Wright is Wrong, But Not for the Reasons You Think

This is written for Temple City Life's June issue. We'll see if it get approved!

Uncommon Sense June 2008

Jeremiah Wright is Wrong (But Not for the Reasons You Think)

The ancient prophet Jeremiah warned Israel that God was not pleased and that destruction was coming on the nation. In recent days, another Jeremiah has gained national notoriety and has damaged the campaign of a major presidential candidate.

I have no interest in rehashing the political fallout of Rev. Wright’s comments; it’s been done, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to address anyway. What I want to examine is this latter-day Jeremiah’s theology. And my conclusion is this: he’s wrong, but not for the reasons you think.

You may think he’s wrong for the harsh things he’s said about America (no need to reprint his most famous comment here). Prophets do say some harsh things. You may think he’d wrong for the conspiracy theories he’s spun (think of his AIDS-as-government-experiment comments). Well, some conspiracies may be true (though I surely don’t think this one is). You may think he’s wrong to praise Hamas or Farrakhan to Khadafy (and I’d agree with you). But I don’t think that’s the heart of the wrong.

No, I can forgive Wright for these things. What makes Wright wrong is his theology—his liberation theology.

It’s not unfair to call liberation theology (LT) an attempt to combine Marxism and Christianity. I’m uniquely equipped to speak to this matter. Before getting two degrees in ministry, I received two degrees in political science. I really do know Marxism quite well, and I know how it’s worked its way in theology via liberation theology. Liberation theology began among certain Catholic theologians in Latin America. They sought a way of “doing theology” that would account for the plight of the dispossessed and also pointed a way forward out of the extreme poverty and inequality of the region.

LT soon spread to certain Protestant theologians and began to morph into regional versions and racial versions. So you’ll find the concepts taken up by some theologians in Europe and Africa and to a lesser extent in North America and Asia. And you’ll find distinctive group-identity versions of LT such as gay LT or feminist LT or (as in Rev. Wright’s case) Africentic LT.
LT claims that it’s just doing what Judaism and Christianity has always done: decry inequity, declare God’s favor to the poor and to champion the cry for freedom. The Exodus becomes the dominate model for understanding God’s dealings: He delivers the oppressed, He judges the Pharaohs of the world and He grants a new freedom to the redeemed.

LT has the same problem that Marxism in general has: in narrows life to economics. Marx believed that his system (which he called “scientific socialism”) explained everything about life, from religion to family to marriage to culture to you name it. For Marx, everything is economic. And in LT, theology collapses into and is absorbed by economics.

In my mind, the great unmasking of LT occurred when one nation fully embraced it: Nicaragua under the Sandinistas (1979-1990). Many of the leaders of the Sandinista government were deeply sympathetic to or actively involved in LT. They proved just as vicious and oppressive as the government they overthrew. In the laboratory of real life, LT failed.

Real life rarely deters academics or off-kilter theologians. Wright is a product of a variant of LT that also embraces anti-historical ideas that make ancient Jews Africans and Jesus a black man. Wright follows the LT line in theology, economics and politics. His conclusions flow from his flawed theological premises.

I find his theology deeply disturbing for two reasons: the attempt to weld the faith of Jesus with the crackpot theories of Marx is abhorrent and very damaging to essence of the Christian faith. Second, I find his racial perspective on the Biblical inconsistent with what we know about the world of the Bible. For the record: Jesus was a swarthy Middle Eastern Jew. I find any theology that has to turn Jesus into something He wasn’t historically to be something which undermines the historical nature of the Christian faith. Frankly, this is just as disturbing as some Aryan Nation attempt to turn Jesus into a blond, blue-eyed (non-Jewish!) white guy.

So I say again: Rev. Wright is in the wrong. But maybe not for the reasons you think.

MAKING DISCIPLES OF JESUS—FROM ALL NATIONS

This is the last installment on, "The Seven Basic Commands of Jesus."

Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 4:12; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Original date: March 9, 2008

I’ll never forget, as a brand new pastor the first time our little church in Western Pennsylvania had a “real live missionary” coming. I was a big missions booster in seminary and had been mentored by a great missionary and had seriously looked into going as a missionary, but God’s direction was pretty clear: stay and pastor and get people excited about missions.

So, when we had a chance for a “real live missionary” I called up every household in the church to tell them the week before he came. I was excited and I thought they’d be excited as well. And most of the families I talked to were pleasant enough and thanked me—and yes, some really were excited.

But there was this one lady. When I called her she said, “Oh pastor, I think we have enough problems in America that we shouldn’t be sending missionaries to other countries.” I couldn’t believe my ears. How could anyone hang around the message of the Bible and never get the local and global call to make disciples?

The reality is that many American Christians are right where she was. As we wrap up this series on The Seven Basic Commands of Jesus, I want to address again the worldwide dimension of the command of Jesus to make disciples.

As I said last week, for over 2,000 years, the church has existed for one prime purpose: to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Churches don’t have to strive to find God’s purpose for their church. There’s a reason we refer to Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission: it defines what we’re supposed to be about as a church:

18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Remember again, Jesus didn’t tell us to make converts or church members. He wants to go and make disciples—from all nations. That means crossing any barrier or geography or cultural barrier to get the job done.

There are three things we have to understand about what He means by “make disciples.”

First, what is a disciple? That’s what we looked at two weeks ago, and we found that a disciple is someone who is learning to live, love and serve like Jesus Himself. A disciple is a person who is like Jesus.

Second, how do you make a disciple? We looked at that last week, and we saw the oikos principle—that God has placed people around us in our network of relationships as the primary people to reach for the gospel. These people are the “low hanging fruit” that we can real with the message in a natural and relational way.

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”? That’s what we’re looking at today.

If you hang around Christians long enough, and if the topic of missions comes up, you’re going to hear the term “mission field.” As in, “Did you hear the Sanchez family is now on the mission field?” When I was a brand new Christian and I heard people talking like that, I always imagined a plane landing in a big clearing on the edge of a jungle—that must be a “missions field”!

Well, I was confused on that. But one thing is clear: the mission “field” is “out there.” It’s across an ocean, up a river, in a rainforest, somewhere away. Right?

Some people don’t like the idea of missions. Who are we, they say, to interfere with these nice natives, who are happy with their own beliefs? And “don’t we have enough problems in America?”

Well, first of all most missionaries will tell you that unreached, unevangelized people are rarely happy with life. The Waodoni of Ecuador had a homicide rate so high before being reached that it’s estimated that two-thirds of all Waodonis died a violent death. The Mouks of Papua New Guinea had a belief system that was without hope and relied on deception and murder to sustain it. So we are not talking about happy people being bothered by missionaries! We’re talking about miserable people, real people with hopes and dreams, who need a new way of life.

Some would abolish missions on another ground. They say that God is a merciful God who doesn’t care what people believe—that there are “many ways to God.” They deny the truth of Acts 4:12, where Peter says:

“Salvation is found in no one else [except Jesus], for there is no other name [expect Jesus’] under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

The Bible says again and again that people are lost, now and forever, if they don’t know God through His Son, Jesus Christ. This belief that Jesus is the only way is the spring that winds the clock of missions passion. So long as there are people who haven’t heard the Good News about Jesus, we can’t rest. So long as they haven’t heard, God hasn’t received the glory He deserves; so long as they haven’t heard, some of our fellow human beings are being denied the best thing in life: knowing Jesus. And so we go and make Him known.

And we also go because of the direct command of Jesus. Once again, Matthew 28:19-20:

19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

That’s a direct command of Jesus! If Jesus is our Lord, let’s be clear: these are His marching orders.

