apprentices – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

August 31, 2023

For Normal People

The guitarist who does the strumming is vital to the exercise of generating attractive sounds. The most artfully crafted instrument only reflects practical worth once it is held and strummed. The instrument’s purpose for being does not get realized until it rests in the musician’s hands. It is here where movement and melody get set in motion.

Probably the most wonderful thing about offering up praises and petitions is the fact that praying is not a solo act. The disciple is not on his own. Any Christ-follower taking up the instrument of prayer in hopes of bearing fruit, does so with the chief maestro closely at hand. “The one who remains in me and I in him”, promises Jesus, “bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”*

As apprentices of Jesus ‘shadow’ his movements – praying, as he often did, passages from the Book of Psalms, etc. – they happily draw upon resources beyond themselves. Just as the first disciples needed help along the way – “Lord, teach us. . .” – the wise seeker after Jesus takes up helpful praying tips from fellow travelers. Guidance offered up in easy-to-grasp ways can usher oxygen into a person’s place of prayer.

A book with an appealing title, How to Pray – A Simple Guide For Normal People, by Pete Greig serves as an example.

A present-day marvel reflecting sustained, fruit-bearing times with God has emerged on the scene. A worldwide movement, organic in its spread, known simply as 24-7 Prayer.

Pete Greig, self-deprecating pastor of a church near London, references himself as “the increasingly bewildered founder of 24-7 Prayer”. The interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice got its start in 1999. Since that time, continuous, non-stop praying has taken on a life of its own. Thousands of prayer rooms dotting the earth’s surface have sprung up across more than half the world’s nations. The spread growing.

Our world – ourselves – can stand to gain much from a crisper understanding of and nearer walk with Jesus. What better approach than by entering the sensible, mysterious, Spirit-empowered means available to us, through him.

Lord, teach us to pray.

August 24, 2023August 25, 2023

Means Aplenty

The thing that sparked my interest in guitar was my brother’s interest in guitar (a trait of the junior sibling).

A 25 cent chord book (fingering charts included) paired together with a nine-dollar second-hand acoustic was our father’s investment in us launching our musical enterprise. Tim, giving diligent attention to the chord book, taught himself. And tutored me along as he went. The ‘two-bit’ resource proved priceless.

That modest publication with its folk songs and fingering charts was vital for our picking-and-grinning advancement. Its few pages helped transform my brother, a teenaged guitarist-wannabe, into an effective musician.

In much the same way effective (gratifying, fruit-bearing) communion with God lies within easy reach of any believer. Any who with willing heart chooses in good faith to simply practice.

Praying the words of a select few lines of a Scripture Psalm over and over. Pondering a phrase or a single word. Expressing this or that fervent heart cry as though it were penned by the one now reading and voicing it. This tool alone has helped bring many over time into lives of vibrant communion in God.

Without notes and chords in place the music room lies silent. Without the apprentice’s heart-strings brought to movement in prayer, no life of flourishing in Jesus will bloom.

Finally, discovering that the Christian is not called on to pray perfect prayers brings unspeakable relief. God goes so far as to let us know we are, in fact, quite ignorant when it comes to the spiritual practice we call prayer. What comfort! No need to fake it.

Without apology God reminds us via a terse confession of his tentmaking apostle, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought”*.

With this truth in mind Christ’s apprentices have the door of a whole toolshed flung wide open before them. His treasure-trove of tools (our means) is not restricted to the book of Psalms. Talking with God in our own personal words (nothing fancy, please!) we also have full permission to give voice to a host of prayers offered up across the pages of Scripture.

Consider this.

How might you feel knowing that a friend or family member was earnestly interceding the following for you, “that he might know the love of Christ. . . that she may be filled with all the fulness of God.”?* Be assured, God would be more than pleased our invoking as our own, Paul’s petition. For anyone whose name or image might show up on the radar of our petitioning heart.

