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

by John Mark Comer

And the beginning of our healing/salvation is what Christians call “confession.” Confession is a core practice of the Way, and contrary to what many think,

And confession is our part in dealing with sin. God is the physician; we’re the patient. All we can do is set our sin in his light. His job is to deal with our sin; our job is to confess our secrets. It’s to live in a way that is open, true, and laid bare before God in community.

The best example of confession I can think of is, again, from AA. When people say “Hi, my name is _____, and I’m an alcoholic” to introduce themselves, that’s confession, far more than saying sorry to God in our minds at church.

The journey to healing begins with naming your illness.

The problem is: Human beings resist facing reality. The human capacity for self-deception is staggering.

We are formed by at least three basic forces.

We’re story creatures.

The stories we come to believe give shape to a thousand daily decisions, they give shape to what we do (or don’t do) and who we become.

We are little more than the cumulative effect of our regular habits. What we repeatedly do, we become.

As disciples of Jesus, we must carefully discern the ways that we’ve been formed (or malformed)—not by the kingdom but by our last names, our family lines, our political tribes, or our zip codes.

Here’s the simple point I’ve been driving to for pages: 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.

Therefore: All Christian formation is counter-formation.

Notice, there are two options: “conform” or “be transformed.” To go full Bible nerd on you, both verbs are in the present passive imperative. Translation: It’s a command to keep on doing something that’s already happening. You’re already being conformed or transformed.

But notice also that the default setting is conformation, not transformation. Meaning, if we don’t take our discipleship to Jesus seriously, the odds are very high that we will become less like Jesus over time and more like “Rome” (or L.A., or London, or Lagos, and so on). The novelist Flannery O’Connor once advised, “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.

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. We can push back.

Of course, this raises an essential question: How?

not only can we hold unreality in our minds, but also we can come to believe that unreality. We can put our trust in lies and then, through our bodies, live as if those lies were true. This is why when the devil comes to Eve in the Garden, he doesn’t come with a stick but with an idea. Because ideas and the idea systems of fallen society are the primary trade of the evil one. They cause us to believe lies. But the best teaching does more than just inform us—it gets into our heads with a vision of the good life. It undermines the untrue stories we believe; it says, “This is true, and this is a lie.” It shifts our trust. It rewires our mental maps to reality, making it possible for us to live in alignment with reality in such a way that we flourish and thrive according to God’s wisdom and good intentions.

For this reason, spiritual formation in the Way of Jesus begins with the healing of our false images of God.

Because we become like who we believe God is.

So, to counter the daily barrage of straight-up lies we receive from the world around us, as apprentices of Jesus we must, like good students, prioritize exposure to teaching and truth. There are all sorts of ways to do this: Reading Scripture Memorizing Scripture Studying the Bible Listening to sermons Listening to podcasts Reading books Meditating Just to name a few. Paul called this “the renewing of your mind,” and it is the linchpin of our formation.

But what’s easy to miss is that Jesus also assumes that living his Way is going to take practice.

One of the first things Jesus says, right before his opening command, is: Whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[52] And the literal last thing Jesus says is an echo: Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice…[53] Jesus begins and ends the Sermon on the Mount with a call to practice. And yet, very few of us think of following Jesus as a practice.

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

Training, not trying. Practice.

One of the primary pictures of salvation in the New Testament is that of adoption.

And this is good news, even when it’s so very hard, because at the core of what’s broken in the human condition is ruined relationships—with both God and people.

Now I’m much more concerned with the culture of a church.

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)?

We must embrace this church, this pastor, these people. We must forgive these shortcomings and celebrate these strengths. Community is always a nonabstract journey into facing reality.

#4 The Holy Spirit Now we’re back to the practice of the presence of God. He is the ultimate source of our transformation.

it is always a gift of sheer grace.

So, how long someone has been following Jesus is a major factor in their maturity level, but so is how much time they give to Jesus in their daily life.

The most difficult moments in our lives—the ones we fear and avoid at all costs—are our crucibles. They have the most potential to forge our souls into the shape of Jesus.

It’s the very things we run from, avoid at all costs, dread, medicate, and deny that hold the secret to our liberation. These unhappy times of great emotional pain, in a beautifully redemptive turn, have the potential—if we open to God in them—to transform us into grounded, deeply joyful people. Suffering is sadness leaving the body.

It will take an intentional plan for counter-formation, what I’ll define later in the book as a Rule of Life.

But you can change, you can grow, you can get free, and you can find healing. Or as Jesus would say, you can be saved.

SAVED = HEALED

Ours is the digital age. Indeed, one interpretation of the sociopolitical chaos of the last few years in America and beyond is that it’s not about politics at all; it’s about the social disruption caused by the shift from an industrial to a digital world.[62] We’re living through a key inflection point in human history, and we’re feeling the vertigo of an entire world turned upside down in just a few decades.

As a result, we are conditioned to expect quick, fast results with minimal effort, all at our beck and call. We often carry this mindset over into our formation—we assume we just need to find the right technique or life hack to solve the problem of the soul. But in reality, formation into the image of Jesus is Hard Slow And we are not in control

The French philosopher Jacques Ellul once compared the Western obsession with “technique” to magic in the Middle Ages. It’s a modern form of superstition that’s all about trying to control what we cannot possibly control.[63] This is where, for those of us with more control-oriented personalities, there’s a latent danger in taking our spiritual formation seriously. The practices of spiritual formation can be perverted into yet another attempt at control—rather than a medium through which we release the illusion of control back to God, and open ourselves to grace. While this truth will likely grate against our preferences, it’s great news. Truly. We can’t self-save, and we don’t have to. We have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved by Jesus and him alone. He’s the savior, not us. He’s the good shepherd; our role is just to follow. And to keep following through all the highs and lows along the Way.

Something approaching Christlikeness is possible in this life. It really is. We can be healed, we can be set free of broken patterns that stretch back generations, we can be transformed into people who are genuinely pervaded by love and joy and peace. Our souls can throb with the bliss of union with God. Our bodies can become temples; our neighborhoods, holy ground; our days, eternity in time; our moments, miracles.

For now, the master’s call is simple: Follow me.

In the first century, “fishers of men” was an honorific for great rabbis,[4] because the best teachers had the power to capture the minds and imaginations of their listeners.

And that’s exactly how Acts reads, as a continuation of Jesus’ work. All the things you read about Jesus doing in Luke—healing the sick, casting out demons, preaching the gospel—you read about his apprentices doing in Acts. Again, this is exactly what you would expect to happen to a talmid upon their completion of an apprenticeship program: to do as their rabbi did.

Now, track with me, as this is a very simple idea that’s lost on so many Christians: 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.

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

Translation: Who Jesus was in his time on earth is an advanced version of who we have the potential to become in him. Jesus is the template for you and me to pour our lives into.

Unfortunately, most Western Christians read the stories about Jesus, especially the miracle stories, not as a template for how to live but as “proof that Jesus was God.” This goes back hundreds of years to the Enlightenment, when Western elites began to say, “We believe Jesus was a great teacher, sure, but nothing more.” (This then let them decide which of his teachings to follow or ignore and, as a result, let them run the world as they saw fit[9]—a pattern that continues to this day.)

But this raises a provocative theological question: Where did Jesus get his power? Ordinary people do not walk around raising the dead. The short answer: from the Holy Spirit.