Apprenticeship to Jesus

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Two Education Paths
• 4:10 Why Information-Only Discipleship Fails
• 9:20 Sermons, Data, And The Transformation Gap
• 13:45 Hearers And Doers: Houses On Rock Or Sand
• 18:20 Discipleship As Apprenticeship To Jesus
• 23:10 The Cycle: Information, Practice, Reflection
• 28:00 Heart Change, Community, And The Spirit
• 32:10 CrossPoint’s Change Model In Action
• 36:20 Action Steps, Daily Exam, And Closing Prayer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You may have a seat. Welcome, welcome. It's good to be with you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. Also, want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home. Good to be with you. So, uh, my wife, Josie, and I, we met in college. Uh, she was in the nursing program, which was very demanding. And um, well, for me, I was not the brightest bulb in the drawer. You know what I mean? Like, I wasn't smart growing up, and I, for some reason, decided to double major or double minor in Greek and Hebrew. So I had my work cut out for me. Um, I had to study a lot, and because Josie and I didn't see each other a lot during the day, we'd often meet up uh in the evenings in the library so we could at least study near each other. Okay, that's what you do when you're in college. So we met up in the library to study a lot. And um, at the time I noticed this, but now it's even more glaringly obvious to me that the way my wife Josie was educated in her program was very different than my education. So Josie had a fair amount of like textbook reading. She had these huge textbooks and she had a lot of memorization because as a nurse, you have to like know a lot. Uh, but it didn't like end there. She had throughout the leap of the week labs that she had to attend. And many of her exams uh weren't fill-in-the-blank or little bubbles. She actually had to, they were entirely based on her skills. She had to perform skills, and that was like her grade. And then as her program went on, she actually spent less and less time on campus and more and more time in the hospital, in clinical settings. She did an entire uh internship on a on a burn unit. Um and so it was very like practice-based. And in fact, they had this little motto, which was uh watch one, do one, teach one. So, probably not just one, but they would watch for a while, here's how to do it, and then you would attempt to do it till you mastered it, and then you could teach others, which always like solidifies your learning. Now, my program was so different than that. It was entirely intellectual. Um, I spent hours and hours memorizing Greek and Hebrew words. I spent hours and hours studying ancient Near Eastern world and memorizing key dates and people and church history. I spent hours learning theological frameworks and studying each. And it was almost like the entire thing was transferring information to my brain that then I had to memorize and be able to regurgitate through essays and papers and that kind of thing. And then after four years of that, I decided to go on and get my master's degree. I went and got a Master of Divinity, which is the primary program designed to train pastors. And it ended up being three more years of the same. Of the professors sort of downloading all the information that they have in their brains into ours, and then the exams were largely, you know, regurgitating that information and showing that you know it. There was zero proc practical skill development. Uh minus maybe a one or two credit course on preaching. That was it. Um, which is a little bit shocking because I'll tell you, like almost 20 years into this things, there's a lot of practical skills that a pastor should have if he's going to be even, he or she is going to be even remotely effective. You'd think that you'd want to train the next generation of pastors with some practical skills, uh, but they did not. And and part of this is because the people who were teaching weren't pastors, they were academics. So here are these guys who had spent their entire careers pursuing their own degrees, and then when they got them, then they gave their life to giving other people degrees. So none of them had spent time really pastoring, none of them even knew probably what that entailed. And so it's not shocking that pastors are trained to be academics because that's who they were trained by. So I want you to follow this for a moment because this is going somewhere. Um given that, given how most pastors were educated by intellects targeting their intellect, doesn't it make some sense then, when it comes to making disciples of Jesus, that most pastors approach it as predominantly an intellectual thing? Like I just need to train their brains, I just need to give them more and more information. It's predominantly about educating people with ideas. We treat it as predominantly an intellectual endeavor. This is why the Christian philosopher James K. Smith says that we've reduced human beings to brains on a stick. Brains on a stick. And this goes all the way back to Rene Descartes, who said, I think, therefore, I am. That sentiment, I think, therefore I am, set