorize Scripture, he doesn’t expect you to start with a large portion of Scripture. Maybe it’s just memorizing one verse like Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” He may have you recite and reflect on the verse through the day. Then he might have you slowly memorize other portions of Colossians 3:1-17, so over time you’ll have the whole passage memorized. But more importantly, you’ve learned how to reflect and pray on Scripture and interact with him through the memorized words. And frankly, even if you don’t have the passage perfectly memorized, it’s more about internalizing Scripture so it’s gently forming you throughout the day.

I need to say it again because it is such a subtle trap. You are not in charge of your transformation. God is. There is no direct correlation between the intensity and volume of spiritual disciplines and the amount of your transformation. Greater effort does not directly translate into greater transformation or greater character. There is no room for heroic effort, because it will actually work in the opposite direction than what you intended. 

A key sign that you’ve fallen into this trap is when you become proud of your regiment and start viewing spiritual success and failure by your performance of your spiritual regiment. That is a sure indication that you are heading in the wrong direction. 

Remember, Jesus called you to be an apprentice not a hero.

I ended my last post with Psalm 63, a beautiful Psalm illustrating an interactive life that is fully satisfied with God. In verse 5, the Psalmist declares about God, “I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods.”

This weekend, my son-in-law and daughter took Cathy, Debbie and I out for dinner. It was a fantastic time of good food and company. We laughed and told stories from our family’s past. And the food was delicious! The appetizers, the entrees, and the desserts (yes, multiple desserts!) were so flavorful and satisfying. By the end of the meal, we were so full. The waiter came by and asked, “Can I get you anything else?” to which I answered, “No thanks. I’m stuffed!” Even if the waiter had said, “What if it were on the house?” I would have declined. I was so full and satisfied that nothing else looked appetizing.

“I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods.” Psalm 63:5

Could you imagine a life in God like that? Imagine that you are so full and satisfied with God that nothing else looks appetizing. I think this is what Dallas Willard meant when he said:

“The surest guarantee against failure is to be so at peace and satisfied with God that when wrongdoing presents itself, it isn’t even interesting. That is how we stay out of temptation.”

Think about the temptations we face. You know the ones. The temptations that are so enticing and always seem to win no matter how hard you resist them. And after giving into them, being filled with guilt, shame, and remorse. Now imagine being so full and satisfied with God that they’re not even interesting. They have no appeal because you are so stuffed with God.

So how do we move to a place where we are so full and satisfied with God that temptations no longer hold any interest or enticement?

One key question we must answer, I mean really answer, is do I truly want to have a life without that temptation. If we have a problem with anger, do we really want a life where we could do without anger? Think about how you might currently use anger to get what you want — to win arguments, to get people to acquiesce, to feel strong and in control. Now think about all of those situations at home, work, church, driving, etc., where you use anger and would no longer use it. Without it, would things go your way? Would you feel out of control? Would you feel powerless?

Think about the thrill of lust. Now think about a life without lust, without the dopamine hit that comes many times through the day whenever you might look at an attractive person at work, at the gym, at the coffee shop, walking down the street, or on your screens. Now imagine your life void of those tantalizing moments. Imagine seeing an attractive person and looking away with no interest and no alluring feelings. Would you be willing to live without that titillating spike of pleasure and excitement?

Or how about the thrill of buying something new — that new car, new appliance, new piece of furniture, new jewelry, new clothes, new shoes, new item for your hobby. Think about that item you want to own that grips your imagination. You might be searching the internet for reviews, watching influencers on YouTube or TikTok, and comparing prices on Amazon, Etsy, EBay, Facebook Marketplace, or other commerce platforms. You might be imagining what it would be like to wear it, drive it, use it, and own it. And then comes that exciting moment when you place the item in your virtual cart and hit the “Purchase” button. Now imagine not visiting those platforms, not spending time browsing for the next acquisition. Imagine seeing that cute outfit or that newly released gadget and having no impulse to even look at it, see what others think about it, or owning it.

Our temptations are many — attention, control, food, power, worry, sex, gossip, alcohol, shopping, anxiety, procrastination, wealth, reputation, anger, jealousy, and on and on and on.

You see, for the most part, our temptations make us feel alive. And while part of us wishes the temptations would vanish, another part of us is enticed by them because of how they make us feel. And if we are dissatisfied with God, we give in to them because they bring some feelings of satisfaction. We get what we want when we want it.

If we’re dissatisfied with God, we’re starving. And like a starving person standing in front of an open fridge, scanning its contents for anything to eat, we search for the things that have satisfied us in the past. The things that promise happiness. And we don’t have to look far. Our distorted desires flare with familiar allures. Our experience has taught us that they don’t bring true happiness. They bring a moment of gratification, but usually accompanied by remorse, shame and grief. And so we try to resist the thing we desire. Sometimes we might succeed. But desire doesn’t relent. And maybe, just maybe, we don’t really want them to go away.

In a recent email from his ministry, John Ortberg wrote the following:

“The idea is not to resist lustful or selfish urges but become the kind of people who no longer want what once enslaved us.”

Part of becoming the kind of person for whom temptation is no longer interesting is to learn to become full and satisfied with God. So when temptation arises we can truly say, “No thanks. I’m stuffed!”

Over the past few months, I found myself becoming restless. Almost without fail during my morning walks, I would experience sadness like something important was missing in my life. I couldn’t pinpoint its source and I have been asking God to reveal the cause.

While listening to a recent episode in The Dallas Willard Podcast, he caught my attention when he said that many of us struggle with different issues because we live in dissatisfaction and disappointment. He then said one of the things that will help us grow into wholeness of life is to ask, “Am I living in disappointment and dissatisfaction?”

This then led me to an article Willard wrote where he made this startling statement:

“Those who experience moral failure are those who have failed to live a deeply satisfied life in Christ, almost without exception.”

A bit later in the article he wrote,:

“The surest guarantee against failure is to be so at peace and satisfied with God that when wrongdoing presents itself, it isn’t even interesting. That is how we stay out of temptation.”

