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February 2, 2023February 4, 2023

Forward Motion

The young man from Schulter glanced to his right, then left. The sun had just set and in the half-light of dusk, he knew he dare not wait. He must leap aboard the slow-moving freight train at this exact moment or not at all.

Over the coming days in varied rail yards along his westward route, a similar scene replayed. At last, his final “hijacked” train ride landed him in Oakland. Clyde was poor, having fled his native Oklahoma where an awful drought – the notorious Dust Bowl – was underway. He had to find work. The Golden State (so he was told) offered the best promise.

Weeks passed.

In a matter of days, blisters from handling construction shovels had risen on his palms. He knew that ditch digging held little promise of a future for him and his bride-to-be. But the job put dollars into Clyde’s pocket, for now, some of his first since landing in Oakland.

He worked hard and soon the ambitious Okie answered a newspaper ad, “Plumber’s Helper”.

After a short stint on the job, Clyde advanced from ‘helper’ to ‘apprentice.’

“Plumber’s Apprentice. How about that.”

Growing up in the home of Clyde Baxter Lout, I caught wind of several names. These were his fellow journeyman plumbers. Kloon. Leggett. Mason, among others.

For my dad, choosing the route of apprenticeship bore fruit.

Apprenticing to Jesus Christ bears fruit as well. Enduring and gratifying fruit. Kingdom fruit.

The apprentice-to-Jesus has shifted gears in his life’s trajectory. He sets out to grow into the kind of person he believes he’s marked by heaven to become. He embraces something called spiritual formation. Not everyone calls it this. Some speak of sanctification – an ongoing work of grace. It is characterized by living forward into a different kind of life, life on God’s terms.

At such a juncture some seekers after ‘more’, offer up a clear “Yes, I’m in. I will be a disciple of Jesus.” For others, there is a warming process, like a courtship. Regardless, a new kind of season has gotten underway. For many who have caught the astonishingly good taste of God’s pardoning love and have drunk deeply of it through faith, they need no further persuading. They are in for a lifetime! As a widely-sung campfire melody puts it, “No turning back, no turning back.”

January 25, 2023

Bridging the Divide

Our cinema van slowed, rolling forward to the shoreline.

Africa’s vast body of water, Lake Victoria, lay directly ahead. If we should reach our destination, Rusinga Island, we must await the ferry here at Mbita Village.

We watched the ferry approach. Soon the Toyota, bearing us two missionaries, a diesel generator, a movie projector and gospel films departed the mainland. We and our cargo floated toward the water-encircled land before us.

Throughout it all the ferry was key. We had no other way to make it there. This was it, the ferry. Just this.

A religious group in the city where I now live set a sign in front of their meeting place. The organization promotes an idea that there are many equally valid “life paths”.

The sign reads, What is the true bible for you?

To the disciple of Jesus, such a question seems odd.

To his delight, the disciple has found that the book of the ages – the Holy Bible – holds in its pages the answers to life’s biggest questions. Foundational truths addressing the deepest concerns of every culture and people through every generation are preserved in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts.

Amazingly, the Bible leads anyone who responds to its invitation to the answer of all life’s primary needs. That answer does not lie in a philosophy or a principle or a creed. Rather, in a person. Jesus.

The earnest Christ-follower stands assured that each broken individual, every fractured, upside-down society can be healed, can be put right. Truths found in scripture supply hope for every soul who lives. What is needed is opening and reading and honestly considering the Book’s words. And responding to God, to his salvation offer of ongoing abundant living with him. In surrender to Jesus.

What Bible is for me?

The disciple has looked carefully at Jesus’ life in the scriptures and says, “I like what I see in the nature of this person, Jesus. I want that. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted, more than anything I could ever want.”

Terrific! It is at this place then, we must meet our challenge. Deep waters lie before us, our complete inability on our own of getting to the place we need to go. It is like gazing across Victoria’s waters to Rusinga Island but with no ferry to get us there.

Good news.

The disciple is not left stranded, the apprentice is given means. A land of the living beckons.

January 19, 2023January 19, 2023

Aim

Certain words have a way about them.

Through every century since Jesus first employed it the term Disciple has pulsed with meaning.

‘Disciple’ carries a weight, an identity and an assignment. A central aim of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth gets captured by this term. Indeed, the final commissioning words the resurrected Christ offered to his followers on the Jerusalem hillside brings it home,

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”.* He pronounced the assignment to his followers, and was gone.

The phrase is clear. It states what Jesus wants. Go. Make disciples.

