After months of frustration, I finally decided to try something. I had to be out of town one Saturday, but instead of canceling the class that day, I assigned him and another student to co-teach the class in my absence. After that fateful day when he found himself on the teacher's side of the table, he was attentive and focussed, and he never caused trouble in class again. You see, as long as he was only a learner, he felt he had the freedom to goof off. But once he became a teacher, he was changed for life.
T hat's the difference between being a disciple who follows and an apostle who is sent.
Disciples are served by their teacher, but apostles are sent as agents of their teacher. As long as you are only a disciple, it is easy to take a lackadaisical attitude. But once you become an apostle, you see things differently, because now you have a stake in what the teacher is trying to accomplish. Not only do we hear his instructions to them before they are sent, but we hear their report when they return. Since every Christian yet today is by definition both a disciple and an apostle, we have a lot to learn from this story.