Just looking at his face I could see the Holy Spirit radiating through him. His love for Christ was evident in his passion for leading worship. . . he spoke of God's call on his life, an undeniable call that had been emerging from the depths of a difficult period in his life. . . he reveled in the mystery of how life turns out for us vocationally, sending us places we never dreamed we would be.
It is truly amazing and a wonderful blessing to stop and chat with someone who simply radiates the love of Christ from their pores. The joy of the Lord exudes from their very being and you can't help but feel warm inside just looking at them. When I see a person like this and have the great opportunity to engage with them in conversation about faith and life, the word "disciple" continually runs through my thoughts as we speak. So, Daniel Patrick Ryan, musician, artist, calligrapher, re-enacter of John Muir and John Appleseed, lover of Christ, Irish by blood, saved by baptism-- this one's for you, sir.
Discipleship is a way of life. Being a disciple of Christ reveals the fullness of who we are and it is lived out in grocery store shopping, worship, work, play and everywhere else that we find ourselves. It is not simply a nod at the One who hanged on the cross, saying in passing, "Yes I believe" or checking the box on a form that asks about religion, "Christian," and then failing to live that out in any meaningful or even intentional way. It is ALL about intentionality. A person cannot say "I believe" and then put that so-called faith on a shelf for safe keeping, taking it down only when it is convenient or PC. Faith is to be lived. Faith is to be active and alive and prominent in our lives. Faith is not relying cheaply on God's willingness to forgive, it is living at the foot of the cross, begging for forgiveness daily, loving and serving Jesus by loving and serving the neighbor, listening for the call on our lives, giving generously of our resources and more.
It is obvious.
It is oozes out.
It cannot be contained.
Something other than that is not discipleship. I don't know what it is. . . but I know what it isn't.
I have written and preached a lot about our Christian vocation and how God calls each of us to share our gifts and talents with the world. I rely on Luther here who lifts up ordinary, everyday work as being holy. From the trash collector to the brain surgeon and every job imaginable, to work is to do honor to God, to work is to fulfill a calling on our lives, to work is to do something holy. But it occurs to me that I haven't gone deep enough on this vocation thing. . . it's not JUST about working or serving (esp. if you work in the service industry) but it is about an awareness of what you are doing and how that serves the kingdom. You see, I used to work in toxicology research (histology to be exact) and I never, ever realized that what I was doing was useful or holy in any way. It was a job and I needed a job. Now I can see that it was useful and helpful for the kingdom. Drugs had to go to market to cure illness, to save lives and those pharmaceuticals had to be tested and approved for use. I had no clue as to how my Christian life played a part in that vocation. The daily dissecting of lab animals, the making and staining of slides for the pathologist to read had no meaning for my life. But it could have!! If I had had an awareness of it, an intentionality about it!! Instead off I went to seminary looking for some way to meaningfully serve the Lord that I love.
It is holy to serve and to work in a vocation but when we do it with intentionality, with sacrifice, with discipline for the sake of others and in the name of Christ THEN we are living the life of discipleship. When we bring in our faith in the incarnate Word of God THEN we are living the life of a disciple. We are no longer slogging away at something simply to be employed or to put food on the table- which is of course noble to be sure-- but we are recognizing God's call on our lives and we are living it out with intentionality! That's discipleship! And sometimes we hear God calling us to do something else for the sake of the Kingdom! That's part of the journey too but we have to be listening! And with intentionality comes a greater ability to listen. When the call comes we put our fishing nets down, or lab equipment as the case may be, and we follow Jesus. And it costs us something. Discipleship costs us something, but we get so much more out of it than we put into it! We get a living, breathing, changing, deepening, loving relationship with our Lord Jesus.
Allow me to offer a metaphor about this from my world of coaching track and field. Sometimes I will have an athlete on my team who might be less than motivated to work hard or to win. I should say, they like to win for sure, but putting in the hard work is less than desirable. When they lose a big race they shrug it off saying, "I don't care, it didn't matter to me anyway!" On the contrary, the dedicated athlete who is the last to leave practice everyday, who desires to be coached and critiqued so they can become better goes into that big race ready to give it their all. If they fail to win they may be disappointed that they lost but they are still happy with their performance because they gave it all they had! They may even have a new PR out of it and that means a lot. They never dismiss the race or the competition and say, "It was no big deal, I didn't care about it anyway."
Discipleship has its own rewards-- a closer relationship to the Good Shepherd. But there is cheap discipleship and there is costly discipleship. We are not saved by our works, however, we despise the gospel if we fail to take our walk with Christ seriously. It is something completely different when an athlete who has worked their proverbial tail off to get better loses by a lean at the tape and when a lazy athlete loses and says it doesn't matter. We deceive ourselves when we think that the life of discipleship doesn't matter and we fail to truly know what grace is all about! Only when we give it 110% can we truly embrace what Christ has done for us- otherwise it doesn't really matter all that much because we have not felt the deep need for salvation. Discipleship is more than mere words-- it is a deep abiding commitment to the One who saved us by dying on the cross, whom God raised from the dead so that we might have new life. It cost Jesus big time. And it ain't cheap for us either!
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