May 2008--The world is no friend to grace. A person who makes a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior doesn’t find a crowd gathering immediately to applaud the decision, nor do old friends spontaneously come around to offer counsel and encouragement to disciples of Jesus.  Ordinarily, there is nothing directly hostile, but I detect an air of puzzled disappointment and agnostic indifference. However it comes, such a lack of interest creates a surprisingly formidable opposition, as Eugene Peterson has observed.  

An old tradition sorts the difficulties we face as followers of Jesus Christ into the categories of world, flesh and the devil.  Most of us are well prepared for the wiles of the devil and the hazards of the flesh, but the pressures of the world are hard to avoid.  The world is an atmosphere, a mood that engulfs us.  It’s nearly as hard for a disciple of Christ to recognize the world’s temptations as it is for a fish to recognize impurities in the water.  We have a feeling, a sense, that things are quite right, that something is amiss, but it’s all so vague.  We don’t know what to do, so we do nothing.  

Perhaps the most harmful aspect of our environment is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. Speedily.  We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been shaped by thirty-second commercials, Reader’s Digest condensed books, text messaging, and Cliff Notes.  
   
Still, I don’t believe it’s terribly difficult to get a person interested in the Good News of Jesus Christ; it is terribly difficult to sustain that interest. Millions of people make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many folks I meet claim to born again, to have grown up in church, but the evidence for Christian discipleship is slim.  Everyone is in a hurry; people are starved for time.  We’ve been infected by what Gore Vidal identified as “today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”  

Frederick Nietzsche saw this area of spiritual truth, and wrote:  “the essential thing in heaven and on earth is . . . that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted, something that makes life worth living.”  
It is living into this “long obedience in the same direction” that the world frustrates and our cynical co-workers mock.  

To go against the stream of the world, the Bible gives a designation that is extremely useful. Disciple. A person who spends a lifetime apprenticed to Jesus Christ, the master of creating a durable faith.  A person living in a living-growing-learning relationship is a disciple.  A person who is a learner and a doer.  A person who is going someplace, who is moving along.
So, during this late spring and early summer, between Easter and the Fourth of July, I will be exploring the marks of a disciple in worship though the weekly message. Together, we’ll explore the signs on the road and let the Christian practices of worship, prayer, the Bible, friendship, community, service and generosity encourage us to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.  See you in worship!

Peace!