Special experiences, faithfulness to the church, correct doctrine, and external conformity to the teachings of Jesus all come along as appropriate, more or less automatically, when the inner self is transformed. But they do not produce such a transformation.The first objective in discipleship then is "to bring apprentices to the point where they dearly love and constantly delight in that heavenly Father made real to earth in Jesus and are quite certain that there is no catch, no limit, to the goodness of His intentions or to His power to carry them out."
The human heart must be plowed much more deeply. Thus these four emphases are good in their place, and even necessary when rightly understood. But when taken as primary objectives, they only burden souls and make significant Christlikeness extremely difficult, if not impossible. With respect to these four emphases, we need to say loudly and repeatedly, to everyone concerned, "You cannot build your house on the rock in this way.
1 Jn 1.5, "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
When the mind is filled with this great and beautiful God, the "natural" response, once all "inward" hindrances are removed, will be to do "everything I have told you to do."How do we accomplish this?
St. Thomas Aquinas .., "love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved." And "love follows knowledge. Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved.We need to help others taste and see that the Lord is good - help them draw close and to linger in His presence.
As teachers we therefore bring the lovely thing - in this case, God - before the dicsiple as fully and as forcibly as possible, putting our best efforts into it.
The second objective is to remove our automatic responses against the Kingdom of God. That is to "repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand." We need to free apprentices from domination, of enslavement, to their old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action.
We need to provide training that leads to doing. That doing is the work of the Kingdom as opposed to the work of our former way of life. This is difficult for the church today since too many have erred to either limiting their concept of the Kingdom to "life after death" or jumping into "victory" in all things at all times (i.e., Word of Faith kind of stuff). Neither of these is life in the Kingdom as Jesus modeled and taught us.
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