Faith Fergette Golda T. Perez B.S.A.-1 TTH 10:00-11:30

Discipleship

I. Introduction

“Every disciple is a believer but not every believer is necessarily a disciple.” When we hear the word disciple, what comes first into our minds? Well, probably the first thing that we could think of is that disciples refer to the first group of people who followed Christ during the first century. This may be partly true but discipleship does not end there. God still desires disciples today whom God can use to do extraordinary things and ordinary people like you and me can be disciples ourselves.

The Christian experience of the believers in the first-century church may seem radical to many in the church today, but to those early believers, it was normal Christianity and these men and women, empowered and motivated by the Holy Spirit turned their world upside down for the sake of Christ. In short, they were true disciples of Jesus Christ.

II. Body

A Christian disciple is a person who accepts and assists in the spreading of the good news of Jesus Christ. Christian discipleship is the process by which disciples grow in the Lord Jesus Christ and are equipped by the Holy Spirit, who resides in our hearts, to overcome the pressures and trials of this present life and become more and more Christ like. This process requires believers to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to examine their thoughts, words and actions and compare them with the Word of God.

A true disciple means walking your Christian life with full of challenge and excitement. A life that has sense of purpose and direction but if your life seems dull, boring, and somehow no purpose well my friend as what the Angel have said to St. Augustine “Tolle lege” which means take up and read. Examine every statement in the bible about what Jesus had said concerning what does it truly mean to be a disciple. We can only fulfill the Great Commission (Mark 16:15; Matthew 28:19) which is to go into all the world and make disciples if we know what a true disciple is. It literally takes one disciple to make one.

A disciple is defined as a learner, a pupil, one who comes to be taught. The relationship between the disciple and his teacher is not merely that of a student listening to a lecturer, or a passively interested listener. A disciple listens with attention and intention. He drinks in every word of his teacher, marking every inflection of voice with an intense desire to apply what has been learned.

In Luke 14:25–35, Jesus laid out the tests and requirements of discipleship. Jesus saw a large crowd gathering. He knew that these people believed and accepted His message in principle. Prior to this point, Jesus had shown how the message of the gospel was for everyone. He had exposed the Pharisees as the religious hypocrites that they were. As a result, He had become enormously popular. Now He wanted to weed out those who were following Him for the wrong reasons.

Some wanted to be dazzled by Jesus' miracles, while others came looking for a free meal. A few even hoped that He would overthrow Rome and establish God's kingdom. So Jesus turned to the multitude and preached a sermon that deliberately thinned out the ranks. Jesus seeks quality over quantity Jesus makes it clear that when it comes to personal discipleship, He is more interested in quality than quantity. The words He spoke that day are perhaps the most solemn and searching words that ever fell from His lips.

Jesus said these words so that His followers would be enlightened, so that they may know in their minds and hearts the true reason why they should follow Jesus. It was not to get rid of them. It was always their choice if they would leave or will still choose to stay after hearing Jesus’ words. After this incident Jesus’ followers decreased whereby the true disciples stayed and those who had been following Him for the wrong reasons left.

A similar account is found in Judges 7:1–22. There God wanted to give His servant Gideon a victory in battle against the Midianites. But the Lord wanted the glory for the victory. So, through a series of tests, God whittled down Gideon's original army of 32,000 to 300. God knew that He could do more with 300 alert, committed men than He could with 32,000 half-hearted ones.

Three times in the course of this message in Luke 14, Jesus used the phrase, "cannot be my disciple." In other words, Jesus was laying out some absolute requirements for discipleship.

A true disciple has to love God above everything else. An example would be Luke 14:26--Jesus begins with some very strong words: "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."

Jesus was not advocating that in order to be disciples, we must actually hate family, friends, and ourselves. In this verse, Jesus was using sharp contrasts to make a point. Here He uses the word hate as the opposite of love. He did not choose something easily hated, like sin. Instead, He chose the noblest love we could have in this world, the love of family. He uses this analogy to show that our love for God must take pre-eminence over all others. Your love for God should be so strong that your love for others is like hatred by comparison.

Our lives consist of various things that may create conflict in the call of discipleship just like personal conflict as shown in the Bible phrase above

wherein our love for God and for our family came into conflict. In Luke 9, there, Jesus asked someone to follow Him, but the man responds with this excuse: "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." (Luke 9:59)

Right there, a conflict arises. If He is truly Lord, then He is first, not us. This man was essentially saying, "Lord, let me wait until my parents grow old and die. I don't want to create any conflict. I'll follow you at a more convenient time."

Jesus answered: "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:60)

In this life, you either will have harmony with people and friction with God, or harmony with God and friction with people. You cannot have it both ways.

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matthew 10:34-35). You must decide which way it will go. If you choose harmony with God, the conflict you experience with others may ultimately lead to the awareness of their own need to find harmony with God.

How much do we love Jesus? Can we really give up everything for Him? How much are we devoted to Him? Well, Jesus also tests our hearts. He wants to be sure that we love Him more than anyone or anything else.

He also did this once to Abraham of the Old Testament when despite of Abraham’s old age he was yet given a son and named it Isaac. Abraham loved his son so much. In Genesis 22:2, God said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." Abraham passed the test. When Abraham so wonderfully passed this test, God blessed him and spared his son (Genesis 22:3–18). In essence, God told him, "It's all right, Abraham. I never intended that you actually kill Isaac. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might remain unchallenged there."

