training – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

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

November 10, 2022November 10, 2022

Nature Study

My engineer friend from South Asia, R.S., knows something about shapes. Long after he had, in faith, opened the door to his own god-shaped space within, R.S. was seeing his professional life thrive amidst shapes and designs. Science-research and revelation took him there.

Once a person comes to faith – trusts his life to Jesus – he starts becoming a new kind of person. In Bible language, the old has gone, the new is here!*. He begins the long journey of “growing into” a new kind of living and thinking, a new kind of “being”.

A scientist growing in Christlikeness? An engineer training in righteousness? Imagine. Scripture comfortably speaks of growing in Jesus as “training in righteousness”.*

Like an infant child who is born to thrive and grow and mature, the new Christian is to change. In most instances over time his belief in Jesus gets to be “seen”. This is the calling of every believer. So that our lives show on the outside what we confess to be true on the inside.

We know that taking thoughtful close-up looks at nature has at times led to mind-boggling scientific insights. So, my engineer/professor friend, pondering one day over the created (especially oceanic) world, caught a revelation. And promptly took his theory to the classroom.

“Whenever you think of trying out a new idea”, Dr. R.S. urged his university students, “you will want to explore what the natural world can offer you.

“Suppose, for instance, I visit the seashore. At the water’s edge, I spot a snail, one of those cone-shaped kind. The creature reminds me of a project I am on at the lab – a petroleum industry drill bit. This little creature from the world of nature may carry within its design important keys to manufacturing a more effective drill bit”.

Because R.S. had confidence in (believed in) his theory about nature’s role in research, he acted on it. He wrote of it. He lectured and demonstrated to his students that his thoughts were likely based on what is true and what is helpful and real.

If you are a Jesus-follower, you are made for formation. If simply given permission Jesus will change you and you will come to show forth his ways, his nature.

He invites, “Come. Be with me, be my apprentice”.

February 10, 2016August 28, 2017

Train

Warm the bench.

The high, red-brick gymnasium overshadowed our school’s single-story classrooms.

Parked on the cold bench with fellow player-wannabees, my gaze dropped to the tennis-shoed polio foot at the end of my left leg.

My rear end’s the best thing this bench ever saw come its way. I’ll keep this wood plank warm all season.

I looked up to the scrimmage happening on court. My melancholy eased. Look at those Petit brothers. Perspiration glistened on their lithe ebony forms. Wow, amazing their fitness. . . and their moves. Effortless.

So it seemed.

* * * * * * * *

A common link binds me presently to four athletes.

Colton, the youngest and his sister, Tara (high school junior) practice lobbing free throws. Every day. They scramble after rebounds for their teams. Moments later their coach barks, Work it inside, move the ball inside!

After practice the siblings breeze along four miles of dirt road to their Oklahoma farm home – to chores, and homework. To laughs with family at the wood-burning stove.

The third athlete in the quartet – Luke, the ninth-grader – schools in Kenya. Luke keeps fit for what’s up next. . . Rugby, volleyball? Calls made in the game of rugby land strangely on American ears. . . scrum awarded – collapsing ruck. . . Given the sport’s intensity, ‘Rugby-moms’ are known to gasp at certain calls – bleeding wound. . .

Grace rounds out athlete number four. On the Congo playing field rigorous training tunes her ears to soccer calls. Corner kick – yellow card. On it goes.

I thrill taking in games, studying pics of these my grand-athletes. Some nearby, some far.

My mind revisits the Petit brothers of Preston High. And the term so readily voiced before. Effortless.

No. The thing that is going on out there – over the squeaking shoes – the pivots, the fakes, the twirling leaps. Nothing accidental’s going on out there. Not a thing.

My thoughts shift to another dimension. To life. All of life.

Whatever goes on with a person that actually counts. Language acquisition, architecture, athletics – or that makes for exceptional living – those actions demand something. On-purpose, precise, repetitive action. While dreaming, hoping.

My fabulous four athlete-grandkids practice. They’re keeping fit. They train..

I’ll never suit up for the NBA. Or charge down a soccer field defying blockers and goalies. I won’t (God forbid) kick shins – or have shins kicked – in a rugby scrum.

Every athlete has an aim.

In the contest of life every follower of Jesus has an aim. Really, an aim beyond the highest aspirations of any physical athlete. The aim is dual in nature, fashioned amazingly God himself.

Being transformed by renewing the mind, the way we think.

Let Christ be formed in you – our becoming like him. In word and action.

Great, we say. So. How’s this done? How?

Good news it is possible. He will help us.

To train, to practice, to be made fit. Till new ways become, not ill-fitting, but natural. Something we call – as Jesus did – the light burden – the easy yoke.

I lean down. Cold bench, warm bench. . . no matter. Lacing my shoes I cock my ear to the coach’s call,

Time to train.

May 30, 2017August 28, 2017

Signposts

The spindly lady of the Bluegrass State bought me time.

Mrs. Hottenstein’s sponsorship gift achieved what she’d hoped. Freed me to attend more to my college work at hand. And the extra hours away from the teletype keys meant added time with my young nurse-student wife. That meant a lot. Our ships-passing-in-the-night could sit a few more minutes each day in their common harbor – the thirty-five by eight-foot rented house trailer we called home.

The added margin freed me to drive northward. To a meeting I felt strongly drawn to make.

“Hey David, I feel I should visit my home church in Oklahoma. Special meetings are going on next week. If you’re free to come, it would be great having time together.”

The nine-hour road trip brought us to the sanctuary of Living Way Tabernacle, my place of worship from childhood. What followed set the course for decades of adventure to come.

Vigorous hand-clapping accompanied robust singing as organist Ragsdale’s nimble fingers brought life to the instrument. Monday night, first evening in a string of special meetings.