The article brought to mind another Willard quote:

“If I am unable to believe that God has done well by me, I will not be able to love and trust him.”

Okay, I know I’m quoting Willard a lot, but this string of quotes communicates an astounding principle — dissatisfaction with God prevents me from wholly loving and trusting him and is the root cause of most, if not all, moral failure.

This provided a needed diagnosis of my restlessness and sadness. I’m still struggling with discontentment, disappointment and dissatisfaction with God in some details of my life.

From a high-altitude survey of my life, I can honestly say I’m satisfied with God. But when I start to ask more detailed questions, my dissatisfaction is exposed. So let me throw out some of the questions I’ve asked myself:

Am I truly satisfied with God in who I am — my personality and physicality, my talents and inadequacies, how I think and feel, how I relate to people?

Am I truly satisfied with God in my past — my memories, my family, my friends, my education, my traumas, my mistakes, my embarrassments, my accomplishments, my joys, my decisions, my actions, my life circumstances, regardless of whether they went well or poorly for me?

Am I truly satisfied with God in my present — my wife, my kids, my friends, my church, my job, my income, my health, my challenges, my fears, my dreams, my reputation, my influence, myself?

As I took this inventory, the majority of the answers were “Yes!” But some of the questions left a slight twinge. And it was in those places that I found the hidden dissatisfaction.

You see, in all of the above aspects and more, God is with us. We may be unaware of his presence and activity. We may even be rebelling or running away from him. But he has been intimately present through everything in our lives.

Until I am satisfied with God in the midst of everything and believe that God has treated me well in everything, I cannot wholly trust and love him. In my heart, I will be afraid he will fail me. Or the next challenge will overcome me. Or the next loss will crush me.

Let’s be frank. We know life doesn’t always go in our favor. That’s an understatement, right? If I’m dissatisfied and disappointed with God because I didn’t get what I wanted, then I’m compelled to manipulate events and people so that outcomes turn in my favor.

We see it in small things. We speed up on the freeway to block a car signaling to move into our lane. We pad our resume so we have a better chance of getting the job we want. We tell a story so we look more humorous, competent, or insightful than what actually happened. We spend beyond our means to purchase something that gives us a sense of importance, credibility, or status.

And we see it in larger things. We regularly spend more time in the office, neglecting our family and health so we get the commission or promotion. We flirt with a co-worker because we feel more attractive and excited. We gossip about a mutual friend to make ourselves feel superior or vindicated. We rely on our indulgences and addictions to mask, numb, or escape our pain and fears.

And that dissatisfaction will ruin us from the inside-out. It leads to anger, resentment, slander, hatred, greed, lust, indulgence, mistrust, fear, selfish ambition, conceit, addictions, and many, many more destructive attitudes and behaviors.

On the other hand, satisfaction with God leads to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, compassion, hope, gratitude, loyalty, forgiveness, humility, and trust.

So how do we learn satisfaction with God in the midst of a life riddled with pain, crisis, stress, injury, loss, and tragedy? It’s built on a foundational truth: Our well-being, now and in the future, is solely in God and not determined by external circumstances.

This goes contrary to how our culture has formed us to think and feel. We must relearn that our well-being is not determined by our looks, health, income, possessions, relationships, jobs, retirement plan, intelligence, skills, or in any outcomes. Rather, our well-being is determined by the God who easily created and sustains this universe, who created you in sheer goodness and joy, who is passionately and deeply in love with you, and who has a magnificent destiny in store for you.

So how do we start building this foundational truth into our thoughts and feelings? Okay, here’s another Dallas Willard quote that provides us with some necessary direction:

“You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your every day life with God.”

We must intentionally build daily routines so we experience contentment, joy and confidence every day with God. Obviously, this will be different for each person. But I can guarantee our current face-in-our-phones, get-what-I-want, overwork, overplay, overspend, and collapse-from-exhaustion lifestyles need to change.

This is why Jesus’ invitation to become his apprentice is the best news any of us could receive, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

As his apprentices, we embrace his unhurried and relaxed lifestyle and we adopt practices that change our thoughts, feelings and habits. Here’s one  example. Paul writes in 1Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Imagine your daily routine gently shaped around the constant attitudes and activities of joy, prayer and thanksgiving. Imagine the first thing in your mind and out of your mouth each morning is a prayer of joy and gratitude for the new day. Imagine starting your morning reflecting on God’s goodness instead of looking at the news or social media feeds on your phone. Imagine praying for the peace of those around you as you drive peacefully and patiently to work. Imagine thanking God for the meeting you’re about to enter and surrendering any and all outcomes to him. Imagine joyfully praying for each person that walks by or through your office door. Imagine a quiet and prayerful lunch where you talk with God about family and friends. Imagine a quiet evening walking around your neighborhood, enjoying the beauty of creation rather than binging another season of the latest show. Imagine joyfully reflecting on the activities of the day, even those moments that didn’t go your way. Imagine going to bed a little early and praying reflectively through the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 23 as you drift to sleep.

The point of this exercise in imagination is to stoke a vision of a joyfully interactive life with God that funds a deep and constant satisfaction with God in any and all circumstances.

“You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water,
I have seen you in the sanctuary
    and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
    my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
    and in your name I will lift up my hands.
I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”
Psalm 63:1-5

Fully satisfied with God.

In Ephesians 3:20-21, Paul writes, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Paul’s description of God’s power is staggering! God is able to do immeasurably more than anything we could ask or imagine. I think most of us would say, “No duh.” Of course God can do this. But look at how he is poised to do this, “according to his power that is at work within us.” 

NT Wright says, “Read verse 20 carefully. Then think of what God might do in you and through you – you as a community, you as an individual. Now reflect on the fact that God is perfectly capable of doubling that, trebling that, going so far beyond it that you would look back at the present moment and wonder how you could be so short-sighted.”

My imagination soars when I read passages like this. Imagine the changed lives, the answered prayers, the prophetic words, the healings, the revival! 

Wait a minute. If this is true, then why am I not seeing this in my life and in my church?

