The School of Christ

I recently was sent this book in the mail that really wasn't supposed to be sent to me, but it was needed to send something a bit smaller that came inside its pages. Something of much lesser value than this book.

I looked at the title of the book and was immediately taken back to 1996 when I walked into the newest adventure of my life. I walked into a discipleship training school with Youth With A Mission called The School of Christ DTS.

Something about this title had drawn me from the beginning....what did this mean "the school of Christ"? All I knew was that the Spirit of the living God drew me to this place of learning, to this place of finding who Jesus was for me. I found Him, not in a country, not in a school, but in my heart, in my spirit, in my understanding. I found myself starting a time of learning from Him, just like Matthew 11:29 says "Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me".

What did learning from Jesus mean for me? Little did I know that this time in my life would set the tone for all the years to come. This year I am looking back 16 years to that time and sometimes I wish that pure, 100% focused time would return, but I realize that I have grown in the learning and I am at a different place, I can only but look back and be glad I stepped into that school with Him. I can't go back there and don't have to go back there, it doesn't have to repeat itself, but sometimes those times of beginnings are so special that you want to repeat them, but I look back and I see a trail behind me with footsteps in which I so often see His and mine together and sometimes His alone because I know He carried me through those moments and still sometimes just my footsteps, because it was necessarily for me to walk through some things alone, but never without His strength.

This school of Christ that I started 16 years ago continues, it is never ending, it gets more intense, more deep, more revealing. The longer you study, the more you see, the more you understand, the further you get. Just like the twelve disciples first were in the school of Christ, they were discipled and disciplined and than they were the sent ones and became apostles (The School of Christ by T. Austin Sparks).

Do you remember that day where you stepped into the School of Christ and became a disciple, where you didn't just look at Christ and learned about Him, but that school where you stepped in to submerge yourself into the studies of who He is, where you learned of Him, not about Him. Where Jesus Himself through His Spirit became your teacher, giving you revelation for life.

Walking with Jesus was never meant to be a school about Jesus and filling our minds with information, it was meant to be a school, a learning that we go through and last for as long as needed until we come out on the other side with greater understanding, revelation and will walk according to what He taught us. Where we don't take a paper exam and try to get straight A's, but where every day in school is an exam and we can pass or fail at any given moment. But with our hearts set correctly, with our eyes in the right direction we will pass and not just pass, we will live past the exam, the exam will disappear and what will remain is our hearts, not the right answer in our minds, but the right attitude of our hearts.

I don't want to leave this school.....don't want to stop learning, receiving. Jesus, your school is the best there is, your teachings are life changing, live giving. Give me fresh revelation today, show me something new that I haven't seen yesterday so I can share You in the way that is worthy of who You are, nothing less. If I have to stop and linger on one thing longer than I stop, I study, I sit, I read, I learn from You....

Are you in the school of Christ? Are you a disciple? Followers of Jesus are disciples if they continue to hunger to learn more each day from Him whom they follow. If following Jesus has become something you just do and it has become a routine and you feel you are studying, learning, but doing it just to pass the test, than stop for one moment. Lay down your books, set aside your pencil, stop reading for one moment and ask the Spirit of God to awaken you to His voice, so that the words on the pages, the writings of your pen will come alive in your heart and mind. That is where the revelation comes when as you read and write you see new things about Him, the one you follow....