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

by John Mark Comer

The problem is, in the West, we have created a cultural milieu where you can be a Christian but not an apprentice of Jesus.

Tragically, this has created a two-tier church, where a large swath of people who believe in God and even regularly attend church have not re-architected their daily lives on the foundation of apprenticeship to Jesus.

You see, Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity; he’s looking for apprentices in the kingdom of God.

It will require you to reorder your entire life around following Jesus as your undisputed top priority, over your job, your money, your reputation—over everything. Yet all these things will find their rightful place once integrated into a life of apprenticeship.

All of us have a source we are rooted in, a kind of default setting we return to. An emotional home. It’s where our minds go when they’re not busy with tasks, where our feelings go when we need solace, where our bodies go when we have free time, and where our money goes after we pay the bills.

If we are rooted in the infinite scroll of social media, it will form us, likely into people who are angry, anxious, arrogant, simplistic, and distracted.

If we are rooted in the endless queues of our streaming platforms of choice, they will form us too, likely into people who are lustful, restless, and bored, never present to what is…

What do you return to in your quiet moments? Where do you go to find solace and joy? What would it look like for you to make your home inside God?

through deliberate practice, you can train your mind to come back to God, come back to God, come back to God…

show me a person’s habits, and I will show you what they are truly most passionate about, most dedicated to, most willing to suffer for, and most in love with.

The human mind is far more moldable than most of us were led to believe. It can be changed to a new default setting, a new baseline. To a new God-orientation.

What first felt almost impossible eventually will become as easy and natural as breathing.

We can be deceived into thinking of abiding as no more than mental hygiene for the prefrontal cortex—the Christianized version of “think happy thoughts.”

I mean by mystic is a disciple of Jesus who wants to experience spiritually what is true of them theologically. Scripture is clear: All those who have been baptized are “in Christ.”[45] You have been baptized, immersed in the Trinitarian community of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, saturated in God. “Your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”[46] Christ is “in you, the hope of glory.”[47]

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.[63]

“We become either agents of God’s healing and liberating grace, or carriers of the sickness of the world.”[9] To believe otherwise is an illusion; and to give no thought to this is to come dangerously close to wasting your life.

We are formed by at least three basic forces.

All Christian formation is counter-formation.

The alternative is to practice the Way, to take up a whole constellation of life choices that’s different from the majority culture around us—to make choices that aim our love and longing at union with God and our formation into his likeness.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,”[51] because we become like our mental picture of God. For this reason, spiritual formation in the Way of Jesus begins with the healing of our false images

of God. If a person’s vision of God is distorted—if they view him as harsh, demeaning, or chronically angry…or as liberal, laissez-faire, and simply there to champion their sexual pleasure—the more religious they become, the worse they become. Because we become like who we believe God is.

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