Disciples not students…
Mar 1st, 2010 by ljkim
I meet many Christians who seem to have a solid grasp of Christian theology and an understanding of how Christianity shapes worldview and culture…and yet feel like Jesus just a concept to them. Jesus the person seems strange and alien, unimaginable, distant, difficult. I understand this. And I don’t think it’s just an isolated problem for a small group of people – looking out at the conservative Christianity in the U.S., I think I see a lot of well-meaning Christians who are somewhat alienated from Jesus. Maybe alienated is too strong a word… But something is wrong, something is missing, and I think it can happen to anybody.
So how do you make Jesus real again? Encounter Him? It has to do with what we’re talking about on Sunday… The way Jesus taught stuff and taught about himself was not through a particular message/sermon, but through the process of discipleship. The point of becoming a disciple was to know Him, and to learn His teaching… To do that it wasn’t enough to listen to His lectures and think – one had to go where He went, do what He did, and do what He asked…
The idea is that as you “DO” these things (what He did, allowing Him to set the agenda, and also doing what He asked you to do…), through the interactive process of listening and DO-ing, you learn stuff about Jesus and what He’s saying. You don’t just learn by listening – but *understanding* the deep things comes as a result of listening and Do-ing…
This is true of regular people and more mundane situations too… You don’t get to know a person on a date or interview, by asking “So tell me about yourself.” You get to know a person, and the actual person becomes real to you as you do stuff with the person, respond to their requests as well make requests of your own, agree, disagree, etc. Real people are three dimensional, whereas talk is one dimensional, or maybe two. You need the reality of action to know them.
This brings us to the question: So what’s God’s agenda for you today? What is He doing and what does Jesus want you to DO?
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