So, what does disciple mean? Wikipedia doesn’t always get it right with definitions. In this case it has,

“In the ancient world, a disciple is a follower or adherent of a teacher. It is not the same as being a student in the modern sense. A disciple in the ancient biblical world actively imitated both the life and teaching of the master. It was a deliberate apprenticeship which made the fully formed disciple a living copy of the master.”

Apprenticeship. Words do have a way about them. In his work The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard helps us with the word apprentice.

Two words. . . Disciple. Apprentice. . . their meaning is the same. This is helpful when the sincere believer asks, “What does becoming a follower-of-Jesus look like?”

So Jesus – savior, teacher, trainer – walks along-side his redeemed ones. He is with them every moment in the person of the Holy Spirit under the caring eye of Father God. He is accessible to his children and they to him. The believer may draw on the peace, joy, love and power of the Spirit’s present companionship.

Consider this. What richer offer could come one’s way as we go about living our lives in real time on this earth? The offer is authentic. But it is more than an offer, it is Christ’s commissioning to every believer,

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.”*

There it is, right from the New Testament. Apprentice language.

Probably a good early question we might ask of ourselves, “Who am I, as a Christian? Am I a forgiven sinner permitted into heaven when I die? Am I that and only little more?” Or am I stirred somehow toward becoming what Jesus stated he was after – a person easily recognizable as God’s child? One growing more and more to resemble the son of the Father in both character and conduct. Being as he was. Doing as he did.

Increasing numbers of believers are making the shift, growing on purpose into Jesus-likeness. Am I in?

*Ephesians 5:1; Matthew 28.19

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023

Assigned

I had known him before our class meeting that day in the early ‘80s. But the friendship grew once X-tray Tech Haniel Karithi joined the studies in a theology program I supervised.

Apprenticing to Jesus means – among other things – stretching one’s self. Allowing him to prompt us to God-sized assignments.

Sometime after our many weekly extension classes, Haniel, with his wife, Peninah sensed a stirring. They felt God’s call to relocate.

Young children in tow, Haniel and Peninah would leave their home in the lush, fertile highlands of Mt Kenya. They would begin serving Jesus in a different kind of place. Among a different kind of people.

After long hours of bus travel northward along paved, then dusty roads, the little family arrived at Marsabit town. Then to villages beyond. Life all around them felt foreign. The northern frontier district featured a landscape harsh, dry, brutally hot.

Years before Haniel had applied himself as an apprentice to master skills in medical technology. Now in this new world of strangeness, he (and his wife) entered a different sort of apprenticing. Haniel and Peninah gave themselves to grow. Learning of and adjusting to new sights and sounds and flavors. Food – Music – Customs – Dress – Language. Change was tough going at times. They pressed on, praying, trusting, hoping.

The couple yielded themselves more and more. They sensed Jesus’ deep care toward a people group lacking any knowledge of him, or of God’s grace.

Every believer (every follower-of-Christ) is called to discipleship. If the Bible says anything true about Christians it is that they are a people engaged. They pursue the way of God. They do this imperfectly. Yet, God’s Spirit aids them. Their prize and goal is love, always love.

Probably only a few people on the planet are invited by God to change their zip code for the Sahel Region of Africa. Yet, an adventure beyond imagining awaits every single Christ-follower who offers an obedient ‘yes’. Our ‘yes’ is relational at its core.

Yes, I’ll move nearer to Jesus than where I have been lately. Yes, with his aid I will turn my ear toward his voice. Then, do the same again, until a pattern forms.

Common folks like Haniel and Peninah remind us such a kind of living is within reach. Apprenticing to Jesus is doable.

Help me, Lord, would you? Help me trust. Place about my shoulders your ‘easy yoke.

January 5, 2023January 4, 2023

Which Me?

Turning my Sherlock Holmes microscope away from other people’s lives – their habits of mood and attitude and behavior – I nervously aim the instrument to myself. Assuming I am taking an honest inventory, sweat droplets begin beading on my forehead.

In my (imaginary) self-exam mode, I assess how I am doing in a brief series of 24-hour segments. Suppose that early on, I might register a good day (part of a good day?) where my natural responses to people and circumstances rank pretty well on the ‘selflessness’ scale. I start feeling a little heady over this, start edging toward self-congratulatory mode.

But right when the ego celebration is about to launch, I catch a nagging reminder that this is not all that I am called upon to have brought about in my life. I am a willing and, yes, loving follower of Christ.