July 27, 2023July 26, 2023

Thirst Quenching

“When I grow up, I wanna be like _____ !”

What gives rise to this sentiment that one hears spoken at times even by grown-ups? An inner hope to become a better whomever.

The individual disciple and the gathered community of the like-minded have a thing in common – they wish to grow to be like Christ. Some groups voice it openly, “Our aim is to be. like. Jesus.” Others may signal the appetite in more reserved tones, yet their hearts yearn to grow, to mature with a character of the kind displayed in Jesus.

Apprentices to Jesus like what they see in his manner of being and doing. They long to take on those qualities more and more, to the point really of being defined by them.

The carefree farm kid is at home in the company of the good daddy. A particular setting doesn’t so much matter. Whether frolicking about barefoot on fresh-turned sod or rallying his young muscles to move a lawnmower through a stretch of Bermuda grass, he knows he is never left entirely on his own. A strong, assuring presence dwells there with him, near at hand.

An inner appetite of every Jesus-apprentice – even when not always conscious of it – is their longing for nearness. The good rabbi’s band of followers are pulled along by an inner tug to follow him closely – not letting him ‘much out of their sight’.

Not every earthly dad mirrors well the endearing qualities seen in the one Jesus called “my Father”. Yet, each person living is welcomed by him into just such a father-child closeness. We move that direction through Christ Jesus.

Whether a veteran disciple or a newly signed-on apprentice, the person choosing Christlikeness is growing in the work of training their eyes on this one whom they worship. They are finding, too, that a good beginning point is at the coming of every morning.

“O God, you are my God; early will I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, in a dry and thirsty land with no water.”*

June 22, 2023June 23, 2023

Rankings

Are habits of surrender reserved for the big leaguers alone – the Billy Grahams, the George Verwers, the Mother Teresas?

It seems to come naturally, doesn’t it, the tendency to think, “Yes, but that is them, not me. I am just me”. We’re prone to contrast what we see as our lackluster performance in growth against that of others whose stars seem to shine bright. Such dead-end thinking misses the point and holds us hostage to our insecurities.

Not a single Jesus-follower who has ever reflected him well has done so by the mere capital of talent or natural gifting.

Simply put, God does not know a big leaguer. He has never met one.

Yes, every person carries their own gifts and graces. Still, the one thing that sets the flourishing disciples (apprentices) apart is the simple willingness to believe in and love Jesus. It is from this garden soil of trust alone that undiluted obedience is born. And, from this, fruit. It is simple, really. The old hymn sums the matter up well, “Trust and obey. . . there is no other way”.

Young Billy was a common North Carolina country boy working dairy cattle when a farmer neighbor invited him to a gospel meeting in a nearby town. His heart was moved by things heard that evening. Billy came to be esteemed in years to come, America’s pastor.

The tough conditions of the poor in the Albania city where she lived stirred the mind of an adolescent girl, Gonxha Agnes, a.k.a. Teresa of Calcutta. Myriads of discarded human beings got to taste for their first-ever time unconditional care.

Captivated by lines from a book gifted him, a rascally kid from New Jersey hungered for more. In time, through his efforts and to his savior’s glory, a library-ship, the Logos, traversed oceans, docking at port cities across the world heralding liberating news.

We are certainly given a wonderful thing to ponder, musing over that handful of people the Christian world celebrates as singular standouts.

Still, for every celebrated hero of the faith the worldwide family of God today numbers millions. Humble, obedient disciples of Jesus, faithfully plodding in life and service in close company with their Lord. By human standards they might be labeled, little leaguers.

Jesus knows them as friends.

March 30, 2023

Modeling

“Do as I say – not as I do.”

Come again?

The old eyebrow-raising directive is not one you will hear rolling off the tongue of a bona fide mentor or coach. Jesus came as rescuer. . . as savior. But more than this.

Jesus routinely coached and mentored and trained these he loved – his forever companions in life and service. His mission of demonstrating the love and life of God in the earth was not to end with his return to glory. And it did not.

