LEADERSHIP TRAINING COURSE

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Table of Contents

SECTION I: DISCIPLESHIP BY DESIGN

Lesson 1: A Biblical and Philosophical Foundation for Discipleship.................3

Lesson 2: The Master’s Method I: Method, Selection, & Association...............7

Lesson 3: The Master’s Method II: Consecration, Impartation, Demonstration..................................................................................................................13

Lesson 4: The Master’s Method III: Supervision and Reproduction................19

Lesson 5: Discipleship Demands Leadership & Dedication............................25

Lesson 6: The Disciplines of Discipleship......................................................33

Lesson 7: Discipleship Through Small Groups I: Purpose & Attitude.............39

Lesson 8: Discipleship Through Small Groups II: Leadership Style & Group Building.....................................................................................................45

Lesson 9: Discipleship Through Small Groups III: Format, Formation, & Content.....................................................................................................51

Lesson 10: 1 to 1 Discipleship from the Small Group Context.......................59

Lesson 11: Confrontation & Restoration.......................................................65

Lesson 12: The Qualities Necessary to be an Effective Discipler...................73

SECTION II: ARTICLES

Love: “The Love of God” by A.W. Pink...........................................................81

Mind in Love I: “The Dying Art of Thinking” by Ravi Zacharias....................85

Mind in Love II: “Let My People Think” by Os Guinness...............................89

Lordship I: “Free As a Slave” by Winkie Pratney...........................................99

Lordship II: “God Has a Right on Our Lives” by Eli Gautreaux....................107

Fellowship: “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer ...................................117

Spiritual Authority I: “Authority & Submission” by Watchman Nee..........125

Spiritual Authority II: “Readings on Authority & Submission”..................127

Prayer: “A Call to Prayer” by J.C. Ryle.........................................................120

Evangelism I: “Witnessing Like Jesus” by Winkie Pratney..........................128

Evangelism II: “Ambassadors for Christ”....................................................137

Holy Spirit: “Power with God” by Winkie Pratney.......................................141

XAi Missions I: “Who Cares” by William Booth...........................................145

XAi Missions II: “Why You Should Go to the Mission Field” by Keith Green165

Bible I: “The Bible is Full of Mistakes” by Winkie Pratney............................171

Bible II: “Top Secret” by Winkie Pratney.....................................................179

Worship: “The Missing Jewel of Worship” by A.W. Tozer.............................185

SECTION III: APPENDIX

LTC First Retreat Schedule............................................................................189

LTC Second Retreat Schedule.......................................................................190

Weekly Time Sheet.......................................................................................191

Inward, Outward, Corporate Disciplines Homework......................................193

Purposes & Goals Homework........................................................................195

16 Fundamental Truths.................................................................................197

Holy Spirit Handout.......................................................................................199

Dating & Relationships Handout...................................................................201

Love Handout..............................................................................................2013

Bible Article III.................................................................................................20

Notes............................................................................................................217

Leadership Training CourseCourse Syllabus

Course Adviser: Kristen HillE-mail: summit.krs@gmail.comPhone: Course Time & Location: 10-12pm @ Murie 3rd Floor unless noted

Class Etiquette: Please be on time. If you must miss more than 3 lessons (not days), we will suggest

you retake the class at another time. Possible make up day. Assignments will be given at the end of each class; you will be

responsible for completing these assignments even if you have missed a class.

Quizzes will be given at the start of every class, not so much for a grade, but rather to show what you are absorbing from class.

The class price is $100: this covers the cost of materials and both retreats. You may pay upfront at the first class or in 3 installments (Feb. 2nd, March 3rd, March 30th)

Course ScheduleClass Date

Topics Homework DUE

1/27 Introduction / Syllabus / History DBD Lesson 1 & DBD Lesson 12

*2/2 – 2/3 **First Retreat: Love, Mind in Love, Lordship, & Body Map

Read Love article Read Mind in Love articles (2) Read Lordship articles (2) Read Fellowship article Trace spiritual lineage back 5 steps

& contact a few to honor & thank2/11 DBD Lesson 2 & DBD Lesson

3 Read DBD Lesson 2 Read DBD Lesson 3

2/18 DBD Lesson 4 & Spiritual Authority

Read DBD Lesson 4 Read Spiritual Authority articles (2)

2/25 DBD Lesson 5 & DBD Lesson 6

Read DBD Lesson 5 Read DBD Lesson 6

*3/4 Prayer and Worship & DBD Lesson 7

Read Prayer article Read Worship article Read DBD Lesson 7 Purposes & Goals Assignment^ Disciplines Assignment^ Fill Out timesheet Assignment^

3/11 DBD Lesson 8 & DBD Lesson 9

Read DBD Lesson 8 Read DBD Lesson 9

Spring Break 3/13 – 3/173/25 DBD Lesson 10 & DBD Lesson

11 Read DBD Lesson 10 Read DBD Lesson 11

4/7 – 4/8 **Second Retreat – Holy Spirit, XAi/XARA, The Bible, Dating & Relationships, Evangelism & Final Review

Read Holy Spirit article Read Evangelism articles (2) Read XAi articles (2) Read Bible I & II articles (2)

4/15 Final Exam (10am-2pm) Fundamental Truths responses Study for your Final Pick a time for your Exit Interview

4/18 – 4/19 Exit Interviews (times TBD)* Class Payment Due** Retreats are Mandatory^These assignments can be found in the Appendix section of the LTC Workbook

Section 1: Discipleship by Design

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Lesson 1: A Biblical and Philosophical Foundation for Discipleship

I. OUR PHILOSOPHY OF MINISTRY

CommunityOur goal is to become a "community" of students on campus. We put a high priority on coming together as a group for biblically commanded activity. God has intended for us to come to a greater understanding of Him by vital interaction in the Body of Christ.

This means that we can experience fully what God has for us only when we are in the context of "community". Only in the Body can the gifts of the Holy Spirit find meaning. Only in the Body can multi-faceted ministry best occur. Only as they are recognized by the community can eldership and accountability be important components for each believer's life. Scattered Bible studies alone are not sufficient for a full and balanced growth in Christ. What is necessary is a fully operating Body with leadership, training, worship, fellowship and outreach.

Key Ingredients for Community

1. Affirmation - There is nothing you have done or will do that will make me stop loving you. I may not agree with your actions, but I will love you as a person and do all I can to hold you up in God's affirming love.2. Availability - Anything I have - time, energy, insight, possessions - is at your disposal if you need it, to the limit of my resources.3. Prayer - I commit to pray for you in some regular fashion, believing that our caring Father wishes His children to pray for one another and ask Him for the blessings they need.4. Openness - I promise to strive to become a more open person, disclosing my feelings, my struggles, my joys, and my hurts as well as I am able. This is to affirm your worth to me as a person. In other words, I need you!5. Honesty - I will try to mirror back to you what I am hearing you say and feel. If this means risking pain for either of us, I will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realizing it is in "speaking the truth in love that we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head" (Ephesians 4:15).6. Sensitivity - Even as I desire to be known and understood by you, I commit to be sensitive to you and to your needs to the best of my ability. I will try to hear you, see you, and feel where you are and to draw you out of the pit of discouragement or withdrawal.7. Confidentiality - I will promise to keep confidential whatever is shared in order to provide the atmosphere of trust necessary for openness.

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8. Accountability - I am accountable to you to become what God has designed me to be in His loving creation.

Community Life ExpressedAs you can see from the ingredients for community, a Christian's community life is defined first by the quality of relationships maintained between Christian friends and secondarily by where we live. Community life does not demand that we live together (and community is not insured even if we live under the same roof). But where proximity living is available, every opportunity should be pursued to assist the development of a Christian community lifestyle.

FIVE-FOLD PHILOSOPHY OF CHI ALPHA CAMPUS MINISTRIES

1. Biblical Foundation for the Five-Fold Philosophy"They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer . . . . Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved" (Acts 2:42,46,47 emphasis added).

Focus of the Five-Fold Philosophy: Full Christian GrowthEach aspect (worship, fellowship, discipleship, witness, and prayer) produces health and growth both for individual believers and for the Body of Christ. Each of us giving continual attention to these aspects throughout our life while we are in accountable Christian community, will keep us on the narrow path that leads to our Father's house.

2. Strategy for Implementing the Five-Fold Philosophy"Our primary strategy is to work toward the building of a group or community of people who share the ideals of becoming a community of worship, a community fellowship, a community of discipleship, a community of witness, and a community of prayer. We believe the most fertile atmosphere for people to come to faith and maturity in Christ is warm exposure to a group of people fervently committed to the God of the Bible, to one another, and to the task of evangelizing the campus. As a praying, worshipping, loving, discipling, witnessing community, they demonstrate the Kingdom of God and most effectively enculturate others in it" (Chi Alpha Philosophy).

II. OUR PARTICULAR EMPHASIS HERE IS DISCIPLESHIP

A. Christ demands that we disciple the nations.

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very ends of the

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age" (Matt. 28:18-20).

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

The scope of the demand:

1. Purpose: "make disciples of all nations"2. Program: "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you"3. Provision: "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you"4. Promise: "And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age."

LET THERE BE NO ERROR AT THIS POINT: Discipling is a task that requires much more than simple programs or techniques. Discipleship at all times requires the power and presence of Jesus Christ through the indwelling Spirit!

Discipleship is not a formula.

B. Christ entrusted the Kingdom of God into the men He discipled. He didn't write a holy book, He left no manual, no tablets full of commandments, only trained, changed and empowered men to continue His mission - to save the world.

C. Christ demonstrated that discipleship must be encased in a personal, relational model and not in a static educational mode. This calls for the direct personal involvement of the discipler in the lives of those being discipled. "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last...This is my command: Love each other" (John 15:16,17)."It is our conviction that discipling is best accomplished in the relational context of the more matured believer helping to nurture younger members of the community" (Chi Alpha Philosophy).

III. A SUMMARY STATEMENTThe making of disciples is not something which just happens. It is a very deliberate and specific process which requires strategy, time, and prayer. It is that process by which growing Christians impart their knowledge and experience in the Lord Jesus to newer Christians, in the context of personal relationships. By this process each member is thus given the basic knowledge and skills necessary to grow toward maturity in Christ and is equipped for the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:11-16).

Discipleship is relationship.

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We desire to follow the instructions of Paul to Timothy. "...the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2). In this way we perpetuate a continuous development of maturing leaders for the work of Christ here in our campus ministry, then across our state, our nation and, through our missions endeavors, around the world.

The Purposes of Discipleship in the Campus Ministry Setting

A. Provide all students involved with this ministry a spiritual/ pastoral discipler for continued Christian growth and nurture.

B. Provide every student a core of fellow students in which to share the love of God with each other.

C. Provide a relational learning experience in the practics of the Christian faith.

D. Provide an atmosphere for leadership development among students for God's kingdom work.

E. Provide for the continual development of a trans-generational ministry to the university community.

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Lesson 2: The Master's Method I: Method, Selection, and Association

THE IMPORTANCE OF METHOD"The days of His flesh were but the unfolding in time of the plan of God from the beginning. It was always before His mind. He intended to save out of the world a people for Himself and to build a church of the spirit which would come in glory and in power. This world was His by creation, but He did not seek to make it His permanent abiding place. His mansions were in the sky. He was going to prepare a place for His people that had foundations eternal in the heavens.

No one was excluded from His gracious purpose. His love was universal. Make no mistake about it. He was the Savior of the world (John 4:42). God wanted all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. To that end Jesus gave Himself to provide a salvation from all sin for all men. In that He died for one, He died for all. Contrary to our superficial thinking, there never was a distinction in His mind between home and foreign missions. To Jesus it was all world evangelism.

His life was ordered by His objective. Everything He did and said was a part of the whole pattern. It had significance because it contributed to the ultimate purpose of His life in redeeming the world for God. This was the motivating vision governing His behavior. His steps were ordered by it. Mark it well. Not for one moment did Jesus lose sight of His goal.

That is why it is so important to observe the way Jesus maneuvered to achieve His objective. The Master disclosed God's strategy of world conquest. He had confidence in the future precisely because He lived according to that plan in the present. There was nothing haphazard about His life - no wasted energy, not an idle word. He was on business for God (Luke 2:49). He lived, He died, and He rose again according to schedule. Like a general plotting His course of battle, the Son of God calculated to win. He could not afford to take a chance. Weighing every alternative and variable factor in human experience, He conceived a plan that would not fail." Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert E. Coleman. (emphasis added)

IS BIGGER ALWAYS BETTER?We live in a time when the tendency in our culture is to associate successful enterprises as those endeavors that end up being large and wealthy. This tendency has also gripped portions of the Church of Jesus Christ. We too often associate numbers as somehow equalling success, or we associate a large a prosperous building as somehow showing that God's blessing is on a particular work.

It should be understood that living things do grow and that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with large churches. But these things do not in and of

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themselves show God's blessing or spiritual success. One need only look at the growth and wealth of groups such as the Mormons or the Unification Church to see that we should be hard pressed if these were our only criterion.

Instead we must search out the principles that controlled Jesus' ministry and determine what goals He was working toward. Rather than meeting the world's criteria for success, it is in the faith fulfillment of God 's commands and purposes that we are truly successful. It should be our conviction that we should not only be students of Jesus' words but also of Jesus' methods. The Scripture is not only our message book but also our method book when it comes to the life of Christ.

IS DISCIPLING THE BEST WAY TO REACH THE WORLD?Let's look at two possible ways to evangelize. First, let's look for a Super Evangelist (SE). We'll pray for Super Evangelist, provide for all Super Evangelist's material needs, and book services ahead from city to city. We'll do everything in order for Super Evangelist to concentrate exclusively on evangelism. If the fruit of the Super Evangelist's labor would be that 1,000 people are converted each and every day for 10 years, how many would be saved through this incredible process?

Now, let's take one equally committed person who would share the Lord throughout the normal course of day-to-day activities and would see 5 conversions a year. We'll call this person Faithful Discipler (FD). Not only will Faithful Discipler lead people to Christ, but he would train them to share their faith just as freely as he had with them. Faithful Discipler will spend a year discipling the 5 new converts and then in the next year those disciples would each reach and disciple 5 others. If this process were to occur over 10 years, how many would be saved after this manner?

Year

Super Evangelist

Faithful Discipler

The importance of the numerical chart is not just to give you an exercise in mathematics. Several key points can be made while working through the chart. The first is that discipleship must be a long-haul investment because it doesn't even start to look worthwhile until some-where between year 8 and year 9. The growth is slow at the start, but the investment is worth it in the long run. You can extend the example by calculating how long it would take for your fellowship to reach the United States adopting the Faithful Discipler model. How long would it take for your own ministry to reach the world if we all became Faithful Disciplers?

1 365,000 62 730,000 303 1,095,000 1504 1,460,000 7505 1,825,000 3,7506 2,190,000 18,7507 2,555,000 93,7508 2,920,000 468,7509 3,285,000 2,343,750

10 3,650,000 11,718,750

Beyond the numerical advantage, what other advantages would there be, practically, for the mission of the Church to

the Faithful Discipler model?

SELECTION: People Were His Method

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Coleman reminds us that before Jesus ever preached His first sermon He had already selected people to follow Him. Jesus was not interested in developing programs that would reach the multitudes, but in developing individuals that the multitudes would follow.

The men He selected would not impress us as being "key people". (Nor did they impress the religious leaders of Jesus' day.) They were rowdy, insensitive, quarreling, envious and bigoted. They came from common backgrounds, a few were social outcasts. Within these individuals He was to build the Kingdom of God on earth.

Just think what modern management consultants might say about Jesus' choice of associates...

HUMAN RESOURCES SPECIALISTS

To: Jesus, Son of Joseph Woodcrafter Carpenter Shop Nazareth, 25922

From: Jordan Personnel Management Consultants Jerusalem 26544

Dear Sir:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have taken our battery of tests. We have not only run the results through our computer, but have also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our expert psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.

The profiles of all tests are included, and you will want to study each of them carefully. As part of our service, and for your guidance, we make some general comments, much as an auditor will include some general statements. This is given as a result of staff consultations and comes without any additional fee.

It is our staff's opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the modern team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience, with managerial ability and a proven track record.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of violent temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine others' morale. We feel it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical tendencies and they both registered a high score on the manic-depressive profile.

One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of broad ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man. All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.

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We wish you every success in your new venture.

Sincerely,

Human Resources Specialists

But the people Jesus chose did have some positive qualities. They were:

teachable (they were honest, and willing to confess their need for understanding)

sincere (they truly wanted to know and serve God) hungry (they were tired of the emptiness of their present religious life)

Jesus taught us by His methods that the world can be transformed, but only as individuals of the world are transformed. He also showed us that anyone is a candidate to be a discipler. It is not so much an issue of whether you are able to disciple, but whether you will choose to disciple.

Were there any distinctions in how Jesus related to people? Certainly not in compassion, but truly there were distinctions in the amount of time Jesus spent with different groups of people, the depth of teaching different groups received and the difference in levels of commitment. Noting that Jesus purposed to work through individuals, let's look at the specifics of exactly how he went about it. Notice Jesus' differing levels of relationship.

Group Description ApplicationThe Multitudes

In the early part of Jesus ministry, we see Him having fruitful ministry among crowds of people. He did not turn away from the needs of the many. He felt responsible for overwhelming need.

We need to respond to the needs of the world at large.

The 500 Paul tells us Jesus, after His resurrection, appeared to 500 people. Surely these must have been followers of the Lord. Something significant here is that the Lord of the universe had ministered for over three years among the same nation of people and was killed and then rose from the dead! After this He could only raise a crowd of 500! It does not appear to be a powerful, world shaking movement, does it? Yet Jesus felt confident that He had finished all that the Lord had sent Him to do. He left behind a small core of trained individuals to continue with His mission to reach the world through continued discipleship.

This might be descriptive of our relating to our localchurch.

The 120 Just after the Ascension, Luke records that there were at least 120 people who were willing to follow Jesus' wishes to go to Jerusalem and pray.

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The 70 In Luke 10, it is recorded that Jesus sent out 70 disciples. In what capacity they were disciples is not explained, neither what level of relationship, nor how they were trained.

This is probably the maximum number of relationships we can maintain at any one given time in our lives.

The 12 These men were with Jesus from almost the beginning of His ministry. They were with Him, heard Him, prayed with Him and He loved them and trained them. They knew each other very well.

This represents the maximum number of depth relationships we can keep concurrent. It could represent our small group.

The 3: Peter, James, John

From within the Twelve were the Three. They experienced things that the rest of the Twelve did not. John was called the Beloved Disciple. These seem to be some of the most important and significant relationships in Jesus' life.

It is important that we invest ourselves in a few (or best friends). Where our problem lies is when we expect all relationships in the Kingdom to be at this level. To choose to not relate at all if the relationships cannot be here is to be pretty unrealistic.

"One must decide where he wants his ministry to count--in the momentary applause of popular recognition or in the reproduction of his life in a few chosen individuals who will carry on his work after he has gone. Really it is a question of which generation we are serving." -Robert Coleman

ASSOCIATION: He Stayed With Them!Beyond selecting people, Coleman points out that Jesus needed followers who could bear witness to His life and ministry and carry on after He returned to the Father.

It is important to see that Jesus' disciples were not taught in a classroom and then asked to recite their lessons in Doctrine 101 and Practical Theology 212, but discipleship with Jesus meant that class was always in session. They didn't learn doctrine, they participated in doctrine.

And as time went on, rather than giving less time to the Twelve, He actually gave more. As the final days of Jesus' ministry approached, the intensity of Jesus' time with the disciples even magnified.

The probable application for us from this example of Jesus is that some strategy must be found whereby every convert is given a Christian friend to follow until such time as he can lead another.

How could the principles of Selection and Association be implemented in our campus ministry?

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Lesson 3: The Master's Method II: Consecration, Impartation, Demonstration, Delegation

CONSECRATION: Carry Your Own CrossFollowing are two letters which highlight the issue of Consecration. From these let us discuss their significance to us.

Letter #1: This letter was written by a young communist to a Christian and appeared in a Billy Graham newsletter. (Emphasis added.)

"The gospel of Jesus Christ is a much more powerful weapon for the renewal of society than is our Marxist doctrine. All the same, it is we who will finally beat you. We are only a handful and you Christians are numbered by the millions. But if you remember the story of Gideon and his 300 companions you will understand why I am right. We Communists do not play with words. Of our salaries and wages we keep only what is strictly necessary and we give the rest for propaganda purposes. To this propaganda we also consecrate all our free time and part of our holidays. You Christians, however, give only a little time and hardly any money for the spreading of the Gospel of Christ. How can anyone believe in the supreme value of the gospel if you do not practice it? If you do not spread it? And if you sacrifice neither time nor money for it? Believe me, it is we who will win, for we believe in our Communist message and we are ready to sacrifice everything, even our lives. But you, you Christians, are afraid to soil your hand."

Letter #2: This is a letter from a revolutionary to his fiancee to explain why he was breaking their engagement. (Emphasis added.)

"We revolutionaries have a high casualty rate. We are the ones who get shot and hung and ridiculed and fired from our jobs and in every way made as uncomfortable as possible. A certain percentage of us get killed or imprisoned. We live in virtual poverty. We turn back to the party every penny we make above what is absolutely necessary to keep us alive. We revolutionaries do not have the time or the money for many movies, concerts, T-bone steaks or decent homes or new cars. We have been described as fanatics. We are fanatics. Our lives are dominated by one great overshadowing fact: the struggle for world dominion. We revolutionaries have a philosophy of life which no amount of money can buy. We have a cause to fight for, a definite purpose in life. We subordinate our petty personal selves into the great movement of humanity. And if our personal lives seem hard, or our egos appear to suffer through subordination to the party, then we are adequately compensated by the thought that each of us, in his small way, is contributing something new and true for a better mankind. There is one thing which l am dead earnest about, and this is the cause. It is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my sweetheart, my wife and my mistress,

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my breath and my meat. I work at it in the daytime and dream of it at night. Its hold on me grows, not lessens, as time goes on. Therefore, I cannot carry on a friendship or a love affair or even a conversation without relating to it, this force which drives and guides my life. I evaluate people, books, ideas and actions according to how they affect the cause and by their attitude toward it. I have already been in jail because of my ideals and, if necessary, I'm ready to go before the firing squad."

Jesus' disciples were not asked to make a statement of faith or to recite a creed. They were first asked to follow.

What kind of consecration are we looking for?

Set apart to ___________ Set apart from ____________

List 3 areas which have been real obedience/consecration issues for you in the last month.

1. ________________________________

2. ________________________________

3. ________________________________

IMPARTATION: He Gave Himself AwayIf from the last section we found that consecration/obedience is a motivation for living a discipling lifestyle, in this section we find that love is also a motivation in discipleship. Love was, and is always the standard by which discipleship is judged. But it's not the kind of love that is often portrayed in our media. It's calvary love - love that leads to service and laying down of life.

Do you know what love is?Do you know how to love?Are you a loving person?

These three questions, though distinct, are all quite crucial and demand a response from every believer. Let us deal with each question in turn.

A. Do you know what love is?This question seems more appropriately relegated to the realm of the poets to define for us. However, in a world where we can say in the same breath, "I love my fiancee," and "I love hamburgers", some defining of the concept of love is necessary.

We are called to love like God. Jesus came to display God's love for fallen humanity. Through his actions we can define love as always:

active displayed selfless

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a decision rather than just an emotion holy

B. Do you know how to love?The love of God was just defined for us as His selfless, purposeful, and willful giving of Himself. For us to know how to love, it must involve us in the same expression of selfless giving of ourselves to God, other believers, and the non-believers around us. Jesus was the perfect model of loving, thus His methods of loving deserve our careful attention.

According to Jesus' first sermon (see Luke 4:18-19 and Isaiah 61:1-2) his own mission included the following:

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Having a warm and tender heart or thinking lovely thoughts did not bring relief to the above-mentioned Love was demonstrated to those in need.

Jesus knew that He was the one who was to be the "ransom for many'. He knew who He was and what He was supposed to do. It's the same for us. We are new creatures in Christ Jesus; we have new identities. He has told us what to do:

"This is how we know what love is: Christ gave his life for us. We too, then, ought to give our lives for our brothers! If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can he claim that he has the love of God in his heart? Dear children! Our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action." I John 3:16-18

Here are some suggestions on knowing how to love more effectively:

1. Make relationships a priority.If you want friendships that make a difference, you must give them a high priority. You cannot assume that love will "just happen". You must be careful to schedule time with your friends. If friendship really is a high priority, it will become regularly visible on your weekly calendar.

2. Don't play it safe.Transparency means: ______________________________________________________Vulnerability means: ______________________________________________________

Without transparency and vulnerability, relationships remain at the surface

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level. If you are to love as Christ loved, you must live just as risky as He did. When you block yourself off from others, you will find yourself in emotional, spiritual and eventually even physical difficulties. God intended for us to be known-known by the Father and by His children.

3. Create warmth in your friendships.We are a society terribly out of touch with each other. Look people in the eyes when conversing, be free to touch them, practice smiling until it becomes comfortable. Share your feelings and not just your ideas. Actively listen in conversations.

4. Affirm your friends.When we meet a person and see only a problem, we imprison that person in their problem. We need to see our friends, through faith, as Jesus sees them: unique, worthwhile, with infinite possibilities. In doing so we call forth a new being. Let's speak the truth in love to one another, especially the good and affirming truth.

5. Be RealIn Paul's letter to the Corinthians he addresses the way they were viewing their life together. They had been abusing their relationships with each other within the Christian community. Paul uses the body as an illustration and draws attention to two separate and opposite attitudes that can occur in a body of believers Paul affirms neither of these attitudes.

He tells them that anyone who feels inferior to other members of the body fails to understand what God has done for them. The grace of God has made them new in Christ and co-heirs with all other saints. Paul also declares that there are some who have superior attitudes toward other members in the body. This too misses what God has done. These think too highly of themselves, higher than they ought to think. So high that they had come to disregard other members of the body for whom Christ had died.

A real person is someone who avoids both extremes. They have a real picture of who they are in relationship to Jesus; they are overjoyed at God's grace in their life; and they recognize that this same grace has set their brothers and sisters in Christ free, as well. A real person is described by Paul's words: "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you" (Romans 12:3).

C. Are you a loving person?Are you a lover or a taker? That is a scary question we all must face many times in our lives. The issue goes beyond feeling good about God's love, or even knowing how Jesus loved. The bottom line question is, "Are you actively loving as Jesus loved?"

How do you get there?

Again a quote from Coleman:"How else could they ever fulfill the commission for their Lord with joy and inward peace? They needed an expression of Christ so real that

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their lives would be filled with His Presence. Evangelism had to be a burning compulsion within them purifying their desires and guiding their thoughts. Nothing less than a personal baptism of the Holy Spirit would suffice. The super-human work to which they were called demanded supernatural help an enduement of power from on High." The Master Plan of Evangelism.

As we discussed in the first lesson, Jesus not only laid out His purpose and program for discipleship to the Twelve, but He also promised His continual presence and the provision of the Spirit's filling. We are called to love as God does. To do so, we must be filled with Him.

"His method was to get the disciples into a vital experience with God, and to show them how He worked, before telling them they had to do it." -Master Plan of Evangelism Pg. 82

DEMONSTRATION: He Showed Them How to LiveWe will devote an entire session to this crucial but basic aspect of Christ's life when we deal with the "Disciplines of Discipleship". Jesus taught not only by word but also by deed. What things can you think of which Jesus must have demonstrated to his disciples?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Even his teaching methods were purposeful. What qualities of Jesus' teaching can you recall which would make his instruction more memorable?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________DELEGATION: He Gave Them WorkIt was in the purpose of Christ to train His disciples. They were then to take over the mission of spreading the message and power of the gospel everywhere. And to learn how to do that they must learn how to do a few smaller things first. Would they understand, would they be faithful and responsible, and would they grow from their experiences? The best way to be sure that this is done is to give practical work assignments and expect them to be carried out.

Here is a simple guideline that helps us understand how this can occur:

FULL CIRCLE DISCIPLESHIP MODEL

1. __________ do it, __________ watches (Mark 1&2)

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2. __________ do it, __________ helps (Mark 3:13-15)

3. __________ does it, _________ help (Mark 6:7-13)

4. __________ does it, _________ watch (Mark 16:15-18)

5. __________ does it, _________ watches (2 Tim. 2:2, Acts 6:1-7)

OUR JOB AS THE DISCIPLER:

Jesus sent them out in pairs. In this action Jesus demonstrated that the Kingdom work is to be experienced in companionship. It is the work of friends. Together with the presence of the Holy Spirit, we can face anything.

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Lesson 4: The Master's Method III: Supervision and Reproduction

INTRODUCTIONWe come now to the conclusion of our study of the components of Jesus' discipling methodology as outlined in Robert Coleman's book, The Master Plan of Evangelism. In this lesson we will focus on the final two aspects: Supervision and Reproduction.

SUPERVISION: He Held Them AccountableTo quickly summarize where we have been thus far:

We have watched Jesus carefully select faithful individuals to be with Him.

He has repeatedly emphasized the need for total commitment to bring in the Kingdom of God.

He has demonstrated the conquering power of love. He gave them practical tasks and responsibilities so that they would

develop Kingdom ministry skills.

Now it was necessary for Jesus to hold them accountable for what they had learned. Jesus expected the disciples to grow in their understanding of the nature of God, the sinfulness of man and a host of other issues through the tasks they were doing. He was not just trying to teach them a few tasks to do for Him after He left for the right hand of the throne. Jesus had one primary goal in mind-the salvation of the world. If this goal is to be reached His disciples must keep that focus ever in front of them and not only settle for minor victories.

Supervision is a process where a disciple is held accountable or responsible for those things entrusted to them. Accountability is a part of our daily lives. Banks expect us to be responsible for the amount of funds we have in our checking accounts. Professors demand we read the syllabus and complete assignments on time. Our friends assume that we will act friendly to them. The list of ways we are held accountable could go on and on.

A. Jesus' rationale for holding disciples accountable:1. Jesus intended to teach the disciples practical applications to their personal

lives from the tasks they were sent out to do."When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. . . 'Consider carefully what you hear'... 'Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."' Mark 4:10,24,25

2. After the disciples were sent out to do the work of the Kingdom of God, they were expected by the Lord to return to share their experiences with the group.

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"When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done." Luke 9:10

3. During these sharing times with the disciples, Jesus would caution against pride in accomplishments."However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Luke 10:20

4. Jesus wanted to insure that the disciples received their needed rest in body and soul from all their labors."Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, 'Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."' Mark 6:31

B. In God's Family, Accountability is MutualAccountability, within most people's minds, conjures up an image like a lion tamer, where we are like a caged animal and a man with a chair and a whip comes barking orders at us so that we will perform correctly. Accountability becomes something to be avoided because it sounds like punishment. We can also view accountability as if we were in a large corporation with ever descending levels of bosses. Does being accountable mean that we are to submit to somebody in the body of Christ who will be the vehicle of God's will over our lives? To answer this we must become aware of the Biblical concept of mutual accountability.

Mutual accountability is a distinctive concept made visible by Jesus Christ. Christianity, then, is very unique. When Jesus came into this world, He brought into being a new approach to functional relationships between people. In the "Gentile world", as Jesus called it, there was no such concept as mutual accountability. People operated primarily out of selfish motives having little or no interest in helping others reach their goals - except when it might benefit themselves (Mark 10:42-45).

The Apostle Paul, as well, made it very clear that accountability to other Christians is essential for personal Christian growth and for growth of the Kingdom of God. The guidelines for mutual accountability are rooted in the authority of Jesus and His Word. Again, as we have mentioned before, to be a disciple means that we are "people of the Book". There are many examples of mutually responsible relationships in the Bible. Here is a list of a few with references:

• Elders to regular members in Christ's body-I Peter 5:2,3• Christians in general to elders-I Tim. 5.17-20; Heb. 13:17• Younger individuals to older individuals -1 Peter 5:5,6• Husbands to wives -Eph. 5:25,28; Col. 3:19; I Peter 3.7; 1 Cor. 7:3,4• Wives to husbands -Eph. 5:22,24; Col 3:18; Titus 2:3-5; 1 Peter 3:1-4• Parents to children -Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:21• Children to parents -Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20• Masters (employers) to slaves (employees) -Eph. 6:9; Col. 4:1

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• Slaves to masters -Eph. 6:5-8; 1 Peter 2:18,19• Christians to governmental officials -Rom. 13,5,7; 1 Peter 2:13-17

As you can see, accountability in the relationships listed above seems to be two-way street. One party does not dominate over the other, even though the function or role may be distinctive. On the contrary, it seems that these relationships underscore that each party involved has a vested interest. It doesn't point out dominance as much as it points out each one being responsible; neither independent nor dependent, but interdependent (mutuality).

C. Basic principles concerning authority and accountability:Christian leaders are a gift to us from God (Eph. 4:11-13), and we need to nurture and enhance in every way possible our relationship with those responsible to us. We also need to make sure we are always in a position where there is someone who will be over us to hold us accountable for the faith within us.

Being accountable to a leader does not mean "blind obedience". A leader should never have control over your life. We all have only one Lord-Jesus Christ.

Being accountable to a leader does not mean that you give up your responsibility over your decisions. We will have no one but ourselves to appeal to or blame when we stand before the judgement seat of Christ.

A leader should never be followed if their counsel contradicts the Word of God or gives you permission to sin.

We must learn to be responsible to others rather than responsible for others. "Responsible for" means that we begin to assume the responsibility for another's actions which is never the case. Being "responsible to" means we serve another as much as we can and point in the right direction (we hope), but we can never assume blame or credit for their decisions or actions.

D. The following questions will serve as a self-test to help you to get in touch with your attitudes and feelings toward authority figures (especially in the body of Christ).

How do I view the people in my church who are in positions of leadership? Do I feel more or less important than they? Do I respect and honor them as fellow members of Christ's body, or do I hold negative feelings toward them?

Do I ever share my inner life and struggles with others, or do I keep my weaknesses to myself?

How do I react when a Christian friend disagrees with me? Am I threatened? Do I try to defend myself? Do I insist on doing things my own way?

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Do I try to avoid situations where my actions or attitudes might be questioned by a Christian friend or leader?

How often have I admitted to others that I have been wrong? Do I always have to be right to feel comfortable?

Do I hold my Christian friends to their commitments to God, to me, to other Christian friends, and to non-believers?

E. Why accountability is necessary in discipling relationships. It assists the disciple in understanding the experience they have just

encountered. By this evaluation, the disciple will be better prepared for the next experience.

It will provide encouragement to the disciple that does not meet with immediate "success" or up to their self-imposed expectations.

We are called by God to live covenant-making lives, and covenants must be evaluated to determine if everyone involved is growing and maintaining their commitments.

To keep pride in accomplishments from clouding the essential picture--that of receiving God's grace and recognizing that we are but saved sinners.

We all need to continually review those things which are vitally important to embed them firmly into our lives and to rekindle the vision they are attempting to achieve.

Christ is not satisfied only with the first fruits of ministry (immediate enthusiasm, zeal, joy), but the disciple must be brought to maturity.

Accountability prevents us from becoming a slacker. "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied" (Proverbs 13:4. Also see Proverbs 20:4, 26:16).

Accountability helps one troubleshoot potential problems before they grow to dimensions too large to restore.

REPRODUCTION: The Evidence of a Trained DiscipleAs Coleman points out from Jesus' illustration of the vine and the branches, the purpose of every disciple is to bear fruit. If we truly are grafted into the very life of Christ by His indwelling Spirit, then we should expect to see results. "A barren Christian is a contradiction. A tree is known by its fruit." Master Plan of Evangelism

The fruitfulness of our lives is not measured by our level of gifting or talents, but by the perpetuation of the life of Christ in and through us to a desperate world. Again, we must remember our focus. Not haphazard patches on a sick world--a frantic blur of activity for the sake of the kingdom. But a carefully considered life which takes the younger believer and imparts everything necessary for life and godliness.

"What really counts in the ultimate perpetuation of our work is the faithfulness with which our converts go out and make leaders out of their

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converts, not simply more followers... The test of any work of evangelism thus is not what is seen at the moment... but in the effectiveness with which the work continues in the next generation." Master Plan of Evangelism

"There is no use to pray for the world. What good would it do? God already loves them and has given His Son to save them. No, there is no use to pray vaguely for the world. The world is lost and blind in sin. The only hope for the world is for individuals to go to them with the Gospel of Salvation, and having won them to the Savior, not to leave them, but to work with them faithfully, patiently, painstakingly, until they become fruitful Christians savoring the world about them with the Redeemer's love." Master Plan of Evangelism

Thus, it is true that disciplers should have "spiritual grandchildren". We must become aware that we are always affecting the next generation beyond the disciple we are working with. Let us be very careful how we build. Make sure that all your goals and methods are all transgenerational. Before this class is over we shall learn transgenerational methods. Set in your heart today to establish transgenerational goals for your service for Jesus for the remainder of your life (till He comes!).

A Summary of the Discipling Method of Jesus

The Model The Principle The ApplicationActs 1:1

"Began to do" -- Jesus was a living model of what He desires

His disciples to be.Discipleship is being a model.

A discipler must focus on the development of godly character

qualities in the new disciple.Acts 1:1

"Began to teach" -- Beyond modeling, Jesus taught truth by

instruction.

Discipleship entailsteaching

the revelation of Jesus.

A discipler must focus on the skill of Bible study with the new

disciple.Mark 3:14

"That they should be with Him" -- Jesus made himself available for

close personalassociation.

Discipleship is arelationship

not amechanistic program.

A discipler must work toward the development of true fellowship

between the new disciple and the family of God.

Mark 6:7"He sent them out two-by-two" - Jesus began a process

which is continuing today.

Discipleship is a transgenerational process

involving evangelism and teaching (Deut. 6:1,2).

The discipler must equip the new disciple in evangelism and the ability to disciple (2 Tim. 2:2).

Mark 6:30"The apostles gathered around

Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught."

Discipleship entailsmutual accountability

to the commands of Jesus and our ministry for Him.

The discipler must model mutual sharing and support while

remaining encouraging and confrontive (Gal. 6:2; Eph. 5:21).

Mt 4:19"Come, follow me and I will make

you fishers of people."Discipleship is

skills development.The discipler must build in the

new disciple the necessary skills (prayer, worship, teaching, etc.).

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Lesson 5: Discipleship Demands Leadership & Dedication

"We seem not to live long enough to take our lives seriously." - George Bernard Shaw

LIVING WISELYNo one can say of us that we are not busy people. We continually fill our lives with activity and flurry, so much so that phrases such as "no time today", "I'm really busy", "Boy, I'm tired", and "maybe later" seem ubiquitous to our vocabulary.

Now, being busy is no sin. But the tragedy which often snares so many is that we have such fuzzy, nebulous understandings of why we're going so hard (let alone knowing where all this hustle and bustle is taking us). It is truly a sad commentary that some people can live their entire lives, and can certainly point to many accomplishments, but still not have the slightest idea why they lived as they did. Was what they were living for worth it?

A fallout of our highly technological society is a lamentable loss in meaning to life and the dignity of the human person. We tend to feel of little value, and that we have little impact on our world. For, "Who am I against such large problems in such an immense world?"

What is even more tragic is seeing Christians who have the "upward call in Christ Jesus", who are urged "to live a life worthy of the calling you have received", that are living such shallow lives and totally caught up in the world's race to nowhere.

Paul admonishes us, "Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15,16).

How, then, do Christians live wisely? We must learn to dream. We need to become visionaries! We need to establish for ourselves biblical purposes (what we are to be), and from these purpose statements build Godly goals (what we are to do), and then see that our actual priorities (our lifestyle as it is actually lived out) reflect these purposes and goals.

