As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our lives from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. If I am a plumber, clerk, bank manager, homemaker, elected official, senior citizen, or migrant worker, I am in “full-time” Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s world. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His Word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His-His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s world everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil (John 8:31-32). We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. A plumber facing a difficult plumbing job must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an “independent contractor.” In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about life in the kingdom. Dallas Willard forward to The Disciple
As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our lives from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. If I am a plumber, clerk, bank manager, homemaker, elected official, senior citizen, or migrant worker, I am in “full-time” Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s world. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His Word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His-His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s world everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil (John 8:31-32). We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. A plumber facing a difficult plumbing job must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an “independent contractor.” In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about life in the kingdom. Dallas Willard forward to The Disciple