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

by John Mark Comer

Translation: The key to getting people to follow you is to convince them they aren’t following anyone at all.

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.[8] I stand (or really, walk) with a vast multitude of others around the world and down through history who have come to believe: There simply is no better way, truth, or life to be found than that of Jesus.

“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.”

And if he thought you had the smarts, the work ethic, and the chutzpah to one day become a rabbi yourself, he would say something like “Come, follow me.”[17] Or another way to translate that is “Come, apprentice under me.”

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

“I don’t believe in God,” replies Dantès. Then comes the priest’s haunting line: “It doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”

The word for “abide” is menō in Greek; it can be translated “remain” or “stay” or “dwell” or “make your home in.”[10] We could translate the verse like this: “Make your home in me, as I make my home in you.”

Apprenticeship to Jesus is about turning your body into a temple, a place of overlap between heaven and earth—an advance sign of what one day Jesus will do for the entire cosmos, when heaven and earth are at long last reunited as one. This is the single most extraordinary opportunity in the entire universe: to let your body become God’s home. And it’s set before you every single day.

We read similar language from the Quaker writer Thomas Kelly: How, then, shall we…live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning of all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established.[21]

As a general rule, we become more loving by experiencing love, not by hearing about it in a lecture or reading about it in a book.

Meditating on God’s love has done more to increase my love than decades of effort to try to be more loving. Allowing myself to deeply experience his love—taking time to soak in it and allow it to infuse me—has begun to effect changes that I had given up hope of ever experiencing. Coming back to God in my failures at love, throwing myself into his arms and asking him to remind me of how much he loves me as I am—here I begin to experience new levels of love to give to others.[38]

Unfortunately, many of us still view following Jesus as a means to an end—a ticket to heaven, to nice feelings, to a successful, upwardly mobile life, and so on. We still don’t get it: He’s the end.

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.

Learning theorists frame apprenticeship as a four-stage training process: I do; you watch. I do; you help. You do; I help. You do; I watch.

He gave us his Spirit to empower us with his capacities. To do his work by his power, not our work by our own very limited resources.

And “when we act like God, we get to feel like God,”[30] to share his 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…. Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged. They know that the gospel comes with a house key.[31]

Everyone is preaching a “gospel.” The question is not, Are you preaching the gospel? It’s, What gospel are you preaching?

Now, when we say “preach the gospel,” all we mean is to tell people about Jesus: Announce the good news of Jesus and the availability of life with him in the kingdom of God.

But preaching the gospel? I think I’ll just mow my neighbor’s lawn and hope they figure out Jesus rose from the dead.

But if we curb this impulse of the Spirit deep within our spirits—to go, to preach the gospel, to testify—then we will “quench the Spirit”[47] in ways that will sabotage our formation and suppress our spiritual vitality. Because there is a kind of spiritual law to the universe: To possess God, we must give him away.

As you are going about your ordinary life, live with your eyes wide open to see what the Father is doing, all around you, and then to partner with him. As Jesus said, “I only do what I see the Father doing.”[64] Jesus had this uncanny ability to see people—to see what God was doing in them, right then, right there—and to unleash God’s power and purposes for them in each moment.

He called the church “the body of Christ,”[65] the embodied presence of Christ in the world. As Saint Teresa of Avila put it, Christ has no body on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours![66]

The Loving Presence does not burden us equally with all things, but considerately puts upon each of us just a few central tasks, as emphatic responsibilities. For each of us these special undertakings are our share in the joyous burdens of love. We cannot die on every cross, nor are we expected to.[67]

Jesus will lay one small part of his universal heart of love. We will find our hearts drawn to particular justice issues, people groups, neighbor families, or lines of work. And it will feel like joy.

“Work is love made visible.”

A Rule of Life is a schedule and set of practices and relational rhythms that create space for us to be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did, as we live in alignment with our deepest desires. It’s a way of intentionally organizing our lives around what matters most: God.

Way of Life and Rule of Life were

Your freedom is what got you here, not your constraint.[9]

I know some people who never miss a week of church, read through the entire Bible every year, and never watch R-rated movies (all good things) but who are still self-righteous, controlling, fueled by anger, blind to their own shadow, and, at times, incredibly unloving.[27] And I know others who are in a season of just trying to survive parenting little kids and barely getting ten minutes a day to pray. But tired as they may be, they are becoming more loving with each passing

But spiritual disciplines are simply a means of appropriating or growing toward the life that God graciously offers.”

A discipline is any activity I can do by direct effort that will eventually enable me to do what I currently cannot do by direct effort.

Our part is to slow down, make space, and surrender to God; his part is to transform us—we simply do not have that power.

You are learning to be joyful, even when you don’t get what you want. You are practicing suffering and, through it, increasing your capacity for joy in all circumstances.

“We generally sin alone, but we heal together.”