I begin drilling down beyond the superficial. And find that the onion surface conceals a lot of layers. I rediscover that I am a whole being – body, mind, heart, will. What if my master, Jesus, is calling me to full-on renovation? That would mean a lot of things.

It would mean the disassembling – portion by portion – of the entire bundle (thinkings, feelings, choosings, etc), followed by the methodical rebuilding of all. His way. After all, if he is set on my growing to fully resemble him (in character, patience, generosity, service, peace, joy, love), a hefty amount of ‘me’ has got to go. Such transformation would mean my being somehow ‘traded off’ for a better ‘me’. Interestingly, someone* wrote a useful book about that very thing, “The Me I Want to Be”.

Pondering all this, I pause a moment and offer a half-whispered question, “Is this what Jesus asks of a disciple? Can the apprentice get to the place the master is leading him toward without the disciple’s all-out surrender to a renovated life? A radically changed life?

December 29, 2022December 29, 2022

En Route

What does a Christ-loving disciple look like?

Imagine for a minute being assigned the task of people-watching for a day, having one focused objective as the aim. Locate and identify one or more persons within your neighborhood or town whose natural disposition is one of consistent selflessness. You are looking diligently to spot such a selfless, caring person wherever you go today – the marketplace, school, office, in traffic.

In your investigative people-watching quest you’re especially on the lookout for responses these persons give as they encounter life’s circumstances and people. Facial gestures, body language, speech come under the microscope as you watch for the exceptionally selfless person amidst the rest. You might recognize them as “Jesus-like” in this one regard. Selflessness.

Gaining this rare kind of closeup look at people’s lives in numerous settings and conditions might prove revealing, right. (a creepy exercise, yes. We’re only imagining, remember).

Carrying our imaginary survey a step further, at the end of the day you review in your mind the parade of individuals you have ‘spied on’ (we assume you’re a benevolent spy).

By now you can identify dispositions (observable attitudes) of a good number of run-of-the-mill Sallys and Joes for this one day. Giving it your best shot, you might now zero in on two or three of the ‘most impressive subjects’ you’ve tracked. Lovely dispositions, all.

Your new assignment – soon ending the creepy espionage game – you undertake the first task once more. Now, however, you are tracking only the one or two people you’ve deemed as ‘high-ranking’. For them the disposition test will now run not for just a day but for seven days, a full week.

I must offer a confession here. While writing the imaginary scenarios above, I felt my interior self ‘looking over my shoulder’. Let me never be so observed or evaluated! A further sensation is one of feeling immeasurable gratitude to the One whose regenerating love covers “a multitude of sins.”

Can we hope that the illustration, flawed as it is, might bring home a couple worthy lessons for us as we aspire to closer kinship in our apprenticing walk with Jesus. Stay tuned.

December 22, 2022December 21, 2022

Living Springs

What now should be done?

For quite a good while my Christian journey centered on “shoulds”.

I had believed on Christ in my youth. I knew he had pardoned my sins through his sacrifice on a cross. When I turned to him, confessing my wrongs and trusting in him, I knew deep down that I was now his. The Bible speaks of being born anew from above. That was me.

I also knew in those earliest years of grace that my life in Jesus was not meant to plateau. It was meant to keep changing. I was not meant to live my life any longer on my own. His salvation was to go deeper than just getting me into heaven after this life.

But there was a problem. I lacked some critical knowledge about how that might work.

Over time I came to think and live as though “pleasing God” was the central purpose of my being his child. Some poor thinking took form, ironically, through things I often heard in church. My understanding of the gospel – God’s good news for all people – had gradually changed to something called “performance-living”.

I was no longer fully living my faith from the inside out. Rather, becoming Jesus-like seemed to call for taking on the next God-pleasing task assigned me. Such tasks, I was reminded, were what I “should do” if I were indeed a true Christian.

It’s worth noting that none of the Christian performances I undertook were bad. Not at all. They were good, sometimes noble, acts of service.

Like many Christians, as I later realized, many of my “wants” were in the right place. Discovering this brought a measure of comfort. After all, I hungered to please God and longed to be a truly “good Christian”. One thing that seemed lacking now was joy, the happy measure of joy I had tasted in those earlier God-companioned days.

And too, the sweet empowering love of earlier days began to wane. My good Savior’s springs of abundant living were being traded for an overburdening list of shoulds.

Only later would I recover the way of living Jesus had in mind for his disciples all along. More of a fruit-bearing kind of living. While not all things going forward would prove fun or easy, my way would become characterized more as a joyous, teamed-up partnership with him.

