Endings (Part 2): The Cost of Discipleship

As those close to me should know by now, I have recently resigned from my position at Victory Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. This post is not about that. Rather, this post is about what I want my legacy to be at VBC (or really, anywhere else that I ever teach and minister).

I am teaching through a series called "Endings" with the students over my last weeks with them. These six messages will attempt to drive home the six main things I have tried to teach them over the past fifteen months that I have spent as their student minister, and would be the six things that I would focus on more than anything if I were to remain there indefinitely. Thus, I will teach six statements that sum up everything I am about. This blog series will communicate that to whomever else would like to know my heart.

Here's the second statement: Giving up all that we have and leading others to do the same is the cost of discipleship.

My last post focused on the exchange that occurs when Christ's righteousness was given to us and He took our sinfulness upon that bloody cross, bearing the weight of God's wrath on our behalf. That's how we have a relationship with God. It is freely given, even though we don't deserve it: that's what grace is, after all. However, once we have this salvation via exchange, there is a cost. That cost is a rather significant one.

When Jesus first called the twelve original disciples, He said a simple phrase: "follow me" (Matthew 4:19). In fact, as one reads the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), it becomes clear that His call to everyone wanting the exchange, wanting the freedom that He brings, is "follow me." This remains His call to all who wish to follow Him to this day. But what does that mean? What does it mean to "follow" Jesus. Allow me to give you two quick points that I believe truly encapsulate what it means to follow Jesus.

1. Give up everything you have. That seems like a pretty intense opening point, does it not? We must give up everything? What do I truly mean by that?

I mean that we give up everything. Wealth may be where you thought first (specifically in the Western culture I am surrounded by); must that go? Perhaps. Do you have an excess that brings you to look at your goods more than Christ? Then yes, it must go.

Perhaps you are more worried about other things: freedom, family, love, success, entertainment, sports, popularity, or something else. Allow me to show you a passage that likely will wreck your understanding of what it means to be a Christian:

As they were traveling on the road someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go!”

 Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.”  Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”

“Lord,” he said, “first let me go bury my father.”

 But He told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.”

 Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord, but first let me go and say good-bye to those at my house.”

 But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” -Luke 9:57-62 (HCSB)

That's one of the most difficult passages in the Bible, if you ask me. Jesus seems pretty cold-hearted here, right? The first guy simply says he wants to follow Jesus, and our Lord said "bro, I'm homeless. You ready for that?" Then He tells another guy to skip his dad's funeral to follow Him. Finally, the last fellow that wanted to follow Jesus was told he couldn't even say goodbye to his living family. That doesn't seem fair, does it?

Yet, was the exchange fair? Did Jesus not give up everything, even His life, for our ability to live eternally? His request, in response to His own unfair bargain, is that we deem Him to be our Lord and Savior. That means we give up all that we have for His gain. We are willing to give up a life of security and pleasure (v.57-58). We are willing to follow Him, even when our personal life seems to just get worse and worse (perhaps even because of following Him!) (v. 59-60). We are even willing to follow Him away from family and friends that may not want us to go (v. 61). Luke 14:26-27 words it like this: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister--yes, and even his own life--he cannot be my disciple." You see, our devotion to and love for Jesus Christ must be so intense and all-consuming that we are willing to give up all that we have and pursue Him so passionately that our love for our loved ones (and even ourselves!) will seem to be hate in comparison.

Perhaps an illustration may help: I have a candle on my desk as I write this. It is burning with a fairly bright light. If my room were dark, then this candle would seem exceedingly bright. However, I also have a lamp on my desk, and it is considerably brighter than the candle's flame. Such should be our love for Christ and others. Our love for others should burn brightly in a dark world, making a sharp contrast with the selfish, hateful ways of the world. It should be a radiant, beautiful flame of love that warms the hearts of all that we give our affection to. However, in comparison with the burning love and passion that we have for Christ, our love for others should seem but a dim flame before a burning lamp. It is not hate for others; it is love for others with an even greater love for God.

This love and devotion, this passion that begins when the great exchange occurs in our lives and we are given new hearts with new passions and new devotions (Ezekiel 36:26-27), is what drives us to be willing to sacrifice whatever He asks of us for His glory. If that means leaving any and everything we have ever had and will have, then so be it. He is worth it. This is why we are willing to bear our own cross, taking punishment from the world (Luke 14:27) for His sake. This is why we say with Peter in Luke 18 that we have left all that we have! We have nowhere else to go but with Him!

