Being the Church - Followers of the Way!

Practising the Way of Jesus!

This is a Vision Series - Practicing the Way of Jesus

We have learned much about Jesus and when we looked at our One in Faith series and some of that stuff was complex:

“The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – born of the virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.

The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God.

The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection; his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the only Saviour of the world.”

But this all needs to be qualified by a timely reminder from Dallas Willard:

“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.” ― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ.

We are Christians, this is a historic description which distinguishes us from others who are not Christians and it identifies us with Jesus Christ.

However, the word Christian is used only 3 times in the Bible whereas the word the Gospel’s use the word “disciples” or followers of Jesus.

Jesus had lots of disciples! Men AND women (This was really radical at the time!), really close followers who were specially designated as Apostles (the 12) and crowds of followers who were more or less devoted to him but certainly identified with Him.

Disciple is the best way to describe the followerts of Jesus who practised His way!

Let’s look at Jesus’ teaching on this…

Jesus the Rabbi

Jesus was and is our Rabbi – a teacher.

The NT, around 60 times refers to him as Rabbi. Disciples follow the teachings of their Rabbi

Mark 1:16-20 – Disciples leaving their nets to follow Jesus

Mark 2:13-14 – Levi follows Jesus

Mark 3:13-19 – the 12 that they might be with Him and that he might send them out to preach

Mark 8:34-37 - Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.” ― Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship

The call of Jesus is not come and believe in me and your sins will be forgiven, and you will go to Heaven when you die, it is come follow me!

“The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.”― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.

We are Disciples:

The word disciple on Hebrew is “talmudin”: meaning follower, student, or apprentice.

Follower not in the sense of I follow you on Twitter or Instagram. Follower is one who learns from and practices the teaching of the Rabbi.

Rabbi Hillel had 70 disciples and Rabbi Akiba had 5, but thousands who learned from those 5 about how to live according to the teaching of Rabbi Akiba.

So this was a common way of learning both in the Hebrew world as well as the Greek world of the Philosophers with Plat being the follower and teacher of Socrates and Aristotle having followers who expounded and but on his teaching.

To be a committed follower of a Rabbi introduced you to the Beth Talmud, to learn the Scriptures and teachings of the Rabbi. Only then could you graduate to become a Talmudin – not now just a follower but a close associate with the Rabbi, a representative of his teaching.

The call was to...

(i). Be with your Rabbi

full time, eating and sleeping in his presence. “May you be blessed with the dust of your Rabbi.”

(ii). Become like your Rabbi

I will make you fishers of men - a catcher of men! An invitation to become a greater teacher and soul-winner for Jesus. Become the carbon-copy of your Rabbi.

(iii). Do what your Rabbi does

send them out to preach and drive out demons. You have become a master now, a Rabbi yourself!

Following & Practising the Way of Jesus:

So what does this mean for us today?

(i). We need to BE WITH JESUS

Our every waking moment with Jesus through relationship with the Spirit of Jesus. See John 15:1-8.

“The first and most basic thing we can do and must is to keep God before our minds. This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in thus practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him. In the early time of our “practicing” we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. But these are habits—not the law of gravity—and can be broken. A new, grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the pole star of our inward beings.' (Dallas Willard)

The best part of following Jesus is Jesus, practicing the presence of God. We will learn more of this as we go on!

“Jesus, does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.” ― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.

(ii). We need to BECOME LIKE JESUS.

This can be referred to as sanctification, our spiritual formation. It’s what happens when being with Jesus rubs off!

“Spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as the spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ…Spiritual formation could and should be the process by which those who are Jesus’ apprentices or disciples come easily to “do all things whatsoever I have commanded you….When we talk about spiritual formation we are talking about framing a progression of life in which people come to actually do all things that Jesus taught.” (Dallas Willard - Spiritual Formation: What it is, and How it is Done?).

We are all disciples of someone or something - “The question is not are you being formed but who or what are you being formed into.” (John Mark Comer)

We need to be seeking that the life of Jesus is being expressed in our personality, to become and mature into the person of Jesus from the inside-out.

