Part VI: The Posture of a Disciple
In this series we’ve explored the critical practices of pursuing Jesus Christ as our King. In my humble opinion, the activities we discussed are the ones that define the Christian life. They should be counted among First Things.
If anything, I hope I clearly made the point that the Christian life is not a life we absorb merely from our culture or family tradition. It’s nothing that we “marry into” or is forced upon us through ceremony at birth. Rather, Christianity is a life we choose. Being a disciple of Christ takes commitment, determination, and intentionality. Christianity is a person we pursue.
On our journey, we’ll be confronted with many distractions. The world is in no short supply of diversions which seek to edge out our relationship with the King. Even the Western church, with its focus on liturgical patterns and programs can send a false signal that church attendance and religious block-checking is what’s important. But we know deep down that this won’t do.
Over the years, I’ve come to learn that the difficulty of our pursuit is not in the rigor or complexity of our religious activity. Rather, it’s in the preservation of our focus. I think this is best illustrated in the story of Mary and Martha found in the Gospel of Luke:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42 (NIV)
Like these sisters, we too have welcomed Jesus into our home. Like Martha, we can allow life to become so busy that we miss the opportunities that (literally) sit before us. There is so much in life that has the appearance of importance. So much that demands urgency. But in the storms of life Jesus whispers to us that only one thing that is necessary. Like Mary, He invites us to simply take the posture of a disciple and rest at His feet.
Jesus Christ is the one thing–the focus of our pursuit. Sitting at the feet of our Lord is a position of rest. It’s a position of focus and attentiveness. It recognizes our complete dependence. It gives us space to take in His words so that we can know Him more deeply. It prepares us to follow Him.
In the last five posts I’ve provided a lot of ‘technical’ content to aid in growing your relationship with the Lord. We’ve spent a lot of time “deconstructing” the Christian life. In this post, I want to re-construct it in the form of five critical and inter-related disciplines that comprehensively summarize our activity of pursuing our Lord. As we struggle against daily distraction, think of these disciplines as our “spiritual posture”. They’re the means of entering more deeply into Christ and His Kingdom.
Give the Lord First Place
First, it’s critically important to give Christ first place in your life.
We live in a world that demands so much of our time. To better manage our time, we compartmentalize our lives around the buckets of family, work, recreation, religious activities, and sleep. When I was younger, I remember feeling terribly guilty about not having more of my life directly involved with God. Of course, by “God”, I meant things like spending time studying the Bible, time spent helping others, time spent at church, and time spent spreading the gospel. Trying to carve out additional time to fulfill these expectations was exasperating and often resulted in my thinking little about the Lord except during designated points on the schedule. But over the years I’ve learned that the Lord never meant for us to “compartmentalize” our Christianity.
Jesus is not just another isolated activity. When we give Christ “first place”, we’re giving Him preeminence over everything. He’s our objective–our overriding thought and consideration. He’s the lens through which we view the world. He’s the source of our life–our hopes, dreams, goals, and relationships, both big and small. Putting Christ first means seeking His path rather than our own. It means following Him rather than what’s easy, “natural”, or socially acceptable. It means to be disconnected from thoughts of self-preservation.
To be clear, I’m not advocating monasticism. There will be times for focused devotion to the Lord just as there are times of focused attention to life’s matters. But to authentically put Christ first is to recognize His rightful place in every aspect of our lives. This kind of mindset requires regular re-commitment. (For me that means just about every day.)
Stand Firm in the Truth
Second, it is vital to maintain awareness of the truth and stand firm in it.
Worldly distractions will draw us away from the truth about our identity and purpose as believers. Like Prince Rilian staring blankly into the magical fire, we can gradually become ‘functional’ non-believers under the weight of the daily grind. We can slowly come to believe that we’re nothing more than what society says we are and accept its worldview. This is what I call the tyranny of the ordinary.
To counter this threat, we must stand firm in the truth. The truth we claim has many facets, each inexorably linked to the identity of Jesus Christ and our identity in Him. Below are (in my humble opinion) the most important truths that exist:
- By His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus Christ has been made King over all. By His authority the Lord will fulfill His eternal purpose.