The cost of discipleship isn't over with our own lives, however. It goes a bit further.

2. We lead others to follow Him. You see, Jesus gave up everything He had to bring us to follow Him. Now, it is our task to follow Him by bringing others along with us in this journey. No one is above His master, and the messenger does no better than the One who sent him (Luke 6:40, John 13:16). If our Teacher, Master and Sender gave up everything for the sake of bringing us along, then we give up everything for the sake of bringing others along, as well. This is why Jesus's last command to His disciples on Earth was to make disciples: bringing them to follow Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20). This is our "message" (John 13:16); this is how we "fish for men" (Matthew 4:19). The only way people ever experience the exchange that we have enjoyed is by our sharing the good news with them and training them in how to follow Jesus (Romans 10:14-15).

This is the cost of being a disciple of Jesus: we give up everything for the One that exchanged our sin for His righteousness, and then we lead others to follow that same path. That is the call of a Christian. There is no alternative route; there is no other option. You are either a follower of Christ or not. This is the fork in the road; which direction will you walk?



For more about how to follow Christ, check out the Multiply Movement and Radical.net for more information. These sites and the guys that lead them are largely responsible for my own personal understanding of what the cost of discipleship truly is. I hope they can help you, as well.

Our Silence Makes No Sense

"Then He touched their eyes, saying, 'Let it be done for you according to your faith!' And their eyes were opened. Then Jesus warned them sternly, 'Be sure that no one finds out!' But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout that whole area." -Matthew 9:29-31, HCSB

So, one day Jesus was walking around when a pair of blind guys walk up to Him, wanting to be healed. They had heard, no doubt, of His healing abilities. Perhaps they even heard that He had healed other blind people. Regardless, they walked up behind Him and yelled for Jesus to have mercy on them.

His response? "Do you believe that I can do this?"

Their answer: "yes."

A repeating theme in the Gospels is faith. Almost anytime that Jesus healed someone, it was a result of their having faith in Him to do what they believed He could do. And really, the same should be true for Christians.

We were once blind when Jesus, by grace through faith, opened our eyes to Him and our salvation in Him. When we are awakened from our sin-induced death and brought into the new birth in Christ, we are healed by Him, like the blind men here, "according to our faith." With that, our eyes are opened.

 For both us and the blind men, Jesus made a command and that command was/is disobeyed. And that's when the similarities disappear.

In the case of the blind men, Jesus told them not tell anyone of what He had done for them, as the time had not come for His awesomeness to be revealed. Yet, overcome with gratefulness and excitement, these men could not keep the news of their Healer to themselves. They felt an overpowering compulsion to share about Jesus with everyone that they came in contact with.

Inversely, Jesus has commanded us to "go, therefore, and make disciples," telling them all about Him and what He has done for us. Yet, we respond in the exact opposite fashion of the blind men. We hold in the news of Christ to ourselves.

Imagine if the blind men were healed, and then ran to an entire group of blind men and women. Upon their arrival at the group, they then proceed to act as though they are blind and refrain from telling anyone how they gained their sight. They have the same mannerisms, actions, words and everything that they had when they were blind. It wouldn't make sense!

And yet, this is us. We are healed of our spiritual blindness, and yet continue on in our lives as though we are still blind, keeping the news of our healing to ourselves.

It must not be this way. We must run to any and all the people that we know, proclaiming the name of Jesus! He has healed us; are we not filled with joy at this truth?! Are we content with our healing so much so that we ignore the blindness of others?!

We have had our eyes opened. It is now our job to do the same with our mouths.

Leave Your Life Behind

"If you died with the Messiah to the elemental forces of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?" -Colossians 2:20, HCSB

Solid question, right? Why do we act as though we aren't in Christ?

I'm not even talking about living a "sinner's lifestyle;" many of us jump immediately to that. We think,

"Well, I'm not living as if I belong to the world! I don't cuss, I attend church most weeks, I lead a bible study, and I don't smoke. I'm doing what I am supposed to do."

But, are you really living a life of Christ? Are you really doing what your salvation saved you to do? I mean, what did Jesus say upon His ascension?

"Go, therefore, and do not smoke weed. Attend church regularly, read Max Lucado books and stay away from alcohol in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

What?! That isn't what He said?! Oh my. Well, what did Jesus command?