There’s a phrase in verse 20 that I want to unpack a little deeper, “according to his power that is at work within us.” God’s power is already at work within. How is God’s power currently working within us? What is God doing within us? If you’ve read this blog long enough, I think you know my answer. He’s training and transforming us into the likeness of Christ as we apprentice ourselves to Jesus.

In The Great Omission, Dallas Willard writes: 

“Jesus is actually looking for people he can trust with his power. He knows that otherwise we remain largely helpless in the face of the organized and disorganized evils around us, and that we are unable—given his chosen strategy—to promote his will for good in this world with adequate power…

“Human life can never flourish unless it pulses with the ‘immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe’ (Ephesians 1:19). But only constant students of Jesus will be given adequate power to fulfill their calling to be God’s person for their time and their place in this world. They are the only ones who develop the character which makes it safe to have such power. [Emphasis mine]”

The last two sentences are key. God’s power is at work in us to first develop Jesus’ character in us so we can safely use God’s power in our world. This is an important thing to grasp. God’s great power is already doing the unimaginable in us. He’s transforming Jesus’ apprentices into Jesus’ character.

Jesus’ character is essential to handle Jesus’ power. Only a humble heart (discussed a few posts ago) will consider others more important than oneself and use Jesus’ power solely for the other’s good. Only the faith of Jesus will be confident in God’s care and well-being so that one doesn’t use Jesus’ power for validation, influence, or identity. Only a life fully satisfied in Jesus will be able to rest in God for all outcomes and not be tempted to manipulate situations and people to make something happen.

We must cooperate with God’s power at work in us so we can eventually cooperate with God’s power at work through us. Remember, the most important thing in your life is not what you do or accomplish. It’s the person you become. That’s God’s power at work in you.

I read a great quote by Bill Gaultiere. When he was mentored by Dallas Willard, Willard taught him to pray the following, “Lord, please don’t grant me more power than my character can handle.” 

Character sustains power. Power without character will ruin a person. Perhaps right now God doesn’t do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” because we couldn’t handle it and it would ruin us and our church.

So what do you do with a passage like John 14:12? Jesus says “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

I think the key is the word “believes”. This is not intellectual assent as many moderns assume. Rather, it’s faithful and loyal confidence. Those who have loyal confidence in Jesus will deeply trust him and accept his offer of apprenticeship. They will intentionally align their lives around his lifestyle and practices. They will seriously learn from him how to be like him. They will seek the inner transformation into his character and learn to be people who routinely and easily do everything he says. That puts John 14:12 directly in line with what we have been discussing. 

“Whoever has loyal confidence in me so that they become my apprentices and learn from me how to be like me, those people will do the works I have been doing. In fact, they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father and I can trust them with my power.”

So trust Jesus as his apprentice. God’s power is already at work in you doing the unimaginable — transforming you into the likeness of Christ, into a person with his character and entrusted with his power.

Contrary to some popular versions of Christianity, Jesus declares that eternal life starts now, rather than waiting until one “gets to heaven.” So, how does one experience eternal life now?

When Jesus speaks of eternal life, it should actually be translated as “life of the age to come.” Eternal life isn’t simply living forever. Rather, it is a radically different quality of life that is fully experienced in the age to come. The quality of that life is so rich and vibrant it is undying and goes on forever simply to contain it.

Jesus provides the only definition of eternal life in the New Testament. In John 17:3, he says to his Father, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The life of the age to come is a deep and ongoing intimate, interactive relationship with God and Jesus.

If possible, imagine the quality of life that God is. Jesus is saying that a deep relationship with God makes God’s quality of life available to us. And this life transforms us.

As we apprentice ourselves to Jesus and learn to live in deep communion with God, our character is shaped into the vibrant character of God — his divine love. In Galatians, Paul calls God’s love the “fruit of the Spirit.” But because God’s love is so deep and concentrated, he must also describe its many facets — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Other facets of God’s love are described in 2 Peter 1:4–8, 1 Corinthians 13, and Romans 5:1–5.) The multifaceted love of God is the very character of the Trinitarian community that is God and the rich quality of his life that transforms us into his likeness. 

Eternal living, experiencing the life of the age to come, begins now. That is the core of Jesus’ good news. We can enter into and live interactively with God’s activity through Jesus. In his book, The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard summarizes five stages of progression in eternal living here on earth.

Confidence in and Reliance upon Jesus:  The first stage is trusting Jesus as the one appointed to save us and deliver us. We trust him to receive us as we are. We take to heart his invitation to repent and believe in him. We rethink how we’re thinking and living and trust that he has a far better way to thrive and flourish.

Desire to Be Jesus’ Apprentice: This confidence in Jesus naturally leads us to desire to be his apprentices, learning from him how to live in and from God’s kingdom. Our faith in Christ leads us to want the faith of Christ. We want to learn from him how to be like him. We want to learn his lifestyle and practices so we can integrate our entire lives into God’s life like he does. Our confidence in Jesus leads us toward wanting to have his character, power and faith.

Obedience to God: The abundant life we experience through our ongoing apprenticeship with Jesus naturally leads to obedience. Our experience of living Jesus’ lifestyle and practices and the rich life it brings compels us to love God with everything we are — thoughts, feelings, body, will, and soul. Love of Jesus then sustains us through the discipline and training that makes genuine obedience possible. We are intentionally training with Jesus to be people who naturally and routinely obey God from the inside-out.

Inner Transformation: God then uses this obedience and its life of training to bring pervasive inner transformation of our lives into God’s multifaceted love. Who we are at our deepest inner core is shaped by the Spirit into all of the facets of God’s love, which is then habituated into our thoughts, feelings, will, body and soul.

Power To Do the Works of God’s Kingdom: With the inner transformation comes the power to do the works of the kingdom. Jesus told his first apprentices that they would do the works he did and even greater ones. Willard frequently states that God is desiring to create a people who he is able to empower to do what they want. 

Summarizing the five phases of spiritual formation Willard writes, “Looking back over this progression, one of the most important things for us to see and accept is that, once confidence in Jesus lives in us, we must be intelligently active in stages or dimensions two through five.” Eternal living is not passive. It requires our effort combined with God’s grace.