Now—how do we go? Remember last week when I talked about “drive-by evangelism”? That’s where somebody lobs the gospel at people from a safe distance. They leave a tract, they use a bullhorn, and they try to shoehorn the gospel in an unnatural and even manipulative way.
I think a lot of people think missionaries are the ultimate drive-bys. I had a conversation with someone last fall that was under the impression that missionaries live compounds, get lavishly paid and barely know anything about the lands they work in. I had to tell him that his information was at least 100 years out of date—if it was every so!

Instead, modern missions takes the Bible in one hand and an in-depth knowledge of the people and culture with whom they work in the other. There are a high percentage of missionaries with degrees in anthropology who’ve learned the ways of the people in great detail, who learn in depth the language, customs, traditions and beliefs of the people. Then they learn how to take the message of Jesus and communicate it to the people in a way that really relates to the people there.

There’s a name for this—we call it contextualization. It’s a practice as old as the Bible. We see it in the missionary strategy of Paul in the Book of Acts and in his letters. When addressing a Jewish audience, he emphasized Jesus as the long-expected Messiah who fulfilled the Scriptures. When he was with Gentiles, he emphasized Jesus as the Wisdom of God, the one who makes life make sense. He writes in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Paul’s not talking about being wishy-washy. He’s talking about telling about Jesus in a way that makes sense to people. He talks one way to Jews, another to Greeks, another to Romans, another to barbarians, and so on. If you haven’t communicated Jesus in a way that makes sense to the people you’re talking to, they you haven’t done anything at all. Call it drive-by evangelism or drive-by missions, it’s no good if people don’t understand it. You have to connect.
What an incredible privilege it is to connect, to be part of making Jesus known, whether it’s across the street or across the world.

One thing I’ve learned is that in the Bible, there isn’t a wall between local and global evangelism. It’s all just evangelism—making Jesus known among those who don’t know Him now. We use the modern term “missions” usually to mean evangelism that crosses cultural, language and geographic barriers. And that’s fine. It’s a handy term. But the Bible itself sees all evangelism as important and all part of the same thing—making Christ known to people who don’t know Him.

I mentioned that some people don’t think missions isn’t necessary because they don’t believe what God says in His word about Jesus being the only way God has designated to make people right with Himself. In other words, they want to push the mission field away as unneeded.
I really passionately believe that it’s the other way around. They mission field hasn’t gone away. It’s come closer. Most of the people around us, whether born in another country or born in America have no clue what it means to be a Christian. The so-called “mission field” is next door. The message of Jesus not comprehended in Thailand, or Temple City.

And the same thing we said about the oikos principle applies on a world scale. (If you weren’t here last week, the oikos principle is that we all have a network of influence around us, and that most people come to faith in Jesus though the influence of that oikos network of family, friend, neighbors, schoolmates and so forth.)

What a missionary does is to intentionally move from one place to another with the purpose of establishing a new oikos network for the sake of making Jesus known. So someone from Nagaland (a state in Northeast India, where the population is 90% Christian) goes to New Delhi to make Jesus known among Hindus, or someone from South Korea goes to Pakistan to make Jesus known among Muslims, or someone from Florida goes to Cameroon to make Jesus known there.

In world missions, we have learned to do what Tom Clegg learned in inner city Chicago—to never tell the gospel without actually demonstrating the gospel. That’s why we sent teams for years to do water projects in villages on the Thai/Burma border. This isn’t “drive-by” missions. Now in that same location, Mike and Becky Mann are working to establish a school that will become a center for the evangelization of the Hill Tribes in that area.

We used another phrase last week that also applies: you have to immanuelize before you can evangelize. Going in to do water projects and build schools is part of the “immanuelization.” Jesus came into this world as our Immanuel, “God with us.” He got in our neighborhood and lived among us. He didn’t do a drive-by. Only after he’d lived among us for 30 years did He even start to preach. He proved the love of God by His way of life, then and only then did He tell the story and then go to the cross. He “immanuelized” before He evangelized! That’s the pattern He’s left for us to follow.