In the company of fellow disciples-in-training, I could move ahead under his accepting, empowering Spirit. The season was to become a very special period of training for me – especially in discovering how eager Jesus was about all this. His label for it, “life in abundance. . . in the easy yoke”.

December 15, 2022December 14, 2022

The Branch – a yuletide narrative

[Note. This fictional six-minute read may best be savored while relaxing with a steaming cup of hot tea or cool glass of eggnog. Regardless, Merry Christmas to you and yours.]]

Gaspar sat atop the moving beast, his body swaying in the rolling gait. Memories stirred.

He savored such occasions as this when he could, without interruption, review his past, his station in life, and his good fortune.

Gaspar knew that certain inner qualities had seemed to elude him. Like humility. He found himself growing uneasy these days with his self-congratulatory reflections. But only slightly.

‘Of Course it was I”, he mused, “I, who first took serious note of the unique light beam in the western sky. And didn’t I, Gaspar, in my research, uncover the mystery-promises?’

The promises he reflected on were oral references of ancient Hebrew parchments – oracles predicting a king’s birth. A child-king promised to the Hebrew peoples. . . perhaps even to the larger world!

‘Of Course, it was I.’

His shoulders lowered and he sighed, still hesitant to credit others who were equally vital to the venture onto which they had embarked. At this point they were months in.

The star’s brightness radiated almost directly overhead now. Gaspar squirmed atop the saddle. A curious discomfort of spirit had been welling within. The saddled shifted again.

The star’s beam – brighter than he had yet observed it – converged, it seemed, with another kind of light.

Gaspar felt a stab of conscience unlike any he had felt before. The regal traveler muffled a cry.

“Impure! Impure am I – unworthy and defiled! I have regarded my brothers with contempt!”

His remorse persisted, conviction’s light piercing his inmost self. “Unworthy.”

His brow furrowed, “Yet before whose face I am unworthy I know not. This I do know, I dare not proceed to the place of the king-child, not with this, this inner stain.”

He mused further within himself, ‘Who is this one really, this child? Is it he himself who moves upon me so – here beneath the night sky, even before I behold his face?’

He drew his camel back and brought a scarf about his face.

At his command the camel lowered its frame to the sandy earth. Dismounting it, Gaspar went to his knees. I must find mercy. . . mercy!

“Oh exalted being”, he whispered, his eyes turned to the heavens, “Oh great governor of constellations. . . mercy!”

In this moment he sensed a thing wholly new to any experience he had known. Sitting motionless, the learned star-chaser felt a warming presence – bathing him, it seemed. Wave on purifying wave. Burning, cleansing. . . Comforting. Wave on wave.

Gaspard did not measure how long he lingered before moving to rise. His right foot pressed beneath him so long had lost feeling. Extending one hand upward, he grasped a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree. A picture slowly took form in Gaspar’s mind as he rose, balancing himself on the steadier foot.

‘Yes, yes, I am seeing it now.” His grip tightened about the branch. “This is who I am, I am a man not able, not of my own might, to properly stand. I am out-of-balance, weak and in great need of support – much as this tree limb supplies aid for my body now.’ The thought lingered.

He sensed within him the stirring of a fresh, even joyful, resolve. A whispered pledge began to form – strong, tender. His jaw anchored in place even as tears of relief moistened his eyelids,

‘From this hour I shall walk in the company of others. . . Yes, in the company of my brothers – Melchior and Balthazar! Indeed, and all others about me. All unto whom I shall henceforth render true service. And to my household, my family. Yes, we shall be – each to the other – a supporting limb. As a branch.’ Gaspard lifted his gaze skyward, his voice fading to a whisper, ‘May we find strength.’

Suddenly, excited voices came, spirited cries, from a place further ahead.

Each step brought him nearer, discerning more clearly the shouts – jubilant, adoring, calls voiced in varied tongues – Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian. The calls rang in proclamation, shouting sacred homage to a special personage, obviously near at hand.

The child-king!

A Hebrew voice bearing a trace of Persian accent rose strong amidst the others. Distinct, jubilant.

Cupping a weathered palm to his ear, Gaspar savored the exclamations.

“All worship to him”, the shouts went up, “to the Christ-child, the Messiah!”

More titles followed, “to the King! The Morning star . . .

“the branch!”

Gaspar’s heart leapt, ‘the Branch?’

He swallowed. A breeze touched his face, stirring his graying beard. Turning briefly, he glanced to the tree and its still-extended limb, now back of him and beyond reach.