This progression prepares us for our eternal destiny in God’s great universe. We are his co-creators and co-reigners, released into his creation to bear his image in character and power for the glory of God and the good of others.

In a recent podcast, John Ortberg cites an observation made by Dane Ortlund. In the four gospels, there is only one place where Jesus describes his own heart. It’s in Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus issues his beautiful invitation to apprenticeship with him:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus invites us to take his yoke upon us — to join him in his work. He invites us to learn from him — to adopt his unhurried and relaxed lifestyle and practices. And at its core, Jesus invites us to have our hearts shaped into his gentle and humble heart. 

What is a gentle and humble heart? And why is it so important?

In Philippians 2:3-4, Paul writes:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

To have a humble heart is to learn from Jesus how to routinely and easily value others and their interests far above ourselves and our own aspirations. In everything — at work, at home, at church, on the road, in the store, in the doctor’s office, wherever we are — others are more important than ourselves.

Paul continues in verses 5-8 with Jesus’ example of a humble heart:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!”

This is Jesus’ humble heart in action. Because God valued others above himself (let that one sink in for a moment), he emptied himself and became nothing. And his humility went further. He humbled himself and became obedient to death!

Paul says Jesus “Who, being in very nature God… made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” Here’s the secret: The nature of God IS the nature of a servant. It’s our human tendency to view the nature of God and the nature of a servant as opposites. But they are the same thing. It is God’s very nature to value others above himself. God is humble. God is a servant.

Let’s return to Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11. In his agricultural context, the yoke was used to join two animals to perform one job. A younger, undisciplined animal was usually yoked to an older, trained animal. Over time, the younger animal would learn how to pace alongside the older animal so they both easily shared the load.

The essence of Jesus’ yoke — his work in his Father’s kingdom here and now — is the humble heart as we saw in Philippians 2. His yoke is only easy and light if we learn from him his humble heart. Dallas Willard states the secret to Jesus’ easy yoke “involves living as he lived in the entirety of his life — adopting his overall lifestyle.” To learn a humble heart that will let us co-labor under his yoke, we must adopt his unhurried and relaxed lifestyle and practices so they transform our thoughts, feelings, body, will, soul and relationships.

Apprenticed to Jesus, we experience his humble heart firsthand. He values us over himself. He makes himself constantly available for our good. We find rest for our souls! While we experience fantastic benefits becoming like him, personal benefits are not the priority. 

I’m becoming like Jesus for God’s glory and the sake of others. 

I’m learning to value God above myself. I’m learning to value others above myself. A humble heart. God’s heart.

When I was young and had to pull weeds in my mom’s garden, I used to enjoy turning over large stones or bricks so I could watch the exposed creepy-crawlies scatter in the light. 

A similar experience occurs in spiritual formation, although not as enjoyable. Usually a situation will turn over a large stone in my life and expose internal attitudes and brokenness that still need to be addressed by God. My typical pattern of exposure occurs when circumstances start leaving me exhausted. Exhaustion upsets my emotional equilibrium. My physical and emotional symptoms of anxiety become more acute. I become impatient, easily angered, and resentful. I lose focus on joy and goodness and easily focus on my perceived lack. Stewing in my worry moves me into a form of self-preservation. I grip tighter to my time and money. Contentment and generosity evaporate. And the last thing I’m thinking about is intending good toward others.

And once again I’m face-to-face with my brokenness, self-centeredness, and corruption. I’m face-to-face with my failure.

For many, many years, I used to get upset at myself when this happened. I would tell myself, “You’ve been a Christian all these years and you’re still dealing with this stuff!?” But now, I recognize this is an essential part of the process of being transformed into Jesus. 

Like two tectonic plates grinding at a fault line, my failure and God’s loving grace meet. There’s shame. There’s ache. There’s sorrow. But there’s also repentance. And ultimately, transformation. Grace prevails. And God’s grace always overcomes our failure. 

Peter says, “Don’t be surprised of the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.“ James says, “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds.” While, this cycle no longer surprises me, I’m not quite at the place where I consider it pure joy. It’s more like reluctant acceptance, like having to go to the dentist every six months.

The encouraging part is I’m noticing where God’s grace is actually transforming my weakness and woundedness. The grip of compulsions, anxieties, anger and other distorted desires is lessening. And like fragile new leaves emerging among rubble, genuine love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are becoming tangibly present. 

This motivates me to keep nurturing the soil of my life in which are planted seeds of God’s love. Through simple practices and relationships with humility and surrender, I’ll keep making space for the Spirit to bring forth his fruit… and even to turn over some more stones.

Paul says in Galatians 5, “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The flesh and Spirit desire contrary things. This is obvious as Paul first lists the “acts of the flesh” followed by the “fruit of the Spirit.” Also obvious is that nothing in the list of the acts of the flesh would ever be attributed to Jesus, while everything in the list of the fruit of the Spirit would. So anyone who apprentices themselves to Jesus — learning from him how to be like him — must learn to walk by the Spirit.

For many years as a Christian, I envisioned walking by the Spirit similar to riding a lazy river at a water park. I would passively sit in my inner tube and slowly drift, carried by the steady current of the lazy river. I would ask the Spirit to fill me and empower me to accomplish what he wanted. However, I learned the hard way that a passive approach to spiritual formation does not work. 

No one drifts into Christ’s likeness. 

Drifting does not address the patterns of brokenness, self-centeredness, and corruption habituated in our thoughts, feelings, bodies and relationships.

During the past several years, I have experienced far greater traction in my apprenticeship to Jesus when I started reading “walk by the Spirit” as “practice daily life in interactive cooperation with the Spirit”.

And the secret to interactive cooperation with the Spirit is an active, yet indirect approach to spiritual formation.

Just like a passive approach to spiritual formation does not work, neither does a direct approach. We’re not capable in our own resources and brokenness to naturally embody and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. As I mentioned before, brokenness, self-centeredness, and corruption are infused into our thoughts, feelings, bodies and relationships. We don’t possess the will or strength to change this on our own. So the worst thing we can do is try to act lovingly, act joyfully, act peacefully, act patiently, etc. It’s just acting. That’s the direct approach. While it may give us a sense of success, it actually doesn’t go very far because it has only modified external behavior at best and hasn’t touched the real person on the inside.