the Western world on a trajectory that reduced human beings to thinking subjects for the next 500 years. I mean, this is what that set the foundation uh for the Enlightenment and so on. Instead of treating human beings as an integration of mind, body, soul, and spirit. So we treat human beings primarily as brains on a stick, and this then informs our discipleship models. We treat it predominantly as an intellectual uh project. It's about acquiring more information. This is what has led to the banking model of discipleship. So if you're just a brain on a stick, imagine your brain is a little safety deposit box, and the goal is then to fill your safety deposit box with as much Christian information as possible. Scripture, right? And the right beliefs about God and so on and so forth. So we try to cram uh the right information into people's safety deposit boxes, their brain, so then they can regurgitate it. And the more serious you are as a follower of Jesus, the more information you'll consume along the way. It's largely focused on information transfer and then regurgitation, just like the education that I experienced in school. Now, I want to be clear that I am not against intellectual learning, okay? Um, I still spend hours every week reading and studying. I do not think that Jesus was anti-intellectual. In fact, he said that we should love God. First command, we should love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Notice that. Part of the way we love God is by using the brains he gave us with our minds. And so I'm not against intellectual learning, and unfortunately, there are some Christians out there who there's like this anti-intellectual sentiment where it's just me and Jesus in my Bible, and I don't need to interact with any other uh literature or any other thoughts. It's just this is, and that is no bueno. That is a recipe for disaster, okay? Um, studying is a good thing. But here's what I do want to name is that information is insufficient for transformation. Information alone uh does not produce transformation. Uh we live in an information age where we have more information right now at our fingertips than any other time in world history. Um, and it's just so quickly accessible. It actually gives us the it dupes us into thinking we're informed when we're really not, because you can Google search any topic under the sun and get some information on it instantly. You can type in a little search on Chat GPT and boom, you can think you're informed on a topic. And then we do that with our spiritual formation. So right now, Christians have more access to Christian um um material that they can consume than any other time in world history. Um and with this banking model, that's what we're doing. So every week you can download the sermons of your most favorite preacher, you can listen to podcasts, you can read books and blog articles. And I'm not against any of this. Um I spend a fair amount of time preparing and delivering sermons. As a church, we have a blog and a podcast. There's a place for this. But it's not going to produce, simply downloading more information will not change you or transform you. That's just one proof of this. Someone recently did the math. They added up all the churches in the United States, and then assuming that each church preaches at least one sermon a week, right, over the last 50 years, you total that up, and there have been 832 million sermons that have been preached in the United States over the last 50 years. 832 million. It's probably more than that because I've heard plenty plenty of preachers outside of Sunday morning with, you know, conferences and Bible studies and talks and youth groups and stuff like that. 832 million sermons. If just hearing good information were enough, don't you think that the United States would look a little bit more like Jesus? And you go, oh Mac, well, there's some bad preachers out there. Not all preaching's equal. And I go, I know. I probably delivered some bad sermons along the way. But you have access to the best preachers in the world. You can listen to them while you're driving in your car to and from work. We can listen to the best preaching that the world has to offer in this present moment, and yet it doesn't transform us. In other words, we can't just think our way to Christlikeness. That's not how it works. Now, I'm not saying we should turn our brains off, of course not. But let's just reckon with this. You can't just think your way toward Christlikeness. How many of you have ever had that experience where you know the right thing, but you don't do it? Anybody? Okay, if you haven't raised your hand, you're you need some therapy, okay? Um, we all know we should probably take better care of our bodies. We know this. We all know how to pursue health. You gotta eat the right foods and watch your portion control, you gotta exercise frequently. Like we all know this, but just because we know it, does it mean we live a healthy lifestyle? No, of course not. You put a bowl of coffee ice cream with little heath bar cl uh on top, and I'm done. I don't care, I know, but I'm gonna eat that, okay? We all know that our uh smartphones are highly