Stop Doing Start Becoming: An Invitation to Become More Like Jesus

By Derek Koone

The beatitudes are some of the most beautiful and yet challenging words in the Bible. Christians and non-christians alike have been chasing after a more blessed life for centuries. Sadly they often come up empty despite all their effort and striving. This book invites you to try a different way. As you instill the spiritual practices talked about in this book you will start to see that you are becoming someone Jesus called blessed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385020966

Derek Koone

Derek is the Lead Pastor of Lake Springs Church in Holly Springs, NC. Stop Doing Start Becoming is his first book release. He has spoken and led worship at conferences and retreats for both students and adults for the better part of two decades.

Book preview

STOP

AN INVITATION TO

DOING

BECOME MORE

START

LIKE JESUS

BECOMING

DEREK KOONE

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Copyright © 2024 Derek Koone.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV Bible® (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG or The Message are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Interior Image Credit: Photo by Wilfried Santer on Unsplash

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2097-3 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2098-0 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2096-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024904707

WestBow Press rev. date: 5/8/2024

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1: The Invitation

Chapter 1     Come and See

Chapter 2     The Power of Invitation

Chapter 3     Invited into Something New

Chapter 4     The Fundamental Attitudes of Being with Jesus

Chapter 5     Practice: The Key to Life on the Rock

Chapter 6     Poor in Spirit by Communion, Mournful by Confession

Chapter 7     Meekness by Silence, Solitude, and Sabbath

Chapter 8     Hungering by Meditation

Chapter 9     Merciful by Hospitality

Chapter 10   Purity of Heart by Lament

Chapter 11   Peacemaking by Community

Chapter 12   Preparing for Persecution by Prayer and Fasting

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Endnote

About the Author

FOREWORD

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and its beatitudes have been the bedrock of Christian teaching throughout centuries. If you want to know what the greatest man who ever lived believed about the world, you could just read Matthew 5–7.

Just as the sermon and its beatitudes have informed our worldview for centuries, so the Christian disciplines (or practices, as referred to in this book) have formed our way of life. If you want to walk in the way of Jesus and the saints, you make a habit of certain spiritual activities.

Yet understanding the beatitudes and living out the practices aren’t easy. The beatitudes, while simple, are also full of mystery. They are counterintuitive. We wonder if they’re a present reality or a future thing. Some seem impossible given our current standing in the world, depending on whether we’re rich or poor, comfortable or troubled, or exalted or persecuted.

It’s good for us to remember that being blessed is to be indwelt by God. When someone blesses my heart, I hope they mean that God is present with my soul. And so it is for the Christian, who’s been granted new life in the baptism of faith and has received the Holy Spirit. In the first moment of belief, the Christian is blessed. Indeed, the beatitudes are collectively a gift to the Christian. Paradoxes for sure, while also present realities and future states of being.

Take just one: Blessed are those who mourn. By nature, the Christian has already experienced a contrite heart in their confession of sin to God. Yet there is much more mourning to do, for the Christian life is one of mistakes, sorrows, and an ongoing recognition of our fallenness. Indwelt by God, the mourners will forever be comforted.

Similarly, the practices can be just as hard to grasp because they seem foreign to our natural way of life. Scripture reading, Sabbath rest, prayer, solitude, and more aren’t like eating and sleeping. Instead, they’re things we must seek. They also seem daunting or impractical to many of us, who may view practices as things reserved for monks, nuns, and super holy people who actually have the time and spiritual prowess to implement them. Yet deep down, we sense that understanding the beatitudes and adopting a spiritual life that looks like Jesus are very important things. We sense they may be crucial components to becoming the best of who God made us to be.

A few years ago, I began attending a church led by a young pastor named Derek Koone. He had a passion for church planting and was an extremely hard worker. His dedication was evident by the hours he put in and the things that came to be because of his sheer determination. But he also knew he was running hard, which affected other things.

Derek loves the gospel narrative and is fascinated with the character of Christ. So when he came to the end of Jesus’s sermon—that building life on a foundation of anything but Jesus’s words was ruinous—it made him think hard about how he’d been building his own life. It led him to reflect deeply on his own formation.

As he studied more closely the character of Jesus, it revealed a Jesus dedicated to the practices. Someone who loved community and solitude. Someone who feasted on the scriptures and fasted to draw strength from God. Someone who took time to rest and be silent.

It also revealed a Jesus who was the embodiment of who he said was blessed in the beatitudes: the poor in spirit, the merciful, the pure, and the persecuted. Story after story, we see Jesus exemplify these traits.

