Apprenticeship in the Inner Life

To follow Christ was never meant to be a theory to study. It was always an apprenticeship in divine reality. The first disciples were not enrolled in courses; they were immersed in life. They walked beside their Teacher, watching Him pray, fast, grieve, bless, and endure. They learned by proximity, by practice, and by imitation — and as they did, something awakened in them. The inner life was not explained to them; it was ignited within them.

The rhythm of spiritual formation in those early days pulsed with holy simplicity. Prayer. Silence. Fasting. Stillness. These were not advanced techniques for specialists or mystics — they were the ordinary tools of transformation. Through them believers learned how to quiet the noise of the world and tune themselves to the voice of the Spirit. Fasting taught the soul to hunger rightly. Silence revealed just how noisy the heart had become. Stillness calmed the surface long enough for the deeper waters to speak. None of these practices earned holiness; they simply made space for the Holy One.

This was the wisdom of the saints. They knew that experience, not explanation, was the soil of revelation. Surrender, not theory, opened the door to encounter. Holiness was not only preached — it was perceived, like heat radiating from a fire. Apprenticeship forged a people whose faith could not be faked. They were not held together by programs or platforms, but by Presence. Their identity did not rest on theology alone, but on encounter. They had met God in the inner chamber, and once seen, He could not be unseen. What is more, the God encountered by one believer was the very same God encountered by another. This shared inner witness did not emerge from committee or creed, but from the indwelling Spirit Himself, creating a unity that nothing else could rival. The temple of God was not just the individual heart — it was also the gathering of the faithful, a corporate temple filled with even greater glory. The prophet Haggai foresaw this when he declared, “The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former” (Haggai 2:9).

Doctrine mattered, but it followed experience, not the other way around. Truth was confirmed in the Spirit before it was confirmed in the scroll. The believer could say, “I know this is true, for He has spoken it to me within.” The heart became sanctuary, and the Spirit became teacher. The writer of Hebrews confirmed this when quoting God’s promise: “I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them” (Hebrews 10:16).

This path has not disappeared. Though we have strayed far from it, the doorway to the inner temple remains open, for Christ Himself is the door. He said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture… I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:7). Even here, hidden within His words, is the invitation to the inner life: to go in and out through Him, to find pasture, to discover rest and abundance on the other side.

The way is not new; it is ancient. We have not outgrown the disciplines that formed the saints. We have not evolved beyond the promises that once turned the world upside down. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The Gospel has not changed. It was delivered once for all to the saints, and it still burns with the same power. It is we who have grown distracted. It is we who have forgotten. Yet if we would return — if we would step again into silence, into stillness, into the sacred space of the inner temple — we would find Him waiting. The Teacher has never left.

Pastor Scot