At Bethel Seminary San Diego’s Recent Spiritual Renewal Conference, Dallas Willard touched on three main aspects of discipleship.

  1. Learning to do as Jesus did and taught.
  2. Learning to handle the ordinary events of daily life within the principles and power of God’s rule.
  3. Learning to act in God’s power.

I want to try and expand these ideas, and unfortunately I only have a few tidbits of notes from Dr. Willard to help me, so hopefully I won’t muddle these ideas too much.

The first aspect of discipleship, to learn to do as Jesus did and taught is aimed at the redeeming the motivation of the heart behind our actions.  The main issue is not, did you do that or did you do this, but realizing our motivations behind those actions  That is to say, “what we would like” and “at what length did we work to get that which we like” are the roots of doing this or doing that.  This aspect of discipleship is on a level that engages the world on an active level.

The second aspect of discipleship, to learn to handle the ordinary events of daily life within the principles and power of God’s rule, is to figure out how to live in world full of situations and things that Jesus said nothing about; to live as if Jesus were living our lives.  This aspect of discipleship is on a level that engages the world on a passive level.

The third aspect of discipleship, to learn to act in God’s power, is aimed learning to live without depending on our own power to make sure things happen the way we think they should or the way we want them to happen.  Two big parts of this is praying and giving.  Dr. Willard noted that “Prayer is God’s power sharing device.  Prayer is how God develops his people and allows them to have more and more of his power, yet still keeping it as his power; its allowing their kingdom to grow within his kingdom.”  This aspect of discipleship is on a level that engages the world on a supernatural level.

All of these aspects of discipleship point to a stance of learning from, acting alongside, and cultivating a relationship with God as we engage the world and its needs.