Having dreamed, we then must become steadfastly dedicated to these Christ-centered directions. It is only through dedication and commitment to the purposes and plans of Christ that our life will find real and lasting significance.

DISTINCTIVES OF A DEDICATED LIFEA. Essential characteristics of the dedicated person include idealism, zeal, devotion, and the willingness to sacrifice to achieve ideals. Not only is it important to have dreams worth living for, but we also need a cause that is worth dying for.

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B. Dedication is contagious. Associating with a dedicated person will breed dedication in you. Being dedicated is a norm setter. It determines the behavior of those associated with it.

C. Being dedicated sets you apart from the rest of the world. One writer calls us to be 100 percenters in a world of 50 percenters.

D. A dedicated person does not fear making mistakes as much as they fear making the same mistake again. They will learn from their mistakes.

E. "...... if you make mean little demands upon people, you will get a mean little response which is all you deserve, but, if you make big demands on them, you will get a heroic response...work on the assumption that if you call for big sacrifices people will respond to this and, moreover, the relatively smaller sacrifices will come quite naturally." Douglas Hyde, Dedication and Leadership, p.18.

F. The dedicated person will postpone immediate satisfaction or gratification for the achieving of more important longer-ranged goals. Self-discipline will continue to win over impulsiveness.

DISTINGUISHING MARKS OF DISCIPLING LEADERSHIPA leader is primarily an agent for change. Often we think of leaders as aggressive activists, people who are bold in personality, articulate in speech and pleasant in appearance. We often assume leaders are born. While these characteristics can be very helpful for leadership, an essential ingredient for a leader is one who has the ability to see a need, develop a goal, and finally, put a plan into motion to move toward that goal. This describes a discipler: a person with Godly vision coupled with faith, who will take action. The following underscore the distinguishing marks of discipling leadership:

A. The process of making a person into a leader is the development of an integrated person. These are "ones who understand what they believe, are deeply dedicated to it, and who try unceasingly to relate their beliefs to every facet of their own lives and to the society in which they live." Dedication and Leadership, p. 157.

B. Leadership is learned not innate.

C. A discipling leader is a thermostat rather than a thermometer. They bring influence to their environment rather than just conforming to the climate of their environment.

D. Discipling leaders are ones who strive for excellence in all that they do. They attempt, with all the resources within them, to become the best that they can become no matter what the situation. Whether that be the best engineer, bricklayer, musician, social worker, or pastor. "Best" needs to be redefined. First, it must be seen as the best that we can do having realistically evaluated our resources-time, money, energy, expertise, and gifting. Then we must determine what expenditure of resources we can give. And finally, we must do our best, given that specific situation.

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NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIPJ. Oswald Sanders, in his book Spiritual Leadership, makes a distinction between God-given natural leadership and spiritual leadership. The spiritual leader influences others not by the power of their own personality, but by the personality penetrated and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Some common distinctions between natural and spiritual leadership would include:

Natural Leaders Spiritual LeadersSelf confident Confident in God

Knows men Also knows God

Makes own decisions Seeks to find God’s will

Ambitious Self-effacing

Originates own methods Finds and follows God’s methods

Enjoys commanding others Delights to obey God

Motivated by personal considerations Motivated by love for God and people

Independent God-dependentBody interdependent

Spiritual leadership comes by way of the Holy Spirit and is something that we should earnestly seek and pray for. It is developed in us by God and is not just innate within us.

THE COST OF LEADERSHIP"No one need aspire to leadership in the work of God who is not prepared to pay a price greater than his contemporaries and colleagues are willing to pay. True leadership always exacts a heavy toll on the whole man, and the more effective the leadership is, the higher the price to be paid." J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership, 104. (Opportunity Cost)

A. Self-sacrifice: A price which must be paid every day. Paul was a supreme example of self-sacrifice. 2 Cor. 4:8-11.

B. Loneliness: A discipler is a believer committed to personal growth in the Lord. A growing person often feels shoved to the head of the pack. Though he may be the friendliest of people, there are times when he will tread a lonely path. 2 Timothy 1:15.

C. Fatigue: The ever increasing demands made on a discipler can drain the emotional energy and wear down the most robust physique. 2 Cor. 4:15,16.

D. Criticism: No leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts and reacts to it. I Cor. 4:3-5.

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E. Time to think: A price paid by disciplers is the time that must be taken for creative thinking and meditation. We do not often think of this as a price to pay, but it is. Most people are too busy to take time to really think. Mark 6:31.

F. Making hard decisions: All disciplers must be willing to face difficulties. The fear of challenging or correcting those that we love is sometimes a wearisome burden, but nonetheless a necessity. Acts 15:3641.

PITFALLS IN DISCIPLING LEADERSHIPA. Pride: The temptation of self-congratulations is ever before the discipler (especially the truly effective one), and we must remember that nothing is more distasteful to the Lord than self-conceit. It is the first and most fundamental of the sins.

B. Jealousy: A jealous person is apprehensive and suspicious of rivals. Some rivals can become our fellow disciplers. Jealousy destroys the bonds between friends.

C. Infallibility: The spiritual man must always remember that he is still of the flesh and fallible. We will make mistakes. One who knows God will be called upon often to assist in hearing God. The discipler's judgement is then always on the line. We must admit it when we are wrong, and must humbly concede our inadequacies.

D. Elation and Depression: In every work for God there are inevitably times of discouragement and frustration as well as days of uplift and achievement. The discipler is in peril of being unduly depressed by the one, and unduly elated by the other.

CONCLUSION

PURPOSES OR GOALS?It is important for a discipler to distinguish between purposes and specific, achievable, measurable, and manageable goals. For instance, ask yourself if the following are purposes or goals:

• To glorify God through our campus ministry• To be a mature Christian• To teach an effective lesson in Small Group• To be a good friend and helper• To be a better discipler

It might surprise you to know that none of the above are goals. They are all purposes. A purpose, or aim, is something for which we ultimately hope. It is not necessarily measurable in itself, but is a clear direction toward which we wish to move.Our purpose statements often fall in the category of things we want to be. To be mature, to be a better, to be a good - these are the ideals toward which we are striving. But it is our goals which help us determine how much progress, if any, we are making toward our "to be" purposes.

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Below are examples of specific goals. I think you will readily see the difference between purposes and goals:

• To share Christ with a non-believer twice a week• To spend 15 minutes in prayer each day• To tithe a minimum of 10 percent of my income• To eat with my discipleship group once a week• To learn to fly an airplane by the end of the summer

Now of course no one can guarantee, for example, that eating with my discipleship group once a week will make me a better discipler. But it does give me a specific, tangible means of measuring this important purpose in my life. Therefore, all of the above are measurable goals.

Purposes: “to be”Goals: “to do”

COMMUNICATE AND MOBILIZEIt seems that God has so made us that we almost naturally respond with enthusiasm to something worthwhile, specific, and measurable to tackle. That's because good goals are related to faith.

A goal is a statement about how we hope things are going to be at some time in the future. It is a statement of faith. Any statement about tomorrow is a statement of faith. This is an important concept. Don't miss it As the writer in Hebrews said, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for" (Hebrews 11:1).

Goals have the power to lift our eyes from the mud below to the sky above. They are a statement about what could be, what should be, or what can be.

Notice that goals are not statements about what will be. That is in God's hands. But they are statements about what we believe God wants us to do or to be, in light of his word.

WELL-WRITTEN GOALSMany may be asking at this moment, how do I start writing down goal statements? I know what we want to be as a campus ministry, but how do we develop the goals that will help us measure our progress toward what we want to be? Below are some statements that might help you.

Well-written goals are:• Stated in terms of end results• Achievable in a time span• Definite as to what is expected• Practical and feasible• Precisely stated in terms of quantities, where applicable

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• Limited to one important goal statement

Poorly written goals tend to be:• Stated in terms of process or activities• Are never fully achievable; no specific target dates• Ambiguous as to what is expected• Theoretical or idealistic• Too brief and indefinite, or too long and complex• Written with two or more goals per statement

Goals may cover different time periods. You may have immediate goals for this week, month and year. Then you may have short-range goals for the next two or three years. And finally you may have long-range goals for five years or more.

Another way of looking at the characteristics of good goals is to use the following items as a checklist of questions to ask for any goal statements you have developed:

• Is this goal accomplishable: do you believe you can do it (under God's leading)?

• Does this goal have a date: will you know when you want to do it?• Is this goal measurable: will you know that it has in fact happened?• Does this goal have steps (a plan): do you know how to reach it?• Is this goal claimed: do you know who will be responsible for the

following the plan?• Is this goal supported: do we have the resources to accomplish it?

THE ABC'S OF PRIORITIZINGNow after you have set your goals, you may still have confusion and misunderstanding in the group if you do not prioritize them Especially with limited manpower, time, and financial resources, it is important for us to determine the top items requiring our best efforts.

Here is a little prioritizing system that may help you sort out the most important items. It is simply called the ABC technique.

A - "Must do" or very high valueB - "Should do" or medium valueC - "Can do" or low value

Start by making a list of all the goals that you have considered....

There is no reason why we have to have one goal that is our top priority. We are more likely to have a number of goals, all of which we consider number

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one.

There is a simple and effective way of sorting out in terms of priorities. Instead of trying to assign each goal a ranking number, assign it a value, an A, B, or C.

You can use the ABC technique in one of two ways. The first way is to go down your list and decide which of these goals you consider to be A goals. If it's a B or a C go right past it. Just mark the A's. Now go back to the list and decide which ones are C goals, low priority. The rest are automatically B's.

A second way is to pause at each goal and decide whether you think it is an A, B, or C.

It does not matter which of these methods you use. Some people find one easier than the other.

Remember, goals for which you have no priorities are useless.

GOALS AND LEADERSHIPIt isn't always easy to put flesh and bones on the exalted purposes which God has called us to in his Word. But developing achievable goals for these purposes and prioritizing them can be one of the most practical and measurable means of mobilizing believers to truly seek his kingdom and his righteousness.

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Lesson 6: The Disciplines of Discipleship

INTRODUCTIONDiscipline is training that corrects, molds, and perfects the mental abilities and moral character of a person. We often think of punishment first when we consider discipline, but even good punishment should serve to penalize a person due to their lack of self-control (trusting that the direct attention will aid in the development of self-control). Thus, to discipline simply means to impose order upon disorder within the mind, heart and spirit. Spiritual disciplines are tools of training for the spiritually unruly which will cause growth in the knowledge of God, growth in putting on the image of Christ, and growth in living an effective Christian life-style. The disciplines enable the "fruit of the Spirit" to come to a bountiful harvest in our lives, bringing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people...

Neither should we think of the spiritual disciplines as some dull drudgery aimed at exterminating laughter from the face of the earth. Joy is the keynote of all the disciplines. The purpose of the disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear... Singing, dancing, even shouting characterize the disciplines of the spiritual life...

Our ordinary method of dealing with ingrained sin is to launch a frontal attack. We rely on our willpower and determination...we determine never to do it again; we pray against it, fight against it, set our will against it. But it is all in vain, and we find ourselves once again morally bankrupt or, worse yet, so proud of our external righteousness that "whitened sepulchers" is a mild description of our condition...

Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin... Willpower has no defense against the careless word, the unguarded moment. The will has the same deficiency as the Law-it can deal only with externals. It is not sufficient to bring about the necessary transformation of the inner spirit.

The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside.

Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observed, 'Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.' Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort." (From Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline. Emphasis added.)

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A SAMPLING OF SOLOMON'S WISDOM CONCERNING DISCIPLINE"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" (Proverbs 1:7).

"My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in" (Proverbs 3:11,12).

"At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, 'How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors. I have come to the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly"' (Proverbs 5:11-14).

"He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray" (Proverbs 10:17).

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates corrections is stupid" (Proverbs 12:1).

"He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding" (Proverbs 15:32).

Also see Proverbs 1:2,3; 5:21-23; 6:2O-23; 9:13-18; 13:18,24; 15:5-10.

OBSTACLES TO A DISCIPLINED LIFEA. The age of permissiveness we live in encourages an undisciplined

approach to life.The dominant world-view in America assumes that there is nothing which is universally right or wrong; nothing which is intrinsically good or bad. Good and evil are not built in, essential, unchangeable qualities of life; they are only descriptions of our perceptions in different situations. Everyone is really "free" to think, live and love as they feel best. Therefore, there is no standard to which we should aspire, other than the "standard" within each of us.

B. The over-spiritualization of spontaneity.In some Christian circles those things which are planned or scheduled are often seen as less "Spirit-led". Strategy in ministry and missions is viewed with the suspicion that the "flesh" must be in control. Only those activities of the Spirit which occur on the spur of the moment or are received by special revelation carry ultimate spiritual weight. This is not to say that special revelation is in any way to be undercut, on the contrary, we are enormously blessed when the Holy Spirit works among us in this manner. But over-spiritualization occurs when we exclusively cling only to the special word. This misses the dimension that faithful commitment produces much fruit. Often "spiritual spontaneity" is only a mask for spiritual irresponsibility.

C. We develop a sacred/secular dichotomy.We have a great tendency to divide our lives into those things which have spiritual value and the rest which is non-spiritual. This flies in the face of a true understanding of spirituality. Our Christian faith must be integrated into the entire fabric of our normal lives. Moreover, this is precisely an essential

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task of discipleship, to lead disciples into concrete understanding of how relationship with Jesus relates to every fiber of our lives.

D. The failure of the church and home to teach skills for the maturing of the spiritual life.

In many cases the normal Christian life has become as lackadaisical and as haphazard as modern secular society. Discipline causes pain for gain, and we live in a society which will do anything necessary to avoid suffering in any form at any cost. Often suffering is equated with evil itself. The local church and the nuclear Christian family must assume their responsibility for training believers in righteousness.

FOUR FOUNDATIONAL TRUTHS CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINESA. Spiritual disciplines are not an end in themselves, but a means to a greater end.The goal is not to be known as a great prayer, but to know God better. The goal is not to see how rigid a life we can live, but to become as effective as possible for the Kingdom of God in our daily lives. "I can't see the forest for the trees." This is what happens often to disciples. They focus so much on the immediate issue of "I didn't pray today", to the exclusion of seeing the larger picture of a God who wants to be in relationship with me, and wants me to know Him.

B. Discipline brings healing into our broken lives.Just as the beauty of God's universe was an outgrowth of God making order out of the primeval chaos, so order coming into our disorderly lives will bring healing and beauty. Unchecked anger brings hurt, but anger brought under the Spirit's control will produce understanding, forgiveness, and healing.

C. The flip-side of loving compassion is loving discipline.The writer of Hebrews 12:5-13 quotes Solomon, reminding us that God the Father disciplines every child that He loves. Maturity and proper self-understanding only come by way of this type of loving discipline. To not act with discipline toward someone straying way off the narrow path is most unloving on our part. Remember, when the Lord Jesus commands that we follow Him, His words bring blessing and curse at the same moment. Blessing for those who respond to His love, and destruction to those who reject His offer.

D. Blessing comes to the disciplined."No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11).

THE FACETS OF DISCIPLINEA. The Discipline of our Spiritual Resources

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Types of Disciplines

Inward Outward Corporate

Meditation – Psalm 1:1-3 Simplicity – Proverbs 11:28 Confession – James 5:16

Prayer – James 5:16 Solitude – Matthew 14:23,24 Worship – John 4:23

Fasting – Matthew 6:17,18

Submission – Ephesians 5:21

Guidance – Proverbs 3:5,6

Study – John 8:32 Service – Galatians 5:13 Celebration – John 15:11

A spiritual growth project:The previous chart is based on the structure of Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline. This book has filled a void that has existed for several decades. Very little had been written on the spiritual disciplines during most of the century. We recommend one of two things for you:

Get a copy of Foster's Celebration of Discipline and read it over Christmas Break, Spring Break, Summer Vacation, or even better...

Make this book serve as a spiritual growth project for the next year. There are 12 disciplines mentioned. Study and try to implement, as fully as possible, one discipline per month for the next year. Every chapter has much practical instruction assisting you to incorporate the discipline into your life. The effects of this spiritual growth project would without a doubt produce blessing for a lifetime.

B. The Disciplines of our Material Resources1. Finances

a. TithesIt is an Old Testament principle that one-tenth of all of our income belongs to the Lord and should be given at the storehouse (where we are experiencing daily Christian community, where we are fed the Word, where we worship, where we minister to other members of Christ's body, and where we are held accountable for the faith within us). The New Testament expands the principle that all belongs to the Lord. A beginning stage should start with at least one-tenth and then increase as the Lord directs. (For a creative option, read about the Graduated Tithe in Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger: A Biblical Study, Ronald J. Sider, Inter-Varsity Press, 1977).

b. OfferingsOfferings are financial giving that go beyond our regular tithes. Whereas tithes should go to your immediate spiritual community, offerings could go to Kingdom needs outside the local

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community, like missions or benevolent assistance.

2. HospitalityGiving assistance and opening up our dwelling places to guests to provide fellowship is a very strong theme throughout the Old Testament and central to the life-style of Jesus.

3. Tangible GoodsSharing and giving away of the material blessings we have received from God's grace (clothes, books, gifts, food, etc.) is demonstrating God's ownership of all things and our willingness to be a good steward of those blessings.

C. The Discipline of our Relational ResourcesThere are disciplines that must be learned in regard to how a disciple relates to his/her parents, teachers, employers, peers, opposite sex, and the community of Christ, as well as to one's self. Time and time again we are called in the New Testament to demonstrate love and allegiance to one another. We are consistently called to minister to those around us. All of this calls for modeling, teaching, and the doing of Christ's will.

D. The Discipline of our Temporal ResourcesEach year about 25% of most campus fellowships graduate. Among those graduating are approximately 30% of the fellowship's discipleship leaders. Each year 30% of the typical campus fellowship is composed of new recruits and converts. Without fail, a central issue in these student's lives is the issue of time and priorities.

It doesn't take you very long as a new university student to discover that you can't join everything; can't support every good cause; and you can't give of yourself to every needy person. We are all faced with the law of an effective disciplined life-style. Effectiveness demands choices, choices, and more choices. What you choose both now and throughout your life will determine to a significant degree, your impact in this world for Christ. The priorities of your life are most clearly seen by your use of time. If being committed to Christ is the top priority of your life, but it is nowhere reflected in your weekly schedule, then this priority is only a dream or wish and not a part of actual reality.

As important as this whole area is, it is very distressing to see that very little, if any, training is given prior to coming to the university in the area of time management and prioritizing of commitments. Because of this, a great majority of students feel that they don't have time to participate in Bible classes, outreaches, small groups or prayer meetings. It is safe to say that most of today's university students are wasting at least 8-10 hours a week or are involved in unimportant and time consuming commitments. Christian students must become more disciplined in the use of their time. In order to do that, more thought will have to go into the setting of personal priorities. For significant results in ministry to occur, it becomes an absolute

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necessity. A typical small group discipling leader will spend about fifteen hours per week preparing, leading, training and following up on his/her small group. This includes the large group gatherings and leadership meetings.

If we are to seriously attempt to reach our world, we must help one another develop in our use of time.

A Lifestyle of Biblical PrioritiesBeing a Steward of my Resources

Priority 1John 15:7-11

Priority 2John 15:12-13, 15b

Priority 3John 15:18-19, 21,

26-27A Progressive commitment to ______________________________________________

This involves:_______________________________________________________________

This demands:_________________________

Beware of overemphasis here and becoming a_________________________

A Progressive commitment to ______________________________________________

This involves:__________________________________ and_________________________

This demands:_____________________ and_________________________one another.

Beware of overemphasis here and becoming a_________________________

A Progressive commitment to ______________________________________________

This involves:____________________________________________________________

This demands:___________________as a_______________________

Beware of overemphasis here and becoming a________________________

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Lesson 7: Discipleship Through Small Groups I: Purpose & Attitude

INTRODUCTIONAs we have already seen through our study of the Master's Methods, it was the strategy of Jesus to gather a small core of individuals around Himself who He would later leave behind to continue His work. Jesus' discipling strategy was to be with them, to train them, and finally, to impart His mission to them. Jesus' discipling was focused neither in the context of the multitudes, nor only to individuals. For Jesus, the gathering and interacting of a small group of individuals was where discipleship occurred--that is where He passed on His life.

We must realize that experience is a key ingredient in the educational process. If people are to experience ministry, then we who are leaders must give ourselves to training them. Having trained them, we must then let them experience the ministry firsthand. Then we can fill the world with eager, trained, experienced leaders whom the multitudes will follow.

RATIONALES FOR DISCIPLESHIP THROUGH SMALL GROUPSA. The Master's method and the New Testament pattern in response to Jesus'

command:

Jesus and his disciples…Paul's example of team ministry…Paul's directive that elders come from within…Paul's directive that elders train others…

B. Recurring historical precedent

1. An Old Testament Example-Moses

We find an example of the same principle in Exodus 18.

Moses' father-in-law replied, "What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. But select capable men from all the people-men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain-and appoint them as officials over thou-sands, hundreds, fifties and tens. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied." (Exodus 18:17, 18,21, 22b, 23)

Here the wisdom of God comes through the father-in-law of Moses (Jethro), that it is impossible for Moses alone to care for the needs of the nation. So

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they broke down the nation into smaller groupings of people. In these passages we can again see the need for trained leaders who are morally upright. Moses could not shepherd all of Israel, and we cannot effectively disciple a large community of Christian students alone. We must be willing to see others take a greater part of the ministry of discipling of the Church of Christ under the direction of Jesus, the Chief Shepherd.

2. An Early Church Example-Acts 2:46; 5:42; 20:20

Here we find the same patterns. The Church gathered in the large group but also met in small groups.

3. A Church History Example-the Wesleyan Revival

George Whitefield, the great English evangelist, credited the lasting success of John Wesley, as opposed to the dying out of his own ministry, to these very principles we have discussed. We would be wise to follow our Lord's example and the example of brethren who have gone before us.

Small Group Discipleship or One-to-One Discipleship?Let's look at some of the advantages of each:

Small Group Discipleship One-n-One DiscipleshipClosest to the model used by Jesus and

the New Testament Church Not as difficult as leading a small group

Conservation of time Enhances the opportunity to really get to know an individual

Encourages transparency among peers Offers privacy and intimacy for very personal problems

Enables friendships and relationships to build Enables very direct ministry to a person

Offers a broader base for mutual support

Releases a group dynamic for problem solving and healing

Helps a person see that he/she is not alone in his/her struggles

Broader base for prayer and intercession with greater fervency

We believe that the ideal model of discipleship is a combination of the two methods. We hope to take advantage of the strengths of both methods by fostering a discipleship that is built around small groups as well as one-to-one time spent by the leader with the group members outside of the group as

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needed.

Some folks may take more personalized care than others. Newer Christians require more one-to-one time for additional help in some of the basics than older Christians. Also, those maturing Christians who are beginning to take on ministry responsibilities may require more one-to-one time.

Discipleship should not build an isolated dependency on one person, but it should integrate people into the life of a corporate community of believers by means of committed relationships and service. Any discipleship technique must reflect this goal.

Discipleship is also not a protracted counseling relationship, but rather an equipping, supportive relationship, which involves and interacts with the surrounding community of believers in constructive ways.

The Purposes of Small Groups (Why do we have small groups?)There can be a myriad of purposes and expectations for small groups. Some ministries develop prayer, fellowship, study, recreation, or evangelism groups whose purpose is narrowly defined as the name implies.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it is necessary that the leadership has clearly understood the small group's purpose and thus its nature. Often times we fail because we are structuring groups to do things they were never designed to do and the leaders were never trained to carry out.

Following are the four basic purposes of our discipleship small groups. You will notice that we have deliberately avoided overly specialized small groups. Our rationale for doing so is based upon a concern for balance and wholeness in the disciple's training and life experiences.

A. Leadership DevelopmentOur small groups exist to develop mature leadership-quality Christians. Often students know very well what they want, but little about what they need. The discipler will attempt to make the small group member aware of the campus around them and their commissioning by Christ to that campus. They need to be challenged to develop vision (personally and corporately), and they need to be challenged to have the character of Christ more firmly built within them. They will need to experience leadership opportunities and will need the skills necessary to be a leader and to grow continually in leadership. They must be taught how to study and think for themselves, to hear God's voice and obey Him.

B. Proper Pastoral Care/Spiritual OversightThe small group experience is intended to provide the student a place where spiritual nurture will occur. In this context, a trained discipler seeks to assist the newer believer in the development of their relationship with and understanding of Jesus. Help should come in making godly choices with regard to morals, resources, relationships and vocation. Besides being a counselor, the discipler will demonstrate, in a safe environment, an

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experience of spiritual leadership and submission to a caring authority.

C. Loving RelationshipsThe small group should be a place where confession of sin and forgiveness should be expressed, where ministry to each other is facilitated by the work of the Holy Spirit through gifts of healing, faith, wisdom, etc. The small group is a place of mutual affirmation and vulnerability and, from this intimacy, a sense of mutual accountability will be fostered by this loving atmosphere. For many, the small group may become a special family away from home.

D. Mission Life-styleThe purpose of a small group is to instill in each member that God declares they have a purpose in His world. The one who loves God will demonstrate it by keeping His commandments. The small group needs to demonstrate acts of caring and loving to Christians and non-Christians. They need to be challenged to put to death their deeply entrenched self-centeredness and be involved in reaching their campus and their world for Christ. Without this outward focus, the good inward focus will eventually begin to sour.

ESSENTIAL ATTITUDES FOR DISCIPLESHIP SMALL GROUPSA. Loving the UnlovableA leader must love each and every member of the group. Natural love will not suffice - we must be filled with the Spirit and express agape love. As a leader, you can do everything perfect in regard to structure, and reproduce ineffective disciples if you fail to love. On the other hand, a young leader could stumble and bumble along and yet still leave a lasting impact on his/her group's life because he/she loved them. Love does, in fact, cover a multitude of sins and ineptness.

B. Accepting the UnacceptableAs leaders, we are called on to express Kingdom values as opposed to cultural values. If a group is to be effective, we must accept people where they are and gently, with love, move them forward from there.

C. Forgiving the UnforgivableWe all fail. We fail to meet our own expectations as well as those of others. Most, if not all of us, have our battles of living under the law. If a disciple is to truly grow, he will do so best in an atmosphere of forgiveness and encouragement. In all things, apply a healthy dose of grace. When sin occurs, lead the group through the biblical steps of confession, restitution, forgiveness, and reconciliation, ending with an affirmation of acceptance.

D. Confronting the UnconfrontedWe must love with a love that is based on truth and the other person's ultimate well-being in Christ in mind. Effective leaders will not be produced where there is not enough love to "speak the truth in love". But remember, speak it in love.

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Lesson 8: Discipleship Through Small Groups II: Leadership Style & Group Building

DISCIPLESHIP AND FELLOWSHIPDr. Nicholas Tavani, a Christian Sociologist, has said, "Fellowship only occurs in small groups." By that he means that fellowship (the purposeful and intimate sharing of our lives) cannot occur at a large group level (over 12 people). He claims that it is impossible for us to have significant, con-current relationships with more than a dozen people. (Surely the number of close friends through a lifetime would be much higher, but on any given day of our lives we can handle no more than a dozen.) Most of us never come close to having a dozen close, concurrent friends. Probably most of our relationships are benevolent acquaintances. Some people never find a true close friend for major portions of their lives. However, scripture calls us to, and Jesus models a lifestyle of personal openness and vulnerability which becomes determinative for the way we relate to each other as Christians. Therefore, fellowship is a major aspect of a Discipleship Small Group.

"What we have seen and heard we announce to you also, so that you will join us in the fellowship that we have with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. If we live in the light-just as he is in the light-then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin" (1 John 1:3,7).

WHAT STYLE OF LEADERSHIP IS NEEDED FOR A SMALL GROUP?

"That guy acts like such a dictator!""Why is he such a passive leader?"

"I like our pastor because he is like a player/coach."

We have already looked at the distinctions between natural and spiritual leadership. Those distinctions point to what a leader is like. Here we will look at how a leader operates. Ted Engstrom cites a survey of 200 managers who overwhelmingly agreed that the most important single skill of an executive is his ability to get along with people. "In the survey, management rated this ability more vital than intelligence, decisiveness, knowledge, or job skills" (The Making of a Christian Leader, p. 67).

A leadership style is the way a leader goes about his or her responsibility ties and how that leader is perceived by those he or she is attempting to lead. Much has been written concerning the style of leadership that should be exhibited given a variety of situations.

Students of small groups have discovered that there are various styles of

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group leadership, some of which are more helpful that others, and some which are more appropriate at various stages in the small group's development.

The four most common leadership styles are:

Autocratic (domineering, dictatorial)Authoritative (definite yet responsive)Democratic (group-centered)Laissez-faire (permissive, passive)

The issue here is not, "Which leadership style is better than any of the others?", but "Which leadership style is best for this particular group at this point in time?"

The most effective style of leadership is one which shifts from an early position of dominance to a later position of facilitation. In the first few weeks (2-4 weeks), the group will be somewhat uncomfortable with each other and unsure concerning what or how to share properly. A well prepared leader with a clear idea of where he or she wants to go, who is open to discussion and the active involvement of the group members, may give the inexperienced group members a sense of direction and security which is helpful in the early stages of group life. The leader should demonstrate a model of the kind of sharing he or she hopes will typify the entire year. This means the leader should be the first to share (personal histories, testimonies, responses to discussion questions, etc.) and thereby set a pattern for others to follow.

Following this first stage, the leader needs to move to a role of facilitator. The members should now begin to feel a sense of ownership of their group. They now are becoming aware of the appropriate manner in which they are to open up their lives to one another. The leader is then to assist their sharing, highlight truths expressed, ask appropriate questions, and make the necessary transitions in the meeting. Rather than being the first to share, he or she now calls for dialogue or response from the members. The leader still is modeling transparency and affirmation, but in a less controlling manner. Some have called this shift the move from Authoritative leadership to Democratic leadership style.

The best leadership styles seem to be those in which prepared leaders offer suggestions and guidance most strongly in the beginning (authoritative) and move as rapidly as possible to a truly shared ownership of the group by all its members (democratic).

By the end of the school year, the group members should be exercising many of the functions in the group and sharing as equal partners in decision-making about future plans and procedures.

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STAGES IN GROUP LIFEIn working to build individuals into a group, it is important for a small group leader to be aware of the stages of small group life. Small groups go through stages as they begin, continue, and end their life together. Just as an individual moves through stages in his life-cycle from infancy to old age, so groups move through stages as well.

There are at least four stages that a Discipleship Small Group will go through to achieve health.

A. History-givingIn healthy relationships, the prerequisite to loving is knowing. For a Discipleship Small Group to go from a collection of people to a community of love, an atmosphere of love and acceptance needs to be facilitated. This is best accomplished by allowing people to share their backgrounds, their personal histories-what in their past has contributed to their present. Hopes and dreams need to be expressed as well as life goals, successes, and failures.

Start with sharing personal history that is the least threatening and even fun to disclose. If you group plans to stay together from 12 to 30 weeks, then spend the first 2 to 4 weeks with a focus on history-giving. Lay a good foundation of mutual understanding.

HISTORY-GIVING AND AFFIRMATION

One of the most natural history-giving exercises is to have everyone take all the time they need to tell their testimony of receiving Christ. The leader should share first. It will also give you a good readout as to where everyone truly is spiritually (and assist them in this same self-understanding).A tremendous resource to use for these first two phases of group life are materials written by Lyman Coleman in his Serendipity Series. Most recently, he has put together the Serendipity Bible for Groups which combines an NIV Bible with questions to aid in group sharing and discussion of each passage of the Bible.

B. AffirmationIt is an affirming experience to share from your personal life and have a core of people who are interested in you and care. But what is called for here is a planned session in which affirmation is the primary focus. This is an opportunity to go beyond the non-verbal expressions of acceptance and actually verbalize your growing love and concern for each other.

This is a time to express to each other the strengths you have observed and the Christian qualities you most appreciate. Now is the time to express your warmth and nail down verbally your acceptance of your new friends. So immediately after you've completed the history-giving focus, have one meeting to affirm one another. Periodically (once every 8-10 weeks) make it the total focus again. We are called not only to demonstrate our love by actions, but also in words.

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C. DiscipleshipDiscipleship need not and should not be a static educational experience. It is best accomplished in a strong relational context. It is a shame to take the Words of Life and express them in lifeless forms. So into this atmosphere of mutual accountability, begin to live out the process of discipleship exemplified by Jesus.

This means that the individual needs must be assessed and then the biblical goals must be highlighted. There are skills which must be learned (Bible study, prayer, witnessing, etc.), there are healings necessary (physical, emotional, relational), there are truths which must be understood and integrated. All of these best occur when the goals are set by friends who accept us, and then will give us the support and practical help necessary for us to accomplish them. In a year of small group life, discipleship will be the dominant focus.

D. CommunionThis last phase is more a statement of intent than an actual phase of Small Group life. Communion reminds us that the Discipleship Small Groups are not an end in themselves-communion is the end. The ultimate purpose is to fulfill the greatest commandments as Jesus expressed them-to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourself.

The Small Group is a structure which most helps communion to occur. However, communion is not guaranteed because one joins a Small Group. If people are to grow in love for God and others, they must obey the commands of Christ. Communion of souls and minds is hard to plan for. It is most often found spontaneously erupting when God's people gather in His name to fulfill His desires.

FAQ REGARDING SMALL GROUP LIFE

A. How large Should a Small Group become?Experience has demonstrated that 4 to 8 people is close to ideal size. Remember, the larger the group, the less the personal "air-time" and thus the slower the relational growth. Groups larger than 6 need (help) and significant contact with one another outside the Small Group meeting.

B. How long should a Small Group meeting last?1 to 2 hours is necessary to accomplish the purposes and goals of a Small Group. It would be quite difficult to do so in less time.

C. How often should the Small Group meetings occur and when?The pace of the university scene is very fast and changing. Much happens from one day to the next. So to stay current with each other, it becomes necessary to have a meeting once every week.

D. Should Discipleship Small Groups be Coed or Sexually Segregated?While both have merit, the most successful groups are the sexually

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segregated (men's and women's) groups. Issues of self-concept, past problems, plus sexual and other more intimate issues are of great concern to the single college student. The coed groups have proven to be too inhibiting and require such great maturity that they have a higher possibility of disbanding. The segregated groups seem to enhance commitment and reduce game playing.

Just a note of observation for what it's worth: Campus pastors have noticed that the majority of students truly prefer segregated groups.

THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT: COMMITMENTIt has been said that a lack of commitment is like a slipping clutch on a car. The driver has years of experience, the car is well tuned and powerful, the road is smooth, but the clutch will not engage. It can be the same with a Small Group. The leader can be well-trained and the members can have good, warm Christian hearts, but without commitment, the Small Group will fail. Commitment is an absolutely essential ingredient to the development of a trust-filled core. Commitment must be taught, expected, and modeled.

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Lesson 9: Discipleship Through Small Groups III: Format, Formation, and Content

INTRODUCTIONIn this lesson, we continue to examine the dynamics of developing a Discipleship Small Group. The previous two lessons have focused on the purposes and phases for these groups. In this lesson, the focus will move to the format, formation and content of these small groups. But before we do, let's look briefly at an important issue concerning discipline and deliverance in discipleship.

DISCIPLESHIP INVOLVES BOTH DISCIPLINE AND DELIVERANCEThe ultimate purpose of a Christian is to know God the Father in a very personal and intimate way, to become like Jesus His Son, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to live like Jesus. However, we all have been born into sin and have gratified "...the cravings of our sinful nature and (followed) its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3). This means that we have all been thwarted in our ultimate purpose.

As was pointed out in previous lessons, we are in desperate need of an inner transformation. This Jesus offers to us full and free by faith in His triumph over the cross and the grave. We stand forgiven before the Father and fully adopted into His family.

Nonetheless, we discover that on-going growth in Christ is a necessity for us all. We discover that we still must put our past to death before Christ, and clothe ourselves with the newness that Jesus offers.

For Jesus to bring freedom into our lives, we need both deliverance and discipline. Deliverance is an encounter with Christ by the Spirit. It may deal with evil forces harassing our lives, freedom from habitual sin, or healing in our bodies, minds and soul. These are moments when Jesus comes strongly into our lives and breaks the power that has enslaved us in some way. From that moment, we experience freedom such as we have never known before. God has intervened and we will be different from that time on.

Discipline, on the other hand, is not instantaneous. It is by nature experienced over time. Discipline is repentance lived out. When we repent of our sin, we must turn from it for repentance to be real and complete. Spiritual disciplines in our lives are ways we continue to express repentance and turn our lives to the Lord. When we discard discipline for the guise of freedom, we are in essence turning and rationalizing away our repentance.

Thus, it is the delivered and disciplined man that hears the Lord.

Discipleship in a Small Group context is the foremost biblical context for

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deliverance and discipline to be fostered. Deliverance is most often experienced in a body ministry context. Discipline is best fostered where mutually supportive relationships exist. Discipleship is the path to growth in Christ.

THE SMALL GROUP MEETING FORMATWhat should occur in a typical small group meeting? What are the basic aspects of a health producing meeting of sharing, learning and growing in Christ?

A. WorshipIn a Small Group, worship could be anything from conversational prayer and a song, to 45 minutes of total focus of adoration of God through song, scripture, and spiritual gifts. No doubt your worship experience will be determined by the style with which the individual members feel comfortable. Whatever expression it takes, worship is a time to transition from the concerns of the day to coming together with other believers to praise God from whom all wisdom and strength comes.

B. ContentFrom worship we now move to the study phase. This is the appropriate time to teach skills such as Bible study, prayer, and witnessing. Or the focus could go to an inductive Bible study through a New Testament book. The choices of subject matter are almost endless. Whatever material is covered, some principles in this interaction time are important to remember:

The content phase should have a primary goal of calling each member to a personal application to carry out during the next few days or weeks.

The teaching should be done in a discussion mode and not after the lecture style.

Learning should be accomplished by assisted self-discovery. The members should be encouraged to be mutually supportive of each other's applications. Everyone needs to be involved, learning, and sharing.

C. SharingThe handicap of content-only-oriented-meetings is that it often misses the personal needs the members bring with them to the Small Group meeting. The Small Group needs to continually stay current with each other. To update one another of the joys and sorrows of the past week, to express praise the Lord for the answers to prayer, or to tell one another the needs to be faced during the next few weeks. Without this sharing time, the Small Group will grow relationally stale.

D. PrayerNow that you have heard each member's application to the Bible study and/or their need expressed in the sharing time, you can pray very specifically for each other. Communion grows between people when they

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pray for each other. When the answers to prayer start to return to the group, all kinds of life will occur! Through prayer for each other, the members will then recognize that God truly does care for them and love them dearly.

FORMAT INSIGHT

This format is to be used as a tool and not as a club. Going from one phase to the next should facilitate growth and encouragement to all the members. But don't hold to this format rigidly. If worship is flowing especially well one night, then let it happen. If someone comes into the meeting obviously distressed, minister immediately rather than waiting until the sharing phases to recognize your friend's need. And if one phase seems to stall one night, then suggest a move to the next phase. A Small Group leader will find this to be a very helpful framework from which to operate.

HOW TO LEAD WORSHIP, DISCUSSION, SHARING & PRAYER IN A SMALL GROUP.

Worship Divide the group in half and have them read responsively a passage

that you have chosen. The Psalms are great for this. Ask someone before the meeting to share a testimony of God's

working in their life over the past week or so. Sing songs that are very familiar to everyone, ones that they know all

the words to. If you are going to teach a new song, take a good period of time to do so and then sing it through 3 to 4 times. If you lack musical talent, then select a couple of songs from different artists, have them in playlist, and then encourage everyone to sing along.