The fruit of the Spirit, which is divine love, must come from a transformed inward life so that it naturally, easily, and routinely expresses itself through our body and relationships. In other words, we must be transformed. We must become the kind of person inwardly possessed by divine love so that it easily expresses itself outwardly. But transformation is not in our control. It is in God’s control and power. We can’t directly affect this. We cannot will love, joy, peace, or any of the other aspects of divine love into our lives. The Spirit of God must grow his fruit in us, in his power and time.

What is in our control is intentionally placing ourselves before God all of the time in every activity during every day. We do this through spiritual practices and relationships with humility and surrender to God. This is the active, yet indirect approach. It is interactive cooperation with the Spirit by opening up and surrendering ourselves and every aspect of our daily life to God. As we make space for God in everything we do, the moments of our daily lives become the soil for spiritual transformation.

Over time, these practices and relationships performed with humility and surrender build new habits throughout our daily lives. God uses these new habits to transform us from the inside-out. With time and the Spirit’s power, our entire person undergoes transformation: mind (our thoughts and feelings), heart (our will), body (our embodied habits and readiness to act), relationships (our family, friends, strangers, and even enemies), and soul (the untouchable integrating aspect of an entire flow of life that forms a whole person). Then our transformed character and experiences become embodied and naturally act through our body and relationships.

I think linear, sequential time is a fascinating aspect of God’s creation. God has created the time-space universe to support our eternal human life. The core of that life, of who we are, is our will. According to Dallas Willard the primary purpose of the human will is to align with and submit to God’s will. As image-bearers, we are to learn how to choose what God’s desires — to abandon ourselves to and to trust in God.

A major component of the environment in which we are to learn this core responsibility is linear time. Linear time reveals our need for someone beyond ourselves because we can never see beyond the moment we are currently in. The future, even the nearest future only a nanosecond before us, is unknown.

While we cannot fully see the future. Certainly there is some level of order and predictability. But there is never 100% certainty of what the future holds.

For example, I can be walking down the sidewalk. I can trust certain aspects of my environment, such as the cement supporting my weight. But I don’t know what the next moment holds. I may not see the crack in the cement that will trip me. I don’t know if jogger approaching me is distracted and will knock me over. I don’t know if my knee is going to lock up. I don’t know if a weakness in a blood vessel is about to cause an aneurysm. Our future is unseen and uncertain. Intentionally so. It compels us to trust someone beyond ourselves.

However, in our brokenness, we tend to trust in things such as money, reputation, possessions, health, and relationships. These things provide some measure of controllable certainty for our unknown future. And so we direct our broken self-centered wills into a form of self-preservation. We try to protect ourselves by amassing something beyond ourselves.

We also try to control time itself. Unable to control the future, we try to control the present. We create “time-saving” devices to perform tasks faster so we have more time to do more things that will amass more of the things we believe give us greater control and certainty. Time becomes a resource. Time is money. For example, The True Cost of an Hour’s Downtime from 2024, reports the cost of downtime in the automotive industry is calculated as $2.3 million an hour. That’s a little over $600 per second.

So, we develop new technologies and procedures to be more efficient and productive in this moment. We mine time for every second possible to amass more of what we think will protect us from the future.

God’s intention is that we trust him. He created us to be eternal co-creators and co-reigners with him in his universe. As such, the very cosmos is the environment in which we train and learn to surrender our self-will and embrace God’s will. 

As we learn to trust God, we become less concerned about protecting ourselves from the unforeseen future. We learn from experience that God is as present in our future as he is in our present. As such, we don’t need to worry about what may or is coming, because we are safe and well-kept by our caring God. We learn peace.

Dallas Willard states that peace or shalom is “life without fear or want.” It is “a kind of rest that comes from bedrock confidence in the holistic, universal provision of what is necessary and good.” What a beautiful description! 

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute or in the next several years. What I do know is, I can learn a life of confident peace where I no longer fear what may happen in the future to me or to those I love.

This doesn’t mean bad things will never happen. Money will be lost. Possessions will break. Health will fade. Reputation will be smeared. Jobs will be lost. Relationships will experience conflict and heartbreak. Loved ones will move away or die. Regardless of what happens, God is good! We are safe in him. His goodness will prevail. He will provide everything necessary and good. Or as Peter says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1Pet 5:7)

We can learn to be at peace with our future. And our past. And our present. And as that peace permeates our thoughts, feelings, muscles, and bones, we can shift our view of time. We don’t need to see it as a resource to be mined in order to amass further protection. Instead of viewing time as money, we can start viewing time as love. 

Love doesn’t value speed, efficiency, and productivity. In fact, love requires a slower approach. More time is needed to competently bring about the good of others. Relationships take time. Listening takes time. Presence takes time. Healing takes time. Love takes time.

Debbie and I recently returned from a three week visit with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. One of the joys during this visit was watching our 14-month old grandson, Zach, learn to walk. When we arrived, he was capable of one or two steps before plopping down on the ground. By the time we left, he was traversing the entire length of the house with ease. I’m not the first person to equate a child learning to walk with the process of spiritual formation. But experiencing it firsthand was absolutely fascinating. And the facets of his learning process find essential similarities in our learning to become like Jesus.

Completely Experienced-Based

As Zach learned to walk, the entire process was experience-based. He didn’t read a book or watch YouTube videos. He imitated what he saw in others by actually doing it.

In our apprenticeship with Jesus, knowledge is valuable. But Dallas Willard defines knowledge as “the capacity to represent a subject matter as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience.” Zach learned to represent his subject matter (walking) on an appropriate basis of thought (wanting to walk and imitating what he saw in others) and experience (practicing until his body learned the proper coordination, balance and motion).

Expectation To Walk

Everyone around Zach expected him to learn to walk. His mommy, daddy and grandparents had no doubt that walking was something he could and should learn. It wasn’t an option. It’s an essential aspect of his ongoing maturing as a human being.

