Following Jesus is based on the first-century practice of rabbis and apprentices.

Today, to follow Jesus means to apprentice under him.

To apprentice under Jesus is to organise your life around three driving goals:

Be with Jesus

Become like Jesus

Do as he did

Apprenticing under Jesus means practicing a way of life.

One of the best ways to begin is through a daily prayer rhythm, where you create a time and place
for solitude, silence, and prayer.

We may desire to become more like Jesus, but feel stuck.

The problem is that we don’t know how to become like Jesus.

We need a training program — a reliable pathway to transformation.

We find this in the Way of Jesus, where we are formed by:

• The Practices

• Community

• Teaching

• The Holy Spirit

Formation happens over time and through suffering.

And one of the best ways to begin to change is to replace an unhealthy habit with the practice of
reading Scripture daily.

The practices are not a religious formula to habit-stack our way into spiritual formation.

When we slow down and come to quiet before God, oen the first thing that comes up is emotional pain, as our soul begins to process and discharge all the pain and suffering of our life.

There are three primary ways people deal with pain:

• Deny

• Detach

• Drug

The Jesus way is to meet God in our pain.

Left unhealed, emotional pain can sabotage our transformation. But if we open it to God, it can become the secret to our transformation.

Spiritual formation isn’t a Christian thing; it’s a human thing.

We are formed by a complex web of forces, but especially by:

• Habits

• Relationships

• The stories we believe

• Environment

• Time

• Experience

Most of our formation is unintentional.

Some of the most important questions to reflect on are:

• Who am I becoming?

• Am I being intentional about who I am becoming?

One of the best ways to do this is through a Formation Audit

The Practices are disciplines based on the lifestyle of Jesus that create time and space for us to access the presence and power of the Spirit and, in doing so, be transformed from the inside out.

Practices are a means to an end: to live and love like Jesus.

We approach deeper changes in our life indirectly, not directly, by practicing ancient disciplines that open us up to God to change us at the deepest level.

Practices are not the whole of the spiritual life, they are just one part of it.

They are essential for those who desire to be transformed to become more like Jesus.

One of the most important practices for our age of exhaustion is Sabbath — a full day set aside to stop, rest, delight, and worship

The practices are

• Sabbath,

• Prayer

• Fasting

• Solitude

• Generosity

• Scripture

• Community

• Service

• Witness

A key aspect of the spiritual journey is healing from sin.

Three dimensions to sin:

• Sin done by us

• Sin done to us

• And sin done around us

Four layers of sin we move through in our healing:*

• Gross sins

• Conscious sins

• Unconscious sins

• Attachments

Our part in the healing of sin is the practice of confession.