Alan Fadling: Notes from my Unhurried Journey

Continuing from the last post on this theme, below are a few amazing insights from Dallas Willard’s presentation at The Jesus Way conference here in San Antonio:

Dallas Willard
The Jesus Way and Servanthood

• Before you get to servanthood, you have to start with kingdom. The basic message of Jesus was the availability of life in the kingdom of God now, right where you are.
• Repentance, as Jesus used it, was not beating your head on the floor. It means ‘Think about your thinking.” Primary in most of our thinking is, “I am king.” If you are running your life, you have a problem. You won’t be a servant to others.
• In order to get out of our kingdom, we often have to go into exile. Prophets spoke to Israel in exile. The kingdoms they thought they were building for God were all torn down.
• We come to the kingdom of God through exile, and then we can live as servants in the Jesus way. Our kingdoms must be torn down. Jesus comes to help us enter into that, offering instead the kingdom of the heavens.
• The kingdom of God is simply God in action. You find the kingdom of God when you enter the action of God—the reign of God. Jesus brings us into an interactive relationship with God which is His kingdom. We can then walk off and leave our own kingdoms behind. And Jesus teaches this by His own example.
• John 13 – knowing where He has come from, knowing where He was going…He washed their feet as a servant. No one else was going to wash those feet. To make the point of servanthood, Jesus served.
• He knew where He came from. Most people fail to serve because they have a sense of the scarcity of their life. Out of such scarcity, they fear they will not have enough for themselves. We can only serve out of abundance.
• He knew where he was going. Where? He was going to His death. The grain of wheat must fall into the ground (John 12). Are our lives are like that? When you put a seed in the earth and go away, a plant comes up and eventually bears fruit. When you return to look for the grain planted, it is no longer there. Exiled. Dead. But it brings forth much fruit. We are talking about service. What Jesus is saying is the path of my future lies through the cross—through death.
• Watch how Jesus simply turned everything loose. He stepped out of His position. He came down to the earth and gave Himself up to death. The grain of wheat fell, died and brought forth fruit. The system of God—the kingdom of God—takes over. We don’t go to servanthood directly, but go by following Jesus in abandoning completely the control we have over life as we try to build our own little kingdoms. Building our own kingdom is the human story since Adam and Eve. The Tower of Babel, for example.
• When Israel says, “We want a king,” it really means “We want someone other than God to trust.”
• All the kingdoms of the earth will pass away, and God will still be sufficient. This is the story of the book of Job, who lost everything. God really is enough. Yes.
• When everything else is gone, there is still God. It is in exile that we learn the sufficiency of God. Then, out of our knowledge of His sufficiency, we can fall into the earth and die. We have our kingdom to give up and let die. We turn it over and are set free from the burden from controlling our world and our lives. The great freedom of the cross.
• The cross frees us into true servanthood. Out of love we can now love our neighbors. If we are not servants, we can’t love. We have problem with mercy in our churches because we don’t live as servants.
• Being a servant is not a matter of particular acts, but a matter of your whole life. You don’t keep your kingdom and occasionally serve. You must live always as a servant.
• A fear? If we serve, who will look after us? If we live the Jesus way in the kingdom, we know who has our back. Humble yourself  under the mighty hand of God, that when the time is right, He will exalt you. You can then cast your cares on Him knowing He’ll care for you.

(Go to Part three)