As a command, Jesus expects all of His disciples to get involved in making the Good News known. That’s why I encouraged you to fill out the My Connection Covenant card last week, and I hope you did. That’s why I encouraged you to decide now that you’ll be involved in our Day of Service on April 27. In the same way, I want to encourage you today to commit to pray for the world mission of Jesus. As a reminder today, see a greeter on the way out for this magnet; it just says, “Remember to Pray for World Missions/First Baptist Church, Temple City, CA.” My hope is that it will be a constant reminder to you that as a disciple of Jesus, He’s called you to be involved in making Him known to people near and far.

These are the basic commands of Jesus. Let’s review all seven:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Personally, I believe that believers who live this way will change the world. This is a way of life that is nothing less than revolutionary. I believe that a church that really lives by these basic commands is a transformed, New Testament people. These are people who don’t just go to church—they are the church.

MAKING DISCIPLES OF JESUS

Matthew 28:18-20
Original date: March 2, 2008

For over 2,000 years, the church has existed for one prime purpose: to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Churches don’t have to strive to find God’s purpose for their church: it’s clear as a bell, right there in the Bible. There’s a reason we refer to Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission: it defines for all this age what we’re supposed to be about as a church:

18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Remember again, Jesus didn’t tell us to make converts, adherents or church members. There’s another outcome He had in mind. First, that we would GO; second that we would MAKE DISCIPLES and third, that we would cross any barrier or geography and culture to get the job done: OF ALL NATIONS. But at the heart, it’s this simple: make disciples!

As we come to the end of looking at the seven basic commands of Jesus, I want us to explore just what Jesus means when He says, “Make disciples.” As I said last week, it seems to me that there are three key aspects to understand what He means by “make disciples.”

First, what is a disciple? That’s what we looked at last week, and we found that a disciple is someone who is learning to live, love and serve like Jesus Himself.

Second, how do you make a disciple? That’s today, and I want to focus on how you initially make a disciple, or how we bring the Good News about Jesus into to lives of people who don’t know Him.

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”? That’s what we’ll look at next week.

When we live as faithful disciples of Jesus, we change the world. Faithful disciples act like Jesus, they live like Jesus and they love and serve like Jesus. That changes the world. Not the whole world all at once, but one little corner of the world where we have a network of relationships. Your “world” is that network of people who know you best, the ones where you spend most of your time.

Many of us here know Charles “Chip” Arn of Church Growth up in Monrovia; Michelle Cooper, Matt’s wife, used to work in his office. Chip continues the work started by his father Win Arn, one of the real pioneers in the area of church growth. Win observed a principle of evangelism in the New Testament that he passed on as the oikos principle. Oikos is a Greek word, the word for household. But the modern equivalent of the oikos isn’t just the people living under your roof. Let me explain.

In the USA, we’re used to each individual family living in their own home; that’s our standard arraignment. For most of the world throughout most of history, that’s not the way it’s done. Your oikos, your household, is everyone in your extended family, plus servants and employees and so forth. That could mean three or four generations of family plus workers or servants. It could easily be 20 people, and in some cases many more.

Remember as well that for most of history, people didn’t go somewhere else to work; they worked from home. (So telecommuting and home-based businesses aren’t something new; it’s going back to the way it’s mostly been throughout history.)

So the oikos today includes people related to you, co-workers, neighbors, schoolmates, friends and really everyone else that you came into contact with on a regular basis. It is your relational world, your circle of influence.

For the average person today, that’s a circle of 8 to 15 people. (For some real introverts that may be as few as 5 or for some real extroverts, that may be as much as 30, but for the rest of us, it’s somewhere between 8 and 15 people.)

These are the people who know if you’re genuine or not. These are people who listen to you when you have something to say.

And this is overwhelmingly how people come to faith in Jesus. Somebody in their oikos network influenced them to consider the claims of Jesus and they did and now they are part of God’s family.

Surveys consistently show that just under 90% of all people who come to faith in Jesus do so because somebody in their oikos network (especially family and friends) influenced them. This is far more effective than any kind of “drive by” evangelism.