Encourage anyone with musical talent to bring their instruments (guitar, flute, etc.), and keep on encouraging them to grow in worship with you.

Type out the words to songs and sing off song sheets. Have a talented member come prepared to share some special music to begin the night.

Open a group time with a response to God in silence, giving them a verse or thought to meditate on.

As you sing, have them change their posture (bowing, kneeling, standing, lifting hands, lying prostrate).

Write out the order of the songs beforehand and put them in a logical order (fast songs with fast songs, slow with slow, same theme, etc.).

Give them a theme (like God's faithfulness, God's love) and have them pray one sentence prayers on this theme.

Discussion during Content phase

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Remember, in the early stages of your group, you need to ask the questions and be the first one to share. You must model before them the manner in which you hope they will share.

Ask questions that cannot be answered with "yes" or "no". For instance:

o What do you see in this passage...o What is your response to... o How do you feel about... o If the Apostle Paul wrote this to you, what would you... o What in your life corresponds to verse...

When someone asks you a question, bounce it back at the group. "That's a great question, Tom. Matt, how would you answer it?"

Direct questions at normally quiet people to draw them out, and then affirm them immediately for responding.

When the group gets off on an unproductive tangent, say so and encourage them to go back to the original issue by restating that issue.

Sharing Focus on becoming current with each other, so ask questions that will

get at that kind of information. For example: What has God been saying to you during the past week? What was the greatest thing that you experienced this past week? What was the most difficult thing you faced lately?

Ask them to share what happened concerning the things that you prayed about for them in the recent weeks.

Share your feeling first if you sense they may be a little hesitant that night. What is the primary agenda going on in your life and how you feel about it?

Tell them to listen very closely to what the person on their left shares, because you are going to ask that they pray for them later.

At times you may need to be very direct by asking someone who is unusually quiet that night how things are going for them right now.

Before, during, and after meetings, affirm your members, showing your appreciation for their openness. Obviously not every night, but enough so that they are sure that you mean it.

Prayer Pray for one another's applications to the Bible study or the need they

brought up during the sharing time. Put one member in the middle of the circle and have everyone gather

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around and pray for them. Then move to the next member and do the same.

Encourage them to pray for the member on their right/left and pray so that all can say amen together.

Suggest that they all close with short sentence prayers and pray as often as they would like.

Pick a country or need on campus to pray for and make that the total focus.

Get into a football huddle and pray or have everyone hold hands as they pray. This helps them to "get in touch" with each other.

Spend an entire night in prayer. Maybe focus on the ACTS format and go through the format phase by phase.

Instruct them to focus on only one aspect such as thanksgiving or God's love, as they pray.

Have them take 10 minutes to write out a prayer and then read it to everyone as their prayer.

HOW TO FORM A DISCIPLESHIP SMALL GROUPBriefly, just remember now what you're hoping to create. A context where several students who have demonstrated a desire to be faithful to the Lord will gather together weekly for mutual love, training, and encouragement. They probably will not know each other, but they need to make strong commitments to each other if true spiritual growth is going to occur. Frankly, that this would ever develop is a real miracle! And that is exactly what you are trusting the Lord Jesus to do-use you to create a miracle! Well, how does this miracle come into being?

A. Pray earnestly that God the Father will lead you to the faithful men or women that He would desire you to pour your life into. Also pray that the majority of students He leads you to are freshmen and sophomores, along with praying for the upperclassmen that the Lord has already placed in your life by friendship. (A strong trust-filled relationship most often is a necessary ingredient for touching the lives of upperclassmen for Christ.)

B. Make Contact with as many new people as possible. Move into your dorm room early and then assist others as they are moving in. Man a book table in your dorm lobby, or help with one outside the Student Union. Put a poster or an invitation to a Small Group Bible Study on you door. Wear a campus ministry T-shirt. Ask other Fellowship members if they know anyone you could contact. Check with the campus ministry staff to see if they have had any leads on new students. Introduce yourself to visitors at the main weekly meeting or visitors at your local church. Be creative! Just do whatever you can to meet as many people as possible in the first 4 weeks of each term. Remember, you must do so with a genuine attitude of concern for your new friends. Check your heart motivation often throughout this process. (If it is not right, don't stop meeting people, but pray until it becomes right.)

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NOTE: Most Small Group Leaders find that only about 40% of those who say that they are interested or who say they will come to Small

Group actually get involved. If you wish to work with about five students, you will need positive responses from about 10 to 12.

C. Explain what a Discipleship Small Group is to the new friends you are making. Describe the impact that it has had on your life and why you feel that it is important. These opportunities may provide a chance to share your testimony and the good news of Jesus to someone who has never heard it clearly.

D. Invite the person to come at a time and place that you have predetermined. Attempt to explain the level of commitment that is necessary for a good Small Group. When they say that they would like to attend (and many will) you will need to remind them often of the time and place (you will need to go by and pick them up for the first Small Group meeting). If they are interested, but can't come at that time, you should introduce them to a Small Group Leader whose group meets at a time that will work. You should also stay in contact with them to make sure they made it into another small group. Also invite them and walk with them to the main weekly Chi Alpha meeting.

E. Plan carefully for the first 4 meetings. You need to make sure everyone understands the issues surrounding commitment, and then spend time in history-giving experiences plus prayer for each other. You need to be organized for these meetings especially, because you can be sure that they won't be! Have most of the details planned before the start of the semester so that you can devote most of your time to personal contacts and follow-up with these new friends. This is a very important time for you to be with them building relationship.

F. Pray some more. Trust God to perform a miracle before your eyes by providing contacts, interest, conviction, friendship and commitment. These things coming together are always a miracle of God's Spirit working hand-in-hand with our efforts.

THE CONTENT OF A DISCIPLESHIP SMALL GROUPNow that you have a group of students becoming friends with each other, what do you disciple them in? What do you attempt to teach them? Here is a list of potential subjects that may apply to your group. You would not be able to cover all of these in one school year by any means, but they may help you to identify where your group needs to go next.

Bible Study Skills Scripture Memory

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Personal Prayer Life Worship Personal Evangelism Relationship Building Skills Lordship of Christ Essential Doctrine Spiritual Disciplines Faithfulness & Commitment Management of Time &

Money

Spiritual Gifts Leadership Qualities & Skills Christian sexuality Self-esteem God's Will & Guidance Assurance of Salvation Missions Life in the Spirit Dealing with Temptation,

Sin, Satan

Beyond these, probably the best choice is to do a study of a book of the Bible. Every biblical book has a central theme (many books have more than one). Choose a book that addresses the overall needs of the group members. For example, you might choose:

Psalms to discover worship Amos to learn about social justice The Gospel of Mark to deal with servanthood The Gospel of Luke to study the work of the Spirit in Jesus Galatians to learn the difference between living under law and grace Ephesians to learn about the body of Christ I Thessalonians to teach on discipleship James to focus on practical Christianity I Peter to study suffering as a Christian

How do you go about choosing the content for your Small Group?A. Evaluate your group

Look at lists like the one above and then evaluate your group. What areas of weaknesses are generally in your group members?

B. Recognize needAssist your members in understanding and recognizing this area of weakness. Help them to own the problem or growth area. Help them see the need for growth.

C. Address Need by ScriptureGo to the Word of God for solutions, directions, and instruction. Very early in the school year you need to teach them a simple Bible study method because you can then:

1. build upon this foundation all year long and2. enable them to feed themselves from the Word when you are not

there to assist them.

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D. Establish goalsHighlight very carefully the goals that you are working toward. They need to know where you are trying to go with them.

E. Follow-up with pastoral carePray with each person as they try to implement the new skill or grow past the area of stumbling in their life.

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Lesson 10: 1 to 1 Discipleship from the Small Group Context

INTRODUCTIONIn Lesson 7, we stated that the ideal model for discipleship is accomplished in the small group context, from which we then undergird with 1-to-I discipleship. Lessons 7, 8, and 9 focused upon the biblical example and practical skills of small group discipleship. Small group discipleship is primary. Secondary to it, but also essential, is time spent 1-to-1 between the discipling leader and the new disciple.

Many questions can be raised concerning 1-to-1 discipleship. What should occur during these times? What do we talk about? How can this time be spent in a quality manner? Answering these questions and teaching skills of 1-to-1 discipleship

are the goals of this lesson.

A STRATEGY FOR 1-TO-1 DISCIPLESHIP

Build a trust-filled relationshipAs stated many times already, discipleship flows from a relational context. No place is this more obvious than sitting in the student union face to face with the new disciple. What is needed in building relationship in the small group is absolutely necessary in 1-on-1. Therefore, do more in-depth personal history sharing. Learn as much as you can about the person, while at the same time letting him know you more fully. Since one of the strengths of 1-on-1 time is that it can be more intimate, then work to build this strength.

Spend time in the beginning stages just doing more history-giving. Loving is built on knowing. This demands openness on your part. In this way you are expressing trust in the person and showing that you care. Do all you can (from your side) to build a trust-filled relationship.

Teach them how to study the BibleOne of the most important skills you can pass on to a new believer is the ability to study the Word of God. Study goes beyond devotional reading. Do all you can to develop 2 Timothy 2:15 in the disciple, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."

Obviously, an entire course on Biblical interpretation cannot be laid out here. However, let us highlight some goals of Bible study and a simple skill that you can teach 1-on-1.

1. Three Components Of Any Good Bible Study Method

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The primary goal for the study of Scripture is to arrive at the meaning of the passage. This meaning needs to be discovered in three stages:

a. Observation : This always occurs first. One seeks to discover the facts and structure of the passage in order to lay a foundation for interpretation.

b. Interpretation : Here we intend to answer the question, "What did this passage mean to the first readers?" What was the purpose of writing for the author?

c. Application :This is a process where the meaning of the passage to the first readers is then translated into our present day situation. It answers the question, "What does this passage mean to me?"

Our first aim in biblical interpretation is to determine the meaning which the author intended to communicate to his audience. Therefore, the meaning of a passage must be something the original readers could have understood. Stated differently, a biblical text cannot mean today what it could not have meant when it was written.

Only after we have a good idea of what the text meant can we go on to see what the text means for us today.

2. A Bible Study Tool

PROAPT is an acrostic that stands for: Pray, Read, Observe, Apply, Pray, Tell. *Note this model is adapted from Discipling Ministries Seminar, Barnabas, Inc. Used by permission, 1991.

Pray:Quiet yourself before the Lord prior to going to his Word. This can be a short time of prayer or lengthy. Be sure to include this as a part of this prayer time: "Dear Lord, please speak to me from your Word and by your Spirit today."

Read:Read the passage aloud. If possible, read the passage in different translations. Make every effort to involve as many of the senses as possible. For some creative ideas see Roberta Hestenes' book, Using the Bible in Groups.

Observe:Now is the time to write down all that you can observe from the text. In your observation, answer some of the following questions.

Who are the people mentioned, where does this passage happen, when did it occur?

What literary constructions are significant, i.e., repetitions, comparisons and contrasts, verb tenses, cause and effect?

What kind of literature is this, i.e., history, teaching material, poetry, prophecy, parable?

What do the words mean? Look up important words in a dictionary and substitute the definition for the word and reread the passage.

Is there any progression or logical development of significance in

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this passage? What is the main point of this passage? What did the first readers understand in their context?

It may help to outline the passage, or paraphrase the passage, trying to maintain the meaning but using your own words.

Apply:Here it is time to bridge the gap between the "there and then" and the "here and now". Ask these kind of questions here:

What issues does this passage raise which are still issues today? What does this passage say about my relationship with God and

with other people, about sin in my life and about my attitudes? How can I apply this within the next two days? What behavior does this passage call for that I am not now doing?

Application is the most difficult part of any Bible study method to master. We tend to make applications that are generalized wishes or hopes. We often come away from the biblical text with unmeasurable goals or goals too large to see daily growth. It takes real effort, but we must chop up the gigantic applications into bite-size chunks. In application, above all, be specific! Take the following example: "Lord I want to be more disciplined in my Bible study." While admirable there are no objective criteria with which progress can be measured. Break it down like: "Lord, in an effort to become more disciplined in my personal Bible study, I am committing to spend from 7:30 to 8:00 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays doing my PROAPTs through Philippians."

Pray:Again, at this point, commit to Jesus your application and praise Him for speaking to you. If you wish, follow the prayer format listed on the PROAPT sheet.

Tell: Find a prayer partner, preferably someone in your small group. Let them know what Jesus is saying and doing in you. These can become some of the most quality times of your life.One final recommendation. When PROAPTing build consistency by staying in the same Biblical book or on the same Biblical topic. A lifetime of consistent study will reap a bounty of fruit.

In teaching this skill, follow this procedure:1. Demonstrate how to PROAPT in a 1-to-1 session.2. Assign them to do three PROAPTs per week for the next two weeks.3. Meet with them and go over their PROAPTs with them.4. Point out areas needing development.5. Make a further assignment until they come to some level of mastery

of this Bible study tool.

Teach them how to prayAlongside the ability to study the Bible, another essential skill is knowing how to pray. Since the Disciples asked Jesus how to pray, it is certainly

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appropriate for us to ask and learn! As can be seen from the Lord's Prayer, there are a variety of components to prayer. A good tool is the ACTS Format of Prayer. Again, ACTS is an acrostic for:

A doration- Praise to the Lord for who He is (focus upon His nature). C onfession- Statement of Jesus as Lord of my life and asking for

forgiveness of sin. T hanksgiving- Praise to the Lord for what He has done(focus on His

deeds). S upplication- Intercession for my needs and the needs of others.

Learning how to pray after this manner would be a stretching experience for any disciple. Again, request in your 1-to-i that they pray after this format three times per week for two weeks. Then after the sixth time, have them write out their reflections and thoughts after having prayed in this manner. It should lead to a good time of discussion on prayer. Don't presume that they will pray this way forever. But it is a great way to open them up to a greater prayer life. It could be an excellent idea to anchor in prayer by spending time together praying in your 1-to-I's. These instructions coupled with your modeling prayer will greatly help a disciple communicate with the Lord Jesus.

Carefully assess personal needsThe first stage in ministry is knowing the needs. Here we try to get in touch with the tensions in their life in order to assist you in knowing how to encourage them in spiritual growth. A helpful method can be to divide their needs into four categories; personal and relational, family, academic, and spiritual and ministry. The sole purpose of this simple method is to gain an overview of the areas of concern in the disciple's life as they perceive them

After you have taught them Bible study and prayer, take an hour or two and ask them to describe their life in the four areas: Personal & Relational, Family, Academic and Spiritual Needs. Sometimes just helping the person to gain an overview of the tensions in their life can be a great moment of self discovery. From this perspective, you can then move toward addressing some specific areas of needed growth in the disciple.

Help them to set personal spiritual growth goalsThis highlights a five stage process in personal ministry. Let's examine each stage, one point at a time.

ASSESS THE NEEDAfter having gone over the Needs, Concerns and Problems sheet with them, you then select one area. Usually it is best the first time, to allow the disciple to pick the area that they want to grow in. If they select it, they will probably bring some motivation to the task, thus increasing the chances for growth. Even if you discern that another area is more needy, it is still probably better for them to choose the first area. They will be more willing to tackle harder issues after they have learned to work with you. Write out as clearly as possible the issue of need in the space provided, just so everyone has a clear understanding on the issue.

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BUILD A BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONWhat does God's Word have to say about this issue? Often this is quite direct and to the point, while there are times when finding the counsel of God's Word is more difficult. Here the leader is modeling the use of the Bible as our guide for all faith and practice. Careful work here helps the disciple see that we are to live under the authority of God's truth rather than by any standards imposed by contemporary morality. In this space, write a summary statement of the counsel from the Word with several Scripture references listed.

CREATE MEASURABLE GOALSFrom what the Bible instructs, what should the disciple trust the Lord to do in his or her life? It is important that goals be specific and measurable. Vague goals are quite frustrating and you are never sure if you are making any progress. State goals in terms of how much, when, how often, with whom, etc. Make the goals tangible but faith filled. Remember what we learned about goals and purposes. "A goal is a statement about how we hope things are going to be at some time in the future. It is a statement of faith. Notice that goals are not statements about what will be. That is in God's hands. But they are statements about what we believe God wants us to do or to be, in light of his word."

DEVELOP A PLAN OF ACTIONNow take your goals and put them into a statement of strategy. Break it down into stages or steps. What will the disciple do first, then next, and then after that? If the final goal will take three months to accomplish, what will the disciple do in the first month, the second and the third? Be specific and clear.

ESTABLISH PROPER SUPPORTWe were never intended to walk out our faith in Jesus alone, but Christ has placed us carefully into His Body. Therefore, we must be there for each other. Establish times for evaluation and adjustment. Encouragement will be very necessary. Sometimes you will need to be a little tough and demand that the disciple stay on target. Sometimes he may need you to forgive him for failing and be able to experience compassion first-hand. So check up regularly and commit yourself to see this through with the disciple.

MINISTRY SKILLS SHOULD BE TRANSGENERATIONALWe have said before that discipleship is a transgenerational process whereby the message and methods of the Kingdom of God impact the world. The skills used in this process need to be transgenerational as well. What is meant by transgenerational skills is that in teaching one disciple you need to use skills that they in turn can use to teach another later.

This is why the forms used in this lesson are simple. There is nothing special in the forms. This is deliberate. The forms could be easily reproduced on a napkin at your favorite pancake house restaurant. There is nothing sacred about the forms, they merely describe process in ministry.

It is cruel to teach someone, but withhold from them source for learning. Don't just tell someone to go from A to Z, but show them how to go from A to

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Z. In doing so they will some day take someone else from A to Z. Keep the first skills that you use simple and transgenerational. No doubt later on you will become much more sophisticated, but make sure they have something in their hand they can pass on to another.

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Lesson 11: Confrontation & Restoration

DISCIPLESHIP AND DISCIPLINE"My brothers, if one of you wanders away from the truth and another brings him back again, remember this: whoever turns a sinner back from his wrong way will save that sinner's soul and bring forgiveness of many sins" (James 5:19, 20 TEV).

Sometimes disciples wander away from the truth. Reasons for this are numerous. Jesus warns that some will have truth snatched from them by Satan. Others never go beyond the initial joy of salvation. Still others fall away due to trouble, persecution, or through the deceitfulness of wealth and desires for other things in the world. For many, they really don't lose their faith, they just cease to use their faith. The neglect results in coldness in their relationship to Christ and they begin to renege on their commitment. Double-mindedness sets in. Again James reminds us, "...he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does" (James 1:6b-8).

Until recently, there has been very little written on bringing restoration to members within a local body of believers when they go astray or are caught in a sin. No doubt this issue makes many nervous due to gross mistakes made which have caused much harm to all involved. There is a tendency to avoid the issue or problem altogether. Pervasive individualism in our society has crept into our fellowship groups and churches, thereby causing many to consider intervention into someone's life an intrusion or an infringement upon one's personal privacy. We come to believe that it is inappropriate to ever bring any questions or demands upon someone else, fearing that we have overstepped our bounds.

But when one considers the instructions given to us in the Scriptures concerning the interdependency of believers toward each other, we should not be surprised to see injunctions such as Matthew 18:15-20 and Galatians 6:1-5.

"If your brother sins against you, go to him and show him his fault. But do it privately, just between yourselves... If he listens to you, you have won your brother back. But if he will not listen to you, take one or two other persons with you, so that 'every accusation may be upheld by the testimony of two or more witnesses,' as the scripture says. And if he will not listen to them, then tell the whole thing to the church. Finally, if he will not listen to the church, treat him as though he were a pagan or a tax collector." Matthew 18:15-17 TEV

"My brothers, if someone is caught in any kind of wrongdoing, those of you who are spiritual should set him right; but you must do it in a gentle way. And keep an eye on yourselves, so that you will not be tempted, too. Carry each

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other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should judge his own conduct. If it is good, then he can be proud of what he himself has done, without having to compare it with what someone else has done. For everyone has to carry his own load." Galatians 6:1-5

These call for direct and explicit initiation toward someone in the body who is struggling in their Christian walk. This then is a vital issue for all who respond to the call to become disciplers. It is an essential responsibility in the process of discipleship.

DISCIPLINE FOR THE WAYWARD DISCIPLELet us recall some things mentioned in a previous lesson. "Discipline is training that corrects, molds, and perfects the mental abilities and moral character of a person. Many times we think first of punishment when we consider discipline, but even good punishment should serve to penalize a person due to their lack of self-control (trusting that the direct attention will aid in the development of self-control). Thus, to discipline simply means to impose order upon disorder within the mind, heart and spirit."

Every disciple submits to Godly discipline. The writer of Hebrews tells us that "God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness."

"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." Hebrews 12:7-11

The discipline we are focusing on in this lesson is that which is necessary to be brought to a brother or sister who is wandering from the truth. Their eternal life is at stake.

In Lesson 8, we mentioned that "discipline is repentance lived out." To discipline a brother caught in sin, is to bring them back to the foundations of their salvation and their relationship with God. It means to speak the message of grace again to them and to call upon them to repent from their folly. How are we instructed to carry out this process of discipline?

THE OCCASION FOR DISCIPLINE: "IF YOUR BROTHER SINS""If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault..." Mt. 18:15a Scholars debate the meaning of "against you" in this passage. Some feel that it refers only to direct sin which injures you. Others feel that "against you" means that you are the witness of the problem. Probably both positions are correct. (In fact, many of the ancient manuscripts omitted the words "against

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you" in this passage. This would make the injunction even more simple. If you are aware that your brother is in sin, then you are to go to him).

Neglect is not excusable on any grounds. Too often we sound like Cain when he said to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" This passage seems to underscore that since we are brothers and sisters in Christ, we have responsibility to one another. One of these responsibilities is to care enough for each other to intervene during times of spiritual waywardness.

We must remember that living a spiritual life is a reality in which sin and righteousness are mutually exclusive. Consequently, even if acts of sin are concealed, the symptoms of spiritual illness will eventually surface somewhere. When the revealing signs of sin make their appearance, the discipler is constrained to inquire into the life of the individual in question. This is not a matter of prying into the private life of people; it is an attempt to help them return to the way of faith. Thus, the fellowship does not go around looking for hidden sins. As in evangelism, so in discipline, we are looking for discipleship, which by its nature is open and visible.

What kinds of sins do we become concerned about? The deeds of the flesh that Paul gives in Galatians 5 immediately precede the list of fruits of the Spirit and the instructions on restoring a brother caught in trespass. The following list can give us some assistance as to what Paul intends for us to become concerned about.

DEEDS OF THE FLESH FROM GALATIANS 5:19-21 Immorality...primarily referring to sexual immorality of any kind. It was

so common in Greco-Roman antiquity that it was not regarded as especially reprehensible. Our culture is not much different. "Sexual preference" or "sexual orientation" or even "safe sex" are really immorality redressed.

Impurity...like an unclean wound or an unpruned tree. To be impure means that one can't approach the holy God.

Sensuality...readiness for any pleasure with no restraint for any desire. Hedonism, as it is called today, is glorified in our culture by the quest for the "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous".

Idolatry...where material things have taken the place of God. Our culture doesn't promote the construction of statues to worship, but calls us to worship power, fame, wealth, security, etc. Idolatry is any substitute for the living and true God.

Sorcery...literally "the use of drugs", primarily for use in witchcraft. Drug use and the rise of the occult are both issues that our culture struggles to deal with effectively.

Enmities...hostile sentiments, intentions, or acts. The examples here are numerous (child abuse, wife abuse, rape, terrorism, international aggression) and each one is experienced in proportions never before seen in the history of mankind.

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Strife...rivalry which finds its outcome in quarrelings and wranglings. The opposite of strife is peace.

Jealousy...desire to have what someone else has. Our compulsion to consume and possess which fuels and drives all of western capitalism.

Outbursts of Anger... bursts of temper, anger that strikes out physically, verbally, or emotionally.

Selfishness...selfish ambition. Describes the man who wants office, not from any motives of service, but for what he can get out of it.

Dissensions...where members of a group fly apart instead of coming together. Western individualism fostered, nurtured, protected, defended and promoted.

Factions...cliques where people who hold different views finish up by disliking not each other's views, but each other.

Envyings...begrudges the fact that someone has things at all. The grudging spirit that cannot bear to contemplate someone else's prosperity.

Drunkenness...excessive indulgence in strong drink which weakens people's rational and moral control over words and action. Unilaterally hailed by administrators and students as the number one problem on campus today.

Carousings...always in close association with drunkenness this is probably equivalent to what the university community calls "partying". It means unrestrained revelry, enjoyment that has degenerated into license.

A common thread among all of those listed above is that they all are a sin against relationship in some form or another. This list is not intended to be conclusive. But you can feel that you are confronting correctly if one of the above is involved.

THE GOAL OF DISCIPLINE: "IF HE REPENTS THEN FORGIVE"We must continually remind ourselves that the goal of discipline is not to correctly fulfill the specific instructions in restoration (although we must do that), but to win our brother back through repentance to God.

Let us draw a distinction between admonition and excommunication. Admonition: This is gentle, loving but firm reproof in counseling and a

warning against a sin or fault. Excommunication: This is the process by which a member of the body is

placed under an exclusion from the fellowship (shunned from the body).

Jesus very clearly teaches both of these actions in Matthew 18, but most clearly in a process of moving from admonition to excommunication. Since He teaches both, we must then take both very seriously.

A truly dangerous testimony of any fellowship's witness before God and in the

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world is their ability to see a brother or sister's sin and to do nothing about it. On the other hand, the fellowship is hurt by an excommunication that is too hasty, for then the Christian community comes to be regarded (with good reason) as a body concerned not with restoration of its members to God, but for its self-image.

The initial approach in the disciplining act, whether it is called admonition, exhortation, rebuke, reproof, correction or any other such term, must be seen as a presentation of the gospel. This is to be done with a sincere personal appeal. "If a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness," writes the Apostle Paul in Galatians 6:1

"Admonition of a sinner in the church is analogous to evangelism outside the church. As in evangelism repentance issues in forgiveness and fellowship, so in discipline response to the word of admonition issues in forgiveness and continued fellowship. Like-wise, as in evangelism an individual's rejection of the gospel is respected and he is not incorporated into the body of Christ, so in discipline an individual's rejection of the word of admonition is respected and he is excluded from the body of Christ. The only difference is that admonition begins with a sinner in the church, whereas evangelism begins with one outside the church." Marlin Jeschke, Discipling the Brother, (Herald Press, 1972) p.85.

This process is intended to accomplish a sincere confession of sin, this is the obvious goal of the Matthew 18 instruction. This confession of sin brings renewed fellowship between sinner and God the Father. Repentance of the sinful life needs to then follow, and repentance can be seen as the indicator for renewed fellowship in the body of Christ.

THE QUALIFICATIONS TO EXECUTE DISCIPLINE: "You Who Are Spiritual..."A. Who are the "spiritual"?

Let's look into Galatians 5. In verses 18-25, Paul tells believers to "walk", "live" and "be led" by the Spirit. A focus we can notice is that Paul expects to see right actions which flow out of right thinking.

B. How does one become "spiritual"?In verses 24 and 25, Paul adds, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." A spiritual person is one who kills the acts of sin in their life. They have come to hate sin and its effects in their life. Beyond this, the spiritual man is one characterized by the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23). This fruit is not to be seen merely as right attitudes or dispositions, but as manifestations flowing from us as from the Spirit.

Since you then are spiritual, you are the one, having seen the trespass, to go to your brother and gently, but firmly restore him to the Lord.

THE HEALING IN DISCIPLINE: "Restore Such A One"

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"Restore" is used for executing a repair and for the work of a surgeon in removing some growth from a man's body or in setting a broken limb.

We are to restore someone who repents. True repentance is evidenced by Godly sorrow. It is more than just saying "I'm sorry". Godly sorrow produces much good in our lives. Paul describes this to the Corinthians, "For you became sorrowful as God intended....Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done" (2 Corinthians 7:9b-11a).

Therefore, we could propose the following guidelines:1. Restore someone who repents.2. Discipline someone who does not repent.

FIRST STEP OF DISCIPLINE: "Watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.""But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted" (Galatians 6:1b).

Start with yourself. Go with a spirit of gentleness. The story is told of the great Chicago preacher D. L. Moody, when once walking along the street, he saw a drunk lying in the gutter. He turned to his friend and said, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." We must start with careful self-examination and repentance before the Lord of our own temptations. We cannot gloat over the grace we have received. That completely misunderstands the work of grace in our life. With a renewed sense of our own position before Christ, a sinner saved by grace through faith, we are then to go to our brother.

One more issue is very important-forgive your brother from your heart before you go, and as you go. The greater context of Jesus' words in Matthew 18 are as follows. In verses 7-9, Jesus teaches us to rid ourselves of anything which would prevent us from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Do radical surgery where necessary. Then in verses 10-14, He tells us that the Good Shepherd goes after the one out of the 100. He describes the joy of the Father when the one lost sheep is returned. Going on we come to our passage for today, "If your brother sins, go to him..." He then talks to us about prayer for the ones who wander off, and affirms that when two or three agree on such a thing, it shall be done for them by their Father in Heaven. However, Jesus saves the punch line for last. In verses 21-35, He tells a story of a servant who is forgiven an incredible debt, but who turns around and punishes someone who owes him a days wage. Jesus says this unmerciful servant will be punished very severely. Jesus last words speak volumes, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart" (Matthew 18:35).

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: HOW TO CONFRONT AND RESTOREA. Personal introspection Evaluate your own life, and make sure you are

"walking in the Spirit", i.e.- keep on becoming "spiritual".

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B. Distinguish between sins and differences Make sure you are evaluating your wayward brother from a biblical perspective. Be sure that what you are confronting is sin and not a matter of conscience. Refer to the "Deeds of the Flesh" as a beginning guideline.

C. Pray Confess your need of Christ's forgiveness; praise Him for His abundant grace in your life; pray that you will not be led into temptation; ask for guidance.

D. Forgive Forgive your brother from your heart. Be merciful.

E. Confront personally Go to the wayward brother and discuss the area of concern. If it is in fact true that he has fallen into sin, then ask for confession of this sin and ask to see a turning from the sin. Do so in a spirit of gentleness, while at the same time not backing down from the truth of God's word.

F. Maintain confidentiality Keep the circle of awareness as small as possible. Don't tell everybody about your brother's sin or even about you going to him. The goal is to "win" your brother back, and then allow him to reestablish fellowship with the body of Christ. If the repentant wishes to testify about his return to the Lord, let that be for him to choose. (Unless, of course, the nature of the sin caused direct injury to the local body, or it was a spiritual leader who sinned. Elders are to be disciplined publicly, but still with mercy. 1 Timothy 5:19, 20)

G. Include witness(es)If your brother does not repent, then go again with one or two others. Again ask for a turning from sin and a turning to the Lord.

H. Include leadership If still no Godly response, then approach the Fellowship's leadership and have them confront the brother. If the brother persists in his sin, then decide with the leadership how best to present this issue before the body.

I. Keep restoration as the goal Remember, the purpose of discipline is to win a brother and not primarily to maintain a pure community, at least not initially. The issue of corporate purity comes after the issue of personal purity has been pursued to the fullest.

J. Celebrate restoration Jesus tells a parable where a shepherd leaves the flock of 99 sheep to go out after one lost sheep in order that the lost sheep might be restored to the fold. Immediately following that parable is the parable of a woman who looses one coin and searches until she finds it. When the lost is found she then calls all the neighbors and has a party! And finally Jesus tells one last story about lost things. The parable of the lost son. When the son returns home to his father the reconciliation is celebrated. (Luke 14.1-32) You must not fear personal failure in confrontation and restoration. It only takes the focus off the injured person and puts it on you instead. Beyond that, our lives are to be lived in faith, and this will certainly cause your faith to grow. Most importantly, eternity

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is at stake for the transgressor.

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Lesson 12: The Qualities Necessary to be an Effective Discipler

READY TO DISCIPLE?So you're ready now to be a Small Group Discipler. Or are you? How does a person assess his or her own preparedness? By what gauge or guide can one evaluate whether to take a step of faith and assume discipling leader-ship? Anyone who takes seriously the Lord's injunction to "disciple the nations" will ask these kinds of questions.

In this lesson, we shall look at two gauges or measuring sticks by which we can measure ourselves, drawn from practical experience in campus ministry and from the Apostle Paul.

ESSENTIALS FOR A SMALL GROUP DISCIPLER

Godly characterThe most incredible news the world has ever heard is that God himself came to earth. Not only did this provide a wonderful salvation for us, but the Lord wanted to make sure we could come to know Him as He is. No more voices from a mountain or earthquakes or even still small voices, but God became a man. In doing so, He demonstrated firsthand what He purposes us to become. The most significant way that we can know how we are to live, act, think, and love, is to see a model, have an example. Jesus was the first model for all who would follow Him, and not only are we to follow Him, but we are to become like Him.

This means that our character needs to become conformed to His. Godly character qualities need to find a home in our lives such as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:2-12), Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-26), and the Rules for Holy Living (Colossians 3:12-17). These qualities are not taught, they are caught.

A Bible teacher may explain them, but each individual believer must respond individually to the Lord to implement them into his or her life. To become like our Lord, a person must spend time with Him. Sharp edges must be chipped and polished, wild branches must be pruned. This interaction with the Lord is often painful (at first), but to the one who submits to this process will find peace and fruitfulness flowing from his life.

There are two reasons why a person's growth in Godly character is a very important indicator as to whether he would become an effective discipler: for two reasons: First, those discipled need a real-life example of who Christ is. We should be able to say as Paul did: "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). Second, those who are growing in Godly character are obviously people in vital interaction with Him. They have learned how to listen to God's voice and obey.

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They have submitted themselves to God's discipline and are being developed by it. This process cannot be taught into a person, exhorted in, preached in or even encouraged in; it comes only from the Lord. The person who is in this kind of relationship with the Lord is just the kind of person that should be discipling others (for that person's experience with the Lord will strongly influence growth in the ones discipled).

Pastoral heartThe word "pastor" comes from the same root that we get the word "shepherd". To care for people as a pastor is thus to care as a shepherd tends sheep. When the Apostle Peter described a shepherd's heart, he underscored the motivation for leadership. A discipler leads because he or she is not forced but willing, not greedy but eager, not lording over but serving as an example to the flock (I Peter 5:1 -4).

A discipler needs to have a heart that breaks at the point of another person's needs. Someone who truly cares, someone who hurts to see the damage done by sin and misfortune in a friend's life. Insensitivity in the hands of a spiritual leader is horribly destructive. A critical attitude will only compound wounds in a young believer's life. A discipler must exhibit the warmth of Christ.

VisionLife without vision is a dead-end. Jesus' first words to his about-to-be disciples were "Come and follow me". Vision is important in three areas:

1. Personal visionA person is much more eager to follow than to be pushed. A discipler must be a person who sees God's direction through prayer and serious study of Scripture. He has prayed for direction to live by, and Jesus has responded. A discipler is going somewhere, is filled with hope for the future, and is not alone; he or she is going somewhere with others who have prayed for vision.

2. Relational visionThe discipler needs to prayerfully develop vision for where the younger believer can grow and develop in the Lord (as well as where the entire Small Group can grow if the Spirit is free to operate among them).

3. Corporate visionThe discipler needs to share the same vision of ministry that the corporate fellowship feels called to fulfill from the Lord. Vision is characteristically something that is shared between believers, and not just personalized. It is a corporate issue.

Kingdom-consciousA discipler must be a Christian through and through. To be disci piers, we must be totally sold out for the Lord. We must be people who recognize that Jesus Christ is the only answer to people's lostness. It is a great temptation in today's society to be a humanistic Christian. It is not sufficient merely to help

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people to feel better about themselves, for we will only truly feel better about ourselves when we are completely assured from within that our sins are forgiven. It is not enough for people to have friends who are Christians and not feel so lonely. Loneliness is only dealt with when believers walk in the light together. A Christian is not just a very moral person. A Christian is a transformed person, a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). A Christian no longer belongs to this world---citizenship is in heaven. A discipler must know the difference and live out this difference.

Ministry skillsTo be effective, a discipler must know how to affect others for the Kingdom of God. A discipler must know the methods of discipleship as well as the message of discipleship. A discipler must know how to:

lead a person to Christ… facilitate worship… lead a discussion… encourage people to share from their heart… teach others how to pray… assess another person's needs… plan to minister to those needs…

There is good news here though! Of these five essentials, the first four (character, heart, vision, kingdom-consciousness) occur in a person who is faithful in knowing God from his heart, and for that reason they are the most important. The ministry skills can be learned. Any person who is sold out for God can be taught how to be effective for the Lord. These skills come to us as a learned process.

THE APOSTLE PAUL DEMONSTRATES EFFECTIVE DISCIPLESHIPThe following are nine essential ingredients taken from the life of the Apostle Paul in his interaction with the church at Thessalonica.

An effective discipler is earnest in prayer."We always thank God for you all and always mention you in our prayers. For we remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how your love made you work so hard, and how your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ is firm.. Day and night we ask him with all our heart to let us see you personally and supply what is needed in your faith." 1 Thess. 1:2-3; 3:10-11

The effective discipler places complete reliance on the power and presence beyond him or herself. Effective disciplers see themselves as being able to change the course of human events through prayer. They know that any human activity apart from prayer is doomed to failure. Therefore, they become intercessors for those being discipied, ever offering them up to the Father who can "supply what is lacking in (their) faith."

An effective discipler is a proclaimer of the gospel."And there is another reason why we always give thanks to God. When we brought you God's message, you heard it and accepted it, not as man's

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message but as God's message, which indeed it is." I Thess. 2:13

Effective disciplers believe completely in the power of the gospel to change lives. They proclaim the good news of Jesus because they know that it will transform someone. Effective disciplers do not disciple from feelings of guilt. Central to the task of discipling is telling others about Jesus and His love and plans for them.

An effective discipler is pure in heart."Instead we always speak as God wants us to, because he has judged us worthy to be entrusted with the Good News. We do not try to please men, but to please God, who tests our motives. You know very well that we did not come to you with flattering talk, nor did we use words to cover up greed-God is our witness! We did not try to get praise from anyone, either from you or from others." I Thess. 2:4-6

The proper motivation for an effective discipler is to ever and always please the Lord and not merely be a man-pleaser. The discipler's heart must be free from self-interest and the need to manipulate others. Integrity between what a discipler says and what he does is essential.

An effective discipler is an example of Christ-likeness."For we brought the Good News to you, not with words only, but also with power and the Holy Spirit, and with complete conviction of its truth. You know how we lived when we were with you; it was for your own good. You imitated us and the Lord; and even though you suffered much, you received the message with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit. You are our witnesses, and so is God, that our conduct toward you who believe was pure, right, and without fault." I Thess. 1:5,6; 2:10

The lives of effective disciplers must be open for inspection. They must be people who are open and honest, letting the sincerity of their walk with Christ become observable. They must be individuals who can testify as Paul said elsewhere, "Follow me as I follow Christ" (I Cor. 11:1). A discipler is a person who lives above reproach.

An effective discipler is a lover and nurturer of people."As apostles of Christ we could have made demands on you. But we were gentle when we were with you, like a mother taking care of her children. Because of our love for you we were ready to share with you not only the Good News from God but even our own lives. You were so dear to us! Surely you remember, our brothers (and sisters), how we worked and toiled! We worked day and night so that we would not be any trouble to you as we preached to you the Good News.. As for us, brothers (and sisters), when we were separated from you for a little while-not in our thoughts of course, but only in body-how we missed you and how hard we tried to see you again! We wanted to return to you. I myself tried to go back more than once, but Satan would not let us." I Thess. 2:7-9; 2:17, 18

There needs to be an intensity in a discipler's caring and concern that

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undergirds any ministry to others. Paul likened it to the tenderness with which a mother nurtures her child. Patient compassion is essential to building the love of God in someone. A discipler must allow the fruit of the Spirit to express itself toward those he or she serves.