Rev. G.C., a pastor hailing from the deep south, was handed the mic. He was a large man, gigantic by any standard I knew. I had never met him. It was preaching time.

Over the past two weeks my thoughts had pivoted back and forth between two topics. An African language whose sounds I wouldn’t recognize if I heard it. And a phrase, leadership training. A seemingly random visit with a former missionary had spawned these musings and the themes wouldn’t let go.

Rev. G. C.’s deep, graveled voice thundered away as he moved deeper into his message. Rivulets of sweat glistened on his broad face as his three hundred or so pounds of Georgia preacher-man paced across the front, up and down the center aisle. His command of sacred text was impressive. His passion ran deep.

Twenty minutes into the sermon it happened.

G.C. paced into center aisle, his preaching on a roll. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, he halted. His head tilted upward. The pause continued. Then the preacher man uttered a single word no one expected.

“Swahili.”

I stared his direction, astonished at the sudden turn in his message. And especially that word. Swahili. The language I had encountered days before. I felt a mist of tears form, a hint at a gathering stream. The preacher went on. “I am hearing the Swahili language.” He scanned the audience.
“Someone in this room is called as a missionary to east or central Africa.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Clearly he wasn’t finished.
©2017 Jerry Lout

October 27, 2017August 17, 2022

Just Do It

As a foreigner in a region where locals had rarely sighted a light-skinned person , I was learning the feeling of different.

During one season of discouragement, when my best efforts to connect with the Kuria seemed frail, I knelt on the concrete floor of a back room in our house. The prayer was brief, sincere, and seems as clear today as that morning I voiced it.

“God, please help these people know that I love them.”

In the silence an inner voice interrupted my pleadings. While it was kind, it was also direct, firm.

“Love them. You just love them.”

Just that. Simple and sparse, like a mail-order kit arriving without instructions.

How do I do this?

Years afterward a definition of Love crossed my path.

To will the good of another. I have yet to hear a phrase that, for me, better reflects the term.

I found myself in subsequent times revisiting the Bukuria scene. Going to my knees in blue jeans and t-shirt back then at that location fifteen hours’ drive from where Stanley met Livingstone under a Mango tree. I ponder again the response to my prayer on that day. Just love them

Gauging love, measuring its impact, seems not always easy.

***

“Mwalimu”.

Pastor Mwangi calling to me (‘Teacher’) lifted his textbook as in a gesture of devotion.

“Before you came with the teachings – before bringing us these Bible courses. . .” The pastor’s voice went low.

“. . back then, when on Saturdays I would prepare a sermon for my people on Sunday, I only knew to follow a certain way. I did not know another way.

“I would pray, close my eyes and open my Bible – letting it fall open where it would. Then, feeling the page, I let my finger go to a place there. Opening my eyes I looked at the place. The words there became my sermon scripture for Sunday.”

“It was all I knew”, he repeated. “I did not know another way.”

Pastor Mwangi concluded as if offering up a sacrament as well as a confession.

“Now I know the good way. Thank you for bringing this Bible School, this T.E.E. I feed my people now and they are helped.”

Mounting my motorcycle that afternoon, I turned toward home, warmed by a gratifying thought.

Thank you, Lord for your word, and for this means of sharing it here.

He (God) was willing the good of a tribal people hungry for truth and for him. And was letting me have a part – growing me in a small measure to care as he cares.

Just loving them. Together.

March 24, 2018March 27, 2018

Follow

For years my faith was out of sorts. Not that it lacked truth. Or strength. Or substance (though this could be a subject for another day).

My faith bobbled and wobbled from a lack of understanding how it was meant to be applied. . . or not applied. Especially where actual life formation was concerned. How I was meant to grow – tools to move me there – actual steps to Christlikeness.

A car-towing venture in Africa during the ‘60s might illustrate (a blog entry at this site labeled Drag Race, relates the drama in full).

Two men. Two cars. One of the vehicles, a Jeep, has its engine running. It’s towing the other – a disabled Volkswagen Beetle.

All went well until, navigating a long, downhill slope of dirt road, the less-seasoned Beetle driver – his car gaining speed – elected to pass the Jeep. Yes, to move in front of the lead car. . . Tow rope secure, in place.

His act was not one of the better options open to him. The driver was abruptly schooled in a basic principle. The tow rope would prove a friend as long as its use was rightly applied.

In my hopes of maturing in areas of Christlikeness I failed (like the VW pilot) to position myself rightly in relation to my leader.

It is the wise Jesus-follower who keeps the Rabbi’s sandal-prints in view. Simply moving forward as apprentice-in-training, eyeing the master, taking signals from him. Rather than the alternative – charging. . . or meandering [the speed doesn’t seem to matter] – off independently.

Actions taken in the hope of life transformation fall to two categories. Dallas Willard offers one of them as the clear choice, stating that effective life-change for the good rests on this critical approach – Training vs Trying.

Like the poor, distracted driver, I’ve spent a lot of my energy trying to keep myself aright, often inattentive to a useful point. The fellow in the lead has a better view of the landscape, holds the necessary power at his disposal, and knows just where we’re headed.

Entrusting my understanding to his recommended way – the power needed supplied in full and within easy reach – I might enter a more hopeful process. Not apart from effort, to be sure, this further journey into his likeness. But surprisingly effective, richly hopeful and actually less labor-intensive. In the Rabbi’s language – an easy yoke.

I was at last entering a means that may help me avoid the wrong use of my lifeline, sparing my ‘mobility’ being toppled sideways in the dust.

The rabbi-teacher inviting me to a better means.

“A more excellent way” – 1 Corinthians 12:31

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.