We all know what a drive-by shooting is. Drive-by evangelism is kind of like that. Somebody lobs the gospel at people from a safe distance. They leave a tract, they use a bullhorn, they drop Biblical quotes into a conversation, and they try to shoehorn the gospel in an unnatural and even manipulative way.

Now no doubt you’ll tell me a story about someone who came to faith when they picked up a tract or heard a radio broadcast or even listened to a street preacher. I have no doubt that that happens. It just doesn’t happen very often, and I strongly suspect many more have been repelled by these approaches than have been positively influenced.

What really works, and what I really think is the God-ordained way for most of evangelism, is the influence of people in your network of relationships, in your oikos.

Let me give you’re a few very quick examples of this oikos principle confirmed in the Bible. In each case, I’m going to leave the word “oikos” untranslated so that you can get the idea quickly:
In Mark 5:19, Jesus tells the man delivered of demons, and says to him,

"Go home to your oikos and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

Another example, Luke 19:9: after Zaccheus was converted, Jesus said,

Today salvation has come to this oikos, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.

Here are a couple of passages where whole households came to faith in Jesus at once:
First, John 4:53. When Jesus healed the son of a royal official, we read,

…he and all his oikos believed.

And in Acts 11: 14, when Cornelius the centurion had a vision of an angel, the angel said about Peter,

He will bring you a message through which you and all your oikos will be saved.

Matthew Levi has an interesting oikos! When he came to faith in Jesus, he threw a party for them. Mark 2:15 says,

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's oikos, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.

His oikos was the lowlifes of Galilee: all the drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members. And when He met Jesus, he threw a kegger for all his buddies—all the people in his oikos network.
My proposition is that since this is so clearly modeled in Scripture, this oikos principle, that this is the primary God-ordained way to reach people. Yes, I know that some are reached by other means, that’s why I said “primary.”

And know this as well: we can seek to intentionally expand our oikos world for the purpose of evangelism; our network can and indeed must change over time. That’s exactly what a cross cultural evangelist (a missionary) does: he goes to a different culture (in Cameroon, or Mexico or Laos) not to “drive-by” the gospel, but to establish a new, intentional oikos network for the sake of the gospel message.

But you don’t have to go to some place distant to do that. You can do that right here, right now. Let me tell a story to help us all relate to this.

Tom Clegg was a youth pastor in suburban Chicago. Each summer some suburban churches put on an evangelistic outreach to the inner city. They’d blitz the streets with tracts. It was a hot day, over 100. Tom went out with a teen from his church named Ryan. A man on the street said something about the heat and Tom shot back, “It will be hotter in hell unless you repent!” Another guy was panhandling, so Tom gave him a tract and said, “You need this more than money!”

They turned a corner and about five tall, tough-looking black kids were sitting in the shade by a basketball court. Tom and the kid with them suddenly felt very small and very, very white. Tom began to hand out tracts when one guy said, “It’s too (blank) hot to listen to some honky preacher!” Then he pulled a knife, and Tom and the kid ran for their lives.

When they got back to their van, Tom confessed to the teen from his church that not only was he scared, but as he ran away, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the way they were trying to “spread the gospel” seemed shallow, fake and manipulative. Then he did something that will probably make you think he was crazy. He talked Ryan into going back to the playground where the guy with the knife was.

They drove the church van, stocked with cold sodas and ice. The tough-looking guys were still there and so was the guy with the knife.

Tom got out of the van and said to them, “Hey everything is cool, OK? Look, I just want to apologize for being a jerk. How about a soda instead of a sermon?” They dove for the cans and began to playfully throw the ice around. One of them challenged Ryan to some one-on-one b-ball. The guy with the knife talked with Tom. Tom ended up hiring the kid--his name was Franklin--to give him a tour of the neighborhood and to introduce him to people.

This was a huge turning point for Tom and for that outreach. It’s a long story, but here’s the bottom line—they resolved never to tell the gospel without actually demonstrating the gospel. Before, they’d been content to drive-by the Jesus message; now they began to live it. Tom calls it switching from sermon-based outreach to service-based outreach.

