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.