An effective discipler is an admonisher."You know that we treated each one of you just as a father treats his own children. We encouraged you, we comforted you, and we kept urging you to live the kind of life that pleases God, who calls you to share in his own Kingdom and glory." I Thess. 2:11,12

Love must always have the strength to confront a brother or sister in love. To admonish is the necessary counter-balance to the previous quality of being a lover/nurturer. To admonish is our reflection of God's love, expressed in Hebrews 12:5-12, where every son is loved and disciplined. If disciplers fail to admonish, they are bound to reproduce disciples who are self-centered and unable to endure the hardships of life.

An effective discipler is a teacher and encourager."Day and night we ask him with all our heart to let us see you personally and supply what is needed in your faith. May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus prepare the way for us to come to you! May the Lord make your love for one another and for all people grow more and more and become as great as our love for you. In this way he will strengthen you, and you will be perfect and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all who belong to him." 1 Thess. 3:10-13

This demands a consistent discipline in the study of the Scriptures. If disciplers are to encourage growth in someone else, then they must be continually growing themselves. Disciplers must then work at becoming effective at communicating this knowledge to others. Simple faith is essential, but stupid faith on the part of a discipler is an affront to the person of God and His people. Truth shared in love builds up.

An effective discipler is persevering."You know how we had already been mistreated and insulted in Philippi before we came to you in Thessalonica. And even though there was much opposition, our God gave us courage to tell you the Good News that comes from him." I Thess. 2:2

The effective discipler must be willing to go against the grain of his culture, being willing to become a prophetic person. Discipling is emotionally taxing and time-consuming, thus demanding the ability to persevere. This quality is a direct result of prayerfulness and realistic biblical planning. If we are to help build lasting communities for Christ, then excellence in craftsmanship is required. This means that a discipler must dig in and stick to a task with perseverance.

An effective discipler is open to receive personal ministry.".. while we sent Timothy, our brother who works with us for God in preaching

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the Good News about Christ. We sent him to strengthen you and help your faith.. Now Timothy has come back, and he has brought us the welcome news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always think well of us and that you want to see us just as much as we want to see you. So, in all our trouble and suffering we have been encouraged about you, brothers (and sisters). It was your faith that encouraged us, because now we really live if you stand firm in your life in union with the Lord. Now we can give thanks to our God for you. We thank him for the joy we have in his presence because of you.. Pray also for us brothers (and sisters)." I Thess. 3:2, 6-9; 5:25

Effective discipleship is not a one-way street. Leaders will not produce other healthy leaders if they do not let others minister to them. If you desire humble, honest, confessional disciples, then you must be one. Beware of isolation, it breeds hostility, haughtiness and heresy.

CONCLUSIONWell, after looking at these two gauges, how did your self-evaluation turn out? If you're like most other folks on the planet, you will find several areas where growth is needed. Don't walk away defeated just because you realize God is not finished with you yet. Find your Small Group Leader and share your self-evaluation with them, and then agree to pursue the specific growth in Jesus that is needed.

Remember, it is God's will that we disciple the nations. It is His idea. And since it is His idea, He is the One who equips us to fulfill His will. He delights in doing so. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10). "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).

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Section 2: Articles

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Love Article:

The Attributes of God: The Love Of God By: A.W. Pink There are three things told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, “God is spirit (John 4:24). In the Greek there is no indefinite article, and to say “God is a spirit” is most objectionable, for it places Him in a class with others. God is “spirit” in the highest sense. Because He is “spirit” He is incorporeal, having no visible substance. Had God a tangible body, He would not be omnipresent, He would be limited to one place; because He is spirit He fills heaven and earth. Second, God is light (1 John 1:5), which is the opposite of “darkness.” In Scripture “darkness” stands for sin, evil, death; and “light” for holiness, goodness, life. God is light, means that He is the sum of all excellency. Third, “God is love” (I John 4:8). It is not simply that God “loves,” but that He is Love itself. Love is not merely one of His attributes, but His very nature.

There are many today who talk about the love of God, who are total strangers to the God of love. The Divine love is commonly regarded as a species of amiable weakness, a sort of good-natured indulgence; it is reduced to a mere sickly sentiment, patterned after human emotion. Now the truth is that on this, as on everything else, our thoughts need to be formed and regulated by what is revealed therein Holy Scriptures. That there is urgent need for this is apparent not only from the ignorance which so generally prevails, but also from the low state spiritualty which is now so sadly evident everywhere among professing Christians. How little real love there is for God. One chief reason for this is because our hearts are so little occupied with His wondrous love- its character, fulness, blessedness- the more will our hearts be drawn out in love to Him.

1. The love of God is uninfluenced. By this we mean, there was nothing whatever in the objects His love to call it into exercise, nothing in the creature to attract or prompt it. The love which one creature has for another is because of something in them; but the love of God is free, spontaneous, uncaused. The only reason why God loves any is found in His own sovereign will: “The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you because ye were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the Lord loved thee” (Deut. 7:7-8). God has loved His people from everlasting, and therefore nothing of the creature can be the cause of what is found in God from eternity. He loves from Himself: “according to His own purpose” (2 Tim. 1:9).

“We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). God did not love us because we loved Him, but He loved us before we had a particle of love for Him. Had God loved us in return for ours, then it would not be spontaneous on His part; but because He loved us when we were loveless, it is clear that

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His love was uninfluenced. It is highly important if God is to be honored and the heart of His child established, that we should be quite clear upon this precious truth. God’s love for me, and for each of “His own,” was entirely unmoved by anything in them. What was there in me to attract the heart of God? Absolutely nothing. But, to the contrary, everything to repel Him, everything calculated to make Him loathe me- sinful, depraved, a mass of corruption, with “no good thing” in me.

“What was there in me that could merit esteem,Or give the Creator delight?

’Twas even so, Father, I ever must sing,Because it seemed good, in Thy sight.”

2. It is eternal. This of necessity. God Himself is eternal, and God is love; therefore, as God Himself had no beginning, His love had none. Granted that such a concept far transcends the grasp of our feeble minds, nevertheless, where we cannot comprehend, we can bow in adoring worship. How clear is the testimony of Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” How blessed to know that the great and holy God loved His people before heaven and earth were called into existence, that He had set His heart upon them from all eternity. Clear proof is this that His love is spontaneous, for He loved them endless ages before they had any being.

The same precious truth is set forth in Ephesians 1:4,5, “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him. In love having predestinated us.” What praise should this evoke from each of His children! How tranquilizing for the heart: since God’s love toward me had no beginning, it can have no ending! Since it be true that “from everlasting to everlasting” He is God, and since God is “love,” then it is equally true that “from everlasting to everlasting” He loves His people.

3. It is sovereign. This also is self-evident. God Himself is sovereign, under obligations to none, a law unto Himself, acting always according to His own imperial pleasure. Since God be sovereign, and since He be love, necessarily follows that His love is sovereign. Because God is God, He does as He pleases; because God is love, He loves whom He pleases. Such is His own express affirmation: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:19). There was no more reason in Jacob why he should be the object of Divine love, than there was in Esau. They both had the same parents, were born at the same time, being twins, being twins; yet God loved the one and hated the other! Why? Because it pleased Him to do so.

The sovereignty of God’s love necessarily follows from the fact that it is uninfluenced by anything in the creature. Thus, to affirm that the cause of His love lies in God Himself, is only another way of saying, He loves whom He pleases. For a moment, assume the opposite. Suppose God’s love were regulated by anything else than His will, in such a case, He would love by rule, and loving by rule He would be under a law of love, and then so far

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from being free, God would Himself be ruled by law. “In love have predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to”- what? Some excellency which He foresaw in them? No; what then? “According to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:4,5)

4. It is infinite. Everything about God is infinite. His essence fills heaven and earth. His wisdom is illimitable, for He knows everything of the past, present and future. His power is unbounded, for there is nothing too hard for Him. So His love is without limit. There is a depth to it which none can fathom; there is a height to it which none can scale; there is a length and breadth to it which defies measurement, by any creature-standard. Beautifully is this intimated in Eph. 2:4: But God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us: the word “great” there is a parallel with the “God so loved” of John 3:16. It tells us that the love God is so transcendent it cannot be estimated.

No tongue can fully express the infinitude of God’s love, or any mind comprehend it: it “passeth knowledge” Eph. 3:19). The most extensive ideas that a finite mind can frame about Divine love, are infinitely below its true nature. The heaven is not so far above the earth as the goodness of God is beyond the most raised conceptions which we are able to form of it. It is an ocean which swells higher than all the mountains of opposition in such as are the objects of it. It is a fountain which flows all necessary good to all those who are interested in it (John Brine, 1743).

5. It is immutable. As with God Himself there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17), so His love knows neither change or diminution. The worm of Jacob supplies a forceful example of this: “Jacob have I loved,” declared Jehovah, and despite all his unbelief and waywardness, He never ceased to love him. John 13:1 furnishes another beautiful illustration. That very night one of the apostles would say, “Show us the Father”; another would deny Him with cursings; all of them would be scandalized by and forsake Him. Nevertheless “having loved His own which were in the world, He love them unto the end.” The Divine love is subject to no vicissitudes. Diving love is “strong as death… many waters cannot quench it” (Song of Sol. 8:6,7). Nothing can separate from it: Romans 8:35-39.

“His love no end nor measure knows,No change can turn its course,

Eternally the same it flowsFrom one eternal source.”

6. It is holy. God’s love is not regulated by caprice passion, or sentiment, but by principle. Just as His grace reigns not at the expense of it, but “through righteousness” (Rom. 5:21), so His love never conflicts with His holiness. “God is light” (1 John 1:5) is mentioned before “God is love” (1 John 4:8). God’s love is no mere amiable weakness, or effeminate softness. Scripture declares, “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son

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who He receiveth” (Heb. 12:6). God will not wink at sin, even in His own people. His love is pure, unmixed with any maudlin sentimentality.

7. It is gracious. The love and favor of God are inseparable. This is clearly brought out in Romans 8:32-39. What that love is from which there can be no “separation,” is easily perceived from the design and scope of the immediate context: it is that goodwill and grace of God which determined Him to give His Son for sinners. That love was the impulsive power of Christ’s incarnation: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Christ died not in order to make God love us, but because He did love His people, Calvary is the supreme demonstration of Divine love. Whenever you are tempted to doubt the love of God, Christian reader, go back to Calvary.

Here then is abundant cause for trust and patience under Divine affliction. Christ was beloved of the Father, yet He was not exempted from poverty, disgrace, and persecution. He hungered and thirsted. Thus, it was not incompatible with God’s love for Christ when He permitted men to spit upon and smite Him. Then let no Christian call into question God’s love when he is brought under painful afflictions and trials. God did not enrich Christ on earth with temporal prosperity, for “He had not where to lay His head.” But He did give Him the spirit “without measure” (John 3:34). Learn then that spiritual blessings are the principal gifts of Diving love. How blessed to know that when the world hates us, God loves us!

http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Attributes/attrib_15.htm

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Mind In Love Article 1:

The Dying Art Of Thinking By: Ravi Zacharias The 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes (pronounced Day-Kart) is best known for his dictum, "I think, therefore, I am." A cynic may well quip that Descartes actually put des cart before des horse, because all he could have legitimately deduced was, "I think, therefore, thinking exists." I do not intend to defend or counter Cartesian philosophy; I only wish to underscore that thinking has much to do with life and certainty.

One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God's thoughts after Him.

A person sitting at his desk and staring out of the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air, or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal's Pensees, a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.

The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in hisheart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true . . . pure . . . if there be any virtue . . . think on these things.”

The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. But how does one manage this in a culture where progress is determined by pace and defined by quantity?

What is even more destructive is that the greatest demand comes from neither speed nor quantity, but rather from the assumption that silence is inimical to life. The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining the "on hold" callers add up as impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly, and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness.

Aldous Huxley's indictment, "Most of one's life . . . is one prolonged effort toprevent thinking", seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. T. S. Eliot observed:

"Where is the life we have lost in the living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ?The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries

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bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.”

Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions for personal and corporate benefit?

STUDY GOD’S WORDNothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God's Word, from whence life's parameters and values are planted in the mind. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture: “Do not go beyond what is written." Psalm 119 promises that God's statutes keep us from being double-minded.

READ GREAT BOOKSThe English-speaking world is endowed with a wealth of books. But muchcontemporary literature comes perilously close to a promiscuous religion with an appeal for the "feel better" syndrome, rather than the impetus to "go deeper.” Read authors who stretch you and introduce you to other writings as well. Great writers stimulate your capacity to think beyond their ideas, spawning fresh insights and extensions of your own. Good reading is indispensable to impartation of truth. An expenditure of words without the income of ideas leads to conceptual bankruptcy.

CHALLENGE THE MINDThe church as a whole, and the pulpit in particular, must challenge the mind of this generation, else we betray our trust. The average young person todayactually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of it. Many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.

Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church pastored by Roy Clements, one of the finest preachers in the western world. Every Sunday at two morning services he preached a one-hour sermon to a packed auditorium.

Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text from the assaults of liberalism. An introduction of a technical nature would take up to 15 minutes of his time before he entered into the heart of his message.

I mention this to say one thing. When we were leaving Cambridge, Nathan, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of Roy Clements to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think. We cannot leave this uncorrected.

This is our first issue of Just Thinking. It is our hope that this newsletter will challenge your mind and stir your heart. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the Great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must. And we must serve Him with all our minds.

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http://www.gospelcom.net/rzim/publications/jttran.php?jtcode=JT92SRZ

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Mind In Love Article 2:

Let My People Think: Restoring The Christian Mind By: Os Guinness

ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED PERSONALITIES of the Middle East is Nasreddin Hodja, the endearing holy- man- cum- scholar of Turkish folklore. His famed wisdom is often threatened by his equally famed stupidity. One day, so a particular story goes, the Hodja dropped his ring inside his house. Not finding it there, he went outside and began to look around the doorway. His neighbor passed and asked him what he was looking for.

"I have lost my ring," said the Hodja."Where did you lose it?" asked the neighbor."In my bedroom," said the Hodja. "Then why are you looking for it out here?""There's more light out here," the Hodja said.

Perhaps the Hodja in his frankly acknowledged folly is wiser than most of us in the concealed stupidity of our pretended wisdom. It is surely the easiest thing to look for what we lost where we lost it-except that humans characteristically either forget what we lost or look for it anywhere except where it can be found.

his is certainly true of the Christian mind, or, more simply, just of wisdom. Exactly what it is, where we lost it, and how we can find it again are urgent but basic questions.

I say that because we could easily examine “the ghost mind” of evangelicalism and its vulnerability to “the idiot culture” and then be sidetracked by the grand cultural questions raised, especially the political.

We therefore turn to sketching the rudiments of the needed reformation in evangelical thinking. The word “sketched” should be underscored. What is outlined briefly here deserves a book by itself. But an introductory sketch is important to spell out what is meant by “thinking Christianly” and equally important-what is not meant by it.

BACK TO OUR RIGHT MINDSThe first step in reformation is repentance. We evangelicals need to confess individually and collectively that we have betrayed the Great Commandment to love God with our minds. We need to confess that we have given ourselves up to countless forms of unutterable folly. God has given us minds, but many of us have left them underdeveloped or undeveloped.

• God has given us education, beyond that of most people in human history, but we have used it for other ends.

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• God has given us great exemplars of thinking in Christian history, but we have ignored them or admired them for other virtues.

• God has given us opportunities, but we have failed to grasp them because we have refused to think them through before him.

As we think of not only our individual lives but our evangelical heritage, community as a whole, reputation in the wider world, and prospects-and as we survey the old and new influences that have shaped us, whether the eight earlier influences or the eight modern pressures-we must ask some key questions.

Are we as truly biblical as we think? Have we not been more shaped by the world than we realize? Would we see it more clearly if brothers and sisters of other

traditions, such as Catholics, pointed it out to us? Or former evangelicals who have dropped out from the faith altogether?

Is there any question that we evangelicals have often stressed every other possible Christian theme except those of truth and thinking?

Can we deny that American evangelicals have a long and unbroken history of pervasive and systematic anti-intellectualism?

In short, who can disagree with the sorry fact that our evangelical anti-intellectualism confronts us today as a monumental scandal and a sin?

It is not for me to say how repentance should be expressed. Doubtless sometimes it will have to be by individuals, sometimes by local pastors and churches, sometimes by Christian organizations and ministries, sometimes by Christian magazines, and sometimes by Christian colleges. And surely in a wise and responsible way it will need to be confessed by the official, national organs and institutions of evangelicalism itself.

But repentance at this point has to be as serious and far-reaching as repentance at any other point. Like Nebuchadnezzar who had to be reduced to eating grass, or the prodigal son who only saw his situation in the mirror that was the pigsty, we may have to be jolted by the shame of our present sorry state into returning to our right minds. For it is certain that the community of faith in America that identifies itself as evangelical has been out of its mind for two hundred years.

MINDS IN LOVEThe second step in reformation is to define what we actually mean by "a Christian mind" or by "thinking Christianly." Obviously, for example, the term "thinking Christianly" has two parts that require serious attention. Thus we must first ask what we mean by "thinking." For as Dorothy L. Sayers laments in her celebrated essay, The Lost Tools of Learning.

Is not the great defect of our education today ... that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils 'subjects,' we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning.

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In my experience no single point of cultural differences between America and England is greater than this one: in English schooling we were given the tools of learning and were taught to think.

My focus here, however, is not on “thinking” but “thinking Christianly.” Because of the deep confusion over what is meant, some negative statements must precede the positive. First, thinking Christianly is not thinking by Christians. As a moment's thought will show, it is perfectly possible to be a Christian and yet to think in a sub-Christian or even an anti-Christian way. Jesus said bluntly to his disciple Peter, “Away with you, Satan. You think as men think, not as God thinks.”

Second, thinking Christianly is not simply thinking about Christian topics. Such topics as prayer, Bible study, and the spiritual disciplines all fall within the bounds of recognizable Christian themes. Thus they are surely candidates to be part of the Christian mind. But the trouble with that approach is that it leaves out the greater part of life. The nineteenth-century maxim applies not only to theology but to life as a whole: “If Jesus Christ is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.”

Third, thinking Christianly should not be confused with adopting a “Christian line” on every issue. Even where a “Christian line” is desirable at all — and that is a good deal rarer than many Christians think — developing a Christian line is impossible without first developing a Christian mind. Expressed positively, thinking Christianly is thinking by Christians about anything and everything in a consistently Christian way— in a manner that is shaped, directed, and restrained by the truth of God's Word and God's Spirit.

As I use it, the phrase “thinking Christianly” is not as important as the idea it expresses. For thirty years many of us have followed Harry Blamires and found that “thinking Christianly” best captures the substance and spirit of what it means for the follower of Christ to grow in the mind of Christ. But others have used different phrases to express the same point-for example, “Christ-centered thinking,” “biblical thinking,” “developing a Christian mind,” “thinking under the lordship of Christ… lifelong learning under Christ developing a Christian world-and-life-view,” and so on.

What matters is not the term but the substance and spirit of the truth. Is it not absurd to affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, the Alpha and the Omega, our creator, redeemer, and judge, the source, guide, and goal of all there is, and yet not be decisive over our minds and thinking? Evangelicals who rightly glory in all the new things in the gospel-a new birth, a new people, new powers, and a new age-must reinsert the vital, missing component of “new minds.” Nowhere are the lordship of Christ and the power of the gospel more needed at the beginning and more glorious at the end.

Expressed differently by Ambassador Charles Malik, in all our thinking “the critic in the final analysis is Jesus Christ himself.” Thus from the Christian point of view' has no solid foundation unless the word Christian here means

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Jesus Christ himself. So from the very start I have put aside all such questionable phraseology as “from the Christian point of view,” “in terms of Christian principles,” “applying Christian principles or values” “from the standpoint of Christian culture,” etc.

The only question that finally counts is, What does Jesus think? Aside from that standard, all our thinking is "an exercise in fuzziness, in wobbly human effort, in subjectivist rationalism, in futility.

What matters above all-whatever term we use-is that the idea and practice be kept simple, practical, and biblical. When all is said and done, the point is to love and obey God by loving him with our minds. For the Christian mind is a combination of intellectual light and spiritual ardor that, in Dorothy L. Sayers's term, is simply the “mind in love” with God. …

GOING MAD FOR GODThe (next) step in reformation is to count the cost of discipleship entailed in thinking Christianly. For cost there is. The same truth that is good sense before God is nonsense to our world, which sees and sets itself over against God. The follower of Christ must therefore break with the world to be faithful to Christ. We must be prepared to bear with the world's folly.

Such “holy folly,” or fool-bearing, is the proper understanding of Christian foolishness. It is as integral to thinking Christianly as it is to living Christianly. Russian orthodoxy, for example, has canonized thirty-six “holy fools.” Blaise Pascal wrote: “Men are so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness.” G. K. Chesterton wrote similarly that a man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. Far earlier Dante pronounced, in words that illuminate the cross of Jesus, the wisest person in the city is “He whom the fools hate worst.”

If this is true, some Christians have embraced folly of the wrong sort-boasting in what is literally foolish and becoming “fools proper.” Others have made the equal but opposite mistake of seeking to escape foolishness altogether, including the necessary scandal of the “foolbearer.” Thus a common but false motivation for evangelical engagement in higher education is an overwhelming desire for respectability-as if academic success were a milestone of social mobility on the long, painful climb out of the intellectual slums of fundamentalism. Yet our Lord himself was dismissed as "mad" and “possessed,” and the Apostle Paul was told by the Roman governor Festus that he was “out of his mind” because of his Christian thinking. We can expect no less. …

NO AUTOMATIC PILOTThe (next) step in reformation is a commitment to thinking Christianly as a form of active obedience. Like every other part of the Christian life, thinking Christianly is active and demanding. It is neither easy nor automatic. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians that “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Thus thinking Christianly is inevitably moment by

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moment, question by question, issue by issue, point by point, and thought by thought. As Oswald Chambers wrote,

God will not make me think like Jesus, I have to do it myself,I have to bring every thought into captivityto the obedience of Christ.

… In so far as the assumptions of any age differ from those of the gospel, they are the false assumptions that circulate in the air like latent heresies. Yet when someone becomes a Christian and either old assumptions are left over in his or her thinking or new assumptions are allowed in later, the result is not a mind made new but a patched-up mind. For alien assumptions, old or new, are like a Trojan horse in the city of the believer's mind.

If Christ's own disciples were guilty of thinking "as men think, not as God thinks," are we likely to do better? How do we know we are not thinking as Americans (or English, French, or Australians) think and not as God thinks? Have we checked that we are not closer to the twentieth-century (or sixteenth or first-century) mind than the mind of Christ? Is our agenda closer to a liberal or conservative agenda than to the agenda of the kingdom of God? Are we more like the profile of Washingtonians (or New Yorkers, Los Angelenos, or Londoners) or of lawyers (or doctors and teachers) than of followers of Christ?

In each case the questions remind us that we are always worldlier and more culturally shortsighted than we realize. But the call of Jesus is radical. If our eyes offend us, pluck them out, he said. The same must be true of every intellectual assumption, authority, and conclusion that is closer to how humans think than the way God thinks. The search is on. The war has been declared. “All truth is God's truth,” so we can welcome truth wherever it is to be found, even among pagans. But equally, “all that is not of God is not of truth” and therefore not for us, even if it is we who believe in it devoutly.

NO, NOT THAT WAYThe (next) step in the reformation of evangelical thinking is to mark clearly the pitfalls and by-paths of Christian thinking. Put differently, thinking Christianly is not what it is often thought to be. Here are (two) common pitfalls and by-paths.

One misconception concerns the idea that thinking Christianly is purely an intellectual activity — a "head trip" as it is often attacked. Far from it. As always the Bible addresses the heart as the center of the whole person and the understanding as the road to the whole person. The concept of "intellectual" in its modem sense of a person devoted to the nearly disembodied life of the mind is alien to the biblical understanding of human nature. Just as spiritual disciplines involve the body, so thinking Christianly engages the whole person. Modern intellectualism is as wrong and extreme as modem anti-intellectualism. Thinking Christianly is different from both. It engages us as whole people in the whole of life. ….

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(This) common misconception concerns the idea that thinking Christianly is purely a human activity — as if to think is automatically to think purely in one's own strength and rely solely on one's own wits. Once again the opposite is true. Intellectualism is certainly a form of humanism because it concentrates on the human intellect in isolation from all else. And "Athens" has little to do with 'Jerusalem' because of the place it gives to reason by itself. Christian thinking, in contrast, is anything but a purely human activity.

Thinking Christianly is premised only on the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. Likewise, it proceeds only when we rely continually on God's word and Spirit. It always operates with the awareness of the supernatural source and dimensions of false thinking. As Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."" Much of today's Christian scholarship would be transformed simply by returning to the classical notion of study as a spiritual discipline.

(A Second) misconception concerns the idea that thinking Christianly is a form of uniformity — in other words, that if we all think Christianly we will all think the same way. When this happens, the goal of thinking Christianly collapses into a frantic search for the one particular correct way of thinking or acting. The result is the fallacy of "particularism," the uniformity of a particular "Christianly Correct" way of thinking.

…The (most) common form of particularism stems from a false desire for uniformity in the realm of practice-the fallacy that if we all think Christianly we will all behave the same way. For one thing the idea itself is false. On the one hand, the community of Christ is diverse, not uniform. Uniformity therefore denies the proper place of freedom and diversity. On the other hand, our highest accomplishments in this life are provisional, not final. Our best thinking and behavior is therefore not fully, finally Christian, but only more or less Christian than it was previously.

For another thing, applying the idea of uniformity is disastrous because it leads inevitably to legalism and judgmentalism. There is only a short and easy step from "This is the Christian way" to "There is only one Christian way" to "Anything different from this way is not Christian!' to "All those who differ from my way are not Christians." Far too many a letter from one Christian to another has begun in reality or in spirit, "Dear former brother/sister in Christ.”

The fallacy of particularism stems from the fact that God has not spoken definitively to us about everything. Obviously he did not intend to. Thus if it is an error for some Christians to make relative what God has made absolute, it is equally an error for others to make absolute what God has left relative. Put differently, where God has not spoken definitively we can legitimately say "This conclusion (or policy or lifestyle) is not Christian." But it is not legitimate

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to go further and say, "This conclusion (or policy or lifestyle) alone is Christian."

We must all think Christianly, but for that very reason we must not all think the same way. There is no one Christian form of politics any more than there is one Christian form of poetry, raising a family, or planning a retirement. Again, many ways are definitely not Christian, but no one way alone is. Diversity rather than uniformity is a direct consequence of Christian freedom as well as Christian fallibility. Helmut Thielicke, the German theologian and ethicist, was right to ask, ‘Do we not have to respect the fact that under the shadow of forgiveness different decisions are possible and different liberties and loyalties may exist?’"

KNOWING MEANS DOING…A full exposition of Christian thought-style would require a book in itself. For example, we have already noted in passing two of the defining features of the Christian thought-style — collegiality and corrigibility. Other obvious ones include the certainty, humility, spirituality, rationality, mystery, and intensity of Christian knowing. But one of the most decisive features — and one directly opposed to modem styles of thinking — is the biblical insistence on the responsibility of knowing.

Modem knowledge is characteristically noncommittal. Much is known, but all is consequence-free. What we know and what we do about it are two different things. … Never has more been known; never has less been required of what is known. From abstract mathematical formulas to anguishing international atrocities, the common reaction to modem knowledge is, So what? Who cares? What do you expect me to do? We could argue that this response is philosophically unwarranted — that in fact responsibility is an inescapable assumption of all human knowing. But this point is stronger for the follower of Christ who is committed to thinking Christianly. For what is at best a small assumption of the better modem philosophy is a central assertion of Christian theology.

The Christian idea of the responsibility of knowledge is rooted in the notion that God is there and that he speaks. He is therefore the one with both the first decisive word on life — in creation — and the last decisive word —in judgment. Thus human life is essentially responsible, answerable, and accountable. Such responsibility of knowledge is the silent assumption in many basic doctrines. Sin, for example, is a deliberate violation of the responsibility of knowledge-human beings become responsible where they should not be (playing God) and refuse to be responsible where they should be (denying guilt)…

We can see the biblical understanding of the responsibility of knowledge supremely in Jesus. For where the first man, Adam, severed the link between knowledge and responsibility, the second Adam reunited them. Refusing the devil's temptations to make claims that had no consequences, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross. The responsibility of his knowing who he was and what he had come to do marked his way to his death.

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Needless to say, what matters for our thought-style is not simply doctrine but the Christian responsibility of knowledge exhibited in all our knowing. Possible applications are myriad in our attitudes to education, careers, specialization, elitism, cynicism, resistance to evil, and a score of different areas. But the recurring motif is the costly obedience of Christian knowing. Knowledge for the Christian is never noncommittal nor consequence-free. Knowledge carries responsibility. Knowing means doing. What we do with what we know is what Christian knowing is all about-and the responsibility of knowledge is only one example of the importance of Christian thought-style.

THE DEFENSE NEVER RESTSThe (final) step in reformation is to recover the practice of Christian apologetics, or of making a persuasive case for the Christian faith for today's generation. Apologetics has usually held an honored, if controversial, place throughout Christian history. Most of the great theologians-including Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin-have also been unashamed apologists for the Christian faith. Benjamin Warfield even claimed that the Christian faith "stands out among all religions, therefore, as distinctly 'the Apologetick religion.' Evangelicals today, however, display a troubling ignorance and unease about apologetics. As stressed earlier, the lack of a powerful, contemporary evangelical apology is one of the four great facts of our shame and a key part of the persuasionlessness that has befallen us. Where we meet people who are open, interested, and needy, we are ready to share our faith because most of our methods of witnessing assume that people are so. But when we find people who are not open, interested, or needy, we are stuck-though we mask our impotence by the compensating vehemence of our proclamation (or in the political arena by our protest and picketing).

Thus ironically, evangelicals now collude with liberals against traditional Christian apologetics. Whereas the broad liberal tendency of the past half century has been to say, "Don't defend, dialogue, the broad conservative tendency has been to say, "Don't persuade, proclaim." As philosopher Antony Flew lamented a generation ago, "Belief cannot argue with unbelief. It can only preach to it."

Caught in this pincerlike grip, traditional apologetics has commonly been rejected or neglected. What remains is all too limited and contained. Sometimes, as I said, apologetics today is limited to addressing the open and interested-a shrinking audience in a society growing increasingly secular in public life and pluralistic in private life. Sometimes it is limited to addressing the needy-as if, as Peter Berger wrote, "the necessary counterpoint of the Christian proclamation was an anthropology of desperation." Sometimes it is limited to addressing rational, literary, abstract, middle-class thinkers- so that, as critics have said, our style appeals mainly to the more complicated heirs of a Christian culture and education who are by that very fact more likely to be closed to our message.

Worst of all, evangelical apologetics today is frequently contained in Christian circles-so that entire courses are given and weighty books written and

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debated that never in a million years will touch real flesh-and-blood nonbelievers. As one professor of apologetics said to me of his eminent predecessor at a well known evangelical seminary, "He taught people how to teach apologetics, not to do it." …

The time has come for evangelicals to wake from our lethargy or turn from our fear, blaming, and victim-playing. We must move out into all spheres of society, presenting the case for the gospel of Jesus in ways that are fresh, powerful, imaginative, compassionate, and persuasive. A sure sign of a genuine reformation of our appalling anti-intellectualism will be the rise of a new generation of Christian apologists.

FOR GOD’S SAKEThe immense project of going beyond the initial reformation of evangelical thinking to recapturing the great establishments of modern thought lies far beyond this slim volume. We have looked at only half, though perhaps the harder half, of what Charles Malik called the two tasks — "the twofold miracle of evangelizing the great universities and intellectualizing the great Evangelical movement." But our challenge is to begin. I would add one last spur.

One of the greatest sadnesses of a thinking evangelical is knowing the thousands who have left, and are still leaving, evangelicalism because evangelicals do not think. …

The writer Dorothy L. Sayers is (one) who self-consciously rejected evangelicalism because of its anti-intellectualism. Her time at the Godolphin School in Surrey, England, left her with a distaste for evangelical pietism. There were two kinds of Christian faith, she concluded. The pietistic and evangelical was sentimental and made her feel uncomfortable; the other appealed openly to the understanding. "The cultivation of religious emotion without philosophic basis," she explained, "is thoroughly pernicious." Her evangelical schooling, she reflected later, was simply a period for "gawky young souls growing out of their spiritual clothing.

When we ponder such stories and the thousands of people whose feet they have had to shed their evangelical clothing, is it not time for anger or tears? This book is not meant to be an academic exercise. It is a cry from the heart for thought, debate, prayer, action, and reformation. One of the great legacies for those of us who knew the late Francis Schaeffer was that truth mattered to him. He took God seriously, he took people seriously, and he took truth seriously. Friedrich Nietzsche's aphorism could be applied to him, "All truths are bloody truths to me." …

Perhaps as we ponder the length and breadth of our anti-intellectualism, as we survey its consequences, as we remember its casualties, and as we meditate on its core disloyalty to our Lord, it is time for us to stammer and hesitate — and seek God's help to change our minds and our ways of thinking.

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Lordship Article 1:

Lordship: Free As A SlaveBy: Winkie Pratney Today we hear the world crying out for more rights. More freedom. Two hundred years ago, the great statesman, Edmund Burke, penned this warning: "Men qualify for freedom in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power is put somewhere on will and appetite, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Contemporary history is filled with movements for the rights of men. But no man can change the world until he himself has been changed. No man can free others until he himself is truly free.

Nearly two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul wrote to a little group of people living in the capital of the world's greatest civilization. Some were rulers, some were servants. Yet all had been freed from one form of slavery and had gladly surrendered to a new kind. New power had gripped their lives. A transforming faith had altered their destinies. In the midst of a world filled with slavery, they met a brave new message that broke off the shackles of their past, and gave them peace and power in the midst of a chained society.

Paul had some astonishing, perhaps even disturbing things to say about the kind of life that results in true freedom. Part of his message was this:"You are the SLAVES of the power you have chosen to obey. All men have a choice of two masters; sin, leading to death, or obedience to God, bringing a life of right. Thank God that you, who were once enslaved to sin, have followed from the heart the challenge given to you. Having been delivered from the mastery of sin, you have now willingly become the slaves of Christ and His righteousness...now, being free from sin and being enslaved to God, your lives have begun to show holiness and you are on the path of life that never ends." (Romans 6:16-22, Youth Paraphrase)

It's hard to imagine that anything good could be learned from slavery. But perhaps Paul, and the early Christian church, knew something about the nature of "slavery" that's totally lost on us today. While slavery to earthly masters can be cruel and harsh, slavery to Christ will set us free. If we really want to change our world, even our world of personal relationships, we need to ask ourselves whether we have "rights," or whether we are “love-slaves" of Christ.

WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO RULE?

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At the foundation of the struggle for rights, each must settle this question: Who has the right to rule my life? Even as Christians we often struggle with what we consider "our rights." The answer is not only simple, it is logical. The one who has a right to rule the affairs of men is the one best qualified. And who is better qualified than God? He made us. He has the wisdom, the understanding and the love. He has the power to direct and control, the justice to be perfectly fair and the mercy to be kind. God has the ultimate right to our lives. He has the first right to be loved, the right to be worshipped, the right to be obeyed. He has the right to be King. Men have marched for their own rights, but who is marching for the rights of God?

Long ago a party of powerful religious leaders came to speak to a quiet carpenter. These leaders had a real problem with the man who said He had the right and authority to forgive sins. And so they came, with one of their many difficult questions. "Master," they said, "we know you teach and say what is right, and don't play favorites. So we have a question for you. Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar or not?" Jesus lifted up his eyes. "Show me a penny," He said. They gave Him one, wondering. "Whose image and name are stamped on this?" He asked. "Caesar's", they replied. "Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and give to God the things that are God's!" Like the coins stamped with the image of Caesar, you are made in God’s image. Have you given Him the things that belong to Him? Have you given Him what is rightfully His?

LOVE-SLAVERY TO CHRISTThe early Christians called themselves "servants of Christ." In Greek, there is a special word for this type of servant; doulos, which means slave. To understand what it means to be a love-slave of Christ, we must discover what this servanthood meant to the first disciples.

DISCIPLE ARE LOVE-SLAVES OF CHRIST First, they had a clear understanding that a Christian is a person who has been delivered from the service of sin and become a love-slave of Jesus. If Jesus in not truly our Master, then we are not truly Christians. (Romans 10:9) No man is a true Christian who has not made Jesus LORD of all known areas of his life. Deliberate withholding of obedience to God and refusal to surrender known rights, or sins, are signs of a phony Christianity. We cannot be a mixture of bad and good. You are either a love-slave of Christ, or a bond-slave of sin! (Romans 6:12-22; Philippians 1:1; James 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; 1 Corinthians 7:21-24)

Slavery to sin is marked by fear of punishment and hope of reward, as well as guilt and emptiness. Slavery to Jesus Christ is marked by LOVE; unselfish choices for the highest good of God and His creation. This is the sign of the true Christian. He loves Christ, he loves others, and he does what his Master asks him to do.

SLAVES HAVE NO RIGHTS OF THEIR OWN When a man becomes a slave he ceases to have any say in his own life. He has been bought with a price, and belongs absolutely to his master. All that a

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slave has and is, lies under the control of his new owner. He is not free from the control of his lord, until death. He is called to serve and to go on serving regardless of praise or blame, weariness or sickness, thanks or disgrace.

When we are slaves to sin, the only way out is death; that is the sting of sin that burns in its final wages. The Lord Jesus offers a new kind of service and an alternate way of death to escape from the slavery of sin. Christ challenges us to die to our old way of life, allow Him to bury our selfish past, and live as His love-slave. As long as we are under His control we will be paid His wages, and not the wages of sin. But if He is to be Boss, He must be absolute Boss.

This involves the total surrender of all our rights to Him. Until this happens, He is not our real Master and Lord. (Matt. 10:24-39; Phil 2:5-8; 3:7-8)

TRUE FREEDOM IS LOVE-SLAVERY TO CHRIST There is certainly NO freedom in sin! Sin is a hard taskmaster that pays its slaves in the coin of a cemetery. We are made to be directed by some power or control. And at the same time, we are given the freedom to choose the power we will obey; either selfishness or the Savior.

Christian freedom is a new kind of control where we are free to do anything we like, because we choose the things that are best for everyone and the things that do not enslave us to selfishness. It is impossible to let both powers control our life at the same time. (Matt: 6:24; 7:16-23; Jas. 3:11-13) Our hearts are either fixed on pleasing Christ, or ourselves. If we do not really belong to Him, His laws will seem tiresome. His demands will seem extreme and we will resent and rebel against His commands. But once we have given Him our love and become His slaves, we enter the path to true freedom and God opens the door to sonship in His family. God is a loving Master! He is not harsh, or unfair, or overbearing. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. (Matt. 11:29; 19:29; Luke 17:10; 22:24-27; 9:23-25;I Cor. 7:23b)

DISCIPLES ARE LEARNERSThere is another name given to the one who would be a love-slave of Christ, and that is DISCIPLE. All disciples are learners. It's possible that you didn't understand what becoming a Christian really was when you first gave your life to God. You acted on all the light you had, and God met you graciously in His love. Since then, no doubt, you have wondered why it can seem so difficult to be a servant of Christ and why it often seems impossible to serve others as He commands you to do. Perhaps you have thought, "If it were not for the irritating things other people do, I could be a better disciple." How often do we react in anger, because we feel that someone has hurt us and violated our rights?

