Discovering the Eternal Kind of Life That Begins Right Now

For four months, during my daily train ride, I had been slowly making my way through Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy.

Let me say this about Dr. Willard: I heard him speak in person several times, and every time I was challenged to the core of my being.

Willard spoke about spiritual disciplines, righteousness, and what it means to become a student of Jesus Christ from a clearly established philosophical and theological high ground. Yet he never seemed to speak merely as an academic. He brought his own humanity and shortcomings into the conversation and acknowledged the struggle we all face in becoming everything God desires us to be.

And during those train rides, I had plenty of time to think.

I thought about the wear and tear on my soul from my years as a pastor and from being involved in the closing of a church. I also had the opportunity—whether I wanted it or not—to examine my own motivations.

I discovered that some of them weren’t very good.

The desire to be well thought of, for example, is not a particularly good motivation for becoming a church leader. If you need people to admire you, pastoral ministry can provide you with a rather painful education.

Sooner or later, somebody won’t.

You might ask, “Charlie, why did it take you four months to read one book?”

My answer would be simple:

Because reading The Divine Conspiracy became one of the most practical, educational, and life-transforming experiences of my Christian walk.

The book was so rich with content and so filled with fresh insights into what Willard called the Kingdom of the Heavens that I could only handle so many paradigm shifts at one time.

I needed time to think.

Time to pray.

And, perhaps most importantly, time to unlearn.

Willard helped me see again the inherent beauty, simplicity, and authority of Jesus’ profound teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than treating those teachings as a collection of impossible ideals or disconnected sayings, he demonstrated their unity of thought and purpose. Jesus was describing a genuinely different kind of life—the life of the Kingdom available to those who choose to become His students.

And that was the fresh insight for me:

Somehow, with all my religious upbringing, instruction, church involvement, Bible study, preaching, leadership, and ministry, I had managed to miss the point.

I had spent much of my Christian life trying to perform correctly.

Believe the right things.

Behave the right way.

Say the right things.

Lead successfully.

Be pleasing to God.

And, if I’m being truthful, be pleasing to other people as well.

But now another possibility was opening before me.

What if God was not standing over me waiting for me to finally get everything right?

What if God had been pursuing me all along?

What if He had conspired—in the best possible sense of that word—to recreate me, renew me, and restore my soul?

That realization began changing everything.

I had struggled for years to perform in just the right way so that I could be pleasing to God. Yet perhaps God had been waiting for me to stop struggling long enough to discover what He wanted to give me.

I used to think I was a Christian primarily because of what I believed, how I behaved, and perhaps even because of what the people around me thought about me.

After those months on the train with Dallas Willard, I began to realize that all of that was beside the point.

God was inviting me into fellowship with Him.

And that invitation was not merely about someday going to heaven after I died. It was an invitation into an eternal kind of life that could begin right now.

I could become a student of Jesus Christ.

I could learn from Him how to live.

I could learn a life of peace and joy even when my circumstances were anything but peaceful or joyful.

I didn’t have to wait until everything was fixed.

I didn’t have to wait until I became a better pastor.

I didn’t have to wait until I became a better Christian.

I didn’t even have to wait until heaven.

My inheritance in Christ could begin now.

Today.

And then again tomorrow.

Every day.