Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts in I Corinthians 12 is built upon the reality of Jesus living within His disciples. This insight is crucial to our understanding and practice of power when we minister with Jesus.

When the power of God enables you to serve others through prayer for healing, prophetic words, and revelations of God’s love and wisdom, you are observing the work of Jesus in you, loving others through you. In other words, spiritual gifts are what happens when Jesus continues to do what He did when He was with the first disciples, only now He is working by filling the church, His body, and empowering and guiding us to join Him in His mission.

Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts in I Corinthians 12 is built upon the reality of Jesus living within His disciples. This insight is crucial to our understanding and practice of power when we minister with Jesus.

When the power of God enables you to serve others through prayer for healing, prophetic words, and revelations of God’s love and wisdom, you are observing the work of Jesus in you, loving others through you. In other words, spiritual gifts are what happens when Jesus continues to do what He did when He was with the first disciples, only now He is working by filling the church, His body, and empowering and guiding us to join Him in His mission.

If you have One Allegiance to the one true God, and your purpose is to live the life Jesus lived and fulfill the mission Jesus began in your roles as a worshiper, disciple, and member of Jesus’ body, then the next question is, how do you prioritize and use your time every day?

In the way of the Lord, we will suggest five biblical practices to integrate into your daily life routines. These are skills every believer can master. The five daily practices are Intimacy with God, Repentance, Prayer, Word, and Works.

We all have the same amount of time, but we don’t all handle it in the same way. Some waste it, others spend it, but those who are wise invest it. Intentional disciples of Jesus invest their day into the future hope of the kingdom of God and the restoration of God’s creation. We participate with Jesus' spirit every day in the process that transforms us into the men and women who will be able to rule and reign as a kingdom of priests in the new heavens and earth.

In the mental model, the Way of the Lord, we discuss four theological ideas that serve as guiding beliefs for your life as an intentional disciple of Jesus. The four guiding beliefs are: the supremacy of the kingdom of God, the primacy of Grace, the sufficiency of the power of the Holy Spirit, and finally, the transforming path of the cross.

I have found these four guiding beliefs powerfully effective to organize our life experiences and make sense of the confusing complexities of life in your world as a disciple of Jesus. These four biblical and theological concepts enable you to see what you would otherwise not be able to see, such as the activity of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.

We have come to think of ourselves as alone in the universe. We are just one more animal fighting for survival on a planet that is overpopulated and polluted. Humans are small and inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, even if we have a larger brain case, opposable thumbs, use fire, and have a large vocabulary.

But the Bible describes humans differently. Humans are responsible actors in God’s universe, and we have been assigned distinct roles to play. In chapter 8, I suggest at least three primary roles for human image-bearers we are able to fulfill as intentional disciples of Jesus.

We have seen that the gospel of the Kingdom does two things: it declares what God has done to save us and it summons every human to repent and return to Him to be restored to proper relationship with God and purpose in His Kingdom. In other words, the gospel restores you to your true life and purpose as a human.

We are using the biblical concept of “the Way of the Lord” to build a mental model proven to help organize many of the core truths and principles we discover in the Bible about living in relationship with God. The ideas and concepts of these next 5 chapters will provide a scaffold to support a life of learning as an intentional disciple of Jesus.

It can be difficult to manage the quantity and diversity of ideas in the Bible. We need a way to simplify, focus our attention, and learn to think more clearly about what is of utmost importance for living as disciples of Jesus. In this chapter, I will propose a solution, a mental model I call the Way of the Lord.