addictive. We know it's not good to be on your phone all the time, but just because we know this doesn't mean we actually put it away. Instead, anytime we're bored, we take it out. Just because you know something doesn't mean you actually do it. This is why discipleship models that just focus on what you know and then apply a bunch of pressure and guilt to do the right thing are insufficient. They will not transform you into the person of Jesus. We have to go beyond just right belief and right behavior. We need a holistic model of discipleship, one that transforms us from the inside out, starting with our hearts, the seat of our wants, our desires, and our affections. Now, here's the good news, friends, is that Jesus already knew this. Nothing I'm saying was new to Jesus. You see, whereas in the Western world, our education focuses mostly on the brain, in the ancient Near Eastern world, in the Hebraic world that Jesus lived in, they actually had a much more holistic model of educating people. And it was built on this concept of apprenticeship. So Jesus probably experienced this with his father Joseph, who was a carpenter. He uh studied under his father to learn the trade. Eventually, as he practiced, he became uh competent and was able to do what his father was doing. And then, had he continued, like most sons, he would have brought up his own kids and taught them. It was an action-based apprenticeship model where you give your life to an expert, to a master, to someone already knows how to do this, and then you become like them. You go on this journey of becoming like them, where you know what they know and you can do what they can do, and then eventually, once you get to that place, you can then pass that on to other people. You apprentice others. And so this is what Jesus invites us into in the Gospels. It's an action-based apprenticeship that looks a lot more like Josie's nursing school than my seminary experience. And it's not just focused on right belief what you believe or right behavior what you do. It's actually focused on becoming. Not just belief, not just behavior, but becoming. Where you actually become like Jesus, you're transformed such that you are able to live like Jesus. This is what Jesus invites us into as he closes out the Sermon on the Mount. A holistic discipleship characterized by action-based apprenticeship. We looked at this passage last week. Drew preached on this text last week, and I wanted to take another run through it. It's from Matthew 7, 24 through 27. So here's what Jesus says as he closes out this message of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine, these words he just got done preaching, and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall, because it had the foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who builds his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. These are the last words of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. This is his grand finale. And as Drew reminded us last week, Jesus here is drawing on the two ways tradition, which was a common literary device used throughout the Old Testament. It's this way of holding up two options and sort of putting you on the spot that you have to choose. And Jesus has been doing this since the start of his conclusion. There are two roads, one that's broad, one that's narrow. There's two kinds of trees: a tree that produces good fruit, a tree that produces bad fruit. There's good leaders and bad leaders, true converts and fake ones. And now Jesus ends by saying, hey, there's two different types of responses to me and to my teaching with two very different outcomes. And so he's sketching these two outcomes, these two responses, in order to put us on the spot and name, you have a choice with regard to how you're going to respond to me and my teaching. Response one is doing the teachings of Jesus. This is the house that is on the rock. This is the response of those who actually become disciples of Jesus. They put the teachings of Jesus into practice and they live faithfully for him. And because of that, when the storms of life come, the storms actually break against their house. They stand firm. The second response is not doing the teachings of Jesus. This is the house built on the sand. And this represents anybody on the spectrum who does not become an actual disciple of Jesus. From those who hear and don't want to follow to those who think they're following but actually aren't, who say, Lord, Lord, but Jesus says, I never knew you. And for these folks, when the storms of life hit, they expose a sandy foundation and the house is swept away. Drew touched on this last week, but I want to spend a little bit more time here or at least circle back to it. Notice that our choice isn't necessarily obvious at first. The difference between these two houses are what's underneath the house, the foundation. One is uh built on a rock, the other one is built on sand. If you're just driving by these houses, they'll look the same. Much like the subdivisions that are popping up everywhere in Oconomak. These are cookie-cutter houses, they look the same. But the difference is underneath the surface. It's