So, the goal of apprenticehip to Jesus is that we live our lives, right where we are, as if Jesus was living inside of us. In other words, we would do what he wants done, we would respond to people and situations as he would respond, we would have the kind of goals that he had, and we would do all of this enjoying the intimate relationship with the Heavenly Father that he had. Sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it.

Well, there is good news, and there is bad news.

But before we hear the news, bad or good, think about this.

Usually, when Christians have talked about following Jesus, or being his disciple, there have been two negative results. The first is LEGALISM. We get all involved in do’s and don’ts, in following rules, in minute questions of what we should and should not do. My grandfather belonged to a religious group that got into fights over whether or not it was appropriate for Christian men to wear neckties. Go figure? Do you think that God had any particular concerns or rules about neckties? The Bible tells us that ‘vanity’ is bad, so these Christians got into fights, and eventually split into two groups, because they couldn’t agree about whether wearing neckties was vain. That is LEGALISM run rampant. Chirstians have done a lot of silly things through the years.

The second problem that has plagued Christians is EXTERNALISM. This is where we focus on external things as if that is what God’s Rule is all about. About twenty years ago when I lived in Petaluma, I was in my study preparing a sermon when I heard a knock on the door. I opened the door, and there was a young man and a young women dressed in bedsheets and sandals. Yeah, Bedsheets wrapped around them like some kind of first century toga. They both had long hair. They told me they were prophets, and they told me that God had told them that they should preach in the church I pastored. Well, I informed them that God hadn’t told me that, and they couldn’t preach until I heard something from God. These two “prophets’ figured that if they dressed like Jesus in the external things it would make them into disciples.

These are silly examples of LEGALISM and EXTERNALISM, but the church has had plenty of experience of getting mired in these things. So, let me say emphatically that BEING A DISCIPLE/APPRENTICE OF JESUS is NOT about your external behavior and following rules. So how do we do it?

Well, there is good news and bad news.

The bad news first – WE CAN’T!!!  In and of ourselves we are no more capable of acting and thinking and responding as Jesus would than we are of flying wiwthout wings. The problem is not our EXTERNALS;  the problem is our internal condition. The Scriptures call it our HEART – the internal core of who we are, where we make decisions, and where we decide on how to respond to life. Jesus said, “it is out of the heart of man that the bad things come into the world. If our heart has hate, and greed, and resentment, and lust, and all of the other things inside, then we are going to be inclined to do those things. Of course, we may conceal, and restrain what is inside of us, but it is still there. And every time we let our guard down, we will start doing things that we know we shouldn’t. If apprenticeship to Jesus is going to work, then the primary focus has to be what is going on inside of us, at the core of who we are, in our hearts. If we are going to be able to follow Jesus into his kind of life, then God must fix our hearts.

So, what is the Good News?

This is what Jesus came to do – fix our hearts. Change us from the inside out. If this is really what Jesus is about, then we have good news indeed.

More about that later.