Tag: Christlikeness

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Senior Access

Rocket science isn’t required for this brand of boot camp. Nor is youthful age! A quiet army of apprentices to Jesus (millions of ordinary people dotting our planet) enter their mornings in quiet resolve. Taking up practices that, bit by bit, lead to character change, they find that a deepening joy ensues.

These people are not hero saints. They do, nevertheless, strive to keep a clear goal in mind. . . to grow to be like their Lord. Taking in an ancient prayer (portions of which may provoke a smile) helps underscore the wisdom of ‘training’ even into the sunset years.

Growing Older
Lord, You know better than I myself
that I am growing older and will someday be old.
Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking
I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.
Release me from craving to
straighten out everybody’s affairs.

Make me thoughtful but not moody;
helpful but not bossy.
With my vast store of wisdom,
it seems a pity not to use it all;
but You know, Lord,
that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details;
give me wings to get to the point.
Seal my lips on my aches and pains;
they are increasing, and love of rehearsing them
is becoming sweeter as the years go by.

I dare not ask for improved memory,
but for a growing humility and a lessening cock-sureness
when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others.
Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.
Keep me reasonably sweet, for a sour old person
is one of the crowning works of the devil.

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places
and talents in unexpected people;
and give, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. Amen.

The prayer (snippets of which might provoke a smile) was penned by a Carmelite nun of the 16th century.* New habits can replace old ones bringing a person to noticeable transformation.

Change into Christlikeness beautifully grows when habits that were found in the routine life of Jesus become the disciple’s aim and practice. Entered into in prayer and reliance upon the Holy Spirit.

An occasional trip down Self-inventory Lane is recommended.

Do I often measure myself as the brightest bulb in the room? Do I have an inflated sense of self-importance? Am I given to talking too long and too much? Am I stingy with compliments? Do others possibly view me as the whiner, the grump?

Are there things about yourself – attitudes, behaviors, moods – that could do with some renovation? If your list – like mine – is long, don’t despair. Habits are replaceable. And, the Spirit is present to generously lend aid.

©2025 Jerry Lout                                        *Teresa of Avila

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Down-to-earth

Some call them spiritual disciplines. Others say spiritual practices. Either label works.

The refreshing thing for the Christ-follower is understanding that God has supplied down-to-earth practical exercises to aid them in their journey toward Christlikeness. Disciples of Jesus worldwide routinely celebrate these provisions – practices that fuel actual growth in Christ.

CELEBRATION

Wonderful news of hands-on, easy to grasp, and habit-building exercises  has made its way across the globe (afresh) in recent times. And Richard J. Foster has brought immeasurable aid to believers of most every demographic through his masterfully-crafted work, aptly titled Celebration of Discipline. Fosters’ is a voice among many.

Christ’s followers everywhere – those longing to reflect the character of Jesus while savoring richness in the with-God life, happily find themselves on a transformative adventure.

Practicing spiritual disciplines, especially those repeatedly seen across the pages of scripture, results in God’s children getting changed from the inside out. Always occurring in the company of (through the empowering presence of) the Holy Spirit.

What are some of these habit-inducing (and doable) spiritual disciplines that people have been putting into practice all the way from Bible times til now?

Common among them are the disciplines of praying – studying scripture – worshipping in community – serving – advancing justice. .

One reason the disciplines continue generation after generation is found in their effectiveness. Orange trees are known by the fruit that they produce. Things are no different in the spiritual world, within the believer who cultivates and nurtures the plant-life of their own souls. Flourishing becomes
predictable, inevitable.

One could ask, “How many practices or disciplines are there?” Fixed numbers are hard to come by as concerns and needs and opportunities can vary from community to community
and from season to season.

We do know of a dozen or so disciplines, tracing back through church history, faithfully served the Christian family – and through it the world – for centuries.

A host of changed lives stands as shining evidence to the
wisdom of growing a close friendship with these practices. Aiding the ordinary person toward Jesus-likeness.

One such practice – talking with God.

©2025 Jerry Lout *Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster

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The Chase

“Practice makes perfect”, so goes the saying.