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you." -Matthew 28:19-20, HCSB

Are we making disciples, teaching and baptizing, or are we living the same kind of "personal religion" that the rest of the world prescribes to? Most of the United States, whether they admit it, have a self-centered religion.

The reason people go to church/mosque or not is based on their spirituality. What makes your spiritual life complete is what you should go for, says the world. Pray to whomever you please. If you're into burning sage, go for it. If you're into worshipping a cactus blossom, great. Whatever pleases you. Just make sure not to try to get anyone else to do it. I mean, we don't want to be pushy and force our religion on others!

I'm not insinuating that Christians should be annoying, leaving a tract instead of a tip at restaurants or anything like that. I'm asking seriously: are you following Christ in a worldly, self-glorifying way that is built around you and your feelings of "religiousness," or are you striving for a walk with Christ that is founded on Him and His greatness?

We are to stay pure, yes. It is a good thing if you don't cuss or smoke pot. However, if you are doing nothing with your salvation beyond yourself, if you aren't sharing the life-changing truth that has been revealed to you, what good is it? We aren't saved for ourselves; we're saved for the glory of God!

We are to live lives that reject the philosophies and such of this world, and follow only after Christ. This means that we will have to go against the grain of culture and step out of our religious box. We must leave the temple behind and be the church, living lives for the advancement of the Kingdom. That's what it means to be dead to the world. We leave behind all trace of life from the old way of doing it and follow after Him.

Are we willing to pick up our cross and die to a life of personal religion? Are we willing to go against the grain and spread the gospel to those around us? Are we truly dead to the ways of this world and culture, willing to go wherever God sends us? These are questions we all must ask.

Let's Just Worship

A worship guide for the new year (and the rest of our lives):

"Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary."

- Psalm 96:1-6, NIV

 

Isn't this a great passage? It has a lot to it, and I really just wanted to share this with you all today. Let's break it down, and I hope you follow each section, worshipping Him:

 

"Sing to the LORD a new song, sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, praise His name...": Oh, sing to the Lord! Sing with all your heart. May the whole planet, nay, the entire universe sing to Him who is seated above all! He is worth of all praise and glory and honor, forever and ever and ever! Praise His great name, the Name that is above all names!

 

"Proclaim his salvation day after day, declare His glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples...": The natural result of, or perhaps better called the continuation of, worshipping our Lord is the declaration of His splendor and majesty and power to the nations for all to hear. If we truly worship Him, it will spill over onto into a flowing river of praise from our lips, taking His name to the ends of the earth.

 

"For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens...": There is nothing on this planet or beyond this planet that is worthy of the praise that our God is due. Why? Because He made it all. He made light and dark and land and water and stars and moons and planets. He made birds and fish and plants and mammals and invertebrates and reptiles and amphibians. He made wood and metal and oil and combustion and paper and jewels. He made relationships and power and love and sex and passion and happiness. Everything you could ever make into an idol, anything that you could put over Him (idols don't have to be objects; they are ANYTHING we put over God) was made by Him or forbidden by Him. In fact, the very act of idolatry is sin.

 

Instead we should fear Him. A writer called the fear of God, "the convergence of awe, reverence, adoration, honor, worship, confidence, thankfulness, love, and yes, fear." All of that is what our reaction toward God should be. Anything less isn't up to par.

 

"Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary...": This is why we fear Him. Splendor and majesty and strength and glory surround Him; I don't think I have to expand. I don't even know if I can. Our Lord is so majestic and wonderful and powerful and glorious and beautiful and amazing that words simply do not do Him justice.

 

Just sing a song and worship. Just bow and lift up His name. That is the only fitting response.