Derek was coming to realize something I’d also been learning about in my own faith walk over the years. It was that the beatitudes are best understood by experience. The more we endeavor to live like Christ, the more we unlock the mysteries of his teachings. And the heart of the practices is to give us this experience, to use them as a means to grow closer to God.

Stop Doing, Start Becoming takes you on a journey to discover the blessed life. You’ll be challenged to consider the foundation you’ve built. You’ll see there are fundamentals to Christian faith that Jesus lovingly invites us to explore. You’ll see that the beatitudes aren’t platitudes but in fact attainable ways of being that can be honed with the right spiritual practice. With God’s help and the power of his Spirit, you’ll see Jesus’s invitation to be his disciple is the best invitation you could ever accept.

xxxxxxx

INTRODUCTION

A LIFE OF DOING

It was a dark and early August morning. I approached the doors to the church to begin another day of labor-intensive work on a building project that had to be finished by the weekend. On the other side of these double doors lay construction material and waste.

I was tired. I’m not a contractor. I’m a preacher. However, in my desire to encourage and support a friend who seemed in need of help, I employed them to do a job they were neither inspired nor dedicated enough to see through to completion. (Maybe they were burned out like me too.) Anyway, there I was doing the work myself late hours into the night.

After kindly firing my friend, I got some more help, but I was still putting in several hours myself, coming in at night and leaving late at night. Having fast food for every meal and meeting my wife and kids in the children’s ministry classrooms for dinner most nights. When was the last time I prayed with them at home, beside their beds, and kissed them good night?

But that’s just the nature of the job sometimes. You don’t get paid by the hour, and all the stuff needs to be done. But how did all this stuff become my stuff?

No big deal, I said to myself. I can get it done. I am strong, smart, and will outwork anyone. I also love having a sense of accomplishment follow me throughout my day. I knew I’d be proud of my work when this was said and done. Everyone at the church would love it and be so grateful to have these beautiful new bathrooms.

On the next day (another long one), I got a phone call around midnight. I was just settling into bed when I saw my nephew’s name pop up across the screen.

We’d recently taken him into our home to try to help him get out of a toxic relationship with certain people in his life back home. We got him a job at Chick-fil-A. He’s a bit like me in that he can outwork anyone. Chick-fil-A makes good use of people who work hard. He was excelling there. He was closing almost every night and working nearly forty hours a week. His bosses loved him. I was proud of him.

To get him to and from work, we bought him an old Jeep. A bit of a project. But I thought that would be good because he loves cars and loves working on cars. He had grand plans for the Jeep with the money he was making.

Now it was midnight when the phone rang, and I was scared. Was there an accident? Why was he calling so late?

He’d broken down on the side of the road. It was raining. The top was off the Jeep, and he was getting drenched. I jumped in my truck and drove to meet him. Tired and in need of sleep desperately. But he needed me to help him. So off I went to help.

We got the Jeep jumped in the rain and raced back to the house to get him out of the rain and get him a good shower. He needed a good shower after frying chicken all night long. So maybe the rain was a good thing? Nevertheless, I could finally get to bed.

It felt like I’d just closed my eyes when my 5:30 a.m. alarm began to sing. I hit the snooze button. Nine more minutes, please. I deserved it. I hit the snooze button again. And again. Eventually, I turned the alarm off and just rolled back over and slept. I hadn’t slept like this in a long time. I crawled out of bed around 9:30 not refreshed but more refreshed than I would have been had I gotten out of bed at 5:30.

I headed to work and repeated the day before. Literally. The midnight phone call and everything. This time, the Jeep wouldn’t crank back up. So we left it in the grocery store parking lot. Over the next few days, we spent hours changing out a fuel pump, fuel filter, and ignition coil. Nothing worked so I had eight friends help me get it onto a trailer so I could haul it back home. I’d try to fix it after our church camping trip and men’s retreat in the next couple of weeks.

Did I mention the church bathrooms were completed? Well, kind of. They still needed stalls made. Luckily one of our elders is a pretty skilled carpenter. He made some fantastic stalls, and I didn’t have to spend much time thinking about them.

The camping trip was great—for almost everyone but me. I broke the window of a church member’s van with a football. I used to play quarterback in high school. Keywords used to.

I also had to share a tent with my two very smelly, sweaty daughters who had been outside in the Carolina heat and humidity for hours before bed. One of them snores. I got a little sleep but still felt lost and unrested.

The next day we did a tubing ride on the lake, which turned out to be a lot of fun. I laughed so hard riding on top of the water. I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. I needed that.

Back home. Unloaded, showered, and went to the office to finish my sermon before the next day’s worship service.

Got through the Sunday