Peering once again to the path ahead the sage took in the lighted glow of a modest dwelling. A tender and purest kind of warmth enveloped him,

“Soon I shall offer up my gift of myrrh to this, this regal young one – my Lord.”

Gaspar gave a tug to his animal’s halter. “Come, camel. Do you see the light of the dwelling there, camel? It is there at that place we shall meet a child. .

“The King-child. The Branch.” *

December 8, 2022December 7, 2022

Proactive

The thing about transformation into Christlikeness is that the process is impossible. It is, frankly, unproductive.

Apart from him.

Becoming like Jesus in disposition, in love and in happy obedience. These are aims which can be realized. But only by his very close-at-hand presence working with his disciples.

Many have learned that no better life exists than a life wholly yielded to God. It is he who empowers, he who changes us to Jesus-likeness!

We hear the saying, “Practice makes perfect”. The principle applies in the area of spiritual transformation as surely as in any other. Our practicing is done not alone, but with God’s continued aid. His nearness grows evident as we grow in prayer.

Three men – all friends, employees at the same local university – have seen something play out year after year. The men are followers of Jesus. Each one takes a proactive approach to being with Jesus in the place and profession where he’s placed them.

Years ago one member of this trio, a science professor, invited the other two to walk the campus every week prior to office hours. The idea was simple. Walk and pray. Pray and walk. The practice goes on year after year. One-half hour each Friday the three move steadily along, eyes wide open (when praying one wants to avoid colliding with lamp posts and the like).

Two outcomes have arisen from this year-after-year practice by common gentlemen whose informal praying carries the ‘scent’ of the love of God.

Each fellow – Jerry, Pete, John – sees growth quietly happening in his personal and family life. Positive changes from down within their own souls.

Also, the three look back occasionally and note various things (good things) happening here at their place of employment. They see God at work in lives of students, faculty members, grounds keepers, administrators. Noting such things lifts their spirits. They carry forward in their Friday practice the next week, and the next. Praying without fanfare or fuss. Praying.

Individual and community prayer gives rise to caring more deeply for one’s fellow human. An increased lightheartedness settles in throughout the work day. Tensions, while not vanishing altogether, diminish. A marked tranquility is sensed.

The Bible identifies such qualities in precise terms – love, joy, and peace. Each one an expression of the Holy Spirit’s fruit highlighted in a New Testament book*. These qualities were routinely demonstrated in one particular life. The life of Jesus.

Faith-grounded praying works things into people and conditions over time. The discipline of prayer transforms individuals and groups, from the inside out.

December 1, 2022December 1, 2022

Help En Route

Taking Jesus Christ as both our destination (our full human aim) and our with-God companion, we soon realize (or likely should) that our basic life focus really must change. To quote John the Baptizer, “He (Jesus) must increase, I must decrease.” After all, a Jesus-resemblance does not naturally spring forth through this jar of clay which God unflatteringly labels “dust”.

We ask God to lend a hand in training us to live as we are designed to live. He does better, not giving merely his hand but his entire self.

Here is how I think this “with-Jesus” living works.

First, he shows to us our need of getting rescued. Next he rescues us through sacrificially dying and then resurrecting. By this means Jesus has supplied us with something incalculable – forgiveness of all wrongs. All.

This is the start.

God now sets us on an entirely new path by which we along with others shall walk. Jesus shares with us his life and his kind of living here, now, in this broken world.

Also, quite amazingly, God introduces another element. He supplies a Helper – a living, empowering personal helper to aid us throughout. Holy Spirit (the Helper) moves into our lives.

Jesus makes clear that his gracious, all-powerful Holy Spirit is now among us to work mightily in shaping us to grow ever more like our master.

Under the Spirit’s empowering and in the guidance of God’s Word, the Bible, we proceed forward taking wonderful baby steps, in living as Jesus lives. Furthermore, we are helped at nearly every turn by other fellow disciples.

Do we tremble a little with fear? Are we uncertain of what our tomorrows hold? Surely.

Still, faith and love tug us forward. Confidence in him has taken root.

Family members – those other imperfect but forward-moving disciples – travel with us and we with them. We are indeed an imperfect, sometimes struggling company of persons. Some have employed the term, Ragamuffins. Our aim is Jesus.

We want above all else to be with Jesus and to grow to love like him – to give like him, and to laugh and to weep and to serve like him.

The one way this happens is in spending time with Jesus. Often simply one-on-one, but also with him in the presence of those “others” of his family. They need us. We need them.

Our coming to fully resemble who Jesus is in the world is no sprint.

But in the company of his grace we are set. We lean in.