- We have been covered by the blood of Christ. Sin no longer separates us from the Lord. Because we are now ‘in Christ’, the Father sees us with the same righteousness as He sees His own Son.
- Because of the blood, we have been made children of the Father and brothers and sisters of the Son. We are the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. We have been invited to participate in the eternal fellowship of the Godhead. We’re now family with the Lord and with one another.
- We are the Bride of Christ. We are loved with an infinite and everlasting love that burns with the fury of Eternity. Christ is mind-blowingly in love with us! Because of this, Jesus enthusiastically pursues our deepest fellowship. His deepest desire is that we know Him.
- He is our shelter, our sufficiency, our supremacy, our source, our freedom, our peace, and our rest, from which nothing can separate us.
- God is not distant. He dwells in us every moment of every day. For this reason we have continuous access to the divine nature of Jesus Christ–to be directed, animated, and empowered by His very Life. Because of Christ’s indwelling, we’re not merely ‘sinners saved by grace’. Through Him, we are more than conquerors.
- We have been invited into His restoration project of making all things new. We have been given authority to embody, proclaim, and demonstrate His Kingdom here on earth against the systems of this world that enslave and oppress. Our war is an offensive against these systems.
- After His return, we will rule and reign with Him in the new creation. We’re all accelerating toward something much greater than what we see today.
No doubt, you’ve heard these things before (especially if you’ve subscribed to these posts). In fact, many are so familiar with these truths in the Christian conversation that they become commonplace. They’ve become mental concepts disconnected with real life.
But it’s one thing to know truth and another thing to know it. For these ideas to be formative, they must go deeper than mental comprehension. They need to penetrate the surface of our thinking. They need to be revealed in our spirits.
For this to happen we must ruminate on the depths of these truths and what they mean to us today. We need to surround ourselves with others who can remind us of these truths and with whom we can live them out in practical ways. We must encourage one another with the weightier truth as Christ re-reveals it to us in new and amazing ways. An abiding awareness of such things can change us and the world around us.
Practice His Presence
Third, it’s important to practice the presence of your unseen Lord.
You have a Lord who has been hard-wired into your spirit. He is with you and in you every moment of every day. He doesn’t just take up space. His words are living and active. He wishes to have moment-by-moment fellowship with you, speaking to you His love, offering you His direction, and encouraging you with an endless supply of His divine Life.
In light of this truth, it’s important to build into our lives habits that facilitate awareness of the Lord who is in us and all around us. We have to “tune in” to his frequency by minding Him in the ordinary activities of life. These habits lead to awareness. Awareness leads to fellowship and intimacy.
Since your Lord is with you all the time, engage Him! Seek periods of focused devotion, but turn to Him also in the moments. See Him in your surroundings and in your present situation. Go for walks with Him. Invite Him to think through your thoughts and offer His direction. Speak your appreciation and love to Him. Tell Him your frustrations, your feelings, your hopes and dreams. Grow a sense of expectancy of His activity in your life and those of others. Invite Him into your work and your leisure. Allow Him enjoy life along with you! Speak about Him with your friends and family (even at “inappropriate” times). Declare His love for others who need to hear it (maybe starting with your own family). Allow Him to sanctify each moment with His presence.
In time practicing the Lord’s presence will become second nature. But we need to be careful that we’re not establishing habits of mindless ritual. We’re establishing a relationship with a very real person who’s ecstatic about His fellowship with you and will delight in revealing His greatness and glory.
Internalize Your Lord
Fourth, take the time to feed on Christ. Drink deeply from Him as your Source.
As great as it is to be marked by the Holy Spirit and engage in an authentic relationship with the Lord, these things alone are not enough. To truly live the Christian life is to operate by the divine life of Jesus Christ. Jesus has promised to supply us with an endless quality of His zoe life. However, just like any other fuel-consuming device, a one-time “fill-up” will only get us so far. We leak and will always need to be supplied with more of His life (which He’s always happy to offer).
Jesus taught us that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we will have no life in us. The fellowship meal of wine and unleavened bread is a representation of this act that we engage in the physical realm. However, we also appropriate Him in the spiritual realm by using our spiritual faculties to turn to Him and behold Him.