largely invisible. And what exposes, what's true about that house, is the storm of life. This is how it works, you guys. Your character and how like Jesus you are isn't revealed on a sunny summer day when the birds are chirping and you're slurping down a milkshake from kilty, when life is good. It's when life uh comes at you, when it winds up and gives you a sucker punch right in the gut. That's when uh who you are will be exposed and what you've built your life on. You see, the storm reveals the foundation. And what Jesus is doing here is he's saying, look, actual disciples of Jesus can withstand the storms of life. And so you, as Drew said, you can hear and don't, or you can hear and do, but the choice is yours. And Jesus is saying there's different outcomes attached to your choice. What are you going to do? And at the heart of this is an invitation and a challenge. It's an invite. Jesus is inviting everybody, but it's also a challenge because it's hard to become disciples of Jesus. So here's our bottom line for today being a disciple of Jesus involves becoming an apprentice of Jesus. It's not just about learning things about Jesus, not just praying a one-time prayer. No, no, no. Being a disciple of Jesus involves becoming an actual apprentice of Jesus. Discipleship is about becoming like Jesus by way of apprenticeship to Jesus. And this is an action-oriented apprenticeship program. Like being a disciple of Jesus is going to look a lot more like being a nursing student than a seminary student. Okay? There are actual careers today where apprenticeship is still the model by which one is trained. So you think about maybe a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter. You don't become a plumber by going to the library and looking at pipes. It's not how it works. You don't become a carpenter by going to the library and reading about trees. You find someone who's an expert who already knows how to do it all. And then over a period of time you submit to their leadership, you come underneath them, and you learn everything that they know so that you can eventually do what they can do. And then if you keep going, you'll be able to do that for other people. You see the paradigm here? This is what Jesus is inviting you into. Only the arena is all of your life. Jesus, you know how to live life in God's kingdom and under God's reign. And so you're the master, you're the teacher. I'm going to come underneath you. I'm going to give my entire life to you, to learning from you. So I'm going to walk it out. I'm going to do life with you so that I can become like you. I'm going to allow you to transform me. And then as you transform me by your grace and your love, I'm then going to, well, give that away to other people. Invite other people to come alongside me in this apprenticeship program. Notice that the context for this type of discipleship, this apprenticeship-based program, is real life. It's your actual life. When you read the Gospels, you'll notice, hey, there are some stories that take place in a synagogue on Sabbath. Yes. And usually Jesus is breaking the rules to make a point there. But the vast majority of stories in the Gospels are actually in the context of the hustle and bustle of real life, where Jesus is out and about in the community, walking with his disciples to this place or to that place. And it's in that context that Jesus is teaching and preaching and challenging his disciples to grow and become like him. He didn't just find a local synagogue or library and then call his disciples to him and spend the next three years in that synagogue while they sat there and took notes. That's not how it was. It was in the context of their everyday life that they actually learned how to live out the way of Jesus. And so it is with us. You guys, we have this temptation to compartmentalize our faith. So these little windows of time where here's when I'm going to focus on Jesus. It's when I go to church on Sunday, and if you're really motivated, you'll have a quiet time, maybe each morning or a few times a week, and then maybe you'll be in a study, and those are the moments where I focus on Jesus, and I live the rest of my life as a functional atheist. That is not how it's supposed to be. The actual context of your discipleship, of your apprenticeship, is your everyday life. As a spouse, as a parent, as an employee, as a neighbor, wherever you happen to be, that's where Jesus wants to meet you, transform you, and teach you how to live like Him. That is the goal of discipleship, to live like Jesus as if Jesus were you. If Jesus had your life, what would it look like? How would Jesus live your life? So I'm trying to say, by way of summary, you guys, I'm trying to say that at the center of the gospel is not an invitation to pray a one-time prayer, but an invitation to become a disciple of Jesus. A disciple is someone who is doing life with Jesus such that they become like him and then live out his way with and alongside other people. And the way that that transformation happens is through an action-based apprenticeship program led by Jesus. Is this making sense so far? Okay. Now here's the question, and this is