Jesus Believes In You
Practicing the way.
The new community group Susan and I have just joined at Grace Church is working through John Mark Comer’s very helpful book, Practicing the Way. I’d like to let him be a guest writer on the site today.
Enjoy the following snippet from the book, and then head out to buy a copy for yourself.
Let me attempt a clumsy adaptation from our era: Imagine you're a high school dropout who always dreamed of becoming a professor. You wanted desperately to go to college, but you couldn't get accepted. Now imagine you're working a dead-end job in food service: low hourly wage and long, monotonous days. One day as you're watching the clock from behind the cash register, a world-famous protessor from a prestigious university walks through the door on a pit stop from his worldwide book tour. He takes an instant liking to you and says, "If you come with me right now, you can become my student. I'll give you a full-ride scholarship. You can live in my home and study under me. And I'll teach you everything I know and give you access to all my resources. I believe that you have the capacity to one day do what I do. It will be the hardest thing you've ever done, but it will pay dividends you cannot possibly imagine. But you have to come with me now."
What would you do? What anyone in their right mind would do:
Throw your apron on the floor, dance a Scottish jig, and run out the door behind him.
Simon and Andrew were fishermen. Think about that for a second: This means they didn't make it into an apprenticeship program. They weren't the best of the best of the best; they were the ones who got sent home to "make babies and pray they become rabbis."
But Jesus invited them to become his apprentices.
Before they believed in Jesus, he believed in them.
….
We talk a lot about the call to believe in Jesus — to put your trust and confidence in him to lead you to life. This is good and fitting.
But it must also be said that Jesus believes in you. He believes that you can become his apprentice. Starting right where you are, you can follow him into a life in the kingdom that fulfills your deepest desires.
He believes that you can live under the loving gaze of the Father; you can also become the kind of person who is like the Father — loving and joyful and full of peace, patience, and kindness. You can grow into a person of happiness, even in times of great suffering. The kind of person who is not afraid of suffering or even of death, who is free of the emotional need for things to go your own way. You can fulfill your purpose. You can even learn to do many of the incredible things Jesus did. To see the signs of his kingdom manifest in your ordinary life.
It's possible — all of it.
But it's not inevitable.
It won't just happen by chance.
There are no accidental saints.
You can't just slip your hand up at the end of a sermon. It's a high bar of entry: It will require you to reorder your entire lite around following Jesus as your undisputed top priority, over your job, your money, your reputation — over everything. Yet all these things will find their rightful place once integrated into a life of apprenticeship.
This life can be your life.
All you have to do is let go of your nets...
(Practicing the Way, p 29-31)