Have a Heart

So, the world didn't end on December 21, 2012. Shocker. While I would have loved to have been able to go see Jesus, I'm not upset that the world didn't end. After all, "to live is Christ (Philippians 1:21)." Life is a good thing. In fact, it's a great gift of God.
The truth is, though, that the world as we know it will end. Some unknown day (Mark 13:32), the world will end. With that end of the world will come a judgment day.
Every person will be judged on their deeds. Since we are all sinners that have rebelled against our great God, the verdict for every single one of us, left to ourselves, will be guilty. Some, however, have received the gift of salvation in this life, and will be declared "not guilty" before God on judgment day (courtesy of the blood and death of Jesus Christ).
Unfortunately, not everyone will come to Christ. There will be lots of people who will die between now and judgment day, and those people will not have received grace. They will not have let Jesus' blood cover their sins and they will not have believed in Jesus as Lord. They will die, be judged guilty before the holy God of the universe, and will be sentenced to an eternity in Hell. That's a never-ending future in a literal Hell.
And you and I know what can keep them from this. You and I, fellow Christ follower, know the great gospel of Christ. You and I know the truth of Jesus. You and I know the sweet goodness of our Lord and Savior. Yet, like a kindergartner on the playground, we want to keep it to ourselves and fail to share the greatest gift we could ever receive.
Oh, that we would have a heart for the damned and doomed like is described in Ezekiel 21! Read with me please:
"Therefore groan, son of man! Groan before them with broken heart and bitter grief. And when they ask you, ‘Why are you groaning?’ you shall say, ‘Because of the news that is coming.'" -Ezekiel 21:6-7a, NIV

Oh Church, may we groan! May we groan before the lost with broken heart and bitter grief. We know that bad news is coming! Let us actually care! Oh Lord, please help us to have this heart for those who are hurtling toward destruction! Please let us legitimately have broken hearts, weeping for those who don't know Christ. Please let us bitterly wail into the night for those that do not know our Lord. Pray that we feel this way! We have the truth of Christ, let us want to share it and prevent this impending doom!

Discipleship, Part Five: Conclusion

So, this is the fifth part and seventh post in my Discipleship series. If you've stayed with me the whole way through, congrats! I'm not positive I'd read seven posts that some goober on the Internet machine wrote, regardless of topic. Alas, today we draw to a close on this series. Our final topic for the series feeds off of my post from last week, Discipleship, Part Four: Teaching. We will look briefly at one question today: how do you balance teaching with the other three aspects of discipleship? As a refresher, let's re-cap the four elements of discipleship, then we'll dive in.

4 Elements of Discipleship

1. Commitment: be personally invested in your disciple
2. Modeling: you set a good example for your disciple
3. Personal Attention: you pay direct attention and care to your disciple
4. Teaching: teaching biblical knowledge, doctrine and life to your disciple

OK, so how does one balance these? We learned that both are necessary to discipleship last week, so we have to have both. But just how important are they? A few points to close out the series:

-Biblical knowledge isn't the key to spirituality: We looked at this last week. You have to do more discipling than just teaching; if knowledge-giving was the key to discipleship, then the best advice I could give would be to send my disciple to [insert your local Christian book store] to get a few commentaries and such, then watch 'em go. Obviously, the first three elements are needed along with the fourth.

Additionally, the personal side of discipleship is needed, as one can teach without discipling. When I preach on occasion, I may have 150-200 people listening to me. I am not discipling 150 people. I may be teaching, as well as aiding their spiritual walk, but that is not direct discipleship. Jesus preached to a lot of people in His ministry, but had a significantly smaller amount of disciples.

-Non-teaching isn't good enough to stand alone: Ponder with me for a moment. If I wanted to be a doctor, how would I go about it? What if I had a skilled doctor that cared about me, was dedicated to leading me, showed me how he does his job, and kept up with me on a day-to-day basis? Am I any closer to being a doctor? Of course. In my time watching and being around this doctor, I have gotten glimpses of what being a doctor is all about. I've learned some things, and probably have a pretty good idea of what this whole doctor lifestyle looks like.

Yet, what happens if I take that and try to become a practicing doctor? Will I be able to be licenced? The obvious answer is no. Why is that? I have no medical school diploma, which would be the evidence that I have knowledge in the area of medicine. I would be familiar with things I had seen with my doctor-mentor, and I would have a general idea of some different things. But what happens when I run into a disease I have never seen, or I need to prescribe a medicine that I have never heard of? The results would be disastrous.

The same goes for discipleship. Our disciples can learn by watching and being with us, no doubt, but a lack of real, intense teaching will prove disasturous for them in their walk. We won't always be their for them when they run into something they've never learned about. Also, guess what: we may model something contrary to God's Word. Even with the best intentions, we are still imperfect, sin-scarred beings that will be that way until we die and resurrect to be with God. We will mess up, and we will show them the wrong thing to do at some point.

There must be teaching, as the Word of God is essential to discipleship, and you are not capable of true discipleship without it.

