"un"wisdom for the ignorant

I have thought about this post all day, but I am still not sure I will be able to keep my thoughts as coherant as I would like. Bear with me...

The idea started a few weeks ago when I became a more "regular" attendee of LifeChurch.tv. There was this 4-part series called True[ish]. You can watch them via their archives! The pastor was talking about things in this world, in this day and age, that we (even us Christians) hold as true, but in fact they aren't really true at all. Over the few weeks I began to reflect on things that I held as virtues, and I began comparing them to who Jesus was and what He held as virtues. I would like to be able to report that I am "right on track" but I am a sinful human, and I am not anywhere near close to Jesus in those regards. (Nor is anyone else I suspect. And no, that is not a judgement, just a fair comparison of where we ALL stand next to Jesus' examples. Unfortunately we all come up short.)

This pastor of LifeChurch.tv is not what I would refer to as a typical pastor, at least not typical for the denomination I grew up in. Honestly, I don't really think his preaching style would be overly appreciated by most. However, I appreciate how he was able to highlight the absolute truths found in the Bible. He pointed out his own, and all of our flaws, and while doing so, he never once made me feel berated. He did however, remind me how much we fail on a day-to-day basis to act as Jesus' example showed us. How much we fail at "doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our Lord." Micah 6:8.

I don't really want to get into too much detail on the specifics of his sermons, I really encourage you to watch for youself. What I wanted to focus on is the outstanding question I have, the same question I almost always have when I leave church.

How?

We hear sermons that reflect on Bible passages. We hear what the scriptures mean in layman's terms. We hear how we don't measure up. But to me something is still missing. How do we do it? Where is our tangible check list of things to do or try, our guideline?

Yes, we have the Bible itself, however, it doesn't have these nifty little lists. If you start a new job, or go to learn a new subject in school, you have a trainer/instructor. Then you run through examples to explain the theory. The next step is running through some of those examples on your own, to see how you do, and where you need to make adjustments. One would never try to solve the square root of a number without knowing (or at least have written down) the quadratic equation.

Where is our equation, our list, our instruction manual on the HOW? I get the why. I understand the theory. How do you put it in practice?