And guess what? It took a year, but Franklin, the kid with the knife, gave his life to Jesus. Today he’s a printer, married with kids and active in an urban church in Chicago.

I can sum it up this way: you have to immanuelize before you can evangelize. Jesus came into this world as our Immanuel, “God with us.” He got in our neighborhood and lived among us. He didn’t do a drive-by. Only after he’d lived among us for 30 years did He even start to preach. He proved the love of God by His way of life, then and only then did He tell the story and then go to the cross. He “immanuelized” before He evangelized!

That’s why we do service evangelism things like wrapping Christmas presents rather than handing out tracts on a street corner. That’s why we’re there at the Camellia Festival. That’s why we host things like the Chamber of Commerce and the Blue Banner dinners. That’s why we’re going to shut down morning worship on April 27 to do a Day of Service to the community—to immanuelize before we evangelize.

Didn’t Jesus say that the world will know that we’re His followers by the way we love? Sure He did.

Now, I want to suggest two action points to make what I’ve shared real in your life. First, in today’s worship folder there’s a card that says, “My Connection Commitment.” It says, “I covenant before God to pray for and to invite…” There are places for three names, a good start. If you need more, you can get more out in the lobby. With Easter coming soon, it’s a great time to invite people to worship. This is simply recognizing the oikos network God has put around you and to be part of praying for them and inviting them to hear the Good News.

Another action point is to get involved in the Day of Service on April 27. This will be a day of total immanuelization! Serving like Jesus will commend the Good News to people like nothing else.

The command to make disciples is clear as a bell. So let’s get to it, OK? Let’s let the world know just how good Jesus is!

BEING A DISCIPLE OF JESUS

Matthew 28:18-20
Original date: February 24, 2008

I was at the National Outreach Convention last November when I got into a conversation with a pastor from Maryland. He was an associate pastor at a Presbyterian church there and his title was Pastor for Discipleship.

He told a funny story about his title, Pastor for Discipleship. He said that he called someone who he was trying to get involved in a small group and left a message with his wife. He never got back to him, so he tried again a week later. Same deal. A third week, and finally the man called back. “OK,” he said, “what did I do wrong? My wife said the pastor for discipline was calling me.”

Discipleship/discipline—you can see the connection! As we come to the end of looking at the seven basic commands of Jesus, I want us to explore just what Jesus means when He says, “Make disciples.” As I thought about this, it seems to me that there are three key aspects to understand what He means by “make disciples” and that it’s going to take us three weeks to unpack this:

First, what is a disciple?

Second, how do you make a disciple?

Third, what’s the full implication when He says, “of all nations”?

That’s the map for the next three weeks. But today I just want to address the basic question, what is a disciple of Jesus?

Let’s look at that word disciple. In Greek, the New Testament used the word mathetes. It’s not a new word; the Greeks used the word for centuries to refer to pupils of a teacher. It came to have the meaning of an intern or an apprentice. Generically, the word means learner, but that’s a little deceiving. It has the idea of someone whose life is being changed by being in close contact with the master, and who is becoming like the master in the process.

Discipleship produces disciples who resemble the master, who take on the master’s beliefs and values as their own.

To be a disciple is to be much more that a convert or an adherent. It means that your life is conforming to the life of your Lord. A convert may check a box and show up at meetings and not be a disciple. An adherent may regard the teachings of a leader as the best and still not seek to make those teachings the guidepost to his or her life.

Now here’s something interesting: in the New Testament, there is no category for a non-disciple “convert” or “adherent” of Jesus. Anyone who follows Him is considered His disciple. The disciple who is lazy about applying Jesus’ teachings to His life isn’t “a believer (or a convert, etc.), but not a disciple” as I’ve heard some people say; the New Testament calls them “unfaithful disciples.”

Jesus really intends for us to be His interns, His learning apprentices, people whose lives are being formed to be more and more like His own.