So we would take turns standing Zach on his feet and encouraging and coaxing him to walk to us. This usually ended in him either sitting down, grabbing something to balance himself, or lunging toward someone, expecting them to catch him.

Apprenticeship to Jesus, learning from him to become like him, is the Gospel. It’s the core expectation of the New Testament for anyone who calls themselves a Christian. It’s a lifelong process with many, many moments of false starts and failures. But becoming like Jesus is something that everyone can and should learn. And our faith-communities should become centers of expectation and learning for this process.

Constant Practice with Others

It seemed that whenever Zach was awake, he would grab someone’s hand and try to walk. I was privileged with caring for Zach in the mornings. After feeding him breakfast, he would grab my hand and we would walk all around the house together. Over the three weeks, we spent hours doing this. He gained confidence, strength, and dexterity. Soon, he would let go of my hands to take several steps on his own. Then he would grab my hand we would walk together again.

Likewise, apprenticeship to Jesus requires constant practice with others. We practice with Jesus. He’s always with us and guiding us in our practice. And we practice with other apprentices. We support each other and learn from each other. The key is practice, practice, practice. I’m in a small men’s group and one of our favorite quotes that we recite is from a monk. When the monk was asked “What do you do in the monastery?” he replied, “We fall and we get up, fall and get up, fall and get up again.”

Encouraging Environment

As Zach failed in his attempts to walk, no one was disappointed or berated him. No one yelled at him, shamed him, or used guilt as motivation. Instead, we applauded him, shouted “Yay! Good job, Zach!” and kept encouraging him to try again.

Zach constantly missed the mark. That’s one of the New Testament’s definitions for sin. But missing the mark never became the focus as he learned to walk. Because we all knew that eventually, he would miss the mark less and less. He wanted to walk. So his desire to learn to walk and his constant practice with walking would eventually build new habits in his brain and body that would replace his inability to walk.

Frankly, I can’t say enough about this aspect of the process. I think as apprentices to Jesus, we can obsess over our sins and failures to the point that it hinders our learning process. When speaking to his apprentices as well as to the crowds, Jesus rarely focused on sin. Rather, he focused on envisioning people with God’s kingdom, activity, and goodness and on training people in his lifestyle and practices.

Surely, sin is an important concept. It’s personally and corporately destructive. So Jesus would address how our broken interior dimensions needed to be understood and renovated so that our bodies and relationships could eventually reflect this new Christlike character, thoughts and values. But, Jesus’ focus was on entering and interacting with God’s kingdom, not focusing on our sins.

Joy

The entire process of Zach learning to walk was infused with sheer joy. We were excited by his attempts and his progress. As mentioned before, we clapped and cheered him on. And Zach was filled with joy. Almost every attempt at walking was done with a huge smile on his face. Walking was joyful. And learning to walk was joyful. Neither Zach nor any of us were impatient. We enjoyed the process, the failures, and the successes.

Likewise, apprenticeship to Jesus is joyful. John Mark Comer has a great statement, “The reward of following Jesus is Jesus.” Absolutely! He is my joy!! Just the fact that he invites us to come and learn from him (Matt 11:28-30) is sheer joy! You mean I get to spend my entire eternal, unending life with Jesus, learning from him how to be like him? What?! Yes!!!

Freedom with Boundaries

As Zach become more independent and mobile, he was free to roam most of the house. But his newfound freedom also came with some boundaries. There was a baby gate in the hallway so he wouldn’t wander unseen into the bedrooms. Cupboard doors had to be locked or blocked so he wouldn’t hurt himself with their contents. Electrical plugs needed to be covered. And we installed foam on sharp edges on some of the furniture to protect his head and face. There were many times we had to lead or coax him away from an area he shouldn’t play in. But despite the boundaries, he was free to walk throughout the living space without instruction.

I remember Dallas Willard saying that a healthy parent wouldn’t instruct their child continuously on how to play in the backyard. They would simply be pleased with the child having fun playing within the boundaries established by the parent.

This is what I call creative obedience. As we learn from Jesus how to be like Jesus, he doesn’t give us moment-by-moment instructions on how to live in every specific situation we encounter. In the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t give us a new legal code. Rather, he provides us examples and illustrations of a life in the kingdom that we can learn from him. As we are transformed by Jesus’ lifestyle and practices so that his character, power and faith infuse our mind, will, soul, body, and relationships, we can respond creatively and competently to situations in our lives without direct instructions from God.

Learning to walk with and like Jesus is the joyful and good core of our existence. It’s what our eternal lives are made for. We may stumble and fall. But the life in God’s kingdom we are learning to live far eclipses any temporary failure and prepares us for an eternal destiny in God’s great universe!

Recently, I’ve been thinking that the way I deal with spiritual conflict is backward from the strategy presented in Scripture. There are three general sources of conflict that regularly affect us – the devil, disordered desires, and people. My strategy has been 1) flee from the devil, 2) resist my disordered desires, and 3) either resist or ignore people. But the New Testament writers lay out a counterintuitive strategy.

The Devil: Resist him and stand firm

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith.” 1Pet 5:8-9

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Jam 4:7

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes… Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Eph 6:11, 13

The devil must be resisted, not fled from. This seems counterintuitive considering how powerful of an entity he is. But the New Testament writers unanimously declare that Jesus has defeated Satan (Luke 10:18; Col 2:15; Heb 2:14-15; Rom 16:20). Therefore, any attack from him must be resisted.

Jesus’ resistance of the devil’s trifold attack in the wilderness provides us with a pattern. The devil traffics in lies. He’s the Father of Lies (John 8:44). So Jesus counters each attack with the truth of Scripture. But this was far more than quoting Scripture at Satan. At one point, Satan quotes, or better yet misquotes, Scripture at Jesus. But Satan’s use of Scripture is a lie. Jesus, on the other hand, embodies the truth and reality of the Scriptures he is quoting.