where we're going to spend the rest of our time today. How did Jesus do that? How did Jesus disciple the disciples? And in light of that, how are we going to do that as a church? That's the question. Now, when you look at the Gospels and you consider how is it that Jesus discipled the disciples, I want to submit to you that there were three key ingredients to Jesus' apprenticeship program that he continually cycled through again and again. So I'm going to give these to you. Three key ingredients to Jesus' discipleship program. The first one is information. So I want to be clear, information is not bad. I'm not saying information is bad. It's just that it's insufficient. Information by itself won't transform you. We've got to stop trusting information to bear the weight of all of our transformation. It can't do that. At the same time, information is important. I have a good friend named Jim Harrington, and he says this all the time. He says, you can't act on what you don't know. If you don't know it, you can't act on it. You can't put it into practice. And so you, as a disciple of Jesus, you actually have to know the teachings of Jesus. You have to study those, you have to understand them. Think about it. Jesus was a teacher. That's what people called him. He was a rabbi. And he spent a lot of time preaching to the crowds with parables and then explaining things at a much deeper level to his disciples. He spent a lot of time giving people information about himself and about the kingdom of God. In fact, the entire Sermon on the Mount is an information dump. It's Jesus giving us information about the kingdom of God and what it means to live into it. And he's covered a ton of topics. He's talked about how we're to be salt and light, we're to be distinct from the world, but also engaged with the world. He's talked about how to process our anger so that we pursue forgiveness rather than bitterness. He's talked about how to live in with integrity so that what we say is what we do. Our yes is yes and our no is no. He's talked about how to be faithful in marriage and how to pray and how to live a generous life and how to seek first the kingdom and how to avoid judgment. All these topics. Jesus gave us a lot of information. And then remember that it's this is just one sermon. There's all these little things that happen as he's traveling about with his disciples, and they sort of step in it, and then he gives them more information. Like his disciples are quibbling about who's going to be the greatest. And Jesus says, No, that's the wrong question. It's not about who's the greatest. That's what Gentiles do. It's about who's going to serve and live like me. So Jesus was constantly providing information about what it means to live into the kingdom. But he didn't stop there. Here is the second key ingredient: it was practice. So Jesus didn't just give his disciples new information, he solidified that information by then challenging his disciples to do something with it. So he starts with the head, but then immediately transfers his energy to their hands. They have to go do the lab work, they have to do the skill development, they got to go do the clinical. As they watch Jesus do things, then they're expected to do the same. And of course, this is how Jesus is ending his sermon. Are you going to be like the house on the rock or the house on the sand? Are you going to hear and not do? Are you going to hear and do? The choice is yours. And throughout the Gospels, you'll notice that Jesus doesn't just have his disciples take notes, they've got to put it into practice. So, for example, Luke 10. This is after Jesus has been out preaching and performing miracles. Jesus takes 72 and sends them out to do the same thing. You're going to proclaim the kingdom of God, and then you're going to demonstrate it by performing miracles and driving out demons. And it happens. They come back rejoicing. It doesn't always go well, of course. There are moments where the disciples try to do something they say Jesus is doing, and it doesn't happen. But this is the pattern. The moment you hear something, then you're expected to do it. They go from the head to the hands, from words about the kingdom to the works of the kingdom. Watch one, now try to do one. And then the final ingredient is reflection. And I'm convinced this is the most important one. Jesus provided regular feedback loops with his disciples based on how their due went. So go back to Luke 10, for example. The disciples are sent out to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom. They come back rejoicing. Even the demons submit to us. And what does Jesus do? He turns it into a lesson. He says, Don't rejoice that the demons submit to you. That's great so far as it goes. But rejoice that your name is written in the book of life. In other words, don't put your security in ministry results, because those are going to go up and down. Rather, put your security and your identity in the fact that you're in relationship with the Father. There are other times when things don't go well. There's this story where the disciples are trying to cast out a demon and they fail. And then Jesus shows up and