We need to embody the principles of Matthew 5-7 to become like the kind of person Jesus teaches me to be - one who trusts God as my Father and would find it harder to hate my neighbor than love him; to be kind to them rather than hurt them. This is a lifetime of practice in community together!

“Spiritual transformation is a matter in creasingly being caught up with what God is doingon earth.”(Dallas Willard)

(iii). Do what Jesus did!

This is to adopt not only the lifestyle and teaching of Jesus but His mission and purpose as well:

· To live to glorify His Father God

· Preach the gospel

· Teach the way

· Hela the sick

· Cast out demons

· Eat and drink with people far from God

· Do justice

· Make peace

· Pray

· Prophesy

· Challenge religious and political corruption.

Application - A Vision for WCF!

A life built around these 3 goals is not a hobby that we can fit into the edges of our life, it is a full-time occupation and the whole point of our lives.

This really is transformational. It is cross-taking and life giving. I am a follower and an apprentice of Jesus. I want to practice living life His way!

This is open to us all! “Whoever would follow me…” – You are invited into this apprentice style life with Jesus.

It’s not easy; indeed, you have to surrender your life up to it – it’s tough, you have to trust God for your needs; be prepared to be persecuted; suffer for His sake. It’s tough and challenging and needs to be PRACTISED, every day – Matt 5:19;7:24-27. It’s the work of a lifetime!

And IT’S NOT ABOUT TRYING, IT’S ABOUT TRAINING (John Mark Comer). This is a marathon not a sprint! Life and life to the full comes this way!

A Vision for WCF

Following Jesus is then a lifetime of practice in community. It is what we need to become and it is what we want to deliberately practice

MISSION STATEMENT - Whitby Christian Fellowship is a place where followers of Jesus, practice the way of Jesus today as we build community, walking with Jesus in the way; learning from His life and teaching and carrying out His purpose and mission on earth.

As followers of Jesus we direct our lives around 3 goals: be with Jesus - become like Jesus - do what Jesus did.

The vision we should have as WCF is built around the idea of following the way of Jesus, together, in our community.

the Church exists to make a new humanity. It’s not a building or a a series of religious activities, but a people.

We strive to live out the Gospel in our community throughout the week, then gather at different stages as a collection of Communities.

Our mission is that as we live this way, our lives, our communities, and our town and its surrounding district, will be transformed.

Our prayer is as Jesus prayed, that God’s will would be done in Whitby as it is in Heaven.

So this part of our series will explore around the three intentions:

1. Spending time with Jesus:

We are going to try and work out what that felt like for the Apostles who lived with Jesus.

Based around the observation that when Jesus called people to be His disciples he called them to “be with him” as well as taking time to teach them.

The reality is that to be with Jesus involves companionship within a community.

It involves exposure to the real person in the everyday bought and table of life so that nothing is hidden and all is revealed about character and application of teaching as well as the teaching itself.

2. Seeking to become like Jesus:

This is learning from His practice - what Jesus did to maintain His relationship with His Father and our modelling our practice from him. For example Jesus:

(i). Listened to God - Silence

(ii). Spoke to God - Solitude

(iii). Fasted - Simplicity

(iv). Spent time with God - Sabbath

So, in following the way of Jesus there will be practices that we embrace together as community which are modelled from the practices of Jesus Himself and His disciples, as they learned them from him and taught them to others.

3. Serving like Jesus

This is learning from His service.

Jesus showed his love for God by loving His neighbour and serving his neighbour and we must do the same.

“As he is, so are you in the world” says John and so we want to learn to model ourselves on his lifestyle because we know He pleased the Father in the way he lived.

To live this way means we need to be transformed, from the inside out.

We believe that this kind of deep, authentic radical change of character is possible. Through teaching, practice, community, and the Holy Spirit, we can recover our humanity as followers of Jesus.

“Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.”― Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God.