-A balance must be found: In our very first post in this series, I referred to discipleship as spiritual parenting. A good parent will have commitment to their child, will model how to live life to their child, show their child personal attention and have concern for their child learning about life. Think about a parent that does the first three without teaching: the child will not survive once it moves out, as the parent never told it how to live. If the parent teaches, but never shows love or commitment or care, the child may go on to physically live, but it will be a socially warped human, having never seen how someone shows commitment, love and compassion for another human.

We must have a healthy balance. Nutritionists suggest a balanced meal; too much bread will leave you with a protein deficiency, while too much meat will leave you with no energy from carbohydrates (yes, I simplified all of that a lot. Bear with me, science geeks.). The ideal meal features elements of both, and so should discipleship. Keep the Gospel/Great Commission as the focus, apply the Scripture that went along with each element of discipleship as needed, and you are on your way to spiritual parenting.

Being a parent is never easy, and you'll mess up along the way (and like biological kids, they may very well tell you so). Don't let that scare you; you've got the Spirit of God inside you, and He will make sure you are capable to do this work. He wouldn't have sent us on this mission otherwise.

Discipleship and Church Strategy: What Is Your Focus?

"Then Jesus came near and said to them, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." -Matthew 28:18-20, HCSB

This is the famous Great Commission passage, which happens to be the exact passage I opened up with my recent post, Discipleship: An Introduction, with. On Tuesday, I continued this series on discipleship, which is at the core of everything the Christian should be doing. Our primary concern should be to make disciples. It is the command Christ gave us to accomplish while waiting for His return (the end of the age).

This also applies to the Church as a whole. The mission of the Church should be discipleship. Not huddle groups and bible classes; discipleship is the job of every believer, not just a few "teachers." Every single Christian is to "go."

I've noticed an interesting thing, though. We almost always leave verse 18 off when we are talking about the Great Commission. If the last command of Christ is so important, why not include all of it? Sure, verse 18 isn't directly a command. However, it may be even more important, as it gives Christ's reasoning for verses 19-20.

The entire reason that Christians share the gospel, lead people to Christ and assist in the convert's journey into discipleship is because Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. He is the supreme Lord and King over all. Everything we do is to glorify this King. He runs the show, and we lift Him up the whole way.

We can disciple and strategize and teach all day, and never accomplish the Great Commission. You see, if we forget that the entire reason for discipleship and church growth is the glory of our Lord, we are nothing more than a group of pagan idol worshippers, recruiting people to worship ourselves and our ideas.

We keep God and His Word at the center of everything we do, and we especially keep the very focus of God's Word (the gospel) at the forefront of what we are doing. If we remove the bright torch that is the glorious gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from our focus, we will be left to be devoured by wolves and trip over our own feet in the darkness of this world.

The gospel, and the glory it brings God, is why we disciple. Without the gospel, you are simply leading people down a path of which even you cannot see. If you are leading people without a focus on their salvation in Christ and the glory of God in that, then you are leading people for an eternity away from God. That, my friends, is not a good direction to be headed.

Discipleship: An Introduction

Moses did it. John the Baptist did, too. Pharisees did, and almost everyone knows Jesus did. In fact, Christ even told us to do it. What is it?

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations..." -Matthew 28:19a, HCSB

All Christians are commanded to make disciples. Questions abound when I make that statement. Questions like...

1) What is a disciple?
     The word "disciple" comes from the Greek word for "learner" or "pupil."

So, if a disciple is a learner, the next question is...

2) How do we make disciples? What is discipleship?
     This is a harder question than it should be, purely because I personally believe that few churches are adaquately teaching their congregations what discipleship is. The fact that I have grown up in church, as have several of my friends, and none of us had a very good idea of how to disciple speaks volumes to me. Furthermore, when I wanted to lead a discipleship training, it was rather hard to actually find material on how to actually disciple people. Fortunately, I found www.disciplers.org. This website had an excellent presentation of what discipleship is, directly from the Word.

I will be basing my Tuesday posts off of this website and their model for disicpleship, which they refer to as "spiritual parenting." Spiritual parenting has four distinct aspects that we will look at over the next few weeks, in hopes that we can all become better at fulfilling the Great Commission.

September 4: Discipleship: An Introduction
September 11: Aspect 1- Commitment
September 18: Aspect 2- Modeling
September 25: Aspect 3- Personal Attention
October 2: Aspect 4- Teaching
October 9: The Dangers of Example-based Discipleship v. The Dangers of Teaching-based Discipleship