Aiming for Christlikeness, in the sense of fully mirroring Jesus’ faultless nature, is likely a reach too far. Still. Every believer can go, and is welcomed to go, a meaningful distance in narrowing that gap.

The late Brennan Manning stated with refreshing candor:   “When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. . .”

A Franciscan priest, and author of *The Ragamuffin Gospel, Manning noted that God’s gift of grace brings to us: “Power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift”.

The priest further lays his heart bare in characteristic self-disclosure, “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”

In A.W. Tozer’s list of qualities he found reliably present in the nature of God, noted that one of them is God’s Immutability. God’s nature is reliable. He doesn’t change.  God loves, and he loves without deviation. His love is immutable, always in “on” mode. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases” (Lamentations 3:22)

So, we ask the question. Do I wish to grow to be more like Jesus. . . that is, to love as he loved and called us to love? Or, short of this, could I bring myself to sincerely whisper, “I want to want to love in this way”?

Either position can be a perfect place to begin and to proceed forward from.

©2025 Jerry Lout      *The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning  **The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer

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Starting Point

My friend Mark is a poster boy to the power of love. Abused, then abandoned by his drug-dependent parents, Mark was found years later, languishing on city streets and in alleyways – dysfunctional and angry. A kind-hearted gentleman named Paul discovered him. Paul – just the father-figure Mark needed – took him under his wing. The journey had its setbacks, but authentic father love comes as a tenacious force.

Fast forward. Fifteen years in Mark himself routinely comes alongside men that are barely surviving at the fringes – every bit as broken as he had once been. Mark, like the rest of us, is far from perfect. A yielded Christ-follower, he’s a work in progress. Bearing God’s love.

The beckoning of Jesus to live the great commandment (love God fully, love others as myself) is not only called for, it is doable in a fuller measure than one might imagine.

It can be argued (and often is) that loving fully – i.e. for the most part with all of one’s being – is the mark of a person becoming fully human. God wishes this for us and, since his hopes are for our betterment, he himself enters the fray, lends aid. What aid it is!

But if a person would align himself with this venture (becoming one wholly given to love) they must want it and want it strongly. The hard truth is, few of us start out with that kind of “want to”. The process of being formed to Christlikeness starts (thank God), not with ourselves, but with him, with God.

God is Love.

Who among us would not want to be a loving human being? What person would look at authentic love and react with a ho-hum, “I’m not interested, thank you.”?

So, even though we do not start out all fueled and fired with an appetite to love God in the great commandment way, Christ himself tenderly invites us. He knows that we must begin where we are, not where we aren’t.

I want to want.

Some of us reach a place of saying, “I want to want what I presently do not want, and I want to not want what I presently do want”*.

This kind of simple honesty brings us to the needed “readiness of soul”. Since we cannot experience life transformation by ‘willing’ ourselves into readiness for it.

We begin where we are, not where we aren’t.

©2025 Jerry Lout                                                                                       *Dallas Willard

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Of Being Owned

Living our lives day by day in closeness to Jesus calls for desire. And intention.

Just like any healthy marriage motoring right into the sunset years, both parties – the man and the woman – make numberless small but significant choices. All along the journey each of them has grown into the habit of offering up expressions of worth and honor, the one to the other. This is the nature of what the Father had in mind in the covenant relationship – man wedded to the woman, woman wedded to the man.

In similar manner, the intentional and deliberate follower of Christ routinely offers up to him both actions and words. Expressions of love are core. It is this that sets the disciple apart. The casual Christian, meanwhile, may content himself with an occasional nod to a religious creed.

Priorities

That boy or girl, man or woman who’s growing in Christ is assured of belonging to him. They do not fear losing the relationship. Jesus their savior has redeemed them from the old kingdom of ego where Self sat perched atop the me-centered throne of the heart.

While secure in his everlasting hope, the disciple set on Christlikeness is one who is not content to merely qualify for the ‘someday upward flight’ to the afterworld. The apprentice counts the value tag of his life as a thing reflecting a far more expansive aim. While the afterlife destination means much to him, the love-smitten apprentice aspires less to owning heaven than to being owned by heaven.