We can behold Him in our spirits and in one another. We can see Him in scripture. He reveals Himself in the created landscape. We can see Him in the eyes of the poor and oppressed. We witness His sufferings as we bear our own. Some people feed on Christ through one or two paths (i.e. only through scripture or only through worship, etc.) When we do that, we run the risk of having a relationship with the Lord that is one-dimensional. So change it up! Jesus is a meal where each ingredient perfectly compliments the overall flavor of the dish. Jesus isn’t just only found in the pages of scripture. He’s a 4D, multisensory experience! Fellowship, study, meditation, fasting, silence, solitude, service, worship, celebration… The ways we can behold Him are as diverse as the Lord Himself.
When we turn to Christ and behold Him by our spirits, we’ll be rewarded with a revelation of His glory and grace. Here, the Lord will deposit a view of Himself so mind-blowing that wipes everything else off the map. When we are captured by the sight of His infinite worth, everything else will become a tasteless vapor. Overwhelmed by the sight of His glory and grace, we’re compelled to forsake all else to be led by and conformed to the image of our King. It’s by revelation that we truly come to know Him in a deep and experiential way.
Follow the King
Lastly, we need to understand that the point of all previous disciplines is to place us in a position of following our Shepherd.
Let’s be clear. To truly follow Jesus Christ is a death sentence. As disciples, we no longer have a right to our life. We have a tendency to crawl back on the throne of our lives. To avoid this, we must continually die to ourselves to ensure Christ maintains His rightful place of authority. The spiritual landscape is littered with the wreckage of those who thought they could follow Christ while also pursuing the world’s idea of the “good life”. These two things are usually incompatible. But we believe our King when he promised that, while the road is narrow, He offers the path to the highest life. It’s with this promise that we concede to His will, set our entire lives at His feet, and commit to following in His footsteps through journeys both big and small. He will use the pain of this world to work His life into yours.
To follow the Lord is not to follow a list of rules, precepts, or traditions. It requires that we first establish a solid foundation of closeness with our indwelling Lord. It’s only through a deep and abiding relationship that we’ll be able to sense His illumination and direction. He will speak to those who want to hear. Only when we tune out the world and abide in our Lord will we be able to hear His voice and follow Him.
To follow the Lord is to defer to His thoughts and actions and displace our natural inclinations with His. It’s to be detached from the situation and our thoughts of self-preservation. Following Jesus is to give Him the freedom to live His life through you as you continuously present yourself to Him. It’s to be receptive to His activity and open to His spontaneity.
To follow Christ is to walk in continuous, conscious dependence. Radical trust is the precursor to every thought and action. We recognize that we can do nothing of eternal value without His involvement. The good news is that we now live by a life not our own.
We can’t, but He can.
What I’ve described are the essential activities of the Christian life. Over the centuries, Christian practice has become many things. But at its core, it has only ever really been about these five things. They are our posture toward the King. While they represent progressive steps that build onto one another, they’re also represent a spiral approach to engaging the Lord since they reinforce one another over time. There’s really nothing else to add. Like with other First Things, rather than adding anything new, we’ll instead go deeper.
Some Western church-goers will ask, “Where is Bible study on your list? Where is prayer and fellowship? Aren’t they important?” I would tell them that such things are specific expressions of some of the broader practices I’ve described. What I’ve attempted to do is elevate our perspective so that we can avoid being entrapped in a legalistic “to do list” that shrinks our understanding of what it means to pursue Christ. Without the broader perspective, religions activities such as prayer and Bible study can become a mechanical exercise disconnected from their purpose. As you practice these disciplines, recognize the Lord as your first objective. The Lord will then lead you into specific means of expression.
I would suggest that if your spiritual life is suffering, it’s likely because one or more of these disciplines are weak or missing. Practice the areas that are weakest. This will take time and effort–there is no shortcut, pill, or ‘easy button’ to pursuing Christ.
Some may find there will be times when you might question whether this investment is really worth the effort. When you do, I would recommend you go back and re-read the First Things series. The depths of the mystery of Christ have a way of pulling us back and refreshing our commitment.
Lastly, if you have any specific questions about anything I’ve talked about, feel free to drop a comment. If you’re too shy to comment, send me a personal email through the link “About First Things” under the menu bar. This blog is here to support and encourage you in your walk with Christ.
And so am I.