he does it successfully, and the disciples are then wondering why. And so it creates this feedback loop. And he says, some can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. Translation, you tried to do it on your own. You tried to do it on your own strength. The only way this works is if you submit and surrender to the power of the Spirit who's available to work in and through you. You see, this is why reflection is so important. Because information alone won't transform, even the practice alone. It's only as you begin to reflect on how it went that you'll begin to learn and grow. These feedback loops often went beyond just how it went. And it translated or focused on their hearts, who they were becoming as people. And so these three are what Jesus continues to cycle through throughout the Gospels. Starts with the head, then goes to the hands, aims at the heart. Starts with words, here's new information, now works, you're gonna do something with it, but ultimately we're after transforming your wants. Starts with doctrine, then we go to deeds, but it's ultimately about your desires. Starts with content, then we inform your conduct, but it's ultimately about your character. Knowing, then doing, but ultimately it's about who you're becoming. This is my best attempt to name the key ingredients that Jesus seemed to cycle through: information, then practice, then reflection. That reflection gives new information and then it puts you back in the cycle. And it doesn't end there because remember, the goal of an apprenticeship program is that eventually you'll be able to apprentice other people. So as disciples of Jesus, we are to multiply disciples of Jesus. This is how Jesus ends. Well, the Gospel of Matthew ends in Matthew 28. It says, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey. Notice that, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And so this is the goal. You become like Jesus by submitting to his action-based apprenticeship program. You walk with Jesus, you receive his grace, he transforms you, and increasingly you're able to live like him. And then the best way to multiply disciples is to invite them to, well, walk alongside you. Come join me. And because I'm a little bit further along, I can help you with this. Everything we do at CrossPoint is designed to help you step into this apprenticeship-based program. Everything. Every ministry environment, every opportunity you have is designed to put you into this cycle of becoming a disciple of Jesus and growing in that direction. From this weekend service to our kids and student ministries program to our small groups, all of it is designed to get you into this cycle where you're becoming like Jesus and living like Jesus. And so I want to show you what our change model is. This is no secret. I'm just going to put it before you. This is our theory of how change works that we're inviting you into, and it's based on the model of what we see Jesus doing with his own disciples. So here's the first diagram, and I just got done explaining it to you. It's this continually, continual learning circle around information, practice, and reflection. Information, practice, and reflection over and over and over again. Think about it. Think about this weekend service for just a moment. What do you do? You come in and I give you information every week, right? You listen to a sermon of like 30 minutes. You get a lot of information. But we ask that it not end there. So the next thing you're required to do, we always leave with action steps where you're going to practice something. And then we leave you with reflection questions as you're going to reflect on those action steps, right? You see that cycle? Small groups. If you're in a small group, you gather together and you're studying something. Maybe uh women's study, men's group, whatever it is, you're studying the scriptures, and every week when you leave, you're left with some applications, some things you're gonna do in light of what you just got done studying. And then at the beginning of the next group, you're gonna process, you're gonna reflect on how that practice went. You guys see this loop? This is the loop we want to be engaging in all the time. Now, I'm gonna add a couple other elements that I've touched on, but I want to make explicit. Um, the second thing I want to touch on is that the focus is always on the heart. We're not just trying to put stuff in your brain. We're not just trying to uh get you to do the right thing through pressure tactics. What we want to do is focus on the heart. Do we have that next slide, Adam? What's that? I can't hear you. If you can talk into my ears, that'd be great. There it is. Okay. Um so we always want to be focusing on the heart. This is the sum total. In the Hebrew world, this is the sum total of what it means to be a human being. This is the this is the seat of your desires, your affections, your wants. This making sense? Jesus doesn't want to just give you information or pressure you to do something. He actually wants to transform the things you want. He wants to transform your affections, your desires. So you actually desire him. You actually love him. You want