© 2023 Jerry Lout

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Wanting

Apprenticing to Jesus bears fruit of the finest variety – kingdom fruit. God’s kingdom is that place where his will is done, “Thy kingdom come”.

Once a clear “Yes, I’m in I will be a Jesus-apprentice” is resolved, a new kind of season gets underway. And, hopefully, goes forward into a lifetime.

This is the season of habits, but habits leading to something far richer than the mere exercise of repeated practices. The season of habits, employed under the guidance and power of the Spirit offers promise of immense gratification.

This is the joy of inside-out transformation. Think of it. You and I humbly growing/changing through clearly laid out movements, into a vivid likeness of the one who invites, “Learn of me”.

We need to ask ourselves a question. Is the average, everyday Jesus-follower called to this radical kind of thing? Incorporating specific practices into routine life that would lead the believer to full-on Christlikeness? What about you?

Over and over the New Testament makes clear that every Christian is granted salvation with an assumption that life-long growth and change lie ahead,

“. . speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”*

Men and women through history affirm the high aspiration, A spiritually mature Christian is “one whose whole character—dispositions, words, and actions—emulates the character of Jesus Christ himself.”**

Want.

Training for a life as a bull rider when you are, at your core, wired to work with spread sheets in the accounting field is a path that might well lead to despair (if not an injured spine).

Being a Jesus’ apprentice happens only in the life of the person who wants it. A genuine inner desire will mark the man or woman, youth or senior, who chooses discipleship to Jesus as their core life aim. Without a hungering for life in the company of Jesus, any ‘choice’ of apprenticeship can take the person to one of two places. Neither, a really fun place to be.

©2022 Jerry Lout                                          *Ephesians 4:15     **Stephen Rankin

 

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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.

©2022 Jerry Lout                                                                                              *Galatians 5

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Resemblance

What would it be like to resemble God – Yes, eternal creator, sustainer of the cosmos and all that it holds? Could we mere humans even ponder such a notion?

The astonishing thing is we already do (by Holy Scripture’s account) share a profound likeness with the Almighty. While no mortal human has ever been or will ever be godlike in terms of things like self-existence, all-knowing, etc. . . Still, every human is in some precise way made in the image of God.

But further in, at a level even further beyond our ability to grasp, he has purposed that God’s redeemed (saved) ones embody the qualities of Jesus’ own character. To reflect the very nature and the virtues of his one and only Son Jesus. Yes, Christians are meant to, over time (through plenty of changings and growings) truthfully own the statement, “as he is so also are we in the world”*.

It is the interior world of Christ God calls us to emulate.

This, the Almighty assures, is within our grasp. With God’s nonstop assistance on our behalf to be sure. But within reach. Possible.

Christlikeness comes about through training in the ways of love and of joy and of peace. Qualities which he alone possesses in full and which he alone can reproduce in us as we humbly and courageously cooperate in the lofty enterprise.

So, what might be a first step?

The beginning move his direction always has and ever will be about vision. Onto what am I setting my gaze? To whom or to what am I continually directing my attention? We hear a saying, “You become like the thing you focus upon”.

Rick Warren penned four shocking words as the first sentence of his classic work, The Purpose Driven Life – “It’s not about you”, (ice water to the ego).

In order to set my attention more and more in the direction of Jesus so that I come to flourish in his qualities of love and joy and peace, I will find it necessary to shift much of my attention away from – yes – me.

Does the phrase “a work in progress” spring to mind?

Probably.

©2022 Jerry Lout                                                                                              * 1 John 4:17

 

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Near Resemblance

Whether changing flat tires in far off lands or fostering character qualities on the long journey of becoming Jesus-like, his followers make use of means.

What does means mean?

Means are things (practices/instruments) necessary to move toward a worthwhile goal.

The goal of getting changed into a kind of person resembling Christ is an aim unlike any other. What pursuit in all of life could bring greater challenges and deeper satisfactions when entered into with the whole heart?

Transformation to Christlikeness comes about (let’s be honest) through many days given to lackluster, routine plodding.

Doing the next good or right thing. If Jesus’ life is anything it is good and it is right (righteous). And it is routine plodding which often marks the pathway of the sincere person applying means to take on Jesus’ temperament, his humility and power.  Routine – not lifeless.

