Discipline, strictly speaking, is activity carried on to prepare us indirectly for some activity other than itself. We do not practice the piano to practice the piano well, but to play it well.

Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.

Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?

The assumption of Jesus' program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence

Other kingdoms are still present on earth along with the kingdom of the heavens. That is the human condition.

Suppose we have a motor and our transmission doesn't work or our clutch or whatever. Then our body, our motor, just takes us down the road. Or our brakes don't work! We must have a coordination system.