Romans 8:29 says,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

When I was a brand new Christian, I read this and thought maybe that in heaven we’ll all look like Jesus---you know, beard and sandals, the whole thing! It took me a while to realize that what God’s intention is that Jesus was raise up a people who would live like Jesus, love like Jesus, act like Jesus, serve like Jesus and by that show Jesus to the world.

This occurs through both a supernatural process and a natural process.

Supernaturally, there has to be the moment of decision that we talked about several weeks ago, when we repent and believe. We hear the message that Jesus is the way God has appointed to know Himself, we come to grips with our own spiritual brokenness, and we choose to follow Him now and forever. We can call that the New Birth, we can call that conversion, we can call that passing from death to life, from darkness to light, from being outside God’s family to being inside God’s family. This is a gift of God, a gift that comes from His grace, and it’s the work of God. It’s a gift that was won by the blood of Jesus on the cross. And when you receive that gift, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you.

That’s’ the supernatural process. Many of us act as if that’s all there is. God gives us salvation (spiritual rescue) and then we wait around until we die. We’ve slimmed down the good news of the kingdom of Jesus into a hell insurance policy!

Now let’s be really clear: I’m glad my eternal fire insurance policy is paid for, and it was paid for by the blood of Jesus on the cross. I’m glad for that. But Jesus didn’t just die to get us into heaven. He died to change the whole world, starting right now. It’s striking to me that when Jesus began His ministry, Mark tells us that the essence of His message was, "The time has come; the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15) It wasn’t, “Repent, one day you will die, you’d better get ready”—even though that’s the way we often try to present the good news. When Jesus came, He was talking about changing people’s lives right now.

Jesus’ disciples are the ones who understand the “right now” implications of His message. The Kingdom is here—therefore my life needs to be re-ordered along the lines of what’s important to my King.

And while the Spirit of God continues to work in us to empower us and to guide us, to continue on as a disciple is going to mean some real effort on our part. How do the supernatural work of God and our efforts work together?

Imagine a tropical island. It’s the end of July and it’s hot and humid and you’re sticky from head to toe. And you’re inland, too far from the beach and you just want to cool off. Lynann and I actually had an experience like this in Mexico in the summer of 2000, not far from Puerto Vallarta. We climbed a steep hill in a village not more than ten miles from the city because of a waterfall we’d been told was there, where there is a pool you can swim in.

But back to the story. So you see a waterfall on your humid island. Cool sheets of water come cascading down into a refreshing pool of water. Hot dog! Now you know how you’re going to cool off!

Think about it: that water comes down from above without any effort on your part at all. You might say this is a waterfall of grace. It’s a “supernatural waterfall”, coming down from above! I ask you a question: do you have to do anything to benefit from the waterfall? Be careful how you answer!

The answer is you still have to get under the waterfall to benefit from its blessings!

You can’t make it flow one drop, but knowing about it or admiring it or praising it doesn’t even get you wet! You’ve got to wade out into the pool and get under the flowing water!

In the same way, there’s a natural element in being a disciple of Jesus. You can say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but it won’t do you any good until you open it up, read it, study it and apply it to your life! That’s getting under the waterfall of God’s truth. Bible intake is one of several spiritual growth habits that are parts of being a disciple of Jesus. One of the things that a Jesus-following disciple does is do the things He did when it came to following the Father. That brings us back to the seven basic commands of Jesus:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Several of these are these spiritual growth habits because they are repeatable, such as celebrating the Lord’s Supper, prayer, giving and making disciples.

There are all kinds of repeatable things we can engage in that will draw us closer to the Lord and that’s part of being a disciple, a learner, an apprentice of Jesus. Let’s think of how these spiritual growth habits imitate Jesus and makes us more like Him.

