Introduction

Some of the finest teachers have poured their lives and their teaching into me, a nobody from nowhere, and I am most blessed. I suppose that is the way Christianity has worked from the beginning. Jesus took twelve nobodies on a three-year camping trip and invested his life in them because he believed in them. The influence of all of these people—Richard, Henri, Rich, Brennan and Dallas—on me is so strong that I am not sure I have any ideas that were not shaped by theirs. Their fingerprints are all over the book you are holding. I have studied all of their books, listened to their sermons, songs and lectures on tapes and CDs, but I can honestly say that it has been the one-on-one time spent with each of them that has influenced me the most. The long hikes with Richard, letters exchanged with Henri, nightlong discussions with Rich Mullins, lingering dinners with Brennan and ice-cream-eating sessions with Dallas (he likes vanilla—who orders plain vanilla?) are deeply imbedded into my soul.

This book is the culmination of twenty-five years of learning from these great men. In particular, the idea for this book started soon after I began working with Dallas. He kept talking about the need to create “a curriculum for Christlikeness” for individuals and churches. His blueprint for such a curriculum can be found in the ninth chapter of his great book The Divine Conspiracy. Even as he was developing that chapter, I kept pressing him with the question, “Can this really be done, Dallas?” He would say, “Yes, of course.” Then I would ask, “Why don’t you do it?” and he would say each time, “Because I think you should do it, Jim.”

No pressure.

In 1998 I began creating a curriculum based on Dallas’s simple blueprint for a course in learning to live as Jesus taught us to live. In 2003 I went to the church leadership board of the church where I attend (Chapel Hill United Methodist Church, Wichita, Kansas) and asked them if I could invite some people in the church to go through this curriculum with me. They eagerly agreed, and the first year I led twenty-five people through the thirty-week course. Midway through that year I began to suspect that Dallas was right all along. Genuine transformation into the character of Christ really is possible.

Since that time I have led another seventy-five people through it, and the results have always been the same: significant life change. In church, spouses come up to me and say, “What are you doing to my husband—he is a different person! He is more patient and more attentive to our whole family than ever before. I don’t know what is going on, but you can be sure I am taking the course next year.” In addition, this curriculum has been used by high school students in youth groups and college students on campus. When people ask me who the target audience is for this material, I always say, “Anyone who longs for change—young or old, new Christian or mature Christian, male or female, it doesn’t matter.”

The book you have in your hand is the first book in The Apprentice Series, which along with two other books form a “curriculum for Christlikeness.” The aim of this first book is to help people discover the God Jesus revealed.

Each chapter deals with false concepts and the true one, namely, the narrative of Jesus. Each chapter also contains a soul-training exercise to help imbed the narrative of Jesus more deeply into our minds, bodies and souls. These exercises are not meant to make you more religious or impress God. They are meant to help you see and understand the world as Jesus did. At the end of the chapter there is a page that highlights the main ideas in the chapter. Throughout each chapter are questions that can be used for individual reflection or group interaction and discussion.

This book is titled The Good and Beautiful God because the focus is on the character of God and how we move into a life of intimacy with God. The second book in The Apprentice Series is titled The Good and Beautiful Life, which introduces the reader to the kingdom of God and focuses on our inward character, dealing specifically with the vices that cause ruin: anger, lust, lying, worry, judging others and so on. Following the Sermon on the Mount, this second book will look at the narratives behind these character flaws (for example, What are the narratives that lead to anger?) and will replace those narratives with Jesus’ narratives about life in the kingdom of God. As with this book, each chapter will contain an exercise that is aimed at helping imbed the proper narrative into our souls.

The third book in this series is titled The Good and Beautiful Community. The focus of this book is to help us learn how to live as apprentices of Jesus in our ordinary, everyday lives. How do I live out Jesus’ kingdom vision in my family? What impact will my life with God have on my life at work? In what ways can I, as a Christ-follower, change the world I live in? What will loving my enemies and blessing those who curse me look like in my daily life? Ultimately it all comes down to this: “the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), at home, at work, in our community and on our planet.

But it all starts with knowing the God Jesus knows, and loving God with every fiber of your being. This is the spring and the foundation of the other two books, and in fact the entire Christian life. This may be the only book you read in this series, and if so, I pray that somehow your “love of God” ring brightens.