If it was you, would you do the same for the Lord? Would you dedicate your Isaac for the Lord? Will you step out from the fickle multitudes and fair-weather followers today and be a true disciple of Jesus, loving Him more than anyone or anything else?

We must be obedient children and doers of the Word. Obedience is the supreme test of faith in God, and Jesus is the perfect example of obedience as He lived a life on earth of complete obedience to the Father even to the point of death. We have to follow Jesus’ teachings.

The disciple of Christ needs to be set apart from the world. Our focus should be on our Lord and pleasing Him in every area of our lives. We must put off self-centeredness and put on Christ-centeredness. Putting Jesus first in all things.

 Our job is not producing fruit just for the sake of producing more disciples. Our job is to abide in Christ, and if we do, the Holy Spirit will produce the fruit, and this fruit is the result of our obedience. As we become more obedient to the Lord and learn to walk in His ways, our lives will change. The biggest change will take place in our hearts, and the overflow of this will be new conduct (thoughts, words and actions) representative of that change. The change we seek is done from the inside out, through the power of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t something we can conjure up on our own.

We are told that love of other believers is the evidence of our being a member of God's family. Love is defined and elaborated on in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. These verses show us that love is not an emotion; it is action. We must be doing something and involved in the process. Furthermore, we are told to think more highly of others than of ourselves and to look out for their interests (Philippians 2:3-4). The next verse in Philippians (verse 5) really sums up what we are to do when it comes to everything in life: "our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus." What a perfect example He is to us for everything we are to do in our Christian walk. It is not only Christ that we have to love but other disciples as well.

 We are to share our faith and tell nonbelievers about the wonderful changes Jesus Christ has made in our lives. No matter what our maturity level in the Christian life, we have something to offer. Too often, we believe the lie from Satan that we don't really know enough or haven't been a Christian long enough to make a difference. Not true! Some of the most enthusiastic representatives of the Christian life are new believers who have just discovered the awesome love of God. They may not know a lot of Bible verses or the "accepted" way of saying things, but they have experienced the love of the living God, and that is exactly what we are to share.

We have to make disciples out of others. The making of disciples is our Lord’s means for answering the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.  Making disciples is important because it is the Lord’s chosen method of spreading the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ.

To truly follow Christ means He has to become everything to us. Everyone follows something: friends, popular culture, family, selfish desires, or God. We can only follow one thing at a time. God states we are to have no other gods before Him. To truly follow Christ means we do not follow anything else. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."

When we give up our will, ambition, goals and desires to allow yourself to be conformed into the image of Jesus, you will discover His plan and purpose for you. Bearing your cross means dying to oneself. Why did Jesus use this particular illustration? He used a radical symbol to get people's attention. He was not simply speaking of an individual's personal problem or obstacle. In that day and age, a person who was bearing a cross was walking to his

death. Bearing your cross means dying to self—laying aside your personal goals, desires and ambitions so that God can reveal His desires, ambitions and goals for your life. In essence, it is living life as it was meant to be lived: in the will of God.

There is no such thing as a "halfway disciple." As the disciples demonstrated, no one can follow Christ by the strength of his own willpower that’s why we need the Holy Spirit to intervene. The Pharisees were good examples of those who were trying to obey God in their own strength. Their self-effort led only to arrogance and distortion of the whole purpose of God's Law. Jesus is not asking if you will commit 20%, 30%, or 50% to Him. He is asking you to commit everything. Billy Graham has said, "Salvation is free, but discipleship costs everything we have."

To follow Jesus, to be his disciple, doesn’t mean community involvement and the veneer of tolerance. It means, mainly, first and central, to worship him — with joy at the heart. Making disciples of Jesus means gathering his worshipers. This is at the heart of Jesus’s ministry on earth.

If ever there comes a time when the call of the highest earthly love and the cross of Christ are in conflict, the call of Christ must prevail. According to Jesus, a disciple is someone who loves God more than anyone else—even family and friends. This is the cost of discipleship.

The greatest barrier to discovering all that God has for us is our preoccupation with self. We have become a self-obsessed society—Jesus' mandate goes against the grain of popular culture. In fact, many in the church today have been advocating that the answer to most of the problems in our society is to build up our self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.

III. Conclusion

Discipleship may cost a lot but what we can gain in the place of the things we gave up for Christ is even better. A disciple is the one who lives the Christian life in all its fullness, receiving all God has for him. For a disciple, each new day is a fresh opportunity to walk with God. For a disciple, life has definite purpose and direction. It is life abundant. It costs to follow Jesus Christ, but it costs more not to. If you are settling for anything short of discipleship, you are missing out.

We love God and we want to follow Him. Now we have to choose: To live for ourselves or to deny ourselves. To ignore the cross or to take it up. To seek to save our lives and ultimately lose it, or to lose (or invest) our lives and ultimately find it. To gain the world or to forsake the world. To lose our soul or to keep it. Though our numbers as disciples are small, we must press on and stand together. God may purge our ranks, but it is only to make us stronger as we pursue His plan and purpose to make an impact upon our world.

God loves us and we love Him. It is our mission to spread out His teachings and find the disciple from within and when we find it, we can be an instrument for others to find the disciple that is within them.

References:

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-a-disciple

http://www.harvest.org/knowgod/new-believer/foundations-for-living/what-is-discipleship.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-discipleship.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-disciple.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/follow-Christ.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/making-disciples.html

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-a-disciple