Jesus’ approach to forming his followers has not changed.

Like any self-respecting rabbi of his day, our Lord modeled a lifestyle his disciples were to emulate. Jesus displayed, by the things he did in his very own body the things his apprentices were to demonstrate in their very own bodies.

If Jesus were to fashion his own catch- phrase in our day to convey his aims for us, something like, “Do as I say and do as I do” might fit comfortably with him.

A touching piece of music out of the past goes, “Make me more like Thee, Jesus, make me more like Thee.” Then, more recently the group Passion released a similar number, “More like You”.

How does Jesus (mentor – coach – trainer) respond when we offer such a plea to him – “make me more like you”? Can’t we see him turning our direction and calling over to us in his thoroughly compelling manner, “Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me”. Is it not time to take up his assignment, to learn of and apply whatever varied practices he sets before us. So that now as on-board apprentices, we might implement the kinds of things he prescribes. Living the Christ-life he lived.

Personally, I must confess, it has taken me a long time catching on to this.

I fail at it often.

Able trainer that he is, though, our master does not weary in his coaching. As Paul writes, “love is patient and kind”*.

November 17, 2018

A Hungering

Jesus of Nazareth invited two apprentices to walk and work with him. Then came a third. . . then another and another. Since those early days, the increase of his trainees-in-Christlikeness has carried forward until their number now spans the globe.

Jesus knew well the need of passing along insights and wisdom. But also, of modelling his rare kind of power – the power of love – brought here to earth by him from another world. He did this kind of thing at every step, this modelling and training.

As for insights and wisdom, what this master-trainer brought into view went deeper. It went past the understanding and good sense already found among people through centuries of human experience. Further, the compassion he showed left other forms of human caring shallow by comparison.

Many historians measure this Middle-eastern figure, whose name is more commonly spoken than any other in history, as the most gifted, the most brilliant human ever to live. Yet he didn’t hold his understanding to himself, wasn’t stingy with his gems. Rather, Jesus offered up to any who would take him seriously, his own qualities – wisdom and truth – which any sensible person might eagerly receive.

So, this carpenter-turned-rabbi – as a feature of his mission – recruited to himself a company of students, of learners who might grow to live as he lived. Might even, to a surprising measure, become as he was. Many of Jesus’ apprentices arrived on the scene from ordinary backgrounds. Some were well-educated, others not, some well to do, others not so much.

They would travel with him in climates both calm or stormy. They tasted samplings of popularity and favor and weathered seasons of scorn and rejection.

These disciple-apprentices dined in community. They wrapped up countless action-filled days reflecting together before an open flame at a makeshift fire pit, often at places a good way from their homes. Their minds and hearts took in what they were able of their coach’s actions and sayings. Time in each another’s presence stretched them. They quibbled. They fussed. They were in training.

When one or two of the group asked him for advice on how to pray, Jesus answered in sensible language, “Pray this way. . .”

He also modeled praying. His apprenticing meant that he would (in a manner unlike others of his day) shift readily into a conversation with the invisible God whom he knew to be among them. This would occur easily, naturally when a time or circumstance called for it, which tended to be often.

When their food supply got small, Jesus talked to them about carefree living, then, on occasion would completely surprise them, bringing forth a meal. Such actions would leave them in wonder and deeply curious as to this man’s other-worldly nature.

Never one who seemed rushed or fidgety, he chuckled easily with his apprentice-friends. And, like any skillful mentor, he corrected them without timidity, apology or fanfare.

On a given day Jesus’ corrective counsel might be directed to one or two of the apprentices or he may address a thing meant for the wider community. Regardless, corrective action was each time offered in the interest of serving both his highest good and theirs. The trainees grew to own this.

The longer they walked with him, the less they wished for the former life, their old ways of being. It began to feel as though the rabbi was growing them, little by little, to become very much like himself. This seemed a good thing. They hungered for more.