Another, more historic word for “spiritual growth habit” is a discipline, but don’t let that make you think that we’re talking about something terrible. (Remember the “Pastor for Discipline”?) Here’s a short list of disciplines that Jesus engaged in that He wants His disciples to engage in as well (see how these words are connected?) Also, to make it simple, I’m using Dallas Willard’s classification of “disciplines of abstinence” (things you don’t do) and “disciplines of engagement” (that that you actively do):

Disciplines of Abstinence

Solitude: The practice of spending time without any others or any distractions. Many times we’re told that Jesus went away to a place where it could be just He and the Father.

Fasting: Abstain from food, media, entertainment, or anything else that occupies your time. Jesus taught that His disciples would fast. It’s a great way to feast on God alone that engages the body. Jesus fasted right after His baptism, and certainly fasted during the times on the Jewish calendar when the Law required it.

Frugality: Use your money for purposes outside your own needs for a time.

Chastity: Jesus was someone whose sexuality was under control. And yes, Jesus was a real man, so this was a real part of his walk with God. Married or unmarried, chastity is supposed to be a part of the life of all of Jesus’ disciples.

Secrecy: That’s when you keep your identity quiet in terms of deeds or do, or money you give, because you know that all that matters is that the Lord sees.

Sacrifice: This stretches your sense of what you can do without for the sake of those who have less. Jesus gave up the security of the carpenter’s shop during His ministry, and often went without in order to do the will of the Father.

Those are disciplines of abstinence—the “do without” disciplines. Then there are the disciplines of engagement, the “do this” disciplines. Here’s a few.

Disciplines of Engagement

Study: Do you think that Jesus studied Scripture? You bet! He studied it, memorized it and pondered it. You can’t absorb the Bible by putting it under your pillow. This is how God speaks to us—by His word!

Worship: Jesus engaged in corporate worship (in the synagogue and at the temple) as well as in times alone worshipping the Father. If Jesus, the Son of God, made time for worship, even more so must His disciples!

Celebration: That’s the discipline of being grateful and thankful both in your own relationship with God and with other believers. Jesus said, “My joy I leave with you.”

Celebration, intentional joy in the Lord is an important and often neglected ingredient in spiritual growth.Service: That’s when you give time to the God’s work and to people in need. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.” (John 13)

Prayer: Jesus had a deliberate prayer life; it didn’t happen by accident. His prayer life so impressed His disciples that they asked, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” Take deliberate steps to pray regularly and with purpose.

Fellowship: Jesus craved time with the twelve, and forged an even closer bond with the inner three—Peter, James and John. If He needed fellowship, then so do I!

Does all this seem tedious? Maybe a story from the movies will help.

How many of you remember the movie The Karate Kid? In the movie, young Daniel (Ralph Macchio) asks Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) to teach him karate. Miyagi agrees under one condition: Daniel must submit totally to his instruction and never question his methods.

Daniel shows up the next day eager to learn. To his chagrin, Mister Miyagi has him paint a fence. Miyagi demonstrates the precise motion for the job: up and down, up and down. Daniel takes days to finish the job. Next, Miyagi has him scrub the deck using a prescribed stroke. Again the job takes days. Daniel wonders, what does this have to do with karate, but he says nothing. Next, Miyagi tells Daniel to wash and wax three weather-beaten cars and again prescribes the motion.

Finally, Daniel reaches his limit: "I thought you were going to teach me karate, but all you have done is have me do your unwanted chores!" Daniel has broken Miyagi's one condition, and the old man's face pulses with anger. "I have been teaching you karate! Defend yourself!" Miyagi thrusts his arm at Daniel, who instinctively defends himself with an arm motion exactly like that used in one of his chores. Miyagi unleashes a vicious kick, and again Daniel averts the blow with a motion used in his chores. After Daniel successfully defends himself from several more blows, Miyagi simply walks away, leaving Daniel to discover what the master had known all along: skill comes from repeating the correct but seemingly mundane actions.

The same is true of being a disciple of Jesus. What we deposit day by day in our lives by obedience to Master Jesus transforms us into different people, people who are armed to prevail in life and serve the Kingdom of God. Brothers and sisters let us be true disciples of Jesus!