Likewise, as Jesus’ apprentices, the truth of his teachings must get into our minds and our bones. His truth must change our thoughts, transform our will, and become the natural habits of our bodies. The embodied and habituated character of God is the armor Paul speaks about that enables us to stand against the devil’s schemes. God’s truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and Word must be part of who we are, in our thoughts, feelings, values, decisions, nerves, muscles, and bones.

Disordered Desires: Flee them, put them to death, and walk in the Spirit

“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 2Tim 2:22

”Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” Col 3:5

”So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Gal 5:16

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” 1Corinthians 10:13

When it comes to our disordered desires, we tend to think we are to resist them with self-discipline and willpower. Instead, the New Testament exhorts us to flee them and put them to death. How do we do this practically? By putting our full attention on the life of God available through apprenticeship with Jesus. 

In Galatians 5, St Paul exhorts us to walk in the Spirit and become people who naturally bear the fruit of the Spirit – the very character of God – as the remedy for not gratifying our disordered desires. In Colossians 3, St Paul instructs us to put to death our disordered desires and behaviors – especially those that cluster around lust and anger – by developing new habits of loving others. These new habits are part of our “new self” that replaces the “old self”. 

Fleeing evil desires is like a trapeze artist who must let go of one trapeze (“the old self”) and fling himself to the other trapeze (“the new self”). He flees the one by abandoning it and completely embracing the other.

People: Engage with gentleness and respect

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” 1Pet 3:15-16

The last counterintuitive strategy is dealing with people with gentleness and respect. Because any conflict from people is so tangible, it seems right to either argue with them or to withdraw from them. But the effective strategy is to present the case for the hope you have in you, the life of Christ being formed in you as you learn his lifestyle. The new love, joy and peace you experience now governs your interaction with those who would attack you and mean you harm. You counter their anger, slander, and malice with love, joy and peace. You can bless those who curse you. You no longer care about having the right answer or convincing others that you are right. Rather your gentleness and respect exhibit genuine care for them.

The strategy for handling spiritual conflict requires embodying God’s truth and character. This is part of the overall life in God’s kingdom that Jesus’ himself embodied and offered to teach any who would apprentice themselves to him. But one cannot have the life of Jesus without adopting the lifestyle of Jesus. Jesus’ knowledge of and faith in God allowed him to enjoy a confident, unhurried and relaxed posture toward life, enforced by specific spiritual practices such as solitude, silence, fasting, prayer, Scripture, and celebration. We must embrace Jesus’ lifestyle to embody his life, truth, faith, character and  power.

“Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work…” Colossians 1:10

These lists that Paul gives for a worthy life are not a new legal standard. He is not saying you will somehow obtain a status of “worthiness” if you master the five or six items he lists. Instead, they are a description of a new type of life, a life befitting the very essence of the rich and vibrant life available in God‘s kingdom, right here and now in apprenticeship to Jesus.

They are designed to seize the individual and corporate imaginations of Jesus’ friends. They create a constant vision of life in God’s kingdom that fuels lifelong apprenticeship with Jesus into his character, power, and faith.

Let’s take the first item on the list from Colossians 1:10 as an example, “bearing fruit in every good work.” The phrase “good works” doesn’t refer to personal moral behavior. Rather, it was a phrase used for humanitarian efforts. NT Wright states that “good works” are things Christians do in the wider community for the benefit of the wider community. These are acts of love and goodwill for our neighbors and even for our enemies.

Imagine growing into a type of life where you would be able to walk into any situation and have the knowledge, experience, and wisdom to know what specific good needed to be done for the people involved. And you would be growing into the character, power, and faith of Jesus to bring that good into being. Healing the sick. Feeding the hungry. Caring for the poor. Comforting the hurting. Accepting the rejected. Counseling the confused. Educating the uninformed and unskilled. Encouraging the disheartened. Creating beauty. Sharing hope with gentleness and respect.

Imagine a life where good works for others flowed easily, joyfully, and generously from your daily life. Imagine that every act of goodwill bears fruit. Because you are like a branch connected to the healthy and robust vine, your life, and the works flowing from your life, are filled with a power beyond your own. None of your effort or generosity is in vain. The words you speak, the moments you serve, the money you give, the prayers you utter, all bear fruit in God‘s kingdom.

Imagine waking up each morning thrilled at the prospect of God using you through the day and then returning to bed each night swirling in wonder and gratitude at the people and situations you filled with goodness.

This is just one aspect of living a life worthy of the Lord and delighting him in every way.

Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father. Colossians 1:10-12

I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3

These two passages use the same combination of Greek words that are translated “live a life worthy”. But then they diverge on what to be worthy “of”.

In Colossians, Paul urges Jesus’ apprentices to live a life worthy “of the Lord.” It’s a life of bearing fruit in every good work. It’s a life of growing in the experiential and relational knowledge of God. It’s a life of being strengthened with all power to have great endurance and patience. And it’s a life of giving joyful thanks to God. Fruit. Knowledge. Strength. Endurance. Patience. Gratitude. It’s a life of loving God.

A worthy life loves God.

In Ephesians, Paul urges Jesus’ apprentices to live a life worthy “of the calling you have received.” What is that calling? To give Jesus complete and undivided allegiance and to learn from him how to be like him so they can routinely and easily replace evil with good. It’s a life that is completely humble and gentle. It’s a life that is patient with one another. It’s a life that bears with one another in love. It’s a life that makes every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit with one another. It’s a life that is bound to one another in peace. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Forgiveness. Love. Unity. Peace. It’s a life of loving others.

A worthy life loves others.

I love it when Paul makes these kind of lists. He uses words like “completely,” “every,” and “all,” indicating how this kind of life isn’t halfhearted or compartmentalized. A life as Jesus’ apprentices in God’s kingdom — learning how to love God and to love others — is a fully immersed life. It’s wholehearted. And it’s whole-minded, whole-bodied, whole-souled, and whole-relationed. Completely. Every. All.

A worthy life is a whole life.