There is one basic lesson you must learn to be a true disciple; the lesson of meekness. You must know now, that the Lord Jesus wants all of you, and that He is not going to stop dealing with you until He has it! He is easy to please, but hard to satisfy. If you are still troubled by fits of temper or worry, you have not learned what it means to be a love-slave. This can be learned by taking on His yoke of meekness.

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MEEKNESS ISN'T WEAKNESS After God got through with him, Moses was meek. But he wasn't weak! (Numbers 12:3) The Lord Jesus was meek, but if there was ever an example of virile humanity, Christ was that example. Watch Him as He empties the Temple with His eyes blazing with fire! He who knotted the cords of rope was meek, but never weak. Christ was strong; a Man among men. But He knew meekness. (Matt. 21:5; John 2:13-17)

Meekness, very simply, means: having a will that is yielded to God. It is the key response of man to the claims of Christ. When we truly surrender to God, our lives should show the fruit of the Holy Spirit. (Gal. 5:22-23) Our human response to God's shared love, joy and peace will be marked by faith, meekness, and self-control. God never used a man until his life showed these three human responses. They are the foundations of human spiritual development in Christ, and meekness is the key. Meekness determines the extent of our faith and self-control. Meekness is vital! Without it we cannot inherit what God has for us. (Matt. 5:5; 1 Pet. 3:4) It is a key to getting guidance and instruction from God. (Ps 25:9) Lack of meekness results in worry (lack of faith) and failure to get along with others (lack of self-control). (Gal. 6:1; 2 Tim. 2:25; Titus 3:2) The more our wills are yielded, the greater faith and self-control we will possess.

WHEN RAGE RUSHES UP One of the most destructive results of an unyielded will is anger. Selfish anger is among the most damaging of sins. God lists it with murder. (Matt. 5:21-22; Col. 3:5-8; Jas. 1:19-20) There is a holy anger in Scripture, and we must distinguish this. God gets angry, and God does not sin. Holy anger is a righteous wrath for the rights of God. It is a right reaction to wrong done against others, especially God. It is always marked by some constructive action taken to end the wrong that created the anger. It includes feeling sorry for the one who caused it, and choosing a way to help him if possible, so he doesn't do the same thing again. Holy anger will be as stern as the depth of love we have for God. The Lord Jesus had it, and a Christian who does not have it is not really following in His steps. It is a Bible command that we "be angry, and sin not." (Eph. 4:26; Mk. 3:5; Lk. 17:1-2)

But selfish anger is sin, resulting from personal resentment and damaged pride. It ruins personality and character by fanning the flames of bitterness, envy and jealousy. (Eph. 4:30-32; Prov.. 16:32; 19:11) It damages the body physically, by filling the system with tension, causing heart-attacks, ulcers, and other physical ailments. It ruins our fellowship with others socially, blasting friendships, family relations and testimony. (Prov.. 21:19; 25:24) The Bible warns against selfish anger in no uncertain terms. Christians are instructed not befriend or even be seen with an angry man. (Prov.. 22;24) The person who is selfishly angry at his brother is in danger of judgment. God considers anger a terrible sin.

GETTING IRRITATED

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Common everyday irritations often spark selfish anger. An irritant is anything frustrating that you have no control over. Each day will bring us irritation. It may come in the form of thoughtlessness, a crossing of our plans, or an ill-spoken word. We cannot avoid or escape irritation, but we can learn how to respond correctly.

Each trial, cause for complaint, or irritation, is actually a test of consecration. If you react in love, these obstacles can be stepping - stones to power with God. React to them selfishly and they will be barriers. We must learn how to handle irritations in Christ. Don't respond in the wrong way! Don't get mad. (Eccl. 7:9; Prov. 29:8)

If you are right, you don't need to lose your temper; if you are wrong, you certainly can't afford to! This amounts to nothing more than justifying yourself by defending your "rights." (Prov.. 19:11; 29:22) God wants to help you die to your rights; so don't blame your anger on the irritation. When you shift the blame to someone else, you will end up with two angry people instead of one irritated one! (Prov. 15:1; 29:22) A kick that knocks a barrel over only reveals what is in the barrel; it does not create it.

Another mistake is to keep your anger bottled up inside you. Silently fuming is not the way to deal with anger. "Don't let the sun go down on your wrath." The one who nurses anger is a fool in Scripture. (Eccl. 7:9) Don't hold on to rage. (Eph. 4:26)

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH ANGER? Step one is to examine the irritation that provokes you to anger. God has allowed this to happen to test your meekness. Therefore you can thank Him for this irritation! Yes; go on! This is one of the ways God will try your spirituality. Go ahead, deep breath; do it.

Then you must expose any hidden heart attitude by asking yourself, "What kind of person has this irritation uncovered? Has something been revealed in my heart that the Lord Jesus would not be pleased with?" Irritation is like a flame playing on a sample of gold. Under intense heat, impurities come to light. This is one of the purposes of a trial.

After this, you can empty out bad attitudes by confessing discovered sin to God, repenting and receiving His loving forgiveness. Now, don't stop with the negative! Ask yourself, "What sort of godly attitude should I have instead? How would Jesus have behaved in that situation?" Then ask God to help you respond rightly to the next similar trial, with patience, self-control and meekness.

VICTORY OVER WORRY Worry is the other destructive force stemming from unyielded rights. Occasions for worry also are opportunities for you to discover the faithfulness of the Father. As human beings, we have six basic essentials for living. When we find one of these rights threatened, self-love, (self-preservation), signals danger to the personality. A man who is trying to run his own life will worry.

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He has no heavenly Father's promise of provision, and must take full responsibility for insuring and meeting all these needs himself. He assumes a responsibility that is not rightfully his, and this produces worry. These six needs are:

1. ACCEPTANCE- A sense of belonging, being well thought of, feeling loved and cared for.

2. ACCOMPLISHMENT- A longing to do something worthwhile with time, talents, opportunity.

3. PROVISION- having food, housing, clothes and money to meet needs, pay bills and taxes.

4. POSSESSIONS- Things we can call our own; belongings to use in the business of living.

5. SAFETY- To be protected from hurt, danger or disaster, illness, incapacity or disability.

6. SECURITY- Assurance of tomorrow, whatever the future holds; a sense of guidance.

The following steps can be used to surrender your rights, and get rid of worry and anger. If you will carefully and prayerfully follow these steps with your cherished right, you will be set free!

•DISCOVER YOUR RIGHT. What has taken place that made you angry or worried? What actually caused your feelings? Discover the source of your irritation. Which of your rights were violated?

•WRITE DOWN THAT RIGHT on a slip of paper. Perhaps it was the right to do what you want with your own time, money or things; the right to dress or act the way you want to; the right to be well thought of by someone you like a lot, who has shown no interest in you. The right to be recognized or encouraged. The right to a certain sport, friend, job, hobby, possession, etc.

•BUILD A LITTLE FIRE, either outside where you can be alone with God or in the secret place of your heart. Use this fire as an "altar" where you can "offer up" to the Lord, in prayer, this right. (Gen. 22:1-18) This will be your secret sacrifice, known only to yourself and God. From this moment on, it will be His right, not yours.

•FINALLY, EXPECT GOD TO TAKE HIS RIGHT! Let Him test your sincerity. If the right has been truly given to Him, it is now His; as it should have been in the first place. It is no longer yours to worry about or get angry over. Now, you may only ask Him if you can "borrow" it for a time, and if He says "no" you shouldn't mind. You are only His love-slave, and because you are a slave, you will know the freedom of joy that comes from serving the most attentive and loving Master in the world! Your new motto will be:"If the Lord is glorified, the servant is satisfied!"

Contact at Box 876 Lindale, TX 75771http://www.gospelcom.net/moh/WinkPrat/DTM/FreeAsASlave.htm

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Lordship Article 2:

Lordship: God Has a Right On Our LivesBy: Eli Gautreaux In Chi Alpha, we speak often of fundamentals. We believe a Christian’s outward life is a direct result of the way he or she thinks. The main issues center around the internal parts of our lives, and the external is always a result of the internal. Therefore, we are very concerned with ideas we embrace as Christians. The following talk will deal with a very fundamental principal of Christianity – selflessness. This is probably the primary characteristic of those of whom we say, “He really gets it.” There are many who come through Chi Alpha, even through leadership, who are good, moral people, but we can easily say they never “got it”. Understanding this concept is absolutely necessary to living the true Christian life. It is the difference between being in Christendom (as the religion man has created, based on his own ideas), and being “in Christ” (or the true faith that is revealed by God.)

Most of Christendom is a religion of selfishness, which is absolutely opposed to the teachings of scripture. The true Christian is a man or woman who is dead to self and alive to Christ.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

We will try to pursue this idea of being dead to self and alive to Christ by looking at the concept of Lordship.

Humanism is a philosophy that puts its' ultimate faith in mankind- saying that man is his own master, the determiner of his own destiny- to the exclusion of God. This is a very man-centered philosophy. We as Christians would reject this idea, at least on paper. However, if we take a close look at our own lives and the church, we will see how often we embrace humanism in practice. The church has been so influenced by the man-centered (or self-centered) thinking of the world that we have imported this mindset into our Theology. Winkie Pratney has called the man centeredness of the church an Evangelical Humanism, or a Christian Humanism. He speaks of a church that is man-centered in motive, manner and message.

As we study this idea, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about our own theology. The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves is “why do you do the things you do, and who do you do them for?” God is a God of motive. He is concerned not with outward appearances, but the reality of who we are on the inside. The answer to this question will reveal to us what Francis Shaeffer called our true integration point. There is a great difference in participating in “Christian” activities out of a true love for God and our

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neighbor versus out of a selfish desire to advance our own person. We will discuss this in further detail later.

G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, has a chapter titled "The Maniac." In it, he opens with a conversation he had with his publisher while walking down the street. The publisher, noticing an acquaintance from the business world passing on the street, has just said, "That man will get on in life (succeed), simply because he really believes in himself."

Chesterton, with his usual sense of sarcasm, replies:"Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

He goes on to explain the mental position of the man we say is a paranoid schizophrenic. He sees a person on the park bench sitting and reading a newspaper, apparently unconcerned about those who are passing by. But our friend knows this person is not really reading the newspaper, it is only a disguise. This person is really watching our friend. He also sees the woman on the cell phone, but he knows she is not really having a leisurely conversation. She is speaking to someone about our friend! In fact, everyone our friend passes on the street is involved in this plot to capture him. Chesterton again says:

"Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it."

We call this person a maniac, simply because it is lunacy to think that the whole world revolves around you!

In the light of this principal, I would like to introduce to you what I would call Christian maniacs – Christians who really do believe everything revolves, or at least should revolve, around them. We see this self-centeredness in everything – in motive, manner and message. Our theology reflects it. We read the bible with this in mind; that every promise, whether Old or New Testament, was meant for me personally. We never give consideration to a corporate interpretation, only that this is meant for me and me alone. Our motives reveal it; so often I only obey God so I will be blessed by God. We choose our church body on the basis of “What’s in it for me?” If I like the preacher, I’ll come back. If the worship suits MY style, I’ll come back. I’ll keep coming as long as I am being fed.

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Our messages from the pulpit verify our self-centered religion. Preachers say over and over again things like, “God is here to meet your needs this morning.” We hear sermon titles such as: “How to unlock YOUR potential”, “How to unleash YOUR heavenly blessing”, or “How to enlarge YOUR territory.” Just this past week I heard an extremely popular preacher give a message entitled “Thanksgiving, the key to YOUR victory.” This coordinated with the Thanksgiving holiday, so it seemingly had relevance to the audience. But it is easy to see the point of selfishness we have come to when we can take the one day that, more than any other, should be God-centered, and make even Thanksgiving about us.

The point is that Man is still the center of the church. I am still the center of my life. I keep Me as the integration point. Everything is filtered through how it affects Me. I am still looking out for number one. This is what I call the Christian maniac, and what Pratney calls Evangelical Humanism. Where is the practice of the Lordship of Christ?

WHERE IS THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST? "... if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

A simple word study on the word Lord shows that salvation is more than a confession of the mouth. From Strongs’ Greek Dictionary, we learn that this word kurios (koo'-ree-os) has the literal meaning of a supreme in authority, or a controller. This is translated in the Bible as God, Lord, or even master. The idea of having another as the supreme in authority, or a master and controller of our lives, is repulsive to the natural man. But as we will see, Jesus demands to be Lord and Savior, not just Savior.

An easy definition of this concept of Lordship is to have God as the integration point of our lives. When we speak of integration point, we mean the thing that everything in our lives revolves around. We mean also, the thing by which all other things are filtered. Our integration point is the ultimate meaning in our lives, the thing that holds everything else together. Humanism has taught us to place man as the integration point. Our sinful nature, which is essentially selfishness, has taught us specifically to place our own individual person as our integration point.

People once thought that the earth was the center of our solar system– that everything revolved around us. We have since learned that we actually revolve around the sun! We must see that we as finite creatures cannot sustain our world. Simply put, we are not big enough, strong enough or wise enough. Only the infinite God is capable of being the true integration point. This is where we run into trouble. We try to be the integration point– we try to be God. Then, because we are incapable, the whole thing collapses. The greatest thing we can know as a Christian (and when I say know– I mean know not only on paper, but in practice) is that God is God, and I am not. This means, practically speaking, that everything revolves around Him. Everything in our lives is centered on and filtered through how it affects Him and His kingdom. We have died to self! I no longer live, but Christ lives in me!

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I said before that Jesus demands Lordship. If you will, remember the story from the Bible of the Rich Young Ruler (Matt 19 / Luke 18). This young man, who had mostly everything this world has to offer (power, youth, wealth, etc...), came to Jesus with a question. He asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” After a brief conversation concerning the commandments, in which the man asserts his attempts at religion, Jesus tells him he lacks one very essential thing. Jesus commands him to go and sell all that he has, give the money to the poor, and come follow Him. The Bible tells us at this, the man went away sad, for he had great wealth.

The point of this story, as it relates to our discussion of Lordship, is that this young man wanted salvation without lordship– but Jesus wouldn’t lower His standards. He came looking for a savior, but he already had his lord. And if the truth is told, his lord wasn’t money, it was himself. He wouldn’t let go of his selfishness, and trust the lordship of his life to Jesus Christ. Jesus did him a favor by calling him to the highest standard, that of absolute surrender to Himself. Too many preachers do people a disservice today by lowering the standards and offering a “fire insurance” form of Christianity, that says you can make Jesus your Savior while holding on to the Lordship of your life. Jesus will have none of it. He will be Lord or he will be Judge.

You will remember also from Mark 8:34-36, Jesus is speaking with not only His disciples, but other followers as well, within the context of His coming death.

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Mark 8: 34-36

The Denying of Self spoken of here is not an occasional “not getting what one wants”.Jesus is speaking of taking up a cross. The cross meant only one thing then, and only one thing now– death! He speaks here also of losing one’s life. This is no isolated theme in Jesus’ teaching. He continually speaks of dying to self, crucifying self, burying self, etc... The man who tries to hold on to his life will forfeit it in the end.

GOD HAS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT ON OUR LIVESWe will try to deal now with a little of the “Why” behind this demand of God to be the center. Is it just vanity on His part, or are there legitimate reasons why He make this demand? There are numerous reasons that come to mind immediately. We will discuss a few of these, which will by no means be exhaustive, but which nevertheless will help us to see things in a better perspective.

The first and most obvious reason that God has a fundamental right to rule our lives is that He is our creator. I will not try to prove this to the unbeliever,

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but state it as a given for those of us who call ourselves Christian. As the creator, God has a right to the ownership of His creatures.

The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Psalm 24:1-2

Even more central to our discussion here though is the fact that as Redeemer, He owns us! 1 Corinthians 7:23 says, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.” In Romans 14:8, Paul says, “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” Again, in speaking of the return of Jesus, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:23 that He is coming back for those "...who belong to Him." Peter testifies to the same principal. In 1 Peter 1:18-19, he reminds believers that they were redeemed with the “precious blood of Christ.” The bible is clear. If you are a Christian, you are not your own, you have been bought at a price, and you belong to Him!

Finally, We have already mentioned our own inadequacies compared to God’s adequacy. Simply put, he has a right to rule because He is most qualified. In any situation, logic would lead us to choose the one most qualified to lead. Surely when we consider God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and the host of other characteristics of the infinite God, we will gladly choose Him as Lord and master of our lives.

As we move on, you might be thinking that releasing lordship of your life to another is a scary thing. This is true for most people at first. But as we will see soon, it is only scary to the degree that you do not know Him. As your understanding of Who God Is increases, your fear of relinquishing lordship of your life to Him will decrease dramatically. The more you understand Who He Is, the more you will trust Him.

Now, there are two types of people that embrace this idea of Lordship. First are those who fearfully or reluctantly submit. These we will only mention in passing, but they are always characterized by legalism and never joy. Secondly, there are those who joyfully submit control of their lives to God. This is the principal of selflessness at work. These are those who are dead to self and alive to Christ on the inside. These are the ones who understand this next very important principal:

GOD’S RIGHT ON OUR LIVES IS FOUNDED UPON HIS VALUE AND WORTH "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Matthew 13:44-46(NIV)

I began with this scripture, now I would like to come back to it. There is much to be

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gained from a careful study of this parable, with many details that we will not consider. However, the main point Jesus was trying to communicate with this story, and the one of the great pearl immediately following, is that of the overwhelming value of the treasure. This man seems to have almost stumbled on to the treasure in the field, while the merchant had been searching all his life for the pearl. Both men, however, immediately recognize the great value of their “find.” Notice that the man who found the treasure did not reluctantly sell everything he owned. He sold everything with joy! The point is that the treasure is so obviously more valuable that it is easy to lose all his other possessions. So he sells everything with joy and seemingly without a second thought.

Is this your story? The treasure, ultimately, is the presence of God in your life. His kingdom means He is Lord, and you are in your rightful place as the creature. However, as the creature, if you have been redeemed, your rightful place is with Him! Have you found His presence and Lordship in your life to be the most valuable thing in the world? Have you seen His beauty and fallen in love with Him– for who He is rather than for what He can do for you?

Let’s look at some other Biblical and historical characters and what they had to say about this subject. Remember that what we are considering is the releasing of the rule of our lives to God as the rightful Lord, based on His overwhelming value.

The Apostle Paul:In talking about all of his worldly and even religious pursuits, those things that were important to him before he became a Christian, he speaks these words in the book of Philippians chapter 3.

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ... Philippians 3:7-8

He is saying that what was once so valuable to him- valuable enough to be the pursuit of his life- is a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. In fact, he considers them rubbish compared to Jesus. The word rubbish literally means trash. In the King James Version of the Bible, it is translated not loss but dung– or manure! Paul experienced the beauty and magnificence of Christ. When he compared it to his life before, he called it rubbish.

C.S. Lewis:Lewis speaks of this in his essay “The Weight of Glory.” He talks of an ignorant boy who has fun playing in the mud, making mud pies. It is fun, but when he experiences the vacation at the ocean, with sand castles, he does not want to go back to mud pies!

The Angels of God:

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Look at the picture of worship at the throne of God in the book of Revelation. Why do the angels of God- thousands upon thousands of them- continually freak out, year after year and time after time, at the mere sight of God? We would think that after thousands of years of acquaintance with the Creator, they would become accustomed to the sight. But rather than growing complacent, they continually fall on their faces in worship.

Maybe they're just of an "excitable nature." Or possibly, they’re simple-minded creatures and unaware of the "wonders of this world", like material things or passions of the flesh. Possibly they would change their minds if they ever drove a new Lexus or saw the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Of course, these are ludicrous ideas. The angels have seen all that this world has to offer, but their eyes have also seen what theologians refer to as the "summun bonum," the final picture of beauty and worth. They know God to be the highest good. None other is worthy of their lives or attention.

King David:“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” Psalms 84:10

David would rather have been in the presence of God than anywhere else. He understood this idea of God’s awesome value.

Charles Finney:In writing of his experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit, Finney said:"No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, "I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me." I said, "Lord, I cannot bear any more..."

Winkie Pratney:In his book The Nature and Character of God Pratney talks about our individual assessments of value. We all have things we look for when determining whether something is valuable, or worth the cost. What is valuable to you? Why do you seek after the things that you seek? What makes something "worthwhile," or worth the cost, or worth the effort to obtain it? He lists some universal characteristics of value or worth, including beauty, permanence, uniqueness, rarity and power.

We would generally esteem anything that contained any one of these elements, not to mention multiple ones. This is why we so highly value diamonds; they exhibit many of these qualities at the same time. It is a thing of beauty because of its luminosity. It is also a thing of permanence, known to be one of strongest formations we know. So in one item, we have the combination of two normally mutually exclusive characteristics. Usually if we have a thing of beauty, say a flower for instance, it is short-lived. Or, if we have a thing of permanence, say a stone, it is not beautiful at all. So when we

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see these characteristics together, we attach a greater relative worth to the object.

We do not have the time to give the details, but we as Christians have found God to be everything we have ever dreamed of as valuable. He is more beautiful than anything we can point to in His creation. He is the essence of permanence- the “same yesterday, today and forever.” His uniqueness is affirmed throughout scripture– there is none like him. His rarity is seen in that there is no other god beside Him. And finally, He is called the all-powerful One!

Pratney goes on with this profound thought:"Try to imagine the impossible: think of all the lovely things you have ever seen, all the most wonderful times and places and people you have ever known; - - - Imagine you could contain all of that beauty and loveliness, concentrate and distill all those experiences of awe and wonder and happiness in your life into one moment. - - - It would be so painfully lovely, so breathtakingly beautiful that you could not bear for it to go on any more or you would die, nor could you bear having it cease for the same reason. - - - What would you give to be part, even for a moment, of something so utterly wonderful as that, so intensely joyful?"

What would you give? I think we could all say we would certainly give everything, with great joy! We could go on and on with this thought, but the point is that it is not a frightening thing to give your life into the hands of One so awesome and worthy. Our fear of God’s lordship of our lives can only be attributed to our lack of understanding of who He is. The more you know Him, the more you will love and trust Him with everything.

TO SUMMARIZE: To try to be the lord of your own life is humanistic and self-centered, not

Christian, and basically lunacy. We are told to die to self. Jesus commands us to take up our cross in

order to follow Him. God is the rightful owner of everything, especially those He has

purchased with the blood of Christ. His right is ultimately founded upon His infinite value and worth. Only those who do not really know Him will want to maintain control of

their own lives.

Who's the center of your life: you or Jesus? Why do you do the things you do, and who do you do them for? You may choose to be the integration point of your world, but what a small, pathetic little world you will have. You may be ready to surrender Lordship of your life to the only One who is worthy. If so, you’ll never regret it. He will take you and use you, based on His great love. Unselfishly, He will always choose what’s best for Himself, His kingdom, and ultimately, for you.

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These things begin on the inside. Pray and ask Him to be Lord of your life. Ask Him to root out your self-centered nature and ideas. Ask Him to give you a revelation of His ultimate beauty and worth.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 1:17

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Fellowship Article:

Readings from “Life Together,” Chapter 1: Community By: Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" (Psalms 133:1). In the following we shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the Scriptures provide us for our life together under the Word.  

It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians, Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. "The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing , who would ever have been spared.” (Martin Luther) It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren. The measure with which God bestows the gift of visible community is varied. The Christian in exile is comforted by a brief visit of a Christian brother, a prayer together and a brother's blessing; indeed, he is strengthened by a letter written by the hand of a Christian. The greetings in the letters written with Paul's own hand were doubtless tokens of such community. Others are given the gift of common worship on Sundays. Still others have the privilege of Living a Christian life in the fellowship of their families. Seminarians before their ordination receive the gift of common life with their brethren for a definite period. Among earnest Christians in the Church today there is a growing desire to meet together with other Christians in the rest periods of their work for common life under the Word. Communal life is again being recognized by Christians today as the grace that it is, as the extraordinary, the "roses and lilies" of the Christian life. Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus  Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and

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in Jesus Christ. What does this mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity. First, the Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself, but in Jesus Christ alone.He knows, that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's  claims and God's justification. He lives wholly by God's Word pronounced upon him, whether that Word declares him guilty or innocent. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure. And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation. As such, God permits them to meet together and gives them community. Their fellowship is founded solely upon Jesus Christ and this "alien righteousness." All we can say, therefore, is: the community of Christians springs solely from the Biblical and Reformation message of the justification of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of the longing of Christians for one another. Second, a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. Among men there is strife. "He is our peace," says Paul of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:14). Without Christ there is discord between God and man and between man and man. Christ became the Mediator and made peace with God and among men. Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon Him, nor come to Him. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother. Now Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one. But they can continue to do so only by way of Jesus Christ. Third, when God's Son took on flesh, he truly and bodily took on, out of pure grace, our being, our nature, ourselves. This was the eternal counsel of the triune God. Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the Cross, and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ. But if, before we could know and wish it, we have been chosen and accepted with the whole Church in Jesus Christ, then we also belong to him in

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eternity with one another. We who live here in fellowship with him will one day be with him in eternal fellowship. He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ. Christian com-munity means community through and in Jesus Christ. On this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal life of Christians. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our brotherly love, the less were we living by God's mercy and love. Thus God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ. "Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God" (Rom. 15:7).  What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. In this wise does one, whom God has placed in common life with other Christians, learn what it means to have brothers. "Brethren in the Lord," Paul calls his congregation (Phil. 1:14). One is a brother to another only through Jesus Christ. I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him. This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance. Not only the other person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking brotherhood, must I deal with in fellowship. My brother is rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life. Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.

I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ.  The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.

One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood.

In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. Second, that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality.

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than

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the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Chris-tians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together— the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?  

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him

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rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God. Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. Christian brotherhood is not an idea! which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality. In this it differs absolutely from all other communities.  

The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest Word of God in Jesus Christ. The basis of all human reality is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind. The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of human community of spirit is desire. The essence of the community of the Spirit is light, for "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (I John 1: 5) and "if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another" (1:7). The essence of human community of spirit is darkness, "for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts" (Mark 7:21). It is the deep night that hovers over the sources of all human action, even over all noble and devout impulses. The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who are called by Christ; human community of spirit is the fellowship of devout souls.

In the community of the Spirit there burns the bright love of brotherly service, agape; in human community of spirit   there glows the dark love of good and evil desire, eros. In the former there is ordered, brotherly service, in the latter disordered desire for pleasure; in the former humble subjection to the brethren, in the latter humble yet haughty subjection of a brother to one's own desire… In the community of the Spirit the Word of God alone rules; in human community of spirit there rules, along with the Word, the man who is furnished with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive capacities. There God's Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind others to themselves. There all power, honor, and dominion are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; here spheres of power and influence of a personal nature are sought and cultivated. It is true, in so far as these are devout men, that they do this with the intention of serving the highest and the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy Spirit, to relegate Him to remote unreality. In actuality, it is only the human that is operative here. In the spiritual realm the Spirit governs.

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Perhaps the contrast between spiritual and human reality can be made most clear In the following observation: Within the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any "immediate" relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human. However, in the self centered community there exists a profound elemental emotional desire for community, for immediate contacts with other human souls, just as in the flesh there is an immediate union with other flesh. Such desire of the human soul seeks a complete fusion of I and Thou, whether this occurs in the union of love or, what is after all the same thing, in the forcing of another person into one's sphere of power and influence.  Here is where self-centered, strong persons enjoy life to the full, securing for himself the admiration, the love, or  the fear of the weak. Here human ties, suggestive influences, and bonds are everything. Moreover everything that is originally and solely characteristic of the community mediated through Christ reappear in the non mediated community of souls in a distorted form. Thus there is such a thing as human absorption. It appears in all the forms of conversion wherever the superior power of one person is consciously or unconsciously misused to influence profoundly and draw into his spell an-other individual or a whole community. Here one soul operates directly upon another soul. The weak have been  overcome by the strong, the resistance of the weak has  broken down under the influence of another person. He has been overpowered, but not won over by the thing itself. This becomes evident as soon as the demand is made that he  throw himself into the cause itself, independently of the  person to whom he is bound, or possibly in opposition to this person. Here is where the humanly converted person breaks down and thus makes it evident that his conversion was effected, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a man, and therefore has no stability. Likewise, there is a human love of one's neighbor. Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule. Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him.  Human love cannot; tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false for the sake of genuine fellowship, and human love cannot love an enemy, that is, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it. Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself, and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ, it serves him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. 

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What love is, only Christ tells in his Word. Contrary to ail my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. Therefore, spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love's sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. It originates neither in the brother nor in the enemy but in Christ and his Word. Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ, the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. Therefore, spiritual love proves itself in that everything it says and does commends Christ. It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him. It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and us by Christ, and it will find full fellowship with him in the  Christ who alone binds us together. Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ. Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hot-house flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God's good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God's outdoors. In other words life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium" pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promises of the whole Church… When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness of the Church, drives it into sectarianism.

In other words life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church.. When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness for the Church, drives it into sectarianism.

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The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may mean the exclusion of Christ. There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them.

It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also, makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not by experience.

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Spiritual Authority Article 1:

Authority and SubmissionBy: Watchman Nee A proper understanding of authority and submission in Chi Alpha is crucial in order for us to fulfill what God has called us to as a body of Christ. God’s will and the Kingdom of God will not be furthered through us if we do not submit to His authority both directly and indirectly (delegated authority).

Authority and submission is a very overlooked and often abused issue in Christianity today. Too often we see one extreme or the other. We see authoritarian rule—leaders abusing their God-given authority or either lack of submission and rebellion.

We must understand and teach people the importance of submitting to God and his delegated authority. God’s kingdom goes forward on the basis of his authority. It’s our responsibility to teach this important principle of God’s Kingdom.

The majority of problems with authority today come from those who claim they are only responsible to God. They are do not understand delegated authority. To be responsible to God is to be responsible to those above us and below us in the position God has called us to serve.

The issue is obedience versus rebellion. Rebellion was Satan’s primary action. He had a heart of rebellion, which is our heart apart from God. In the garden when Adam and Eve sinned, they disobeyed God and mankind joined Satan in his rebellion against God’s authority. We are born with a sinful nature and therefore a heart of rebellion.

Obedience was Jesus’ primary action. He submitted himself to God’s authority and made salvation possible.

We must recognize rebellion in ourselves. It’s often disguised or justified. The kingdom of God going forward is our desire. We pray, “Let your kingdom come”. What more is this than people being saved, baptized, filled with the Holy Spirit and discipled? God’s kingdom goes forward on the basis of submission to His authority. Christ initiated God’s Kingdom on earth when he submitted to God’s authority. We continue this when we the church submit to Christ and his delegated authority here on earth. In doing so, God’s authority is established on earth, His will is done and His Kingdom comes.

(The following are steps to be taken to prepare to teach on Authority and Submission. These steps should be done over the course of a week and cannot be rushed.)

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Step 1: Read and review the outline of Spiritual Authority (also known

as Authority and Submission).

Step 2: Read the “Examples in Scripture” pages, noticing the illustrations of submission to God’s authority.

Step 3: Read and study the Authority and Submission Discussion Notes

Step 4: Small Group MeetingAsk group members to discuss Bible passages.

• How did David treat Saul?• What is the difference between Jesus’ behavior and

Satan’s?More possible questions and discussion topics.

• What two senses should a Christian have?• What must be our first thought wherever we go?• What is the difference between obedience and submission?

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Spiritual Authority Article 2:

Readings on Authority and SubmissionExamples in Scripture David and King Saul “Because David maintained the authority of God, God acknowledged him as a man after His own heart”

4 The men said, "This is the day the LORD spoke of when he said to you, 'I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.' " Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul's robe. 5 Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. 6 He said to his men, "The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the LORD.” (1 Samuel 24:4-6)

David Again Spares Saul’s Life 1 The Ziphites went to Saul at Gibeah and said, "Is not David hiding on the hill of Hakilah, which faces Jeshimon?" 2 So Saul went down to the Desert of Ziph, with his three thousand chosen men of Israel, to search there for David. 3 Saul made his camp beside the road on the hill of Hakilah facing Jeshimon, but David stayed in the desert. When he saw that Saul had followed him there, 4 he sent out scouts and learned that Saul had definitely arrived. 5 Then David set out and went to the place where Saul had camped. He saw where Saul and Abner son of Ner, the commander of the army, had lain down. Saul was lying inside the camp, with the army encamped around him. 6 David then asked Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, "Who will go down into the camp with me to Saul?" "I'll go with you," said Abishai. 7 So David and Abishai went to the army by night, and there was Saul, lying asleep inside the camp with his spear stuck in the ground near his head. Abner and the soldiers were lying around him. 8 Abishai said to David, "Today God has delivered your enemy into your hands. Now let me pin him to the ground with one thrust of my spear; I won't strike him twice." 9 But David said to Abishai, "Don't destroy him! Who can lay a hand on the LORD's anointed and be guiltless? 10 As surely as the LORD lives," he said, "the LORD himself will strike him; either his time will come and he will die, or he will go into battle and perish. 11 But the LORD forbid that I should lay a hand on the LORD's anointed. (1 Samuel 26:1-11)

David hears of Saul’s DeathAfter the death of Saul, David returned from defeating the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days. 2 On the third day a man arrived from Saul's camp, with his clothes torn and with dust on his head. When he came to David, he fell to the ground to pay him honor. 3 "Where have you come from?" David asked him. He answered, "I have escaped from the Israelite camp." 4 "What happened?" David asked. "Tell me." He said, "The men fled from the battle. Many of them fell and died. And Saul and his son Jonathan

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are dead." 5 Then David said to the young man who brought him the report, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?" 6 "I happened to be on Mount Gilboa," the young man said, "and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him. 7 When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, 'What can I do?' 8 "He asked me, 'Who are you?' " 'An Amalekite,' I answered. 9 "Then he said to me, 'Stand over me and kill me! I am in the throes of death, but I'm still alive.' 10 "So I stood over him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm and have brought them here to my lord." 11 Then David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and tore them. 12 They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the army of the LORD and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. 13 David said to the young man who brought him the report, "Where are you from?" "I am the son of an alien, an Amalekite," he answered. 14 David asked him, "Why were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?" 15 Then David called one of his men and said, "Go, strike him down!" So he struck him down, and he died. 16 For David had said to him, "Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when you said, 'I killed the LORD's anointed.’” (2 Samuel 1:1-15)

Submission of Jesus to God’s AuthorityYour attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7-9)

Satan’s RebellionHow you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! 13 You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." 15 But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15)

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were

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created they were prepared. 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. (Ezekiel 28:13-17)

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Prayer Article:

A Call To Prayer: A Spiritual Stimulant For This Critical Hour

By: J.C. Ryle I have a question to offer you.

It is contained in three words, DO YOU PRAY?

The question is one that none but you can answer. Whether you attend public worship or not, your minister knows. Whether you have family prayers or not your family knows. But whether you pray in private or not, is a matter between yourself and God.

I urge you to pay attention to my question. Do not say that my question is too personal. If your heart is right in the sight of God, there is nothing in it to make you afraid. Do not turn off my question by replying that you say your prayers. It is one thing to say your prayers and another to pray. Do not tell me that my question is unnecessary. Listen to me for a few minutes, and I will show you seven reasons for asking it...

PRAYER IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARYPrayer is absolutely necessary to our salvation. No one who professes to be a Christian can be saved without praying. I hold as strongly as anyone that salvation is God's free gift. I would speak to the greatest sinner who ever lived, even if he were old and dying, and say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, even now, and you will be saved." But I cannot find that the Bible teaches that anyone will be saved without asking to be. Although nobody will be saved by merit of his prayers, nobody will be saved without prayer.

It is not absolutely necessary for salvation that someone should read the Bible. He may never have learned to read, or be blind, and yet have Christ. A deaf man, or someone who lives where the gospel is not preached, may be saved without hearing the gospel publicly preached. But no one can be saved without praying.

There are certain things which everyone must do for himself Everybody has to attend to the needs of his own body and his own mind. Nobody else can do your eating, drinking or sleeping for you. And if you want to know something, nobody else can do your learning for you. And it is the same with your spiritual needs. Nobody else can repent for you. Nobody else can come to Christ for you. And nobody else can do your praying for you. You yourself must pray.

We get to know people in this world by speaking with them. If we don’t speak to them we don't get to know them. Similarly we cannot get to know God

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without praying to him, and if we do not know him we certainly shall not be saved by him.

One day, heaven will be thronged with "a multitude, which no one could number" (Revelation 7:9). But all these people will sing with one heart and one voice. Their experience will have been the same. Each one will have believed in Christ. Each one will have been washed in his blood. Each one will have been born again. And each one will have prayed. Unless we pray on earth we shall never praise in heaven.

In short, then, to be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope and without heaven. It is to be on the road to hell.

PRAYER IS ONE OF THE SUREST MARKS OF A CHRISTIANThe habit of prayer is one of the surest marks of a true Christian. There is one respect in which all God's children on earth are alike. They all pray. The first sign of life in a new-born infant is that it breathes. In the same way the first act of the newborn Christian is to pray. Just as it is part of a child’s nature to cry, so it is part of the Christian's nature to pray. He sees his need of mercy and grace. He feels his emptiness and weakness. Therefore he feels that he must pray.

I cannot find in the Bible even one of God's people who was not a person of prayer. It is characteristic of God's people that they "call on the Father (I Peter 1:17) and they "call on the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord" (I Corinthians 1:2), whereas it is characteristic of the wicked that they "do not call on the Lord" (Psalm 14:4).

I have also read the lives of many outstanding Christians who have lived since the Bible was written. They have differed in all kinds of ways, but one thing they all have had in common: they have all been people of prayer.

I know quite well, of course, that a person may pray insincerely. The mere fact that someone prays proves nothing about their spiritual state, for they may simply be a hypocrite. But this I can say with certainty: not praying is a clear proof that one is not yet a true Christian. Clearly they do not really feel their sins, or love God, or feel their debt of gratitude to Christ, or long to be holy. However much they may talk about Christianity, they cannot be a true Christian if they do not pray.

Let me also say that the habit of heart-felt private prayer is one of the best evidences that the Holy Spirit has really worked in a person's life. A man may preach or write books or do all kinds of other things from quite wrong motives, but a man will seldom get alone by himself and pour out his soul to God in private unless he is sincere. God himself has taught us that this is the best proof of a real conversion, for when he told Ananias to go to see Saul in Damascus, the only evidence he mentioned that Saul had undergone a real change of heart was this: "He is praying!" (Acts 9: 11)

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I know, of course, that many people come to faith slowly. They may go through many convictions, desires, feelings, resolves, hopes and fears. But all these things can come to nothing. A real heartfelt prayer, flowing from a broken and penitent spirit, is worth all these things put together. The first act when we have real faith will be to speak to God. Prayer is to faith what breath is to life. Just as we cannot live without breathing, so we cannot believe in Christ without praying.

PRAYER IS THE MOST NEGLECTED CHRISTIAN DUTYNo Christian duty is neglected as much as private prayer. I used to think that most people who call themselves Christians prayed. But I have come to a different conclusion now. I believe that the great majority who say they are Christians never pray at all. Prayer is a strictly private matter between God and us, which no-one else sees, and therefore there is a great temptation not to bother.

I believe that many never say a single word of prayer at all. They eat and drink, sleep and wake, live on God's earth and enjoy his mercies. They have bodies which must die, and they have the Day of Judgment and eternity ahead of them. Yet for all this they never speak to God. They live as though they were animals rather than men with never dying souls.

