Living Discipleship: Integrating Faith into Daily Life

"now secondly what we're learning is to handle the ordinary events of daily life within the principles and power of god's kingdom rule, there are a lot of things that jesus didn't say anything about, you didn't say anything about driving the speed limit did he, i don't mean to, it's just an illustration of what he didn't talk about for obvious reasons, right, their vehicles were not very fast, and i'm sure there were some rules that needed to be observed, but there are just lots of things he didn't talk about, some i think not because they weren't there, but because they were covered in what he did say or something of that sort, but sometimes you need more instruction, it's one thing to know that you should love your family or your neighbor but then how you do that and what your neighbor is like and what are the different particular circumstances or in business, you're running a business, you need to be able to do that as jesus would run that business if he or you, not quite the same as what would jesus do, that's a little different, it's not a terribly bad idea, but for one thing you you need to sort of not have to ask that question in a lot of circumstances you need to know what he would do and just do it and you learn that by being with him, so a difficult committee meeting a family dispute a church fight writing a book living through some political dispute how would he do all that that's discipleship that's what you're learning as a disciple of jesus" [00:13:44]

"now you're learning all this in ways that will simply lift the burdens of life off of you, this is not something an extra job, this is something you learn as a part of what you're going to do anyway, so you're having you have to make a living you have to deal with people in various ways in real life, you have to get an education you have to enter a career finding someone to be wedded to and raise a family and all of that, that's where you want to understand that jesus is your teacher" [00:135:84]

"the church is not the kingdom of god it is an outpost of the kingdom of god and it extends the kingdom of god through its influence, that influence is primarily the transformation of the people who are there, that can keep you out of the mistake of worrying about the people who aren't there, see in church we want to deal with the people who are there we can do something for them i've preached a lot of empty chairs in my life some of them may have been converted and gone to heaven by now as far as i know, but what we need to do is to pay attention to the people who are there and we need to do that in a loving gracious way with the anointing of the power of god on us, and we need to be able to get to know their lives and talk to them helpfully about living in the kingdom of god wherever they are" [00:227:04]

"now we have to learn to act with the power of god and bringing the kingdom to bear, sometimes that is as simple or complex as simply learning how to pray, because prayer is a major part of what you need to learn, see prayer is a power sharing device for a world of recovering sinners, that's what it is, i say prayer, prayer is a power sharing device for a world of recovering sinners, that's what it is, and you know all that power can't be turned loose without some preparation, you have to learn how to do that, you read the wonderful promises in scripture and if you don't understand that then you'll read something like jesus saying in john 14 whatever you ask in my name that i will do that the father may be glory died in the son and he you know makes that statement and the things that i do my followers will do also and greater things than these that will they do because i go to my father" [00:305:28]

"and you just want to say well he must not be talking about me, but see that's a learning process, and the promises that are given along these lines are designed to help us understand there is nothing impossible, but of course there's some things that would be better if they didn't happen unless you can handle them, think of what your what would happen in your life if you started raising the dead, are you ready for that, well you'd have lots of business wouldn't you, people would be showing up at your door with corpses, so maybe i don't want to be that powerful, i actually spend a significant time in my own prayer with the lord asking him to make sure that i don't ever have enough power that my character can't stand it, see power without character is another one of the lessons that you learn as you read your bible, that's where you get your sampsons and your souls and that's where you get a lot of failures in public leadership, there's people who have got more power than they have character you say well why does god do that well actually god gives power to help people" [00:376:80]

"and sometimes when we think about gifts we want to remember that they're not for the benefit of the bearer therefore the benefit of others, and so when we think about prayer you have to understand that character is always involved with prayer, you don't want someone who can make a lot of things happen unless they've got the character to stand it, so if we want to get involved in then we say well lord lead my character on, very few of us i think come to the point where we have our ego in such abeyance that we could do anything very big and live through it, so that's why i say prayer is a power sharing device for a world of recovering sinners, learning to act with god's power in bringing your kingdom to bear on obvious human need individual and social" [00:527:20]

"so for example if you haven't come to the point to where when you pray for something you're not wondering about whether or not it's going to be answered, well you need to grow a little, i remember a pastor and i think he was characteristic he just hated to visit sick people in the hospital because he thought i'll have to pray for them and what if i pray for them and nothing happens, well maybe the issue isn't you, you've made it the issue, and so you have to learn how to move beyond that so you're not thinking about yourself when you're engaged in that, and that has a lot of implications for the use of power we said this morning that kingdoms work by words, remember that, and that's how kingdoms work" [00:592:56]

"the presence of the kingdom is with us mainly in god's action with us that's power, not force, but power, that's what we're learning as disciples, now, where do i do it, and the important thing is to under this understand the place where i learned this, you get some help at church hopefully if it's not a bunch of disciples you may not get much help, but if it's a people who are operating on jesus is charged to us then they would be ready to help us with these things, now i know many of you are leaders pastors and related to churches and organizations and so i'm really throwing a challenge right in your teeth, is this what you do, is this what you teach is this where you put the pressure so the place of discipleship is wherever i am, it's now, it's whatever i'm doing now, that is the place of discipleship, it may be home work play or the church, the church is a wonderful place for discipleship" [00:768:32]

"our work or job is of special importance in discipleship for that is where we put most of our time and effort, and to leave god out of that is to exclude him from most of our life, so i need to learn how to learn when i'm working what, and some of you have been talking about things that are real serious issues at your work, where you're being pushed in a direction that you don't believe is godly that's a part of what we have to learn how would jesus deal with that, so we go to him and ask the question and listen and study, we listen in our community and we try to learn how to do the things that he would do" [00:928:39]

"so now the gospel of the kingdom faith his confidence in jesus and his present kingdom that naturally leads to seeing my whole life as as the place of redemption, interactive relationship and to discipleship as learning from him how to lead my life as he would lead my life if he or i, okay, now in talking about transformation we cannot bypass discipleship, cannot do it, discipleship is the key to transformation, and that's a part of the good news of a life from above" [01:38:84]

"and uh given all of this you would expect perhaps if you came in from alpha centauri or someplace else in the universe you might say well i've been reading the bible you know on the trip down and so i assume that when i find a local congregation of christians they will be entirely devoted to spiritual formation of those who are in attendance, and unfortunately it doesn't work out that way, there's so much distraction, the demands of the organization, our traditions are faith and practice, and often there is a realization that what we wind up quote having to do in our role is not what we really feel it should all be about, and that actually is true across the professions now in medical field, in law i have so many of my students that go on in law and they come back two years later and they say man this is not what i had in mind, or maybe they get it past law school and get into practice and they thought they were going to do justice and they find out that justice is now due process, when you've had due process you've had justice, and you sit there and blink your eyes you say is that what that was, was that justice, so it's very discouraging to be pulled away from the ideals of what you thought your work was about by the traditions and practices that are prevalent" [01:68:84]