When I was a young Christian, I thought a lot about God as I was reading and trying to learn about this new faith I had entered. My personality is such that I like to categorize and analyze. So I was very content with abstract concepts of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence to think about God.  When I would try to describe God to others using these concepts, I would say things like God is so knowledgeable, he knows your deepest, darkest sins. Or God is so powerful, he could wipe away the entire universe with just a blink. Or God is everywhere at once, so he sees everything you do in secret, even when no one is around. In hindsight, using such destructive and negative examples spoke more about who I was than about God.

I also spent time reflecting on God’s moral attributes such as love, holiness, mercy, justice and goodness. But again, I would usually focus on the darker aspects. I would say God loves us so much that he forgives us and has mercy on all of our sins even when we deserve to die and go to hell for them. Or only God is good while humans are wicked and deserve his justice. Or God is so holy and hates sin so much he can’t stand to be in its presence.

Over the 40 or so years since becoming a Christian, my thinking about God has improved. But some of the darker thoughts continued. I was convinced about God’s goodness, mercy, love and power. But what if he chose to treat me differently?

I would read in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well,” and think “What if God doesn’t provide these things? I mean there are a lot people in this world that lack basic necessities.”

Or I would read in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing in creation is able to separate me from God’s love. But then I would think “That’s easy for Paul to say. But what about that particular sin I can’t seem to overcome?”

Thoughts that questioned God’s goodness and love were always lingering in the back of my mind. I knew God loved the world and wanted his good for us. Yet I couldn’t help think I might somehow be excluded. Perhaps for me, there was some sort of “catch” to God’s love. I didn’t realize how much these negative thoughts about God filled me with fear and anxiety. I felt I was always one misstep from hardship and loss, one mistake from slipping through God’s fingers, one blunder from tragedy.

In Romans 12:2, Paul famously says we are to “be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind.” In Colossians 3:10, Paul says our new self is “being renewed in the image of the creator, bringing you into possession of new knowledge.” Our minds are renewed with new knowledge of God. Our thoughts about God, and the accompanying feelings those thoughts create, preserve the vision we need to thrive in God’s kingdom as Jesus’ apprentices.

Here’s a good example. In Philippians 2:5, Paul encourages the apprentices in Philippi, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” He then proceeds to describe how Jesus didn’t consider equality with God to be used for his advantage, but became nothing, a servant. What were Jesus’ thoughts and attitude toward God that enabled him to do this? It was his knowledge of the Father. Jesus knew his Father. That knowledge, along with the accompanying thoughts and feelings that knowledge inspired, poised him to live confidently as a servant and to give himself fully to God and others.

Here’s a wonderfully insightful description of Jesus’ knowledge and thoughts by Dallas Willard:

“To live and lead like Jesus we need to think like Jesus. He knew who he was speaking of. He knew to whom he was introducing others. He knew Elohim’s capabilities, purposes, and priorities. Jesus knew and acted on the fact that Yahweh is limitless, boundless, and unrestrained in power, grace, mercy, peace, joy, hope, and love. All things are possible. All things. Jesus knew his Father’s name, and he knew when to invoke it to do his will, creatively, adventurously, and joyfully, for himself, for the well-being of others, and ultimately for the entire world.” –The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom On Earth

I remember reading another quote by Willard that opened my mind to the possibility of new thoughts about God. It was his definition of joy. I used to think joy was simply a more intense form of happiness. So, when I read Paul’s encouragement to “Rejoice always,” I thought he meant I needed to make myself happy by thanking God for what he’s done for me regardless of the tragedy, suffering, or loss I was currently experiencing. I think it goes without saying that this didn’t work most of the time and I would feel guilty that I wasn’t doing it correctly.

But then I read Willard’s definition. “Joy is a positive outlook of hopefulness based upon a pervasive, overall sense of well-being.” I know this sounds melodramatic, but that single thought broke profound shackles in my thinking about God. It freed me to begin exploring a different way of thinking about God. It allowed me to begin exploring the idea that I’m really safe in God; that God’s love and goodness will actually prevail in any and every situation; and that while I may experience pain, tragedy and loss, I am protected from harm and that everything is ultimately redeemable. 

I honestly cannot express how much this one thought has impacted my life. I’m learning that I truly can live in constant joy — the pervasive, overall sense of well-being. I’m learning that this joy is equally at home in times filled with sorrow and pain as in times filled with gladness and delight. This thought has helped me to deal with issues like anxiety, anger, discontentment, and jealousy.

I recently heard a lecture by Willard where he says, “If you want to get rid of anger as a burden, you have to understand that the care of God goes past any harm that people can do to you.” That has proven to be very true.

This isn’t a Stoic idea of “focus on what I can control and accept what I can’t control”. Far from it. This is joy! This is one of God’s virtues. God is joy. And that joy underlies how he thinks about himself, his world, and you! The creation of the cosmos was an act of delight and joy. Creating you was an act of unqualified joy. God takes great delight in you and rejoices over you. You are well in him. 

So let’s try on some of these thoughts about God:

• God created you as an act of boundless goodness. You and your whole life is a good thing. You are a gift from God and he takes great delight in you. There is no limit to the goodness of God’s inten­tions for you or his power to carry them out.

• God knows everything about you because he adores you so much. Like a parent lovingly counting the fingers and toes of their little child, God lovingly counts the hair on your head. He delights in all of the little details about who you are. 

• God is able to do more than we can possibly imagine. He is poised to do incredible good for you and through you. And he wants to share that ability with you. He wants to form you into the kind of person that he can empower to do what you want through eternity in his vast creation.

• God is present with you all the time because he loves being with you. He is closer to you than your next breath. He is as close to you as the air that touches your skin. He eagerly waits for you to wake up every morning so he can spend the day being and talking with you.

• God permeates his creation. His presence makes his world beautiful and good. He knows every aspect of his creation and can easily control it. Every thing and every event is filled with his glorious presence. Therefore, this world is a perfectly safe place to be.

Some of these thoughts may seem far-fetched due to our darkened thinking. But they are rooted in a knowledge of God shared by Jesus, Paul and the other New Testament writers. And as this knowledge renews our minds, it can transform our thinking and feeling, and ultimately our daily living. These new thoughts can enable us to have the mindset of Christ and to be poised to do good to God and others like him.