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

by John Mark Comer

For those of us who desire to follow Jesus, here is the reality we must turn and face: If we’re not being intentionally formed by Jesus himself, then it’s highly likely we are being unintentionally formed by someone or something else.[6]

There is no problem in human life that apprenticeship to Jesus cannot solve.

Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. He didn’t even call people to become Christians (keep reading…); he invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of living. To be transformed. My thesis is simple: Transformation is possible if we are willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus himself did, which will open our lives to God’s power to change. Said another way, we can be transformed if we are willing to apprentice ourselves to Jesus.

Every rabbi had his “yoke”—a Hebrew idiom for his set of teachings, his way of reading Scripture, his take on how to thrive as a human being in God’s good world. How you, too, could taste a little of what they’d tasted…

As Dallas Willard said, “What lies at the heart of the astonishing disregard of Jesus found in the moment-to-moment existence of multitudes of professing Christians is a simple lack of respect for him.”[12]

Here’s why: If disciple is something that is done to you (a verb),[25] then that puts the onus of responsibility for your spiritual formation on someone else, like your pastor, church, or mentor. But if disciple is a noun—if it’s someone you are or are not—then no one can “disciple” you but Rabbi Jesus himself.

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who…are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.[35]

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

For Jesus, salvation is less about getting you into heaven and more about getting heaven into you.

There is a way of life—modeled personally by Jesus himself—that is far beyond anything else on offer in this world. It can open you up to God’s presence and power in ways most people only dream. But it requires you to follow a path marked out for you by Jesus himself.

We talk a lot about the call to believe in Jesus—to put your trust and confidence in him to lead you to life. This is good and fitting. But it must also be said that Jesus believes in you. He believes that you can become his apprentice. Starting right where you are, you can follow him into a life in the kingdom that fulfills your deepest desires.

The kind of person who is not afraid of suffering or even of death, who is free of the emotional need for things to go your own way. You can fulfill your purpose. You can even learn to do many of the incredible things Jesus did. To see the signs of his kingdom manifest in your ordinary life.

There are no accidental saints. You can’t just slip your hand up at the end of a sermon. It’s a high bar of entry: 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.

This is the first and most important goal of apprenticeship to Jesus: to be with him, to spend every waking moment aware of his presence and attentive to his voice. To cultivate a with-ness to Jesus as the baseline of your entire life.

Let’s return to the story: Goal #1 of apprenticeship to Jesus is to live in that moment-by-moment flow of love within the Trinity. Again, if there’s a starting line, this is it.

So many saints, with so many names for life with Jesus.

But my undisputed favorite is from a monk named Brother Lawrence, who called this “the practice of the presence of God.”[18]

There is so much we can’t do in our spiritual formation; we cannot fix or heal or transform ourselves. But we can do this: We can be with Jesus. We can pause for little moments throughout our days and turn our hearts toward Jesus in silent prayer and love.

Hold it before God, with no excuses, no blame shifting, no denial, just utter vulnerability, and let God love you as you are. And then let God love you into who you have the potential to become.”

For Jesus, the secret place wasn’t just a place; it was a practice, a habit, a part of his life rhythm. He seemed to have little hiding places all over Israel where he would slip away to pray.

So, work with your personality, not against it; tailor your practice to your Myers-Briggs type and stage of life, but find your secret place. Go there as often as you can. Prioritize it. Fall in love with it, with God. Without quiet prayer, your life with God will wither; with it, you will come alive to the greatest joy of life: a familiar friendship to Jesus.

Jesus is calling you to slow down and simplify your life around the three goals of an apprentice: To be with your rabbi, become like him, and do as he did.

The apprentice is not above the rabbi, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their rabbi.[6]

For Jesus, the point of apprenticeship was to be with him for the purpose of becoming like him, which happens through an in-depth process of training.

At the risk of saying it yet again, the question isn’t, Are you being formed? It’s, Who or what are you being formed into?

With that in mind, let me attempt a working definition of spiritual formation in the Way of Jesus: the process of being formed into people of love in Christ.

If you want to chart your progress on the spirituality journey, test the quality of your closest relationships—namely, by love and the fruit of the Spirit. Would the people who know you best say you are becoming more loving, joyful, and at peace? More patient and less frustrated? Kinder, gentler, softening with time, and pervaded by goodness? Faithful, especially in hard times, and self-controlled?

This is the gospel: God has drawn near to us in Jesus—us, we who are sinful, broken, wounded, mortal, dying, and incapable of self-saving, with many of us completely uninterested in God or even enemies of God—to draw us into his inner life, to heal us by immersing us within the fold of his Trinitarian love, and then to send us out into the world as agents of his love.

This, then, is spiritual formation: the process of being formed into a person of self-giving love through deepening surrender to and union with the Trinity.

This is why information alone does not produce transformation. Because knowing something is not the same as doing something, which is still not the same as becoming the kind of person who does something naturally as a by-product of a transformed inner nature.

You are right now, currently, as we speak, being formed by a complex web of ideas, cultural narratives, reoccurring thoughts, habits, daily rhythms, spending patterns, relationships, family ties, activities, environments, and much more. Just by waking up and going about your life.

“Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow.”[54]

Now I’m much more concerned with the culture of a church. Whether there are thousands of people around a stage or ten or fifteen around a table, whether they are worshipping to modern rock ballads or quietly reading ancient prayers, I’m interested in this question: Does the community call people up to a higher level of apprenticeship? Or does it devolve to the lowest common denominator of maturity (or immaturity)?

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.”[55]

Of course, “time” here is double entendre: (1) Our formation will take a long time—a lifetime. But (2) it will also take a lot of time. And like any relationship, the more time you put in, the more you will get out.

If you are an apprentice of Jesus, your end goal is to grow and mature into the kind of person who can say and do all the things Jesus said and did.

Instead, ask this: How would Jesus live if he had my gender, place, personality profile, age, life stage, job, resources, and address? How would he show up to the world? How would he handle _______? For the apprentice of Jesus, that is the question all of life becomes an attempt to answer.

For all of us, before we set out on any journey, we need at least two things: (1) a compelling vision of our desired destination, and (2) a plan for how to get there.

You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.[2]

A Rule of Life must balance two sides of an emotional equation: It must guard, and it must guide.

So, that said, what are the practices? The practices are disciplines based on the lifestyle of Jesus that create time and space for us to access the presence and power of the Spirit and, in doing so, be transformed from the inside out.

Once we are rested, the quiet is where we go to find God. Because it’s there, in the quiet, that the inner roar of our world of noise—the distraction, the chaos, and all the lies—fades away, and what shimmers in its place is the peace and presence of God.

Step one: We must find God in the contours of our actual lives—not the lives we wish we had, used to have, or plan to have, but the lives we actually have, here, now. Because “God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are.”[58]

Let me say it again: Following Jesus is not about doing more, but doing less.

We must come to realize that following Jesus is the main point of life. To borrow a term from the world of activism, it’s about centering Jesus, making him the dominant voice over your own.

Following Jesus always requires you to leave something behind.