Transformative Living: Embracing Jesus' Teachings Daily

The reason why these courses at such uh august institutions are popular is because of a basic truth about human beings. Far, far more than we need to know how to make a living, we need to know how to make a life. How should we live our lives? Where do we find wisdom? [00:02:12]

Blessed, he says, are the poor in spirit. The good life comes to even unlikely candidates. That word is always a little tricky to translate. Some translations simply say happy, the poor spirit, those who mourn, not because those are happy conditions, but because now life together with God in his kingdom is available to absolutely anybody. [00:03:07]

And he says it has to come from a transformed inside, what Dallas Willard in this book we're going through calls the renovated heart. Bless your goodness, your righteousness, the old word for it, exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees who tried to do externally good behaviors but did not neglect to pursue the transformation of that inner flow of thoughts and perceptions and desires and choices all the time. [00:03:30]

The most fundamental thing is to be clear on what an apprentice of Jesus is. It's people who have learned to trust Jesus with our whole lives and therefore make our ultimate goal trying to be with him from one moment to the next to learn from him how to live like him. That's our course, that's our class, that's our teacher this day. [00:04:10]

Two different though inseparable aspects of discipleship need to be singled out. Dallas writes on page 241, the first is what we might in misleading language describe as the specifically religious aspect. Here we are learning to understand and do the things Jesus gave us in specific commandments and teachings. [00:04:36]

While developed in the gatherings of disciples, this learning is only completed as we take it into all our life activities, especially at home and at work, and increasingly practiced there as a matter of course the things that Jesus taught. So those are the direct teachings what Dallas puts in language that he says might be a bit misleading is religious. [00:06:24]

Concerns all the details of what for lack of a better term we call our secular, our non-churchy life. How do you run a business? How do you live with your parents or live with a maid or raise a family? How do you get along with neighbors? How do you participate in government? How do you get an education? [00:07:17]

He walks with me and he talks with me as the old hymn says about all these matters. Nothing is too small, nothing is too ordinary. So here are two of the little things that you can learn from Jesus today just as throwaway examples. There is no limit to this. He walks with me. [00:08:00]

How are you walking right now? You know one of the oldest phrases in the Bible to describe what life can be is to say for example of the character Enoch, Enoch walked with God, Abraham walked with God, Moses walked with God. Let's just start physically with your body with walking which is a gift. How do you walk? [00:09:00]

And then she says walk with your head up high like there was a string connecting your head to heaven. I have another friend, um I won't mention his name but you know who you are while you listen to who said that sometimes he kind of slumps over when he walks and his wife just pokes him in the back. [00:09:27]

And somehow when we walk heel to toe, shoulders back and down, head up real high, our body reminds us oh yeah I'm just not walking by myself. I am walking. How are you going to walk today? See to be an apprentice of Jesus means taking something as ordinary and as walking and beginning to do it with him. [00:10:04]

And there is no detail too small to be unable to reflect the beauty and goodness and joy and generosity of the kingdom of God. How do you answer your phone today when you pick it up? How do you send an email? How do you sign off on it? How do you look at somebody? How do you put on your clothes? [00:11:41]