I believe that for many more, prayer is nothing more than a form of words. Some use set patterns of words without any sincere feeling for the things they say. Even when the pattern is a good one (like the Lord's Prayer) many rush through it without really thinking about it. We may be sure that God does not call this praying, even if men do. Prayer involves much more than words spoken with our lips. It involves our hearts, or it is not real prayer. No doubt Saul of Tarsus had said many long prayers before the Lord met him on the way to Damascus. But it was only when his heart had been broken that the Lord said, "He is praying!'

If you find all this very surprising, consider the following facts:

It is not natural to pray. The natural desire of our hearts is to get away from God. We do not naturally love him, but fear him. And by nature we have no sense of sin, or feeling of our spiritual needs, or faith in things we cannot see. We do not naturally desire to be holy. For these reasons, men do not naturally pray.

It is not popular to pray. All kinds of worldly activities are popular among men. But prayer is not popular, and many would do almost anything rather than admit publicly that they were in the habit of praying. In the light of these facts I believe that few people pray.

Consider also the lives that many people lead. When we see men plunging into sin, can we believe that they are praying constantly against sin? When we see men wholly taken up with the things of the world, can we think that they are regularly asking God for grace to serve him? How can they be, when they show no interest in him at all? Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will choke sin, or sin will choke prayer.

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When I remember this and then look at men's lives, I believe that few people pray.

Consider also the deaths that many people die. Many dying people seem to be complete strangers to God. They lack the ability to speak to him. They give the distinct impression they have never really talked to him before. What I have seen for myself of dying people convinces me that few people pray. We have great encouragement to pray.

We have more encouragement to prayer than we have to any other Christian duty. God has done everything necessary to make prayer easy if only we will attempt it. He has provided for every difficulty, so that there is no excuse for us if we do not pray.

There is a way by which anyone however sinful and unworthy may draw near to God the Father. Jesus Christ has opened that way by his sacrifice for us on the cross. God's holiness and justice need not frighten sinners away. Rather, let them cry to God in the name of Jesus. Let them plead the fact that his blood has made atonement for sin, and they will find God willing and ready to hear. The name of Jesus unfailingly ensures that God will hear our prayers. In his name we may draw near to God with boldness and pray with confidence. And God has promised to hear. Is this not a great encouragement to pray?

There is an advocate and intercessor always waiting to present the prayers of those who will make use of him. He presents our prayers before the throne of God. Our prayers are feeble in themselves, but when presented by the Lord Jesus they are effective. And his ear is always open to the cry of all those who want mercy and grace. Is this not a great encouragement to pray?

There is the Holy Spirit who is always ready to help us in prayer, for this is one part of his office (Romans 8:26). He is the "Spirit of grace and supplication" (Zechariah 12: 10). We have only to seek his assistance.

There are great and precious promises to those who pray. Read Matthew 7:7,8 and 21:22; John 14:13,14; Luke 11:5-13 and 18:1-8. Think over these passages, for they contain the greatest possible encouragements to pray.

There are wonderful examples in Scripture of the power of prayer. Prayer opened the Red Sea; it brought water from the rock; it made the sun stand still. Things which were impossible by any other means were done by prayer. What greater encouragements could you look for than these things? Or what greater folly could there be than to neglect prayer in spite of all this encouragement?

PRAYER IS THE SECRET OF HOLINESSDiligence in prayer is the secret of eminent holiness. Without doubt there is a great deal of difference between the achievements of true Christians. How much more progress some make than others! Some who are truly converted seem to remain spiritual babies all their lives. From one year to another they

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do not seem to grow. They are troubled by the same besetting sins; they still need the milk of the Word rather than strong meat; their spiritual interests remain narrow and confined to their own little circle. But there are others who are always growing - always advancing in the Christian life. They grow in faith; they grow in good works; they attempt great things and do great things. When they fail, they try again; when they fall, they soon rise again. They think of themselves as poor and unprofitable servants, yet they are the people whose lives commend the Christian faith to others.

Now, how can we explain this difference among the Lord's people? Why are some so much holier than others? I believe the difference in nineteen cases out of twenty arises from different habits about private prayer. I believe that those who are not eminently holy pray only a little, while those who are eminently holy pray a great deal. I believe that once someone is converted to God, whether or not he becomes eminently holy depends chiefly on his diligence in the use of those means, which God has appointed. And the main means by which believers have advanced in holiness is the habit of diligent private prayer. Read the lives of great servants of God and you will see that this is true. No Christian became a great Christian without becoming a person of prayer. If you wish to grow as a Christian, you must learn the value of private prayer.

THE NEGLECT OF PRAYER CAUSES BACKSLIDINGNeglect of prayer is one great cause of backsliding. It is possible to go backwards in the Christian life, after making a good start. The Galatian Christians progressed well for a time, and then turned aside after false teachers. Peter loudly proclaimed his love for the Lord, but in a time of trial denied him. And to be a backslider is miserable. It is one of the worst things that can happen to a man. I know that real grace in a man cannot be destroyed. I know that true union with Christ cannot be broken. But I believe that a man may fall away so far that he loses sight of his Christian standing and despairs of his own salvation. And this is the nearest thing to hell. A wounded conscience, a mind sick of itself, a memory full of self reproach, a heart pierced through with the Lord's arrows, a spirit broken with a load of inward accusation - all this is a taste of hell.

Consider the solemn words, “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways.” Proverbs 14:14|

Now, what is the cause of most backsliding? I believe it is generally caused by neglect of private prayer. It is my considered opinion, and I repeat it, that backsliding generally begins with neglect of private prayer.

Prayerlessness in daily life and decision-making has led many Christians into a condition of spiritual paralysis, or to the point where God has allowed them to fall badly into sin.

We may be sure that men fall in private long before they fall in public. Like Peter, they first neglect the Lord's warning to watch and pray, and then, like Peter, their strength is gone and when temptation comes they fall into sin.

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The world then takes notice of their fall, and scoffs. But the world does not recognize the real reason, which is prayerlessness.

If you are a Christian, you who are reading this, I hope you never become a backslider. But if you wish to avoid this, be careful about your praying.

PRAYER OBTAINS HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENTPrayer is one of the surest ways of obtaining happiness and contentment. This world is a world of sorrow. Ever since sin entered it, it has been impossible for anyone completely to escape sorrows of one kind or another. Now the best way to cope with this is by taking everything to God in prayer. In the Old Testament we read, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he shall sustain you.” Psalm 55:22

In the New Testament we read, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6,7

This has been the practice of God's people in all ages. When Jacob was in great fear of his brother Esau, he prayed (Genesis 32:22-32). When Paul and Silas were thrown into prison at Philippi, they prayed (Acts 16:23-25). The only way to be truly happy in a world like this is always to be casting our cares on God. When Christians fail to do this, and try instead to bear their own burdens, they become unhappy. If only we will go to him, the Lord Jesus is always waiting to hear and help us. He knows all about the trials and sorrows of this world, for he lived in it for more than thirty years. And he can make us truly happy whatever our outward condition if we trust and call on him. Prayer can lighten the heaviest cross. Prayer can bring light into our darkness. Prayer can bring comfort in the greatest sorrow and loneliness. I want everyone who reads this to be a really happy Christian. But if you are to be happy there is no more important duty for you to attend to than that of prayer.

CONCLUSION Let me close with some advice to various classes of reader. Let me speak to those who do not pray.

Prayerless friend, I must warn you of your danger. If you die as you are, you will be lost. You are completely without excuse, for you cannot give even one good reason why you should live without prayer. Do not say that you do not know how to pray. Prayer is simply speaking to God. You need no education to pray - only the desire to do so. The tiniest infant can cry when he is hungry. If you are conscious of your need you will soon find something to say to God. Do not say you have no place in which to pray. Anyone can find an adequate place if he really wants to. Do not say you have no time to pray. You have plenty of time, if only you are prepared to use it aright. Daniel had to deal with the affairs of a great empire, but he still prayed three times a day (Daniel 6: 10). Do not say you cannot pray till you have been born again

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and have faith. If you lack these things you must cry out to God for them. "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near" (Isaiah 55:6). Do not put it off. Salvation is very near you today. Do not miss it because you will not ask.

Let me speak to those who desire to be saved but do not know what to do.

I advise you to go right now to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the nearest private place you can find, and beg him in prayer to save you. Tell him that you have heard that he receives sinners, and has said, "Me one who comes to me I will by no means cast out." Tell him you are a lost sinner, and that you come to him on the strength of his own invitation. Tell him that you are entirely in his hands: that unless he saves you there is no hope for you at all. Ask him to deliver you from the guilt, the power and the consequences of your sins. Ask him to forgive you, to give you a new heart, to put his Holy Spirit in you. Ask him to enable you to become his disciple and servant from this day and for ever. Do all this today if you have any concern about your soul.

Remember that he is willing to save you, for you are a sinner and he came into the world to save sinners (Luke 5:32, 1 Timothy 1: 15). Do not stay away because you feel unworthy. The more ill you are, the more you need a doctor. You would not stay away from the doctor because you were too ill. Don't worry about the kind of language you use. Jesus will understand you. And don't despair because you do not seem to get an immediate answer. He is listening. Keep on praying, and the answer will come. If you desire to be saved, remember what I have told you and act upon it, and you will certainly be saved.

Finally, let me speak to those who do pray.

Let nothing at all discourage you. You may often feel great discouragement. Your times of prayer may be times of conflict. But this is quite common, for the devil hates to see you pray. So you must go on. Let me then offer you some words of brotherly advice about your prayers.

Remember the importance of reverence and humility in prayer. Think of who God is, and who you are.

Remember the need you have of the Holy Spirit's help in prayer, and be careful not to let your praying become a mere formality.

Remember how important it is to pray regularly. You might see prayer as one of the most important activities of each day and time for prayer must be built into your daily routine.

Remember the importance of persevering in prayer. You will often be tempted to neglect your prayers, or to cut them very short. This always comes from the devil, no matter how plausible the reasons for doing so might seem. Be earnest in prayer. It is "fervent" prayer which avails much (James 5:16).

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Remember the importance of praying with faith. We in believe that if we ask according to God's will our prayers will be answered (Mark 11:24). You must expect answers to prayers.

Consider the importance of boldness in your prayers. I not mean an improper familiarity, but arguing with God on basis of his own Word and promise. Remember the importance of asking God for much. How often is it true of believers that they do not have because you do not ask (James 4:2).

Be specific in prayer. Confess your specific sins; pray your specific weaknesses; tell God your specific needs. Remember the importance of praying for others. Beware letting your prayers become narrow and self- centered.

Be thankful in prayer. We have much to be thankful for; I dare not call any prayer a true prayer if thankfulness has part in it.

Finally, let me remind you of the need for watching over your prayers. True Christian experience begins in prayer; it flourishes in prayer; and it decays with the neglect of prayer. Prayer is a kind of spiritual pulse by it you may know when you are spiritually healthy. Be watchful over your prayer and I shall be very surprised if anything goes very seriously wrong with you spiritual progress.

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Evangelism Article I:

Witnessing Like JesusBy: Winkie Pratney "The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men." (E. M. Bounds)

To be a witness for someone is to share his life with another; to stand in his place as best you know how; to show others what that person is really like and what he does.

You do not have to learn to be a witness. You already are a witness! You are a witness to whatever or whoever is foremost in your life. You are telling the world right now what god you really belong to. You cannot live life without showing the world your real interests. Your words and your life are tied inseparably together; you will always convey to others around you what you really love and live for most. Your words will either prove this, or call you a liar. Anyone who watches you closely, who follows you around for a day, can tell if you really mean what you claim with your lips.

Every day you are witnessing. What are you witnessing to? Your witness is the total package of your attitudes, character, and actions. It does not lie. No careful observer is fooled. What are you witnessing to? Whatever your god is, you will show the most interest in. If it is anything but Jesus, your closest friends already know. It will be the thing you like to talk most about, read most about, center your life on, love and live for. Say - could you get to heaven on the testimony of your next-door neighbor?

If you call yourself a Christian, you have already been witnessing - for or against Him. If you have claimed to belong to Him, but your life does not back up your words, men and women have rejected Christ and the Gospel because of you. That is why Jesus said, "He that is not for Me is against Me; and he that gathers not with Me scatters abroad."

I know of no Bible plan that will enable you to present Christ to others without your own life being Christ-like. True Christianity is Christ! You can present another philosophy or religion without its founder by a "canned" plan, and change a few words to sell soap just as effectively with it; but you cannot present Christ to another until you properly represent Him and His love. If you would be His witness, you must really KNOW Him to show Him.

MOTIVEThe Lord Jesus viewed the winning of one soul as worth more than the whole world. He spent much of His time talking with one person at a time about his relationship to God. True soul winning is impossible without concerned, personal contact. Jesus put the life and the love of His Father on exhibition to

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the world. This is true witness. When the world is lost and running from God, He must go looking for men to convince them of His love and concern despite their sin. He wants to do this by living His life through and in men and women who will yield to His direction, and this more-than-human team seeks out lost sinners to bring them the message of reconciliation and forgiveness. To be Christ-like in attitude means to be real - absolutely real. God hates phonies. If you have any other reason for wanting to witness to others apart from a genuine concern and love for them and for God, forget about trying to "witness." You will do more harm than good. LOVE is the only acceptable motive for the witness - an honestly unselfish concern for the highest good of God and His wayward creation. It involves a level of concern that made even Christ cry. (Matt. 9:36) Love is not primarily something you feel; it is something you DO, and is directly measured in unselfish sacrifice.

Witnessing like Jesus means Christ-likeness in conduct. The world is full of selfish people, who basically think only of themselves, care only for themselves, and live only for themselves. God's new people are to be totally different - they are to live like Jesus. It will do you no good to say to the sinner, "I'm full of sin and iniquity, look only to Jesus!". He has every right to say, "But I can't see Jesus. I can only see you. And if He hasn't helped you, what makes you think He can change me?"

The Lord Jesus said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." He is no longer in the world but He is risen and left us as His witnesses. "As My Father has sent Me, so send I you." (John 20:21) "You shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:8 ASV) To be effective witnesses for Jesus we must live above the world's standards and values, so that unbelievers will take notice and ask us what the secret of our lives is. We must live our lives so that with Paul we can say, "Those things which you have both learned and received and seen in me, do, and the God of peace shall be with you." (Phil. 4:9) Men must be able to be followers of the Lord and us at the same time. (I Thess. 1:6) Think of the victory over sin Paul experienced daily when he could say, "Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me."(I Cor. 4:16) This was no boast; it was simply the statement of a holy life founded upon the witness of the Holy Spirit as the source of his strength. "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ." (I Cor. 11:1)

God's blueprint of Christian witness for youth is outlined in I Timothy 4:12. There is no real reason why a young person cannot be as effective for God as an adult, provided there is a basic understanding of what is involved and a consistent life. We are to be examples by word (what we say - speech); conversation (what we do - actions); charity (why we do it - motives); spirit (where we do it - led and directed by); faith (when we do it - obedience to the word of God); purity (how we do - it a clean channel through which Christ can operate). God is mobilizing youth in this last generation for the mightiest awakening history has ever seen. Witnessing like Jesus means consistency, the ability to be the same all the time. To be like Jesus, the indwelling Holy Spirit in a humble walk of faith must keep changing us. We are to keep ourselves in the love of God and this is a daily matter.

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Christianity is not a set of rules, but a fellowship with a living, loving Person. It is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:27) In this life of grace and faith, we are to be marked by the sign that sin shall not have dominion over you. (Rom. 6:14) Christianity is Christ; resurrected, real, and bringing to the new living heart peace and power. (2 Cor. 3:18) To keep effective for God three things must occupy our attention if we are to maintain the glow.

(1) We must be CLEAN - Continually turning away from all obvious sinful and harmful indulgence; confessing and being forgiven and cleansed from every sin. Sin as a manner of life is always referred to in the past tense in the Christian. (I Cor. 6:11; Tit. 3:3) The true child of God must take up his cross daily and follow Jesus, (Luke 9:23), and be able to say with Paul, "I am dying daily." (I Cor. 15:31) There is no true salvation without repentance from all known sin at the point of conversion, but sin has a subtle way of working itself into our hearts again unless great care is taken. And Satan paints a pretty picture of the past. It is often so easy to go back, because we have Christ's treasure in earthen vessels. Such a state of retreat brings defeat in which effective witness is impossible. God directs us to "cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." (2 Cor. 7:1) We have His promise, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (I John 2:1) and "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1:9) Without this daily cleansing, witness will be worthless. Is it not highly embarrassing, to say the least, to plead with a sinner to give up his sin, when we are holding on to some as well? Salvation is salvation from (not in) sin, and we had better show it in our lives.

(2) We must be UNCHOKED - We cannot afford to waste time. The sin of wasted time has trapped more Christian people than any other sin today. Satan knows that no sold-out young man or woman of God would ever deliberately do some gross sin. Knowing this, he works the quiet way. He persuades them to waste a little time on the pretense of relaxation or legitimate entertainment. You cannot tell a vision with too much television. The harmonies of heaven are too often drowned out by the hard rock of the casual radio. Many a soul has gone to Hell as a Christian read his comics. Many a young man or woman has gone down the moral drain with too much time on his or her hands! Every Christian must dare to discard all questionable and unprofitable activities for the warfare of soul winning! "No man that warreth entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who has chosen him to be a soldier." (2 Tim. 2:4) Many things do not seem sinful in themselves, but we may find ourselves so hung up in them that time is crowded out for Christ. This is what Jesus meant by the parable of the sower: "The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful." (Mk. 4:19)

The use we make of our lives in Christ is largely up to us. There are all kinds of vessels in a large house - gold, silver, wood, and clay. If we are willing to

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purge (thrust out, clean out) ourselves from what is unworthy or unclean, we shall be "vessels unto honor, set apart, meet (highly useful) for the Master's use and prepared unto every good work." (2 Tim. 2:21) We must cut off every excess weight, put priority on the things that count most and conserve the cream of our time and energy for that special task Jesus has set us.

(3) We must be CHRIST-DEPENDENT. Jesus is our power, our strength, and our wisdom. Salvation is an impossible thing - but with God all things are possible! Jesus said, "Without Me, you can do nothing." (John 15:5) Where can you get the wisdom necessary to lead souls out of darkness into light? In Him is hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col. 2:3)

Hebrews 12:1-2 sums up the secret of spiritual victory: "Let us lay aside every weight (be unchoked) and the sin which doth so easily beset us (be clean, especially from that particular form of sin you find the strongest temptation to) and let us run (steadfastly, determinedly, doggedly keep on running) the race lying before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith!" This is simple to say, very difficult to learn, but astonishing in power. Jesus Himself is the secret of power over sin. Jesus Himself. His love. His Presence. His power! You can't fight sin in your own strength. The more you struggle with it, the greater its power grows over you. But you may look to Jesus and experience instant deliverance! No definition of power over sin will work for you until you learn to extract power from your Savior. Looking unto Jesus!

God commands: "Don't be a mass-product of this age; but let God renew your mind and transform (transfigure) your life." Christ looked to His Father and He was transfigured so that His face "did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." (Matt. 17:2) The same word is used in 2 Cor. 3:18 where "We all, with unveiled face beholding for ourselves as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being (continually) transformed (or transfigured) into the same image, from glory to glory, even as from the Spirit of the Lord." Christ, personally revealing Himself to our minds and spirits through the Holy Spirit, will keep us safe and change us continually closer to His own image.

We are the only Bibles this careless world will readWe are the sinners' gospel; we are the scoffers' creed We are the Lord's last message, given in deed and word What if the type is crooked? What if the print is blurred?

MESSAGENow God can offer forgiveness, full pardon, and restoration to His family on two conditions:(1) Repentance - That the sinner is willing to forsake his previous selfish way of life, whatever the cost to his plans, his pride, or his public image before men.(2) Faith - That he is willing to (from that point on) trust Jesus Christ as his Substitute for the penalty of sin, and love and obey Him as Lord and Master forever.This surrender is one of the heart (the ultimate choice) and centers around one particular point of obedience. This is

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usually the one thing the sinner is most unwilling to do. When this is yielded, a transforming climax from selfishness to love occurs, which the Bible calls being born again, (John 3:3) or salvation.

METHODIn most witness, daily contacts with others will create the chance for a personal word. As you show the fruit of the Spirit and live the life of Jesus Christ in you, His Spirit will draw those who need help across your path. Ask God for this. Your task is to be alert to see them and be ready to help them. Don't try to scheme how you will lead talk around to spiritual things. Honestly, sincerely be concerned about them. Listen! Find out their real problems and needs. If you try to keep in mind some canned plan or presentation, they will sense that you have something on your mind that isn't related to what they are saying - in other words, they may think you don't really care about them at all. If you listen carefully, God will show you their point of need, and also what needs to be surrendered for salvation.

The best way of bringing their attention to Jesus when the opportunity occurs is to raise a question at a point of interest. This was Christ's way of witness. He either created a situation that made the other person ask a question, or directly asked one Himself. They were always loving, geared to the sinner's basic need, and never offensive. It was a question that could not be answered with a yes or a no and created interest for further ones. He answered these in the same way, encouraging the sinner to open up his problem, face his sin, and give Him their trust. Here are some that have been used with effect by others:

"Have you ever seriously considered Christ's claims on your life?" "Are you interested in spiritual things?" "Have you ever thought about becoming a real Christian?" "If someone were to ask you, ‘What is a true Christian', what would you

answer?" "Have you ever personally discovered Jesus Christ, or are you still in the

process?" "Do you think it is possible to know for sure before you die that you are

going to Heaven?” "How did you personally give your life to Christ? (For a sinner posing as

a Christian)" "Some day when you stand before God, what reason are you going to

give Him as to why He should let you into His Kingdom?"...

Fear in witness is created by 3 basic factors: (1) Inadequate training or preparation, (2) Self-consciousness from insufficient prayer or concern for the other person, and(3) Not knowing what might happen when the truth is presented.

A vast load lifts off the mind when you realize there are only 5 basic attitudes a sinner can adopt when witness occurs:

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(1) Indifference - The worst attitude! Prayer, care, a loving but firm warning

from the Word of God coupled with an invitation to further consideration is your only tools here.

(2) Curiosity - A sign of an awakened hunger for reality or further consideration. Present as simply as possible God's claims on his life. Use love, smile at yourself now and then, but be in firm and concerned earnest. Ask questions to make sure they understand what you say.

(3) Hesitancy - Often a sign of sin being exposed. If questions come here, use them to center back on his personal responsibility to God, answering them as briefly as possible. If you feel they are only some kind of excuse, show them you understand it is just an excuse and that in giving it they are not sincere. For example: "How do you know God isn't just imagination?" "You are giving the same kind of excuse I did when I lived for myself... I knew God was real all the time, but I didn't want to live for Him and I found it more convenient to deny His reality than to answer His claims on my life." "Yes, but He might only be real to you; He's not real to me!" "Of course He is not real to you; He never will be as long as you keep on serving and living for yourself. You only find He is real when you quit living in sin and honestly face His call."

(4) Acceptance - Usually a sign that the person has already been dealt with by the Lord for some time beforehand. Check very carefully to make sure that they fully understand what they are doing. (Do not witness to those on drug or alcohol highs, unless specifically directed!) Make sure they have counted the cost of total surrender to Jesus. Be suspicious of quick decisions made without question and without signs of struggle, surrender, or resultant change after prayer.

(5) Rejection - When the truth is fairly and fully faced, the cost counted but finally rejected. They should first fully understand what they are doing to God's offer of mercy and love and what they are choosing forever as their final destiny. Show your grief and concern that they have thus chosen. Sometimes a final clarification has brought home the terrible finality of rejecting Christ and His Gospel, and the soul has at last surrendered.

MANBlowing Up Barriers. When the truth comes home in power to the heart of the sinner, prepare for barriers of defense. They usually take one or a combination of these four basic forms:

(1) Mental - Argument - Don't argue back! Answer by raising a further question like:"What evidence do you have for that?" Or by further defining what you have just said. Answer with facts, don't raise your voice, get angry, or sarcastic, or ridicule him. If you know he is making an excuse, smile and point that out. Stick to the basic points, keep pressing them home and don't get side tracked by his smokescreens.

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(2) Physical - Attack - You may be physically assaulted in your witness for Christ. This is rare in countries with Christian backgrounds if your witness is not offensive or belligerent, but it may happen. In this case, you are under direct command to "resist NOT" evil. (Matt. 5:38-48; 10:34-39; Rom. 12:21; Tit. 3:2; Col. 3:13; Eph. 4:2) You may not be able to control your feelings of hurt or anger if this happens, but you can cry out inside to Christ to help you make the right choice and not hit back, This is showing true love.

(3) Social - Avoidance - This is one of the most common barriers. Let your witness strike home, and the sinner will try to steer clear of you. Don't trail them around if this is happening. Just happen to be there at key times. It is not really you they are trying to hide from, it is God. They may avoid your words and eyes, but you might be able to get across to them that they cannot avoid your love and prayers. (Jn. 3:16-21; 12:44-48)

(4) Spiritual - Assurance - He may assure you that they are already saved; they belong to a good church; they have their own religion, thank you very much! You can clarify the religious sinner's stand before Christ by asking them about the events leading up to the time of their conversion and what took place. Point out the essential difference between a true Christian and a religiously selfish person. Missing in the latter, of course, is a true devotion to Jesus Christ and the Christian love that marks the unselfish life. This is the hardest kind of barrier to crack because often the front is strikingly similar to true faith. Use the appropriate "Counterfeit Conversion" tract.

CONVICTED - BUT NOT CONVERTED There is always some reason for a convicted sinner not yielding to God. You must find it, bring it out, and deal with it. Many times they know what it is, but try to hide it from you. Other times they are self-deceived and will not see the reason. Ask these questions:

"Have you done something wrong you are not willing to make right?” "Is there something you are not willing to give to God?" "Is there an idol in your life you are not willing to forsake for Christ?" "Has someone hurt you that you are not willing to forgive?” "Did you do something in the past you don't want to confess?" "Are you prejudiced against some person?" (Christian with a poor

witness?) "Are you waiting for God to do something before you will?" "Do you think you have committed the unpardonable sin?" "Have you been playing with spiritual powers outside of Jesus Christ?”

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If you meet hesitation, confusion, or silence on any of these, and you can probe deeper. Usually it is on just one thing God strives with the sinner to yield. The moment he gives in, just because God asks him to, true conversion begins. Sinners often ask, "Will I have to give up...?" (Some pet sin or idol). Tell him plainly, "Yes." It is probably the only thing they have to give up, because it is their god. Don't yield an inch to make it easier. Give him all the promises of Christ for provision and power, but if God is dealing with him on one point, don't compromise or pass it by, or he will get a false hope and a sham experience. Jesus didn't give in with the rich young ruler although He loved him. If the young man had been allowed to keep the god of his possessions, he would have felt relieved, called himself a true disciple, joined the church and still gone to Hell. Don't try to make it easier than God has.

Help him through to Christ by suggesting what he should honestly tell the Lord: "Lord Jesus, please forgive my sin. I admit to you honestly today that all my life I've lived for myself. I want to give up all rights to my life right now. I am ready to follow you whatever the cost, no matter how much it may take to get right with others I have wronged and hurt. Forgive me - make me your child. Be my ‘Boss' from this moment on, in everything I say or do. Amen."

MAINTENANCE

Don’t Say:(1) "Now you are saved!" Why not?

Because you don't keep the Book of life - God does. He knows if a prayer was from the heart or not. You have no right to tell him what God alone can assure him of.

If he discovers a change of life for himself, it will strengthen his faith. If it is real, it will stand.

If you tell him, it is your word he relies on. You may just find that he is your convert, not God's! Life will prove whether it was experiment or an experience. Let God grant him the assurance. If he doesn't have it, he is not properly saved.

(2) "How do you feel?" The Christian life is entered by a choice, not feeling. Teach him his duty, feelings or not. If what he has is real, feelings will follow in short order.

(3) Too much! Keep some instruction for another time. A few things at a time.

DO ASK: If he will pray and thank God for his salvation. If it is real, you can discover it here for this may expose doubt. If he still doubts, there is still duty to be done. It almost always shows an incomplete consecration. Don't be afraid to dig deep. Tell him it must be sin to have reason to doubt, and also sin to doubt without reason. (Rom. 14:23) Leave him uncertain, and he will be at best a sickly, shaky convert. (1 Jn. 5:11-13)

TEACH TO:

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(1) Enjoy God's love and favor. This will not mean that he will always be excited, nor always directly thinking of God. But his heart should be at peace and enjoying the blessing of Christ. Give him the idea it that won't matter if he loses the sense of God's smile, and when, through your fault, he backslides don't be surprised. Sin should cause doubt and worry in the Christian, so that he will tearfully go back to God to confess his wrong. The only real evidence of salvation is to obey God from the heart. (Luke 6:43-49)

(2) Get in with other Christians who love Christ wholeheartedly. Don't put him in with a lot of backslidden hypocrites or he may get his standards from them. He should want to be with God's people or there is something wrong with his salvation. (1 Jn. 1:7)

http://www.gospelcom.net/moh/WinkPrat/DTM/ WitnessingLikeJesus.htm

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Evangelism Article II:

Ambassadors For ChristBy: Unknown2 CORINTHIANS 5:11, 14-20Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

There is a need for Peace - people must be reconciled to God.

CHRIST'S AMBASSADORSThis is “Chi Alpha” (Chi=Christ ; Alpha=Ambassador)

Questions:1. What does it mean that we are Ambassadors for Christ?2. Why do you think Paul used the word Ambassador?

At this point, you may need to review the essentials of:A. Man’s rebellion and guilt before God.B. Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross.C. Salvation by Grace, through repentance and faith.

AMBASSADORS FOR CHRISTAmbassadors Know what it is to Fear the Lord (verse 11) - Read also Luke 9:26

Questions:

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1. Be honest, have you ever been afraid to witness to someone? Why?2. Is being afraid to witness the same as being “ashamed of Jesus and His words?”

ONE OF THE GREATEST HINDRANCES TO WITNESSING IS FEAR.Fear in witnessing is created by 3 basic factors:

1. Inadequate training or preparation 2. Self- consciousness from insufficient prayer or concern forthe other person3. Fear of Rejection by the person witnessed to (including bodily harm)

There are 5 basic attitudes a sinner can adopt when witness occurs:1. Indifference - The worst attitude!2. Curiosity - A sign of an awakened hunger for reality or further consideration.3. Hesitancy - Often a sign of sin being exposed.4. Acceptance - Usually a sign that the person has already been dealt with by the Lord for some time.5. Rejection - When the truth is fairly and fully faced, the cost counted but finally rejected.

Ambassadors Are Compelled By the Love of Christ (verse 14)1. This concerns our Motive – (for God’s sake, not for our sake.)2. And Our Method. (Read Eph 4:15 – “... speaking the truth in love…”

Questions:1. Have you ever experienced someone “witnessing” in a way that

misrepresented Christ?” Explain. We are representing Jesus… we have a responsibility witness in a way that "rightly" represents Him.

2. What other characteristics of Jesus should we emulate in our witnessing?3. Christ Ambassadors Regard No One from a Worldly Point of View.

Christians must think eternally.

C. S. LEWIS, FROM THE WEIGHT OF GLORY – The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back... It is a serious thing... to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people.”

Questions:1. Do you agree that we “all day long, in some degree, are helping each other to one or other of these destinations?” How?2. Why is it difficult to maintain an “eternal perspective”?

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AMBASSADORS ARE NEW CREATIONS IN CHRIST (verse 17)The old has gone, the new has come!

YOU HAVE A STORY (YOUR TESTIMONY)… tell what Jesus has done for you.

Be able to tell your story of giving your life to Jesus in about three to five minutes. Include:1. What your life was like without Jesus2. How you came to be introduced to Him3. What you specifically said and did to turn your life over to Him4. The changes that have transpired since your decision

They provide relational bridges, common ground with unbelievers. share appropriately what Jesus has done.

Questions:1. Why are Personal Testimonies so powerful?

AMBASSADORS COMMIT TO MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION (verse 19) Read 2 Tim 2:15We need to know the Gospel Story (Good News) -You can’t share what you don’t know.

Questions:1. Have you ever been in a situation when you wished you knew more scripture?2. Why would Paul call it shameful to “mishandle” the Word of Truth?

AMBASSADORS ARE THEREFORE CHRIST'S AMBASSADORS Winkie Pratney :

You do not have to learn to be a witness. You already are a witness! You are a witness to whatever or whoever is foremost in your life. You are telling the world right now what god you really belong to. Every day you are witnessing. What are you witnessing to? Your witness is the total package of your attitudes, character, and actions. It does not lie. No careful observer is fooled. What are you witnessing to? Whatever your god is, you will show the most interest in. If it is anything but Jesus, your closest friends already know. It will be the thing you like to talk most about, read most about, center your life on, love and live for...

If you call yourself a Christian, you have already been witnessing - for or against Him. If you have claimed to belong to Him, but your life does not back up your words, men and women have rejected Christ and the Gospel because of you. ... I know of no Bible plan that will enable you to present Christ to others without your own life being Christ-like. If you would be His witness, you must really KNOW Him to show Him.

Questions:1. Are there any people in your life who may have gotten the “wrong picture”

from you?

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2. What practical things can you do this week to be a better Ambassador for Him? Hold them accountable here – ask for real names, then pray for them together, and follow-up.

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Holy Spirit Article:

Power With GodBy: Winkie Pratney ALL AGREE… POWER NEEDEDEven a cursory reading of revival history is convincing. Among all God's servants that have deeply affected their generations there is a harmony of deeper experience with Him. Terms used to describe this power have been as different as their denominations, conversion experiences and education; but the experience itself has always been essentially the same. As there is practical agreement among evangelical Christians with regard to the way of salvation, so there is a practical agreement among those who believe in a deeper Christian experience than conversion. In a court of law, testimonials are rejected if all testifying give the same evidence in the same words and manner; it would prove there had been collusion among the witnesses. But if each witness uses his own words and way of presentation, yet their testimony agrees in essential facts, the evidence is convincing. And the evidence of history is this; no man or woman has ever been used of God until they had first discovered the secret of power with God.

Christians have called this experience by many different names. Men like D.L. Moody, R.A. Torrey, C.G. Finney, William Booth, Andrew Murray, George Witfield, A.B. Simpson and others have called it "the baptism of the Holy Spirit"; others, like G. Cambell Morgan, Robert Murray McCheynes, Praying Hyde and C.H. Spurgeon have preferred "the filling with the Holy Spirit". Some have called it "empowering", others "the anointing of God"; but the question is not "Can you name it?" but - "Do you HAVE it?" Billy Graham, in his message "How to be Filled with the Spirit" put it this way:

The very fact that we believe one thing and some of us another does not do away with the fact that GOD says -" Be filled with the Spirit". I believe that is the greatest need of the church of Jesus Christ today. Everywhere I go, I find God's people lack something: God's people are hungry for something. Many of us say that our Christian experience is not all that we expected. We have oft-recurring defeat in our lives, and as a result across the country from coast to coast there are hundreds of Christian people hungry for something we do not have. …I am persuaded that our desperate need tonight is not a new organization, a new movement - or even a new method. We have enough of these. I believe the greatest need tonight is that men and women who profess the Name of Jesus Christ be filled with the Spirit! We are trying to do the work of God without supernatural power. It cannot be done! When God told us to go and preach the Gospel to "every creature: and to evangelize the world, He provided supernatural power for us. That power is given to us by the Holy Spirit. It is more powerful than atomic power…It is more potent than any explosive made by man. Do you know anything of the power of the Holy Spirit? (Greater L.A. Crusade, 1949)

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This enduement of power is NOT the receiving of the Holy Spirit in salvation. When a man is truly born again his conversion is dependent on and effected by the Holy Spirit in response to his repentance and committal to Christ. (John 3:5-6; 7:37-39; 14:16-17; 20:21-22; Rom 5:5; 8:9-16; I Cor 2:10-12; 3:16; 6:19; 12:3; 2 Cor 1:21-22; 5:5; 6:16; Gal 3:2; 4:6; 5:25; Eph 1:13-14; 2 Tim 1:14; I Jn 2:27; 3:24; 4:13) But this conversion To Christ is not to be confused with a consecration to the great work of world evangelism and the enduement of power to carry out this task.

R.A. Torrey, world-renowned evangelist and Bible teacher of the last century, explained it this way:

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a definite experience of which one may and ought to know whether he has received it or not…the baptism of the Holy Spirit is an operation of the Holy Spirit distinct from, subsequent and additional to His regenerating work. In regeneration there is an impartation of life, and the one who receives it is saved; in the baptism of the Holy Spirit there is an impartation of power and the one who receives it is fitted for service. ("What the Bible Teaches”)

The word "baptism" used by Torrey here is a symbolic term in scripture that signifies (1) Complete exposure and cleansing from all sin, and (2) an overwhelming sense of God’s presence and power to energize for Christian service. By following the example of the Lord Jesus in water baptism, many Christians understand this symbol in the first sense (Rom 6:3-11; I Cor 12:13; Eph 2:1-7; Col. 2:10-12) but have never known it experimentally in the second sense - a clothing of energy for Christian service. Without this sense of covering, surrounding and energizing of the Holy Spirit, Christian work and witness is fruitless, joyless and practically impossible.

In CONVERSION, the soul is drawn by the Holy Spirit (Prov 1:23; Jn 16:7-11) God's own Agency of salvation. The Bible reveals that the Holy Spirit, Himself God, is a Divine Person Who carries out the executive work of the Godhead. (Matt 28:19; Is 11:2; Jn 14:26; John 15: 26; Acts 8:29, 39; 10:19; 13;:2; 15:28; 16:7; Rom 8:9; I Cor 12:11; 2 Cor 13:14) This conversion experience is a personal transaction between the soul and the Lord Jesus relating to its own salvation. To accomplish this, the Holy Spirit first convicts of sin - (Gen. 6:3; Ps 51:12;, 13; Mic 3:8; Zech 12:10; Jn 16:8-11; Acts 2:37) - then points the convicted sinner to Jesus, magnifying Him and making His sacrificial death real to the penitent. In salvation, the soul yields up its doubts, rebellion, self-righteousness and its pride; it accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, trusts Him and supremely loves Him. The sinner's pride is humbled; his selfish purpose of life is finished; he is cleansed and all his guilty past is forgiven. The Holy Spirit enters his life (Rom 8:9, 11; I Cor 3:16; Eph 3:17; 2 Tim 1:14; Jas. 4:5) there to abide in settled union (Jn 14:17; I Jn 2:27; 3:24) and baptizes him into the Body of Christ, the Church. (I Cor 12:13)

The disciples had already been saved before the day of Pentecost. (Luke 10:20; Jn 15:3, 15-16; 17:6-9) The resurrected Christ had breathed (emphusao - breathing of impartation) on them (John 20: 20-22) and said

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"Receive ye - (2nd Aorist Imperative - when spoken by one in authority, command is obeyed immediately) - the Holy Ghost". They had already utterly renounced any idea of living for themselves and devoted their lives to the reaching of a world. The Lord Jesus had commissioned them to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:19, marg.) But they still lacked the promised power to fulfill their task! The Lord's last promise to them was "You shall receive POWER after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you…and you shall be witnesses unto Me."(Acts 1:8) They were told to wait until they were endued with power "from on high" before commencing their work. (Luke 24:29) They had met the Lord; they knew Him as Savior; but they did not have the power of the Holy Spirit to do His work. (Cf. Samaritan Christians; Acts 8:14-17; believed and were baptized already, but not empowered; Paul: Acts 9:17 ("brother")

THE PURPOSE OF POWER The 120 gathered expectantly in the Upper room on the day of Pentecost knew what they were waiting for. This energizing experience was to be an overwhelming sense of God’s Presence. It was to mean even more to them in terms of intimate, loving communion with God than the physical Presence of Jesus had meant on earth. Then, He had been WITH them; now by this anointing of the Holy Sprit He would seem not only back with them, but also welling up inside them and all around them! They were to be utterly flooded in the sense of his closeness and power. They had already been given one "power" - that of legal right or authority, to become the sons of God (John 1:12). Now they were to have "dunamis" (Greek) power - strength, might, energy, explosive enabling power - to act, think and LIVE like their Lord with the outpouring energy of Heaven! (Luke 24:49; Rom 15:13; I Cor 2:4; I Thess 1:5)

In this empowering, the soul is introduced BY the Lord Jesus TO the Holy Spirit. The role of Christ and the Spirit are thus reversed from that of salvation. The Holy Spirit has introduced the soul to Christ; now Christ makes the indwelling Presence of His Spirit real to the believer. The climax of this energizing process is the flooding up of God's reality in the soul like a fountain, until the believer is utterly immersed in His power and love. Once initially understood and experienced, this is to be the continuous experience of each believer - deeper and deeper baptisms or fillings with the Holy Spirit as we look to Him in faith for delivering and transforming power. (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 6:3; 5:8; 7:55; 9:17; 11:24; 13:9; 13:52; Eph 3:18; 5:18; I Jn 1:4)

SYMBOLS and emblems of the Holy Spirit used in Scripture describe the results of a Spirit-filled life. WATER is an emblem; (Ex 17:6; Jn 7:38-39) it cleanses, fertilizes and refreshes; it is abundant and freely given. So the Holy Spirit cleanses, brings life, revives and refreshes the soul - He too, was fully and freely given when the risen Christ was glorified. FIRE is an emblem (Acts 2:3; Luke 3:16) Fire purifies, illumines and searches. The Holy Spirit accomplishes what we cannot do ourselves; He searches our hearts, illumines and purifies us. The WIND is a third emblem (John 3:8; Acts 2:2) - it is independent, felt in its effect, powerful and reviving. God the Holy Spirit is independent in His operation - He is not controlled by anyone! He moves with

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power, His presence is felt and how He revives the work of Christ when He comes to the dropping members of the church! The DOVE (Jn 1:32) teaches us the work of the Spirit in making us gentle, innocent and loving; the VOICE of the Spirit His teaching, guiding and warning ministry, the SEAL, His work to impress, secure and make us Christ's own.

