Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.

by John Mark Comer

We become like the people we love and do life with.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed.

“Push as hard as the age that pushes against you.”[49]

We have to push back on the forces that seek to deform us, to keep us from reaching our potential in Jesus.

Tish Harrison Warren wrote in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary (a must-read for all young parents),

my daily practices were malforming me, making me less alive, less human, less able to give and receive love throughout my day.[50]

We can put our trust in lies and then, through our bodies, live as if those lies were true.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,”[51]

Paul called this “the renewing of your mind,”

We run a marathon one mile at a time.

The problem is, very few of us approach our formation this way—by training.

We hear clichés like “Rely on God” or “You can’t do it in your own strength.” All true, but rarely do we learn how to rely on grace and draw on God’s energies when we most need them.

What I mean by practice is more accurately the practices of Jesus, also known as the spiritual disciplines.

These are essentially activities we undertake as disciples of Jesus that re-habituate the automatic responses of sin in our bodies and replace them with the intuitions of the Spirit.

become the kinds of people

mar

Christlikeness in our inner being is not the result of the right application of spiritual disciplines, finding a “good church,” or mastering the right technique of living—it is always a gift of sheer grace.

You will never work harder for anything in your life than Christlike character, and nothing else will ever feel like such an unearned gift.

And like any relationship, the more time you put in, the more you will get out.

“A black belt is just a white belt who never quit.” A saint is just an ordinary apprentice who stayed at it with Jesus.

crucibles.

dross

Suffering is sadness leaving the body. Where does your soul hurt? A pain of the heart that can be expressed only in a groan…

Open your pain to God…

Terrible, wonderful news: You are not in control

He’s the good shepherd; our role is just to follow.

it may take a long time of darkness and struggle until we emerge beautified, and it may not be until the very end of our journeys this side of eternity. But it will be more than worth it.

All in good time…

honorific

What if that inner prompt of the heart is the Spirit working in us to go and do the kinds of things Jesus did?

Archbishop

Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing…

lucrative)

They called it “table fellowship”; to eat with someone was a sign of welcome, not just into one’s home, but also into good standing with the community and even with God himself.

“Jesus got himself crucified by the way he ate.”[20]

You see, for Rabbi Jesus, meals were not a “boundary marker” but a sign of God’s great welcome into the kingdom; not a way to keep people out, but to invite people

in.

xenophobia.

When we offer hospitality, we get to embody the heart posture of the Trinity’s inner life—welcome, invitation, warm affection, generosity, provision, safety, community, comfort, the meeting of needs, delight, and sheer joy.

Radically ordinary hospitality—those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth….

They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged.

There’s no better place to get to know someone than over a meal, no better place to dialogue and even disagree in love.

But I can tell you this: After living in one of the most secular cities in the world, all of the best conversations I’ve ever had with people far from God have been around my table. All of them.

It is something you’re already doing. You already eat meals. All you have to do is repurpose a few of them to offer God’s great welcome.

seminary

pluralistic,

“proselytizing”

shtick

Now, when we say “preach the gospel,” all we mean is to tell people about Jesus:

many of us have lost our sense of witness entirely. But it is core to our faith and essential to our discipleship that we reach out to others with this good news of Jesus.