what he wants. And again, you see Jesus doing this throughout the Gospels. He's constantly taking the data among his disciples and then directing it at their hearts. He teaches this explicitly. Here's what he says in Mark 7: nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them, for it doesn't go in their heart, but into their stomach and then out of the body. Translation, everyone poops, okay? But then he says this what comes out of a person is what defiles them. And that starts in the heart. What's in your heart overflows from your mouth and through your actions. So Jesus is constantly focusing on the heart. It's about being transformed, it's a renovation of the heart. Now, two other key ingredients. So you've got information, practice, reflection. The goal is to be transformed, your desires, your wants, your affections, but it happens in community. It happens in community. When you read the Gospels, you'll notice that Jesus discipled a group of people. A group of people. I'm sure he had quality one-on-one interactions with each one of his 12 disciples. And we do get little glimmers of that here and there with John or Peter or whatever. But the primary context, you guys, was not one-on-one. It was a group, a very diverse group. These disciples, you guys, were very different from one another. Like if it were today, he had Republicans and Democrats as disciples, and that created tension. And those very tensions then became the raw data for them to be transformed and learn how to love one another. So this whole me, Jesus, and my Bible, nowhere found in the Gospels. You need to be in relationship with other people who can rub you the wrong way, and in that rub and in that friction, you learn how to love like Jesus. So community. And then finally is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit. You cannot transform yourself. No matter how hard you try, no matter how disciplined you are, no matter how much effort you put in, you will fundamentally not be able to change yourself. Becoming like Jesus happens as we surrender to the grace and love of Jesus made available through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows what you need. The Holy Spirit is the one who transforms you, and we grow as we surrender to what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. This is my best attempt to name here's how we actually grow and make disciples as a church. We attend to the teachings of Jesus. We learn them, we know them, we practice them, we reflect on how that practice is going. It's aimed at our hearts, not just our behavior, our heads. We do it in community, and sometimes that gets messy. Because you guys are messed up. And the Holy Spirit leads us. We're surrendering to the grace and the love of Jesus through the Spirit along the way. And yes, I'm messed up too. Here's some prayer for you this week. These are your reflection questions. Am I moving beyond hearing to actually doing the teachings of Jesus? Where are you building your house? What's the foundation? What pieces of Jesus' change model, information, practice, reflection, might be missing in your formation? Is there one of those that just is altogether absent? Is there a calibration of the three of those? And what is Jesus in inviting me to let shape, where is Jesus inviting me to let him shape my desires, wants, and affections? How is Jesus speaking to my heart these days? Now here are a couple practice practices for you. First of all, just do it. Okay? So we there is a horrible ratio between how much information we're consuming and how much we're actually doing. So instead of consuming tons of information and maybe doing it, flip it. For every podcast, sermon, or devotional you take in this week, identify one concrete action Jesus is inviting you to take and then do it. And then reflect on how it went afterwards. Making sense? So if you listen to a podcast tomorrow or the next day, before you can listen to another one, you've got to do something with it and then reflect on how it went. Practice two, do an apprenticeship exam. Each night, create a few quiet minutes to notice what did Jesus teach me today? Where did I practice what I already know or that thing that Jesus taught me? And what might Jesus be showing me about my heart? What did Jesus teach me today? Did I do it? And what does this reveal about my heart? Is this making sense? Okay. All right. Um, just a reminder to grab an Advent Guide. If you haven't already, that would be a great resource for you as you head through and lean into the holidays this year. Uh you can stand, and I want to close us in prayer. Uh Jesus, we thank you that you invite us into an intimate, loving relationship with you, and it's in that context that we're transformed to become more like you. We want to give you our hearts and we give you permission to shape them, to mold them. May we want what you want. May we desire the things you desire, starting with a deep uh relationship with you. Give us an appetite to know you and to love you more and more this week. And may it uh uh be revealed in living out your way and becoming like you. For we ask this in your name, and everyone said. Amen. Go in peace.