RECEIVING POWER The Holy Spirit is the gift of the Risen Christ. His anointing filling, empowering work is a baptism of love that gives power to make Jesus real to you and known to others. The most impressive evidence of this power is the abilit to make the things of God real; a man filled with the Spirit of God becomes deeply, intensely believable. The Holy Spirit works to impress the heart and seal the preached word of God with conviction. When an empowered man speaks or prays, his words strike fire. His words stick in the heart like darts of love. Now, how is it with you, beloved " Have you obeyed God's command to be filled with the Spirit? His gift is offered to every child of God who is willing to simply meet these conditions:

HONESTY - Do you really WANT God's power? God will not give His gifts for self glory (to make you a "great" man or woman or to "build up your church" etc.) He will not grant His power so that selfish pride may be exalted. (Acts 8:18-24; Jas. 4:3) He does not empower to free from trouble, to make you happy or even to make you holy, although of course these often follow a Spirit filled life. He fills only for His glory, and that must be your motive.

CLEANLINESS - Are you in dead earnest to be used of God? William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army and man of God said - "Before we go on our knees to receive the baptism of fire, let me beg of you to see to it that your souls are in harmony with the will and the purpose of the Holy Spirit. See to it that the channel of communication by which the Holy Spirit must be received is kept open. It is no use praying, singing, or even believing if there still is something you are holding back or even refusing to do. Out with it; give it not rest; give it up. Destroy your idols and stoppages with an everlasting destruction. Let there be free communication between you and God. Let all go and you shall be flooded before you rise from your knees…the world shall feel the power of it, and God shall have all the glory."(Salvation Soldiery”)

The GIFT of the Holy Spirit is neither earned nor deserved. He is not given on the basis of "special attainment" in holiness with God. The gift of the Holy Spirit is primarily for POWER; a man who receives this empowering has no more Christian character immediately after his experience than he had before. The fullness of the Spirit is a SOURCE of help to BUILD a Christian character, and is certainly not given BECAUSE of a high degree of consecration to Christ. Therefore, He is to be invited to energize only on the basis of the clear promises of God, and with the condition that all obvious sin is forsaken. (Gal 3:2) Scripture shows that God is more than willing to give the Holy Spirit to His children and longs to do so. You do not have to beg and plead with your heavenly Father to obtain this promised power, the very fact that He not only promises but commands us to be filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18) is the highest possible evidence that we can receive it. For God to

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command is equivalent to a certainty that we can obtain, for He does not command unless we have power to obey. Once the dams of conscious hindrances are swept away, you may not even have to ask God to fill you. In fact, you will probably not be able to keep Him from doing so!

OBEDIENCE - When you have dealt with all obstacles, you must receive by faith from the hand of God. There is nothing to be afraid of in receiving God's power. The Lord Jesus said - "If you, being evil know how to give GOOD gifts to your children. HOW MUCH MORE shall your Father which is in heaven give the Holy spirit to them that ask Him? (Lk 11:13) If you come as a little child in love to your Father, do you think He will give you something to harm or frighten you? (Luke 11:11-12) Don’t you think you can trust GOD to keep you from excess and extravagance? The Holy Spirit's power is a LOVE gift for every child of God. You need not be afraid to fully open your life to His love. If there is something you are not willing to have happen, some personal point of pride you hold, or some right you don't think God need ask you to surrender, be sure that VERY THING will be the reason why you still have no power with God or man. Obedience is better than sacrifice. (I Sam 15:22)

Now dare you do it? If you are willing and obedient, God will meet you! Don't try to copy another experience; get yours from God and you will know it is real. Accept His gift and trust Him NOW for power. Let the sense of His love well up in your heart until it floods and fills you with praise. He may come quietly as a river or mightily like a flood; but you shall know it has happened and you will never be the same again. Go now, as a little child: let Him make your life a miracle!

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XAi/ Missions Article I:

Who CaresBy: General William Booth On one of my recent journeys, as I gazed from the coach window I was led into a train of thought concerning the conditions of the multitudes around me. They were living carelessly in the most open and shameless rebellion against God, without a thought for their eternal welfare. As I looked out the window, I seemed to see them all... millions of people all around me given up to their drink and their pleasure, their dancing and their music, their business and their anxieties, their politics and their troubles. Ignorant-willfully ignorant in many cases - and in other instances knowing all about the truth and not caring at all. But all of them, the whole mass of them, sweeping on and up in their blasphemies and devilries to the throne of God. While my mind was thus engaged, I had a vision.

I saw a dark and stormy ocean. Over it the black clouds hung heavily; through them every now and then vivid lightning flashed and loud thunder rolled, while the winds moaned, and the waves rose and foamed, towered and broke, only to rise and foam, tower and break again.

In that ocean I thought I saw myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating; shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning; and as they cursed and screamed, they rose and shrieked again, and then some sank to rise no more.

And I saw out of this dark, angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with its summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this rock I saw a vast platform. Onto this platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling, drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean. And I saw that a few of those who were already safe on the platform were helping the poor creatures still in the angry waters to reach the place of safety.

On looking more closely, I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats, and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of this sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of all the consequences, in their passion to "rescue the perishing." And I hardly know which gladdened me most-the sight of the poor drowning people climbing onto the rocks, reaching the place of safety, or the devotion and self-sacrifice of those whose whole beings were wrapped up in the effort for their deliverance.

As I looked on, I saw that the occupants of that platform were quite a mixed company. That is, they were divided into different "sets" or classes, and they occupied themselves with different pleasures and employment. But only a

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very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.

But what puzzled me most was the fact that though all of them had been rescued at one time or another from the ocean, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten all about it. Anyway, it seemed the memory of its darkness and danger no longer troubled them at all. And what seemed equally strange and perplexing to me was that these people did not even seem to have any care - that is any agonizing care - about the poor perishing ones who were struggling and drowning right before their very eyes… many of whom were their own husbands and wives, brothers, and sisters, and even their own children.

Now this astonishing unconcern could not have been the result of ignorance or lack of knowledge, because they lived right there in full sight of it all and even talked about it sometimes. Many even went regularly to hear lectures and sermons in which the awful state of these people drowning creatures was described.

I have already said that the occupants of this platform were engaged in different pursuits and pastimes. Some of them were absorbed night and day in trading and business In order to make gain, storing up their savings in boxes, safes, and the like.

Many spent their time in amusing themselves with growing flowers on the side of the rock, others in painting pieces of cloth or in playing music or in dressing themselves up in different styles and walking about to be admired. Some occupy themselves chiefly in eating and drinking, others were taken up with arguing about the poor drowning creatures that had already been rescued.

But the thing to me that seemed the most amazing was that those on the platform to whom He called, who heard His voice and felt they ought to obey it at least they said they did those who confessed to love Him much and were in full sympathy with Him in the task He had undertaken - who worshipped Him or who professed to do so - were so taken up with their trades and professions, their money saving and pleasures, their families and circles, their religions and arguments about it, and their preparation for going to the mainland, that they did not listen to the cry that came to them from this Wonderful Being who had Himself gone down into the sea. Anyway, if they heard it they did not heed it. They did not care. And so the multitude went on right before them struggling and shrieking and drowning in the darkness.

And then I saw something that seemed to me even more strange than anything that had gone on before in this strange vision. I saw that some Of these people on the platform whom this Wonderful Being had called to, wanting them to come and help Him in His difficult task of saving these perishing creatures, were always praying and crying out to Him to come to them.

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Some wanted Him to come and stay with them and spend His time and strength in making them happier. Others wanted Him to come and take away various doubts and misgivings they had concerning the truth of some letters, which He had written them. Some wanted Him to come and make them feel more secure on the rock-so secure that they would be quite sure that they should never slip off again into the ocean. Numbers of others wanted Him to make them feel quite certain that they would really get off the rock and onto the mainland someday; because as a matter of fact, it was well known that some had walked so carelessly as to lose their footing, and had fallen back again, into the stormy waters.

So these people used to meet and get up as high on the rock as they could, and looking toward the mainland (where they thought the Great Being was) they would cry out, "Come to us! Come, help us!" And all the while He was down (by His Spirit) among the poor struggling, drowning creatures in the angry deep, with His arms around them trying to drag them out, and looking up oh! So longingly, but all in vain to those on the rock, crying to them with His voice all hoarse from calling, "Come to Me! Come, and help Me!"

And then I understood it all. It was plain enough. That sea was the ocean of life-the sea of real, actual human existence. That lightning was the gleaming of piercing truth coming from Jehovah's throne. That thunder was the distant echoing of the wrath of God. Those multitudes of people shrieking, struggling, and agonizing in the stormy sea, were the thousands and thousands of poor harlots and harlot-makers, of drunkards and drunkard-makers, of thieves, liars, blasphemers, and ungodly people of every kindred, tongue, and nation.

Oh, what a black sea it was! And oh, what multitudes of rich and poor, ignorant and educated were there. They were all so unalike in their outward circumstances and conditions, yet all alike in one thing all sinners before God all held by, and holding onto, some iniquity, fascinated by some idol, the slaves of some devilish lust, and ruled by the foul fiend from the bottomless pit! "All alike in one thing?" No, all alike in two things not only the same in their wickedness but, unless rescued, the same in their sinking, sinking... down, down, down... to the same terrible doom. That great sheltering rock represented Calvary, the place where Jesus had died for them. And the people on it were those who had been rescued. The way they used their energies, gifts, and time represented the occupations and amusements of those who professed to be saved from sin and hell followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. The handful of fierce, determined ones, who were risking their own lives in saving the perishing, were true soldiers of the cross of Jesus. That Mighty Being who was calling to them from the midst of the angry waters was the Son of God, "the same yesterday, today, and forever," who is still struggling and interceding to save the dying multitudes about us from this terrible doom of damnation, and whose voice can be heard above the music, machinery, and noise of life calling on the rescued to come and help Him save the world.

My friends in Christ, you are rescued from the waters; you are on the rock. He is in the dark sea calling on you to come to Him and help Him. Will you go?

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Look for yourselves. The surging sea of life crowded with perishing multitudes rolls up to the very spot on which you stand. Leaving the vision, I now come to speak of the fact a fact that is as real as the Bible, as real as the Christ who hung upon the cross, as real as the judgment day will be, and as real as the heaven and hell that will follow it.

Look! Don't be deceived by appearances men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea! Look at them from the standpoint of the great white throne, and what a sight you have! Jesus Christ, the Son of God is, through His Spirit, in the midst of this dying multitude, struggling to save them. And He is calling on you to jump into the sea to go right away to His side and help Him in the holy strife. Will you jump? That is, will you go to His feet and place yourself absolutely at His disposal?

A young Christian once came to me and told me that for some time she had been giving the Lord her profession and prayers and money, but now she wanted to give Him her life. She wanted to go right into the fight. In other words, she wanted to go to His assistance in the sea. As when a man from the shore seeing another struggling in the water, takes off those outer garments that would hinder his efforts, and leaps to the rescue so will you who still linger on the bank, thinking and singing and praying about the poor perishing souls, lay aside your shame, your pride, your cares about other people's opinions, your love of ease and all the selfish loves that have kept you back for so long, and rush to the rescue of this multitude of dying men and women?

Does the surging sea look dark and dangerous? Unquestionably it is so. There is no doubt that the leap for you, as for everyone who takes it, means difficulty and scorn and suffering. For you it may mean more than this. It may mean death. He who beckons you from the sea however, knows what it will mean and knowing, He still calls to you and bids you come.

You must do it! You cannot hold back. You have enjoyed yourself in Christianity long enough. You have had pleasant feelings, pleasant songs, pleasant meetings, and pleasant prospects. There has been much of human happiness, much clapping of hands and shouting of praises, very much of heaven on earth.

Now then, go to God and tell Him you are prepared as much as necessary to turn your back upon it all, and that you are willing to spend the rest of your days struggling in the midst of these perishing multitudes, whatever it may cost you.

You must do it. With the light that is now broken in upon your mind, and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your heaven in going into the very jaws of hell to rescue them.

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Now, what will you do?

http://www.thetravelingteam.org/2000/articles/wc.shtml

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XAi/ Missions Article II:

Why You Should Go To The Mission FieldBy: Keith Green I recently returned from visiting some overseas missionary bases, and I must say that since returning, my life has not been quite the same. The vision and goals of our ministry have suddenly changed. The Lord definitely did something to my heart on that trip. Besides showing me how small my vision had been, He began to give me a great burden to see the ranks of His army in the field swell! One of the greatest things God opened my eyes to was how tremendously evangelized my own country was, while the rest of the world was barely being reached. As I traveled from country to country, I thought of the millions of people I was passing through who needed to have the Gospel of Jesus shown to them in a real way - and yet there was hardly anyone there to reach them.

As I visited each mission base, I spoke with different missionaries, and picked up various pieces of literature that told the story of what was being done in different parts of the world to expand the Kingdom of God. As I read the statistics, I was shocked - I really had never known how little the need was being met!

When I returned home, I got hold of some of the leaders of different missionary organizations and set up some meetings to find out more about what was being done to fill the need. After these meetings, I decided to do a study of God's Word (to see what He had to say about reaching the lost in other countries), and I also read through some more of the missions literature I had been given. This article is the result of that study, and also a burning desire in my heart to see 100,000 young people released to the mission field over the next five years!

So...why should you go to the mission field?

1) Because Jesus has told you to go."Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15) With these words, Jesus made it clear exactly what His disciples were to do - they were to spread His teachings in His name, preaching salvation unto the ends of the earth. (Rom. 10:18) If you consider yourself a "believer", then you must consider yourself a "disciple" of Jesus - no less called and chosen than the very first 12 apostles. There are no such things as "1st class" Christians and “2nd class" Christians - every believer is called to spread the Good News about Jesus to those who have not yet heard. Jesus' command is definite and clear - it is His great mandate, His "Great Commission" to the soldiers in His holy army. We must go, because our great General has commanded us to go.

2) You should go because the need is so great.

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"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest." (Matt. 9:37-38) Ever since Jesus first spoke these compassionate words, the supply of workers in the fields of soul-harvest has always been horribly low. But today the need is the greatest it has ever been in the history of mankind. Remember, Hell is not just for the weekend! More people are alive today, and more souls are at stake, than the total number of people who have ever lived on the face of the earth in all of human history! This simply means that we can populate either Heaven or Hell by our obedience or our laziness. There are over 2,700,000,000 people who have never heard the Gospel at all, and there are only 5,000 to 7,000 missionaries worldwide, working directly with these totally unreached groups of people. That means there is approximately one missionary for every 450,000 of these people! There are over 16,000 different and distinct cultures and peoplegroups - even whole countries, where not one single church is in existence. There are 7,010 distinct living languages, and 5,199 of them still have no Bible or Scripture translations available in their own language! Do these figures move you at all? Does it matter to you that an estimated 80,000 unsaved people die every day (approximately 3,333 every hour...55 people every single minute!) to face the judgment seat of Christ?

3) You should go because so few Christians are obeying the call, making the need even greater! "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ...how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:17,14) Right now worldwide there are only 85,000 workers on the mission field - working mainly among those who have heard the gospel before. This figure includes missionaries from all over the world of every nationality. When you compare this number with the amount of Americans selling Avon or Amway products, it is staggering. Just in America alone there are 435,000 Avon sales-people (with 1,280,000 worldwide), and over 750,000 Amway products distributors, (with over a million worldwide)! Do you realize that these two companies combined have 14 times more representatives in the United States alone than the Church of Jesus Christ has in the whole world outside of America?

And what about the Christian representatives we do have in the world? Only 9% of the world's population speaks English, and yet 94% of all ordained preachers in the whole world minister to the 9% who speak English. And 96% of all Christian finances are spent in the United States on 6% of the world's population. Only 4% of all Christian money is spent on missionary efforts to reach the other 94% of the world's population! There are over 1,000,000 full-time Christian workers in the United States; while one half of the world's population (3 major groups - Muslim, Hindu, and Chinese), 2,200,000,000 people, have only 2,417 full-time Christian workers. As you can see by these figures, something is definitely wrong. While we in America have approximately one worker for every 230 people - those who have never heard the Gospel even once have one worker for every 450,000 souls! Please forgive us, Jesus, for being too timid to obey You and reach out into all the world like You have commanded us to!

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4) You should go because God gives special anointing and grace to those who leave their own land, people, and culture to do God's will and spread the Gospel. "And the Lord said to Abram, 'Go forth from your country and from your relatives, and from your father's house...and I will bless you and make your name great; and so you shall also be a blessing; and I will bless those that bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" (Genesis 12:1-3)

Abram (later to be renamed Abraham by God) is only one of the many people in the Bible who God used mightily only after he left his own people, his own land, and his own culture. Look at the travels and ministries of people like Jacob and Moses - both of whom had to go into other lands to learn from God and be used by Him.

No matter where you look in the Bible, God always gave a great anointing and blessing to those who served Him in a foreign land. Look at Joseph and Daniel. They were the only two men in the Bible who God raised up as successful, secular officials in foreign and heathen cultures - and they remained faithful witnesses and servants of God to the very end, and often at the risk of their very lives! What about Jonah? He was a good example of someone who didn't want to go to the mission field and preach to heathens! Stubborn, rebellious, and selfish - and yet God "made him an offer he couldn't refuse." (I pray that God would freely move like that in all our lives, "helping" us to make the right decisions about going.)

And then there's the apostle Paul - who had such a burden for his own people and country, Israel. Oh , how he would have loved a ministry among the Jews! But what did God say? "Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles." (Acts 22:21) That's what God commanded, and "go" he did. Never was there a missionary like Paul. Take a look at II Corinthians 11 if you'd like to see a list of his qualifications: beatings, imprisonments, stonings, mobs, shipwrecks, the list goes on and on - and so did Paul, obeying his Master who bought him.

From Noah to Abraham, from Moses to Jonah, from Daniel to Paul, God hasalways given special blessing to those who, leaving the comforts of home and relatives, cross the boundaries of their little worlds to bring God's message and blessing to the nations. Remember Jesus' words about this subject, "A prophet is not without honor except in his home town, "(Matt. 13:57)

5) You should go because America (and some other western nations) is literally drenched with the Gospel, while most other countries and cultures of the world do not have any continual, relevant witness at all. "And thus I aspired to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man's foundation; but as it is written, 'They that had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand.'" (Rom. 15:20-21)

It is so true that we here in America are continually bombarded with Christian witness and ministry. Almost at every turn there's a billboard or a bumper

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sticker proclaiming something about Jesus. Turn the dial on your radio at any time of the day or night, and you've got non-stop preaching. There are several Christian satellite and cable networks. And there are over 250 different Christian magazines and publications. In most cities there's a church on almost every corner. I am not trying to say that this is all bad - a lot of it is good, winning many souls to Jesus - but as I've traveled overseas, it is hard for me to believe that it is God's will for there to be so much Gospel preaching and literature available here, while there is comparatively little or even none in many places outside of this country.

The world is going to Hell on every continent! Is it God's fault that so few arehearing the gospel - or is it the Church's? Aren't we who love Jesus accountable to reach our generation with the gospel? A friend of mine has written, “this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of sinners." If this is true, then each of us must take a good, long look at our lives and priorities - finding out where God would have us begin to get ready to go!

6) You should go because, as Oswald J. Smith said, "No one has the right to hear the Gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.”"But if our Gospel be hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, that they might not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (II Cor. 4:3-4)

Has it occurred to you that Jesus wants every creature to hear the Gospel? If you had 20 children to feed and plenty of food to feed them all with, do you think it would be right to give 3 of the children 10 meals, 7 children only 1 meal, and the remaining nothing - causing them to die of starvation? That's exactly what we’re doing with the Gospel in the world today!

Because we believers are so deaf to God's call to go into all nations, we keepmost of God's resources to ourselves! We keep feeding and reaching the same people over and over again. I am not saying there should be no Gospel preached in America, I am saying that there needs to be a spreading out of the soldiers of God, to fight the enemy where his greatest strongholds are - "where Christ is not already named”!

7) You should go because the time is short. More and more countries are closing their doors to missionaries and the Gospel, and we must go now."We must work the works of Him who sent me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work." (John 9:4)

I constantly hear of country after country where missionaries used to bewelcome, but now the doors are closed to them entering. Though it is true that many Christians can still go to be subtle witnesses as doctors, teachers, engineers, etc., the Gospel can no longer be openly preached in many lands. Although there are still vast areas of the world wide open for foreign evangelism, such as western Europe, parts of Asia, and most of the Pacific

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(Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc.) there are many other countries where it is illegal to hold a street meeting or pass out Gospel literature. We need to sense the urgency of this hour, and obey God by reaching out to those lost in the darkness "while it is still day.”

8) You should go because the Holy Spirit is speaking to Christian leadership all over the world that it is God's desire for there to be a great final missionary thrust with the Gospel before the end of the age.

It is His desire that every people should have the Gospel preached to them, and that the Gospel should be published in every nation and in every language. And unless YOU get involved personally, there is no hope of that ever happening in our generation!

"...And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea andSamaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (Acts 1:8) "And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come. " ( Matt. 24:14) "The Lord is…patient toward you, not wishing for you to perish but for all to come to repentance." ( II Peter 3:9)

Is there any doubt in your mind that God wants everyone to be saved? If you believe this, and you really love Jesus, then WHY are you so timid about getting involved in this great thrust to bring the Gospel to all the nations? Do you think that while you're reading this, God isn't grieved that His Church is being so lazy and disobedient about fulfilling his commission? He knows that you agree with the Scriptures, and He's listening to every excuse you're turning over in your mind like, "Yes, I know that more people need to go...but He just couldn't mean ME! I'm...just not the 'missionary-type'..."

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Bible I & II Article 1:

The Bible Is Full Of Mistakes: By: Winkie Pratney The Bible is full of mistakes…

-The first mistake was when Eve doubted the Word of God -The second happened when her husband did, too -And mistake after mistake is still being made because people insist on doubting God's Word

The Bible is full of contradictions…-It contradicts pride and prejudice-It contradicts lust and lawlessness -It contradicts sin, yours and mind

The Bible is filled with failures…-Because it is the record of people who failed many times!-There was Adam -There was Cain -There was Moses -There was David and many, many others -But it is also the record of God's never-failing love

God did not write the Bible…-For people who want to play games with words -For those who like to examine good without doing it -For the man who does not believe because he does not want to

Modern man has discarded the teachings of theBible…

-For the same reasons other men have discarded it throughout history… -Woeful ignorance as to its true message and content -Determined apathy in refusing to consider its claims -Parroted pseudo-scholarship posing as honest criticism-Secret conviction that this Book is right and men are wrong

It is clear that only an ignoramus or prejudicedperson would believe it…

-Teaches outmoded, irrational, unreasonable and archaic principles -Is filled with hopeless discrepancies and unacceptable statements -Could only be the undirected, irrelevant, uninspired and unaided work of mere men

The Bible is, after all, only just another religious book…-For thousands who do not dare be honest with themselves and God -For those who are afraid to accept God's challenge to an honest examination

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-For those unwilling to look, in case it tells them what they are really like inside

And you cannot understand or trust what the Bible says -Unless you are willing to consider the evidence and face up to the Author… -Make no "mistake" about it—the Bible is here to stay!

The Bible is a Book from God, about GodThe Bible is a Book from God, about God—the story of His love for man. Itscentral figure is Jesus Christ, God robed in humanity; the record of His origin, birth, life, death, and resurrection. Its message is stranger than fiction—that the God who spun the worlds in space once visited earth to provide a way to heaven, and that man may share a new Kingdom in His very own family. The Bible is no ordinary Book—it is strangely different, because men who listened to the voice of God wrote it. The words they penned were more than human. They live like fire to each new generation, fresh as wind and pure as rain.

It is not a book of history although its records have been accurately substantiated by modern archaeology. It is not a book of poetry although it has been the inspiration of countless songs and poems throughout the centuries. It is not an adventure story, although few novels have matched its sheer drama. It is not a book of ethics or morality, although civilization's finest and fairest laws have been forged from its principles. It is not a textbook, but it still astonishes scientists and scholars from fields as widely varying as genetics, geology and nuclear physics. The Bible is a unique record of man's problem, and God's answer—the Good News of salvation from sin through Jesus.

"What a man has produced, man can exhaust… we have outgrown every other book that belongs to the past, but instead of outgrowing the Bible we have not yet grown up to it. The Bible is not only up-to-date, but it is always ahead of date." (C. A. Benham) Centuries of study by the most able scholars have not begun to exhaust its riches. The most profound study has only revealed unfathomable depths of wisdom. Mark Twain said, "Its' not the things I don’t understand in the Bible that bother me; its the things I do understand!" These accurate insights expose the real reason most people are afraid to study the Scriptures; they are afraid they may meet the Author, and they know that they are not ready to do so. For many people, objective evidence as to the authenticity of Scripture is almost useless. Their atheism or skepticism is merely a convenient excuse for moral cowardice and willful blindness. Such a rejection of the Word of God does not stem from lack of evidence, but from lack of honesty, integrity and moral purity. There is much evidence to examine that you may honestly believe— but do you want to?

Those "contradictions"…

Before you read any further, know this— knowledge = responsibility! Dare you read on?

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…are largely myth. Few people who criticize Scripture actually know what it says. Even fewer have the necessary qualifications to pass any accurate, objective verdict on its message. Most have never really read it at all, and their assertions of "mistakes" or "contradictions," are largely hearsay. Any man or woman who will give an intelligent opinion or conclusion on the Bible should first spend enough time in personal, intensive research to see what it actually says. Simple, but honest, investigation will harmonize the majority of the apparent discrepancies of shallow reading.

The Bible does not attempt to defend its claim to Divine inspiration—it simply states it. The writers of Scripture continuously claim their message was not human opinion, but divine revelation. Genesis opens with the words, "And God said," nine times in the first chapter. The statement, "…saith the Lord," appears 23 times in the last Old Testament book, Malachi. "The Lord saith," appears 560 times in the first five books of the Bible alone. Isaiah claims at least 40 times that his message was from God, as do Ezekiel and Jeremiah, 60 and 100 times respectively. At least 3,800 times in Scripture, writers declared their message to be divine in origin.

The Lord Jesus quoted from at least 24 Old Testament books. He referred toDaniel 22 times, Isaiah 40 times, the Pentateuch 60 times, as well as the Psalms, never implying that the events or people recorded there were mere fables or folklore. In Luke 24:24-27, Christ claimed Himself to be the subject of prophecy all through the Old Testament. Many times He stated that all things in Scripture must be fulfilled. (Matt. 13:4; Luke 21:22; John 13:18; 15:25; 17:12) He claimed His own words were inspired, (Mark, 13:31; Jn. 6:63; 8:4 2-47; 12:46-50), and that, "the Scripture cannot be broken." (John 10:35) His own claims to divine origin and the claims of the Bible stand or fall together. If He cannot be proved a liar or a lunatic, the Bible is God's Word.

The New Testament writers who walked and talked with Christ likewise claimed divine inspiration. Paul declared that his message came from God, in God’s power, (I Cor. 2; Gal. 1:11-17), and Peter says Paul wrote by, "wisdom given to him." (2. Pet. 3:15-16) There are at least 600 Old Testament quotations and references in the New Testament, interlacing and interlocking the two Testaments as one united whole. The Bible's own account of its inspiration and preservation is: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God… no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation; for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21)

The Bible is a Book written for careful, intelligent people. It will bear the closest examination by anyone. Honest scholarship by saint and skeptic alike has always resulted in overwhelming evidence of its authenticity. The Bible does not require blind faith, but it does ask complete honesty on the part of the critic. Thorough the study of its claims, origin, historical records, and fulfilled prophecy, as well as careful consideration of every challenge and charge of its critics, enough convincing evidence will be amassed for even the most cautious of scholars.

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1. ITS SURVIVALWhy has the Bible survived century after century of determined persecution? No other ancient book has such a vast number of surviving copies; there arethousands of Old and New Testament manuscripts. Variations between these are minor and insignificant and great care must have been taken in copying them. It is said that Jewish scribes would use a new pen each time they came to the word "LORD" and at that point they carefully compared everything they had written so far, with the original. Men in every century have been killed for owning copies. Each era brings a renewed attempt to stamp it out, but history shows it has been impossible to destroy the Scriptures. Voltaire said, "In one hundred years, this book will be forgotten." Voltaire is forgotten. One hundred years exactly after his boast, his house was being used as the headquarters for the Geneva Bible Society. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth may pass away, but My Word will never pass away." (Matt. 24:35) God's Word is "quick" or living. (Heb. 4:12) It has stood the test of scholarship, centuries, and the trials of all enemies.

2. ITS STRUCTURETake about 40 different writers, over a period of about 1,500. Use men from many walks of life—doctors, shepherds, kings, and fishermen. Pick them from miles and generations apart. Give them little or no chance to communicate. Cut off most of them from the church organizations of their day. Ask them to write on religion, poetry, health, ethics, science, morality, and philosophy. Ask them to predict future events, write about the meaning of life, the mystery of existence, and man's final purpose. You be the editor! Collect, condense and cradle it in common language. Divide it into books, chapters and verses. Now, what have you got?

Literature hash! No man on earth could make unified sense out of such a mess of outdated ideas, wild speculations, and hopeless contradictions. But the Bible was written in just such a way. And any honest reader, who has carefully examined its message, has found it to be one amazing whole from Genesis to Revelation; united in theme, consistent in concept, logical in development, and agreed in doctrine. In real-life illustration, parable, and prophecy, recording historical people who lived and died, the Bible is the love-story of history—God seeking rebellious man.

3. ITS SCIENTIFIC ACCURACYThe God of the Bible is the God who created the universe. True science andScripture will always agree—they both have the same Author! Science has had centuries to examine the statements of fact in Scripture. Although the opinions of men about nature and the opinions of men about the Bible have sometimes clashed, no fault has been recorded in Scripture. The Bible does not tell fairy tales. Its statements are true, able to stand the closest examinations. It is a matter of historical record that science has never developed significantly anywhere, except where there was a Christian influence. The scientific method and motivation for inquiry is really a child of Scriptural concepts; that the universe is the orderly product of a Divine Mind, and that man can discover the secrets of His creation, since he is made in

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rational, finite miniature likeness of his maker. Science has primarily expanded where the Bible was most freely read. Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Copernicus, and many others knew the Bible and its Author.

Before Columbus sailed around the world, Scripture records the spherical nature of earth. (Is. 40:21-22) When "Science," as a baby, thought the world to be held up by, "three elephants on the back of a tortoise," the Bible factually established its free floating in space. (Job. 26:7) The moon is shown to be a reflector, unlike the radiating sun. (Job. 25:5; 31:6) Modern precision telescopes have charted a "runaway" star in space. Arcturus, drifting with all its planets in tow, travels silently through the universe at twenty-seven and a half miles a second. The Bible recorded its wanderings centuries before the telescope. The Bible record of creation is a master example of the harmony of geology, biology, and Scripture. 300 years ago, it was discovered that physical life was resident in the blood; theBible recorded it 3,500 years ago. (Lev. 17:11) Meteorology, geology, aeronautical principles, are all hinted at in Scripture. (Ps. 135:5,7; Job 38:4; 28:5) Atomic energy and radiation effects are old-stuff with the God of the atom. (2 Pet. 3:1 0-12; Is. 4:1; 13:12; Joel 2:30—the word "pillars" is in Hebrew, “palm-trees")

Science can tabulate the "What," for us, analyze the "How," and probe for the "Why." But it cannot tell us the "where from" or the reason for which the universe exists. It cannot say who you are or why you are here. It can tell us what we are able to do, but not what we ought to do. Here, revelation in science is superseded by His revelation, Scripture. (Ps. 91:1; 8:3-6; 19:7-14) One shows His power; the other, His purpose.

4. ITS SPAN OF TIME IN PROPHECYThere is one thing the Bible dares do that no other book in the world does. It accurately predicts the future. God arranges situations in history to bring about His glory in the lives of those who respond to His call. Working with the moral choices of men, He directs circumstances together into a pre-planned series of patterns laid down before the foundation of the world. The outline of many of these patterns is revealed in the Bible. There are about 3,856 verses directly or indirectly concerned with prophecy in Scripture—about one verse in six tells of future events! God's challenge to the world is, "Prove Me now - I am the LORD… I will speak; and the Word that I shall speak shall come to pass." (Jer. 28:9; Ezek. 12:25; 24:14; Lk. 21:22) Buddhists, Confucianists, and the followers of Mohammed have their sacred writings, but in them the element of prophecy is conspicuous by its absence. The destruction of Tyre, the invasion of Jerusalem, the fall of Babylon and Rome—each was accurately predicted and fulfilled to the smallest detail.

In the life of the Lord Jesus Himself there are over 300 fulfilled prophecies. The chances that these would all coincide by accident in one person are laughable. By the laws of chance, it is one in a number followed by 181 zeroes! To give you some idea of the size of this immense figure, think of a ball that is packed solidly with electrons, (two and a half million, billion, end to end make would a line about one inch long.) Now in your mind imagine this ball expanded to the size of the universe we know—some four billion light-

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years in diameter. (A light-year being the distance light travels in one year, at a rate of over 186,000 miles a second.) Multiply this by 500 quadrillion, then remove just one electron, and color it red. Put it back and stir for a hundred years. Then blindfold a man and send him in to pick it out first time. Impossible? This is the same chance that Christ lived and died according to Scripture by accident. The Bible specifically predicts events and happenings that are as modern as tomorrow's news release.

5. ITS SOCIAL INFLUENCEA book's true value is revealed by the effect it has on society. The Bible gives laws for human relationships that have never been excelled or equaled. Whenever the Scripture has been taught and lived, it has transformed nations. The Bible has produced consideration for others, tenderness and compassion for the old, sick, and needy. It has dignified womanhood and guided childhood. Whenever the Scripture is freely circulated in the language of a people, it releases astonishing power for good, elevating society, overthrowing superstition, and opening the door to progress in the sciences, arts, and humanities. The Bible message has delivered thousands from the chains of fear, sickness, and sin. It is the most powerful book in the world for the renewal of man. Practically applied, it teaches and inspires industry, fairness, and justice; it stands for the welfare of the individual, the family, the community, and the state. It has created more benevolent enterprises than any other book in history. Study the record of history for yourself. See what happens to the nation that honors the Bible and its Author. See what happens to progress in countries that try to suppress, reject, or misinterpret its message. Wherever the Bible is loved and applied, the nation is exalted. Whenever men become forgetful of its Author and ignorant of its truths, fear, war, disease, and hatred stalks the streets. The Bible injunction is clear; "Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord”.

6. ITS SUPREME APPEALThe Bible is a Book with a universal message for all. It is the only volume that a child and scholar may find equally delightful. Its simple, life-related principles work in any country transcending barriers of culture and race to bring peace, love, joy, and forgiveness. Only the Bible can make bad men good inside, transforming the rebel into the saint and servant of humanity. It appeals to all men.

7. ITS SUPERNATURAL SALVATIONThe greatest proof of the Bible is the difference its message can make in your life. If you have not done so, will you ask God the Holy Spirit to reveal to your heart the truth of His power in its pages? (John 16:13; I Cor. 2:11-14). Pray honestly, "God, I don't know if this is your Word or not, but if it is and you can help me, please show yourself to me as I read." God will meet you in a living demonstration of His reality. (John 20:30-31) Don't make the mistake of doubting God's promises!

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Bible I & II Article 2:

Top SecretBy: Winkie Pratney

Hidden somewhere in the world lies a book with the secret of power more awesome than a cobalt bomb. I shall give it the code-name “F."

If our secret movement could discover and direct this energy, we could begin a revolution that might well sweep the world.

This document is Top Priority, and is concerned with the possibility of someone like you finding that book and rediscovering its secrets for our world. Of course, the volume is in code. No secret of comparable importance could ever be left unprotected. Such frightening force in the wrong hands might well mean terrible and universal destruction. "F" was designed to turn the tide of destruction on a planet that was in trouble. Mystery surrounds both the structure and designers of "F." For the purposes of Operation Discovery it will suffice to call the creators of this power The Great Ones. "F" was to be made available by them only for those who qualified by meeting stringent conditions designed to protect the harmony of the universe.

No ordinary code protects this volume's priceless contents. The Great Ones designed a protective coding key so simple that a child could unlock its treasures, yet so intricate that none but those who meet the conditions can unlock its mysteries. You will recognize the book by its resemblance to a well-written book of history, poetry, and ethics. An uninitiated reader could scan any encoded lines and only see a good story. Even a lifetime of careful search by a trained decoder would still fail to decipher its true meaning.

Decoding qualifications are simple but not easy. Are you willing to accept a challenge? You may be the one we are looking for. Someone must rediscover and apply the key secrets before it is too late. Yet the qualifications are costly. Are you willing to use this discovery for the highest good of our world? Are you prepared to harness the awesome energies of "F" for the betterment of mankind, whatever the cost? Are you ready to make any personal sacrifices necessary to apply your discoveries unselfishly for the needs of your generation? Are you willing to go on once you begin, although it may well cost you your life to continue?

I hope we were not wrong in choosing you for Operation Discovery. Do you dare say yes? The Great Ones will know of your choice. Right at this moment, scattered across the world others have already begun the search… the most challenging search of all time. Do we have your consent to begin? Time is running out, but if you succeed, we may yet turn the tide.

Within are your instructions. Oh, by the way, you will need to get a copy of the book! Strangely enough, it is not too difficult to obtain one. You may

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even find one in your own home somewhere.