The whole apprentice-in-formation  journey can be equally characterized by surprise and adventure. Boring Jesus is not!

We never graduate from experimenting in the use of tools (means). This is the part where we discover a happy truth. The tools or the practices (stillness, worship, community, service etc) never are the point. Never. No more the point than if after undergoing a medical procedure the patient insists the surgeon hand over stethoscope, scalpel and sponge, “Just place them in my overnight bag at discharge time”. The point of everything was the patient’s wellness, not the collection of devices employed in the process, good and helpful as they surely were.

Though I was clueless at the time, the moment I decided as a high-school junior to opt for the Typing I course over the Spanish language track, a life-altering shift was set in motion. All this while any notion of tackling spiritual disciplines in hopes of becoming like Jesus could not have been further from my mind. Indeed “What are spiritual disciplines?”, I would have wondered. So, this small snapshot from my story serves only as an illustration.

As a high schooler, my means of afterward landing a job with a newspaper included the useful practice of learning to type. Those hours and hours of attentive practice yielded some rewarding fruit.  Firstly, gaining a set of marketable skills (typesetting). Secondly, landing a job in the glorious Wyoming Rockies. And finally, stumbling into a setting there where I would get introduced to a pretty young lady – my future bride. Surprise. Adventure.

We may then be wise on our spiritual journey to ponder and apply in humble faith some ancient, proven practices (means).

Practices which could bring each of us over time to (wonder-of-wonders) mirror a close resemblance to Jesus – Son of God.

2022 Jerry Lout

 

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Invitation

The membrane-cloaked calf lay still from exhaustion on the dew-soaked Bermuda grass. The little bull had, the past few seconds with the gallant aid of his mama, thrust his way outward from her womb and into Autumn’s sharp early-morning  air.

Wanting to grow to be like Jesus comes naturally for any born-anew believer. It is as natural a thing as conception – gestation – birthing and maturing are natural to reproductive life.

The progression, in fact, sounds normal. That is because it is normal. The thing that does not come naturally (automatically) for the believer, though, is the actual doing it. . . becoming like Jesus. At least not for a good while. Not for most.

Transformation to Christlikeness, however, is not unrealistic. Nor is it such a hard thing to make headway in. The issue that makes growing into the likeness of Jesus most difficult is likely our simple lack of know-how. This had been true for me, no question. I wanted change like crazy. Make me like you, Jesus. I just didn’t know how to start getting there.

Reflective musings

So, moving from being a ‘not-much-like-Jesus’ person to becoming very much like him. Are there ways to go about this, ways to understand how?  Can there be things, we press the matter further, “hands-on, practical things – I could learn to do? Could do together with Him, leading me to pleasurable rhythms of Christ’s joy, his love, service, character and life. . . For real? That I could grow to live in that curious easy yoke he seemed to matter-of-factly invite us to?”

Easy yoke? The easy had eluded me. And for quite a long time. How could I start, where to begin?

The birthing language helps me get a handle on something.

“Oh, my dear children!” Paul writes. “I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives” (Galatians 4.19  NLT)

The fellow credited for writing much of the New Testament uses here the birthing metaphor to help us catch the idea of God’s means of bringing the change we yearn after. We catch a feeling too for how passionately the Holy Spirit wishes this for us. Labor pains. We can’t help getting the feeling he really means it. Christ – radically developing us, reproducing his nature and character within our lives. Freely. Easily. . . Remarkable.

For a good while – decades actually – I struggled over this thing. A discussion, mostly silent, went on in my head and my heart.

  1. Once a person is saved, brought to faith in Christ, a new beginning has launched, right.

The believer isn’t born into the family of faith to stay an infant. We are born to develop, to grow in the faith, to mature, be transformed. We are to get better at being a Christian. This is what he is saying, what he is after.

Every child of God, every one of us, is handed the oxygen-charged assignment. To change. And, what is more, sliding our neck into an easy yoke with Jesus us sounds more like an invitation to dance than to trudge forward under a burdensome, ever-crushing load. What if Jesus is approaching. Offering his hand, extending a question.

May I have this dance?

©2018 Jerry Lout