It's called the Holy Bible.

THIS BOOK THE BIBLE - A LETTER FROM THE LIVING GOD!For hundreds of years, this has been the passport of power for men and women of God who changed their world. God's new race to redirect history is people of His Word. Each new generation must have its men to rediscover the fiery reality of Holy Scripture. The destiny of your age may hinge on your venture into its secrets.

The unseen God cannot be discovered by unaided human reason. God is a God who hides Himself. (Is. 45:15) He reveals His presence only to those who are honest enough to face their sin and surrender to His love. (Is. 59:1-4; 55:6-7; Heb. 11:6)

He can be discovered only when He wants to be. If a heart is dishonest, and a life is a lie, God will show that person nothing. He does not need to impress anyone He will share His powerful secrets only with those willing to become as little children - eager to learn, excited to discover, and willing to obey. No member of the Godhead will reveal Himself unless we meet the conditions. (Luke 10:21-22; Duet. 29:9; Pro. 1:23; Isa. 45:3; John 12:36-40; I Cor. 2:4:10; Eph. 2:17-19; Matt. 18:3) Neither can God's written Word be understood by ordinary methods of study and insight alone. Knowledge without corresponding goodness is terribly dangerous. God has locked His treasures so that the wise, (according to the wisdom of the world), will only be puzzled, blinded, and totally ignorant of its real meaning. A thousand people can all research the Bible with great intensity and each comes up baffled with different ideas and conflicting discoveries. No matter how high the powers of reason, no matter how deep the intellect, no one can discover God's secret messages without paying the cost of true discipleship. God has guarded His Word so that only the pure in heart can see its secrets. All other efforts will fail. (I Cor. 1:17-31) God has appointed an agent through whom the Bible can be understood. Only one person can open the mind to see the Bible's secrets - a person who knows the secret attitude of every human heart. He is the author of the Holy Scriptures. (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20-21) Filling all time and space, He is the most mysterious member of the Godhead. "Secret Agent X-3" is the third person of the Holy Ones, The Holy Spirit. He is the Father's chosen decoder through whom the simplest humble servant of the Lord God can understand the Bible. You cannot really love God's Book until you meet this wonderful person. He alone can open the glories of the Scriptures and thrill your heart with Christ. (John. 14:16-17, 26; I Cor. 2:11)

STEP 1: The first step to cracking the code of Scripture is to yield your mind to the Holy Spirit of God. He will take command of your life and direct your thoughts to the secrets hidden in Scripture. He is admitted to the control room of your reason when you surrender your life to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. (I John. 3:23-24, Rom. 10:8-10; 8:1-9) This is the first, and greatest cost of Operation Discovery. It involves death - death to your own proud

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ideas, death to your own natural wisdom without God, death to selfish ambition. It demands total surrender of every life faculty to the guidance of Christ, when you enthrone Jesus Christ as the King of your life, He will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. God's own Secret Agent. He will strengthen you against the counter attacks of the Enemy. He will help when the journey becomes difficult, His chief purpose is to show you how wonderful the Lord Jesus is, and reveal that glory in the Bible. Let Him take over the controls of your perception and turn on your spiritual understanding. (John 16:12-15; I Cor. 1:17-31; Rom. 8:26; 12:1-2)

STEP 2:The second Scripture code lock opens with another key - human need. Approach the Bible without sincere desire to discover and the door of understanding will stay closed. God does not do business with people who do not mean business with Him. He never used anyone He could easily get rid of. Only those who are willing to come with need - devotedly, determined, even desperately - can discover the secrets of the Lord God. (Gen. 32:26; Matt. 15:21-28; Luke. 8:15; 11:5-8; 18:1-8; 2 Tim. 2: 14-15) Insert the key of need and the Bible will light up with meaning. It is not by chance that Christ is called the Word of God. (John 1:1) Our attitude towards the Lord Jesus is directly reflected in our attitude towards His written Word, the Bible. It is the only material link we have with heaven. If you really love the Author, you will love His Book. Disinterest in the written Word of God is a sure sign of spiritual apostasy from the Living Word of God, the Lord Jesus. Spiritual desire or need is deepened by prayer. Bring the key of your need to God in prayer. Whatever you desire for His glory - comfort, strength, direction, or praise - it will be gloriously revealed by the God of love who delights to meet human helplessness with divine power. If your life is clean from sin, no matter how limited your education or your natural understanding God will show you His Scriptural treasures. The deeper your desire for God, the more rapidly His Word will open to you. (Matt. 5:6; John 4:34; 7:15-l7) Right now, you are able to understand all of God's Word that you honestly want to understand.

STEP 3:The last code can only be cracked by the sacrifice of time. It is nearly impossible to find time for the study and reading of Scripture; you must make time! Satan does everything possible to keep you away from God's Word. The "sword of the Spirit," (Eph. 6:17), is a deadly weapon against the Enemy in the hands of a trained Christian. Jesus answered each of Satan's temptations with Scripture - "It is written!" (Malt. 4:4, 7, 10) If you ever must guard your life against Enemy infiltration it will be right here - in making time to decode God's daily instructions for sabotaging the Enemy lines. If you are pressed with a multitude of things that must be done instead of your Bible reading - know where they come from. You must discipline your life to make time for God's Word, and determinedly resist all the subtle suggestions for forgetting it. If you are too busy for this, you are too busy. Without the knowledge of Scripture, you are like a toothless tiger in a jungle of danger.

READ

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The basic reason most Christians do not understand the Bible is that they never read it! You must learn to live in the great truths of Scripture until they become a living part of you. God's plan for world evangelism is to incarnate His Word in twice-born men. It is this awesome unity that releases the power of faith to revolutionize lives. (John 17:6-21; Rom. 10:13--17; Malt. 13:23, cf. Matt. 13:28) D. L. Moody once said, "I prayed for faith and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read Romans 10:17. I opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since." True, world-changing faith is a loyalty of love to the Word of God. The Bible can be read right through aloud in just 70 hours and 40 minutes. Read 10 chapters a day and you can finish it in about 18 weeks - three times a year. By reading it just five minutes a day, you can finish the entire Bible at least once a year. Right now you must decide how much time you intend to give to God to train you for His work. If you gave only one-tenth of your time each day that would be over 2 hours! Jonathan Edwards studied 13 hours a day. Billy Graham spends at least 6 hours a day in the Scriptures. If you had to live on a "meal" of the Bible, would you starve to death?

Do not dare patronize God with a hurried glance at His Holy Word, and then call this affront "devotions". If you love a person you will want to spend time with them. Is God so hard to love? Are His promises so boring you really couldn't care less about using them? Or will you now ask God for the courage to discipline your life to spend time with His Book? If so, decide sensibly, on the amount of time that you can afford each day or the number of chapters or verses you decide to read each day. Make a solemn vow to God before the recording angel. (Ecc. 5:4-6) You may afterwards increase your time, but do not lessen it, so decide carefully and intelligently. Better a few understood verses than chapters of hurried scanning. You should read so you that will not need a bookmarker to remember where you were reading. When you have done this, sign the following pledge and paste it in the front of your Bible.

After reading Ecc. 5:4-6 and realizing the seriousness of such a vow to my Lord, I vow to read ____ chapters a day in the Word of God.

RESEARCHReading alone will not open all the treasures of Scripture. You must spend some time in study. The Holy Spirit will help you here if you ask Him, (John 16:13; Jas. 1:5), but you must pay the price of extra discipline to study "to show yourself approved to God, a workman that doesn't need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth." (2 Tim. 2:15; John. 5:39; Acts 17:11) Your most useful tool will be a concordance. This is a sort of Bible index that helps you find words that you only partly remember. Simply look up one word you do remember in the concordance and go through the list of verses until you find the one you are looking for. Some Bibles have small concordances in the back. For a moderate cost you can buy much better ones to help you study.

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Keep a notebook in which you can record your studies. Work neatly and you will have a good record of your progress through Scripture. In your Bible, mark all the verses that God opens up to you in a special way. If funds permit you may even like to buy a loose-leaf or wide-margin Bible. Abbreviate books, verses and chapters as you see in this sheet; i.e. the First Epistle of John, chapter one, verses nine through to ten becomes simply "I Jn. 1:9-10." Expect the direct teaching and illumination of the Holy Spirit when you study. (I Cor. 2:12-13; I John. 2:27)

MEDITATEMeditation involves rethinking all passages of Scripture into our daily experiences, and using God's Word to express our feelings and decisions. Thinking God's thoughts after Him through meditation on the Scriptures purifies the thought life and helps us learn God's own language to talk to Him. We will never grasp all the depth of meaning in the Word of God, as God's thinking is higher than ours is in all levels. (Is. 55:8-11; I Cor. 1:25) But, by rethinking His thoughts after Him, through Scriptural meditation, we can alter the old habits of our minds and bring every thought into captivity for Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5; 3:18) To help you meditate on a verse say it aloud. Repeat it to yourself a number of times, and mentally underline each key word in the verse. "Chew the cud" with Scripture until it becomes a vital part of your spirit. Constant mental repetition of a verse is like dialing a familiar telephone number remembered through habit. Many blessings are promised through meditation. (Josh. 1:7; Ps. 1:2-3; I Tim. 4:15) You can meditate on Scripture in many places. (Deu. 6:7) Take time to meditate!

MEMORIZEScripture memorization is the most effective tool for using the Word of God in life. One of the simplest ways to memorize is to write out the verse that you want to learn on a card and carry it with you all day. Read it every spare moment; on the bus, in a line, waiting for someone. See if you can quote it word perfect without looking at the card. After you have learned one verse like this, you can begin another, adding that to your cards. A daily memorization program is the single most important practice for using Scripture in life yet discovered. One Christian lost his arms and legs, his sight and his hearing, in an accident. He learned to read a Braille Bible with his tongue. He completely read the whole Bible four times. Of all those dedicated to Operation Discovery, he is the leader when compared to what we, the "seeing ones," have done. Will you take time daily to hide the Word of God in your heart that you might not sin against God? (Ps. 119:11; Jas. 4:7; 2 Tim. 2:15; 3:l5-16; Ps. 119:42; I Pet. 3:15; John 6:63; Ps. 19:7; Heb. 4:l2)

Operation Discovery is now under way for you. You must learn to feed yourself from the Word of God, to unlock the secrets of power with God and light a torch of faith and fire for your generation. God's will is expressed in His Word. Your world is waiting for the discoveries you must make.

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Worship Article:

Readings from “Gems from Tozer,” Chapter 2: The

Missing Jewel Of Worship By: A.W. Tozer We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God. God is spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Only the Holy Spirit can enable a fallen man to worship God acceptably. As far as that’s concerned, only the Holy Spirit can pray acceptably.

Man was made to worship God. God gave man a harp and said, ”Here above all the creatures that I have made and created I have given you the largest harp. You can worship Me in a manner that no other creature can.” And when he sinned man took that instrument and threw it in the mud.

Why did Christ come? In order that He might make worshippers out of rebels. We were created to worship. Worship is the normal employment of moral beings. Worship is a moral imperative. Worship is the missing jewel in modern evangelicalism.

I want to define worship, and here is where I want to be dogmatic. Worship means “to feel in the heart.” A person that merely goes through the form and does not feel anything is not worshipping.

Worship also means to “express in some appropriate manner” what you feel. And what will be expressed? “A humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder.” It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing.

Now what are the factors that you will find present in worship? First there is boundless confidence. You cannot worship a Being you cannot trust. Then there is admiration, that is, appreciation of the excellently of God. Fascination is another element in true worship; to be filled with moral excitement; to be captivated and charmed and entranced with who God is, and struck with astonished wonder at the inconceivable elevation and magnitude and splendor of Almighty God. Next is adoration; to love God with all the power within us; to love God with fear and wonder and yearning and awe. At times this will lead us to breathless silence.

The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonished anybody. He manages to stay pretty much within the constitution. Never breaks over our bylaws. He’s a very well-behaved God and very denominational and very much one of us, and we ask Him to help us when we’re in trouble and look to Him to watch over us when we’re asleep. The God of the modern evangelical isn’t a

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God I could have much respect for. But when the Holy Ghost shows us God as He is we admire Him to the point of wonder and delight.

Worship rises or falls with our concept of God; that is why I do not believe in these half-converted cowboys who call God the Man Upstairs. I do not think they worship at all because their concept of God is unworthy of God and unworthy of them. And if there is one terrible disease in the Church of Christ, it is it is that we do not see God as great as He is. We’re too familiar with God.

Worship is pure or base as the worshipper entertains high or low thoughts of God. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

We’re here to be worshippers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of him. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worker. The work done by a worshipper will have eternity in it.

Labor that does not spring out of worship is futile and can only be wood, hay and stubble in the day that shall try every man’s works.

It is rarely that we find anyone aglow with personal love for Christ. This love as a kind of moral fragrance is ever detected upon the garments of the saints. The list of fragrant saints is long. It includes men and women of every shade of theological thought within the bounds of the Orthodox Christian faith. This radiant love for Christ is to my mind the true test of catholicity, the one sure proof of membership in the church universal.

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Appendix

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LTC First RetreatFRIDAY6:00 pm Arrival, Check-in, **Pay 1st installment6:30 *Dinner7:30 Worship8:00 Love9:30 Go home for the night (meet back in the

morning)

SATURDAYBreakfast on your own

9:00 Lordship10:45 Coffee Break & Picture11:15 Mind in Love12:30 *Lunch2:00 Fellowship3:15 Coffee Break3:30 Body Maps & Demographics4:45 Wrap it up / Prayer / Clean up

* Current SG leaders are welcome to attend any sessions. However, food is only provided for LTC attendees.

** Find Kristen for any LTC payments.

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LTC Second RetreatFRIDAY

Dinner on your own before arrival6:30 Arrival & Check-ins7:00 Worship7:30 *Coffee & Snack Break7:40 Holy Spirit9:00 *Campfire & S’mores

SATURDAY8:00 Breakfast8:30 Jesus Time9:15 Worship9:30 Heart of Missions11:00 *Coffee & Snack Break11:15 Final Review12:00 *Lunch & Break (pack up)1:30 Bible I2:30 *Coffee & Snack Break2:45 Bible II4:00 Wrap it up / Prayer / Clean up

Dinner on your own

* Current SG leaders are welcome to attend any sessions. However, food is only provided for LTC attendees.

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Weekly Time SheetSunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

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Inward, Outward, Corporate Disciplines Homework

Identify 1 discipline for each category that you want to focus on and improve on this semester and explain why.

Inward:

Outward:

Corporate:

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Purposes & Goals Homework

List at least 3 purposes and 2 measurable goals per purpose statement (feel free to do more!).

Example: 1. Purpose Statement (“to be”)a. Goal #1 to help you reach that purpose (“to do”)b. Goal #2 to help you reach that purpose

Purpose 1: ____________________________________________________________

a. Goal 1: ________________________________________________________

b. Goal 2: ________________________________________________________

c. Goal 3: ________________________________________________________

Purpose 2: ____________________________________________________________

a. Goal 1: ________________________________________________________

b. Goal 2: ________________________________________________________

c. Goal 3: ________________________________________________________

Purpose 3: ____________________________________________________________

a. Goal 1: ________________________________________________________

b. Goal 2: ________________________________________________________

c. Goal 3: ________________________________________________________

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16 Fundamental Truths

1. WE BELIEVE…The Scriptures are inspired by God and declare His design and plan for mankind. The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.

2. WE BELIEVE…There is only One True God – revealed in three persons…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (commonly known as the Trinity).

3. WE BELIEVE…In the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. As God’s son Jesus was both human and divine.

4. WE BELIEVE…though originally good, Man Willingly Fell to Sin – ushering evil and death, both physical and spiritual, into the world.

5. WE BELIEVE…Every Person Can Have Restored Fellowship with God Through Salvation (accepting Christ’s offer of forgiveness for sin). [1 of 4 cardinal doctrines of the A/G] Salvation is received through repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, being justified by grace through faith, man becomes an heir of God, according to the hope of eternal life.

6. WE BELIEVE…and practice two ordinances – (1) Water Baptism by Immersion after repenting of one’s sins and receiving Christ’s gift of salvation, and (2) Holy Communion (the Lord’s Supper) as a symbolic remembrance of Christ’s suffering and death for our salvation.

7. WE BELIEVE…the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a Special Experience Following Salvation that empowers believers for witnessing and effective service, just as it did in New Testament times.

8. WE BELIEVE…The Initial Physical Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is “Speaking in Tongues” as experienced on the Day of Pentecost and referenced throughout Acts and the Epistles.

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9. WE BELIEVE…Sanctification Initially Occurs at Salvation and is not only a declaration that a believer is holy, but also a progressive lifelong process of separating from evil as believers continually draw cloer to God and become more Christ-like.

10. WE BELIEVE…The Church has a Mission to seek and save all who are lost in sin. We believe ‘the Church’ is the Body of Christ and consists of the people who, throughout time, have accepted God’s offer of redemption (regardless of religious denomination) through the sacrificial death of His son Jesus Christ.

11. WE BELIEVE…A Divinely Called and Scripturally Ordained Leadership Ministry Serves the Church. The Bible teaches that each of us under leadership must commit ourselves to reach others for Christ, to worship Him with other believers, and to build up or edify the body of believers-the Church.

12. WE BELIEVE…Divine Healing of the Sick is a Privilege for Christians Today and is provided for in Christ’s atonement (His sacrificial death on the cross for our sins).

13. WE BELIEVE…in The Blessed Hope – When Jesus Raptures His Church Prior to His Return to Earth (the second coming). At this future moment in time all believers who have died will rise from their graves and will meet the Lord in the air, and Christians who are alive will be caught up with them, to be with the Lord forever.

14. WE BELIEVE…in The Millennial Reign of Christ when Jesus returns with His saints at His second coming and begins His benevolent rule over earth for 1,000 years. At that time many in the nation of Israel will recognize and accept Him as the Messiah, the Savior who died for them and all mankind.

15. WE BELIEVE…A Final Judgment Will Take Place for those who have rejected Christ. They will be judged for their sin and consigned to eternal punishment in a punishing lake of fire.

16. WE BELIEVE…and look forward to the perfect New Heavens and a New Earth that Christ is preparing for all people, of all time, who have accepted Him. We will live and dwell with Him there forever following His millennial reign on Earth. ‘And so shall we forever be with the Lord!’

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Holy Spirit Handout

I. Who is the Holy Spirit?A. The Holy Spirit is a ____________________ not a

____________________B. Part of the ___________________________ = 3 in 1

1. One God revealed in three ________________/________________

2. Matthew 28:19-20 & 2 Corinthians 13:14C. The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament

1. Life _______________________ (Genesis 1:2, Romans 8:2)2. Was a special ___________________ for a special

______________ to do special ___________________.3. Prophesied for our ____________________ (Joel 2:28-29)

D. The Holy Spirit in the New Testament1. ____________________________ (John 14:15-17)2. ____________________________ (John 14:26)3. ____________________________ (John 16:7)4. ____________________________ of sin (John 16:8)5. ____________________________ (Acts 2:38)6. ____________________________ (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)7. ____________________________ (Acts 1:8)

II. How does the Holy Spirit relate to salvation (3 baptisms)?A. Baptism of Salvation -

_________________________________________1. Legal standing and rights as children of God (John 1:12)

B. Baptism in Water - ____________________________________________

C. Baptism of the Spirit - _________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

1. Filling of the Holy Spirit2. It is ___________________ and ___________________ to

salvation (Acts 19:1-6)3. It is for __________________ (Acts 1:8)

III. Why do we need the Holy Spirit?A. The Holy Spirit will lead us into 2 directions…

1. ______________________ into God.2. ______________________ out into the world.

B. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a ______________________ gift.C. The gift of the Holy Spirit is for ______________________ (Luke

24:49)

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1. Power to live ______________________ lives (Romans 15:13, 1 Thessalonians 1:5)

2. Power to be a ______________________ (1 Corinthians 2:4)IV. Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

V. Evidence of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:7-10)A. ______________________

1. Speaking in Tongues2. Interpretation of Tongues3. Prophecy (Foretelling and Forth-telling)

B. ______________________1. Words of Knowledge2. Words of Wisdom3. Discernment

C. ______________________1. Witness2. Miracles

VI. The outward physical manifestation is not nearly as important as the inward reality we are seeking the _________________, not the _________________

VII. How do I receive it?A. Not earned, it’s a ______________________, it’s for everyoneB. ______________________

1. AW Tozer – The Holy Spirit will never fill a man who is full of himself.

2. Repent of selfishness, unforgiveness, pride, independence (Surrender Control)

C. ______________________D. ______________________

1. Recognize it is good and beneficial (Luke 11:13)2. Ask & Seek for it (Matthew 7:7)

E. ______________________1. Laying on hands

F. ______________________ Glory to God (Acts 2:11-12)G. Not a ______________ time thing! (Acts 2:4, Acts 4:31,

Ephesians 5:18)

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Dating & Relationships Handout

If you don’t have God on the ___________________ of your heart, then someone else will take that place.

Date someone who you will ___________________.

o 2 Corinthians 6:14 says to be _________________ _________________

If you are rationalizing or justifying a relationship – that’s a red flag!

Determining ___________________ means determining ___________________.

Dating couples need to ___________________. Plan a beginning and an end to your dates.

There are two ways you should be saving yourself for marriage:

1. ___________________ - Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Hebrews 13:4

2. ___________________ - Trusting another person with your emotions, your “innermost selves”, acceptance

Dating couple should not act like ___________________ ___________________

Engaged couples should not act like _________________ __________________

INTIMACY MUST BE KEPT IN PROPORTION TO ________________________. Never arouse passions in the other person that you cannot fulfill.

God gave us 2 ___________________ and only one ___________________. Learn to listen to godly leaders, the Holy Spirit, and to the person you are dating.

Make your intentions known but don’t suffocate the other person.

o You don’t want their decision to be based on _____________ feelings!

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Dating, even marriage, will turn out to be a ______________ _______________ for an empty life until we are totally satisfied in Him.

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Love Handout

I. The true markQuestions-

1. What are the traditional symbols of Christianity?2. According to Jesus, what is the universal mark of Christianity?

(Read John 13:35)

There is ________________________________________that God could give you than to take care of what is most precious to him.

II. What is love? Read Romans 5:8 & I John 4:10 A. Greek vs. English

1. in English=2. in the Greek=

Two Greek examples from the bible (new testament)1. 2.

The word used for love in the above passages is ________________________?

B. A new definition of love- -it is not……...-it is…...a good test is...__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

Questions-1. What do most people think that the opposite of love is?2. Based upon the above definition, what would you say the opposite of love?

III. The command to love- the law of loveWinkie Pratney calls the summation of all the commandments the “Law of Love”

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Matthew 22:37-39.

A. We are commanded to Love… Questions-

1. Based on our new definition of love, what does it mean to love God?2. What does this mean practically?

B. We are commanded to Love… Read John 13:34 & Luke 23:34.Questions-

1. Who is my neighbor?2. I am told to love others as Jesus loved me. What practical things can I do to make this a reality?

C. We are commanded to Love…Read Matt. 5:43:48Questions-

1. Did Jesus practice what He preached? Read Romans 5:10 & Luke 23:34.

2. What good could come out of “unselfishly choosing for the highest good” of your enemy?

IV. The transforming power of love.G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy- “Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico (a city). If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico , which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise to ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer that Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

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Hence, an eternity principle- A thing must be loved, before …

__________________________________________________________.

Questions- 1. Do you agree with Chesterton, that a thing “must be loved before it can be lovable?”2. Can you think of any examples of things that weren’t loved? What happened to them?3. Can you think of any examples where love brought beauty?

Summary Love is the only distinguishing mark of a true Christian. Love is NOT a feeling, it IS an unselfish choice for the highest good of

God and His Kingdom. Things that are unloved always become (or remain) ugly. Objects that are shown love can become beautiful. The only reason we

are who we are, is because God first loved us. We now, should do the same.

The Law of Love is the law of the universe- the only way to true happiness is to consistently love God and others. My test is to always ask myself, Why Do I Do The Thing That I Do, and Who Do I Do Them For?

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Bible Article 3

ISSUE #1: The Bible has been copied and re-copied so many times by man that it must have been corrupted.NT has 99.5% MSS agreement across 24,000 Manuscripts all dated before 800AD (the traditional beginning of the Middle Ages)

Different linguistic and cultural traditions Varied geographic locations Transverses the Mediterranean, Aegean, North Africa, Asia Minor What about the errors?

o Word order errors don’t matter in Greek.o 7/8ths of all errors in the NT are orthographic (fancy-talk for

grammar and spelling errors)

ISSUE #2: But we don’t’ even have the originals?! AND there is a huge gap between when they were composed to the earliest copies!The composition to copy gap, when compared to other books in antiquity is negligible (we shall see this later…)

4 Gospels, 8 Pauline Epistles, Hebrews, Revelations and Acts dated to 200 AD

o Gap of 170 years from death of Christ (no time for legendary material to creep in)

John Rylands Library MS (P52) of gospel of John dated to 98 to 138 AD (during the rules of Trajan or Hadrian)

o Found in Alexandria, Egypt (John composed the gospel in Ephesus, Turkey)

o Has 5 total verses, The front (recto) contains parts of seven lines from the Gospel of John 18:31-33, in Greek, and the back (verso) contains parts of seven lines from verses 37-38.

o John died around 90 ADo Agreed to be the last gospel account written downo Places other synoptic gospels to within 60-70 years of Jesus’

death Bodmer Papyrus II contains 2/3rd of John’s Gospel dated 150 to 200 AD Chester Beatty Papyri

o #1 has 4 Gospels, Acts, to 200s ADo #2 has most of Pauline Epistles, part of Hebrews to 200s ADo #3 most of Revelations to 200s AD

Fragment 7Q5o Found in Qumran cave #7 and was the fifth fragment found in

the caveo About 4x5 cmo Contains portions of 7 words. ID-ed in 1979 and 1982, the most

prominent word on the fragment is the word “kai” which means

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“and,” however, the arrangement of the letters leaves only 7 possible sources of the text. Only one of them would be religious which would fit with the Qumran community.

o Hotly debatedo If 7Q5 were identified as Mark 6:52-53 and was deposited in the

cave at Qumran by 68AD to 139 AD, it would become the earliest known fragment of the New Testament, predating P52 by at least some if not many decades.

Acts does not end with an account of Paul’s martyrdom that occurred in 65 or 66 AD.

o Acts was the 2nd in the two part series written by Lukeo Inference places the composition of the Gospel of Luke within 30

years of Jesus crucifixion for surely Luke would have mentioned Paul’s death had it happened before his writing of the Gospel

o That is one account placed within one generation and therefore still easily verifiable or refutable…it wasn’t refuted.

ISSUE #3: What about the Old Testament? Isn’t that unreliable?

Called the TANACHo OT was established by a rabbinical council centuries beforeo Torah, Nevi’im, Kethubim

Division attested and established firmly by Christ It was confirmed by the early church from what Jesus

quoted and alluded to 200 BC translated into Greek by Hebrew scholars at

Alexandria, referred to as Septuaginto Hebrew Bible consists of the Masoretic Text and Septuagint

It is important to consider the esteem in which the transcribers and translators held the Tanach. The word being copied or translated had to be said out loud three times before writing and whenever God’s name (YHWH) was written it required a new pen and inkwell. A page that was found to have even one mistake was burned in the fire!

o Canon closed by 400 BC Dead Sea Scrolls and Isaiah

o Discovered in Qumran in February or March 1947 by shepherd boy

o Dated to 125 BCo Isaiah 53 compared to what we have now. This chapter is

important because of the Messianic overtones and the clear prophetic indicators of Christ. Before the Qumran discovery, it was widely believed that 53 was added by monks during the Middle Ages.

166 words in the chapter 17 letters in question 10 letters of those are spelling issues 4 letters are stylistic changes like conjunctions

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3 letters remaining compose the word “light” that was added in v. 11 which does not change the meaning greatly

3 letters, one word over 2000 years of transmissiono Showed our Hebrew bibles to be 95% accurate over two

millennia

The Qumran Discoveries: A BreakdownCanonical Division OT Book Qumran MSS #Pentateuch Genesis 18+3?(Torah) Exodus 18

Leviticus 17Numbers 12Deuteronomy 31+3?

Prophets (Nevi’im) Joshua 2Judges 3

Former Prophets 1-2 Samuel 41-2 Kings 3

Latter Prophets Isaiah 22Jeremiah 6Ezekiel 7Twelve (Minor Prophets) 10+1?

Writings (Kethubim) Psalms 39+2?Proverbs 2Job 4

The Five Scrolls Song of Songs 4Ruth 4Lamentations 4Ecclesiastes 3Esther 0Daniel 8+1?Ezra-Nehemiah 11-2 Chronicles 1Total 223 (233)

ISSUE #4: So much time has passed that the person of Christ has taken on legendary material much like King Arthur.

As we have already seen, this is simply not true because we have extant texts that are well within two generations of the authorship and three of the events that are recounted.

BUT, there is still evidence that shows the core beliefs of Christianity were there well before the New Testament began to take form:

o The Creeds of Paul We can tell from the language and words that Paul uses

that he is quoting creeds that he was taught. Paul’s conversion takes place within 5yrs of the resurrection plus his decade in the wilderness

Phil 2:6-11, Col 1:15-20 (Prison Epistles, so written in the late 50s or early 60s)

Paul was martyred in 65 or 66AD 1 Cor 15:3-7 (written in 42-47 AD) –

Unquestioningly acknowledged as the first book in the NT written

Show belief in atonement, resurrection, and divinity of Christ

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ISSUE #5: How does the NT stack up against other books from ancient times?

The Bible holds up better to scrutiny than any book in history; hands down, no question Volume of manuscripts (MSS)

o 24,000 total MSSo 5,300 Greek NT MSS (latest dated to 800ad)o 10,000 in Latin Vulgateo 9,000 MSS in other languages from antiquity

BUT, let’s make it easy on the doubters and throw out anything not in the original Greek 5,300 MSS in Greek

o Greatest volume of texts in antiquity Iliad has 650 MSS (earliest dated to 400 BC)

o Most analogous because it was sacred to Greeks, also had system of commentaries and expositions sprung up around it

o Composed 8th to 9th centuries BC o Composition to copy gap of 500 yrs. o has 95% MSS agreement

Josephus’ Histories has 11 MSSo MSS dated 9th to 12th centuries ad o composed 1st cent ad o 800 to 1100 yr comp to copy gap o used in text books!!!

The Other Major Writings from Ancient Times:

Author When Written

Earliest Copy

Time Span # of Copies

Ceasar 100-44 BC 900 AD 1000 10Livy 59 BC to 17 AD 900 AD 1200 20Plato 427-347 BC 1100 AD 1300 7

Tacitus 100BC – 100 AD 1000 AD 900 21(-)Pliny the Younger

61-113 AD 850 AD 750 7

Thucydides 460 – 400 BC 900 AD 1300 8Suetonius 75 – 160 AD 950 AD 800 8Herodotus 480 – 425 BC 900 AD 1300 8Sophocles 496 – 406 BC 1000 AD 1400 193Lucretius Died 55 or 53 BC 1550 AD 1100 2Catullus 54 BC 1550 AD 1600 3Euripides 480 – 406 BC 1100 AD 1500 9

Demosthenes 383 – 322 BC 1100 AD 1300 200*Aristotle 384 – 322 BC 1100 AD 1400 49^

Aristophanes 450 – 385 BC 900 AD 1200 10(-) Mostly incomplete MSS, *all of one copy, ^of any one workEven without the MSS, 36,289 quotations of the NT by Early Church Fathers

The writings of the past have come to us along the thinnest threads of preservation. If you were to throw out the NT, then you would lose the writings of the past as well.

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It is important to remember that we have ALL of the books of the NT dated to within 200 yrs of the Resurrection of Christ! That means they are dated to within 100 to 150 years of their writing. When compared to the other ancient texts, the gap is minimal and objection enters the realm of absurdity.

ISSUE #6: But the books of the Bible were chosen in a secret and selective council by means of cloak and dagger!!!!

This objection is just a poor understanding of historical context. It is important to get a few dates down:

o 313 Edict of Milan – Gave Christianity legal standing in the eyes of Roman government just as the other religions of the time had. It effectively ended the time of persecution

o Council of Nicaea 325 – Effort by Constantine to establish some semblance of orthodoxy of belief throughout the empire. It settled the question of Christ’s divine and human nature and the Arian Controversy. It was also the site of a fist fight involving Arius and St. Nicholas over Arius’ heresy.

o Council of Carthage 397- 28th of August established the canon of the Bible, quoted as, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, 4 books of Kingdoms, 2 books of Chronicles, Job, the Davidic Psalter, 5 books of Solomon, 12 books of Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Tobias, Judith, Esther, 2 books of Ezra 2 books of Maccabees, and in the New Testament: 4 books of Gospels, 1 book of Acts of the Apostles, 13 letters of the Apostle Paul, 1 letter of his to the Hebrews, 2 of Peter, 3 of John, 1 of James, 1 of Jude, and one book of the Apocalypse of John."

o Edict of Thessalonica 380 – Effectively made Nicaean (or Orthodox) Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire, although pagans were not persecuted and more than half of the roman elite remained pagan during the reign of Theodosius the Great.

Canon requirements: o Apostolic Authority o Conformity to "rule of faith" or canon o Continuous acceptance and usage by larger church

Term “canon” means standard There simply is not enough time for Dan Brown-esque conspiracies to

spring up especially when you consider: o List of disputed books prior to Carthage –

Clement of Rome’s List 195ad via Eusebius – Jude, Barnabas*, Hebrews** Revelation of Peter

Origen’s list 228ad 2 Peter**, 2 John, 3 John –

Muratorian Fragment 157ad Jude, 2 John, 3 John, Book of Wisdom*, Revelation

of John, Revelation of Peter* - *= considered apocryphal (uninspired) NOT heretical – **= disputed because of authorship questions –

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21 of 27 NT books were undisputed 130 yrs before Nicene o Irenaeus’ list of confirmed books 180 ad

Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Cor, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, 1 and 2 Thess, 1 and 2 Tim, Titus, 1 Peter, 1 John, Revelations

Irenaeus is important because he was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of John

o Polycarp counts Synoptics, Acts, Pauline Epistles martyred 156ad at 86 yrs old

"the gospel is the pillar and base of the Church and the breath of life, so it is natural that it should have four pillars.."

"Matthew published his Gospel among the Hebrews (ie., Jews) in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, (ie., their death), Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on His breast (a reference to John 13:25 and 21:20), himself produced his Gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia."

o Clement of Rome (c. 96AD) quotes 1 Cor, Romans, Hebrews o Tatian writes Diatessaron in 160 AD, harmony of 4 gospels

therefore, all four Gospels existed so he could harmonize them o Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) counts all 4 Gospels, Acts, Pauline

Epistles, 1 John, Rev o Tertullian (c. 160-225) counts all NT except James, 2 Pet, 2 & 3

John "It is a simple truth to say that the New Testament books became

canonical because no one could stop them doing so" - William Barlcay The canon is not an authoritative list of books, but a list of

authoritative books. BIG DIFFERENCE. Also, the canon was established during periods of persecution and repression. The bishops that attended the councils that decided the canon were men that bore in their bodies the scars of loving Jesus. They had lost property, family members, and friends to torture and spectacle.

ISSUE #7: But they left out books!! It was a conspiracy I tell you!

Pseudographia -Label applied to a collection of writings that were of dubious character or appeared well after the life-time of the apostles

Eusebius (c.270-340) called them “totally absurd and impious” Gospel of Thomas adds pantheistic and anti-feminist tones to what

Jesus says. For example, saying that Mary must become a man for her to enter the kingdom of heaven.

o Collection of 114 sayings no narrative structure o Majority quotations from Gospels

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Ex: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s. Render unto me what is mine.”

o Copy found in 400s ad written in Coptic o Probably written in Syria in 140ad o Inclusion of Johanine Epsitles is a direct and purposeful move to

invalidate gnostic sects that appeared in the early church Muratorian Canon 157 AD

o "There are also in circulation one to the Laodiceans, and another to the Alexandrians, forged under the name of Paul, and addressed against the heresy of Marcion; and there are also several others which cannot be received into the Catholic Church, for it is not suitable for gall to be mingled with honey."

Apocrypha o The gap between OT and NT that appears in catholic bibles o Jerome (c. 340-420) debated the inclusion of the Apocrypha in

the OT

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o Augustine was main proponent of inclusion of Apocrypha o Apocrypha was canonized during the counter-reformation at the

Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563

Here are some interesting little tidbits about the Bible:Matthew 1 is written in heptadic structure aka divisible by 7.

If we look at the first 17 verses of the New Testament (The Gospel of Matthew) which deals with a single principal subject: the genealogy of Jesus Christ, It contains 72 Greek vocabulary words in these initial 17 verses. We find the following structure throughout these original Greek verses in the Bible.

The number of words which are nouns is exactly 56, or 7 x 8. The Greek word "the" occurs most frequently in the passage: exactly 56

times, or 7 x 8. Also, the number of different forms in which the article "the" occurs is exactly

7. There are two main sections in the passage: verse 1-11 and 12-17. In the first

main section, the number of Greek vocabulary words used is 49, or 7 x 7. Of these 49 words, the number of those beginning with a vowel is 28, or 7 x 4. The number of words beginning with a consonant is 21, or 7 x 3. The total number of letters in these 49 words is exactly 266, or 7 x 38-exactly. The numbers of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20. - The

number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18-exactly. Of these 49 words, the number of words which occur more than once is 35, or

7 x 5. The number of words occurring only once is 14, or 7 x2. The number of words which occur in only one form is exactly 42, or 7 x 6. The number of words appearing in more than one form is also 7. The number of 49 Greek vocabulary words which are nouns is 42, or 7 x 6. The number of words which are not nouns is 7. Of the nouns, 35 are proper names, or 7 x 5. These 35 nouns are used 63 times, or 7 x 9. - The number of male names is

28, or 7 x 4. These male names occur 56 times or 7 x 8. The number which are not male names is 7. Three women are mentioned-Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The number of Greek

letters in these three names is 14, or 7 x 2. The number of compound nouns is 7. The number of Greek letters in these 7 nouns is 49, or 7 x 7. Only one city is named in this passage, Babylon, which in Greek contains

exactly 7 letters. Just food for thought….

Genealogy in Genesis 5 – Genesis 5:3-32 gives a genealogy from Adam to Noah Now let's put it all together:

Hebrew EnglishAdam ManSeth AppointedEnosh MortalKenan SorrowMahalalel The Blessed GodJared Shall come downEnoch Teaching

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Methuselah His death shall bring

Lamech The despairingNoah Rest, or comfort

Gospel message in the first book of the Bible!! The Masorites were meticulous counters when they made their copies of the Tanach, they had the number of vowel markers and letters per page memorized. They noticed this pattern:

Genesis and Exodus every 49th letter spells TORH Numbers and Deuteronomy 49th spells HROT Leviticus 49th spells YHWH The implication is that the law (torah) points to God

Jesus and rabbinical tradition During Jesus’ times, there were not chapters and verses so a rabbi

would reference a portion of scripture or psalm by reciting the first line Flip to Matthew 27:45-46, Jesus is quoting the first line of Psalm 22 Flip to Psalm 22:11-18. Remember, we have copies of the Psalms that

predate Christ by at least a century! The Psalm was written by David approximately 600 years before Christ

and describes precisely how Christ suffered and died even though the Persians had yet to come along and invent crucifixion.

mind=blown

There is plenty more that could be placed here, but dig in and “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Further Reading: Case for Christ by Lee Strobel Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell Bruce Metzger Craig Blomberg Norman Geisler F.F. Bruce

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