ECIPLESHIP for Passionate Christ-Followers

Saturdays are wonderful. They are quite often a blank canvass that I get to paint from scratch. There are no regular meetings, work expectations, or high-pressure demands. These are days that usually start slow over a strong cup of coffee, reading my One Year Bible, perusing the newspaper, and then working on some home and family projects. I always spend time on my teaching material for the next day (when I’m on anyway)…and I ALWAYS love that!

Yesterday was…Saturday. I loved yesterday because…

• I got up so early that I took a nap before 9AM!
• I took another nap at 10:30…
• I had a simple and very late breakfast with Susan…and just enjoyed our moments together.
• I went to a Caribou coffee shop and did some church work for about four hours. God spoke and I wrote…
• Spent some time working on a fun project with my son.
• Grilled some MASSIVE steaks on the grill. We don’t do that very often.
• Did a little more church-work.
• Went on a very short, enjoyable, and inexpensive shopping trip with Susan. Nice!
• I sat in a chair while Susan cut my hair.
• Bedtime!

Saturdays are WONDERFUL! They’re like therapy to the soul…

I had a very full day of work yesterday. I wrote and wrote…and wrote. I was finishing up Morph for our all-church study in the fall. I got so into what I was doing that I had to come home mid-afternoon to change shirts! Enough said on that…

So last night was a welcome reprieve. Two things:

• A couple games of competitive softball
• A small army of guys working on brakes in my driveway until the wee hours

Both of the above activities are good for a man because they’re manly!

The softball games? Won them both! After knocking the rust out of my aging body, I had a lot of fun and a few decent defensive plays at shortstop. Let’s just forget what happened at the plate.

The mechanical repairs on my son’s Saab was an experience all it’s own. Old cars can give you big challenges. And there were quite a few of those. But many heads and several strong young arms accomplished the task! It was really fun to have a group of guys working on a car project. I was reminded of how unpleasant tasks can take on a whole new flavor when it’s shared with others. Cool.

So this morning, my elbow is swollen and really sore. My joints and muscles ache from running too hard, flopping around on the ball field and cranking like crazy on a tire wrench. But…I FEEL LIKE A MAN!

I’d do it all over again. In fact, I can’t wait until I do.

The Greatest Loser outreach is coming September 25-26! Don’t miss out on what God is doing…

What IS the Greatest Loser outreach?

• It’s a weekend that is carefully and prayerfully designed to reach others for Christ.
• It’s success depends upon the Holy Spirit’s work and your invitations.
• It’s a weekend that MUST be bathed in prayer…and then putting feet to those prayers.
• We will focus on what we need to lose in order to win!
• Sean Algiers, from the show “The Biggest Loser” will be with us that weekend.
• The youth will have a BIG EVENT on Saturday evening featuring a youth band and Sean Algiers.
• There will be a Fun Walk on Sunday morning at 8AM with Sean and maybe some others from “The Biggest Loser”.
• Both worship services will feature Sean…and a clear and compelling presentation of the gospel by me.
• We will need at least 100 volunteers to pull this weekend off. We already have about half of that!

What should you do?

• Pray
• Invite many
• Get involved
• Anticipate a God-thing!

From the lips of Jesus’ mouth, we have the compelling command to “go and make disciples”. This is the focal point of what we are to DO. This command is not about the BEING part of us. A lover of God is who we’re supposed to BE, as Jesus stated in the Great Commandment. That’s a whole concept of its own.

Let’s get back to the DOING thing… This making-disciples-thing is really about evangelism more than anything else. According to the New Testament, a disciple was a follower of Jesus, whether for thirty seconds or thirty years. So when Jesus tells us to make disciples, He’s telling us to help people become born again! Of course we’re supposed to grow them up in the faith…especially since Jesus said we are to “teach them everything I have commanded you”. But disciple-making is first about outreach, evangelism, extending the Kingdom to others, friendship influence, and bringing others to repentance.

The Old Testament has a sobering statement that emphasizes the same thing. In Ezekiel 33:7-9, God declares,

⁷ “Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. ⁸ If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. ⁹But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself.

The above statement was made to the prophet Ezekiel. This called man of God had a heavy responsibility. When God revealed His wrath on a person or people group, the prophet was compelled to tell them THE TRUTH and let them deal with it. If Ezekiel did not tell them, like a watchman on the wall of an ancient city, he would be held responsible for their lostness. BUT–if Ezekiel simply told, he was released from responsibility. He had carried out his part.

For today, Jesus tells us ALL to be His witnesses. TELL. It is a sobering responsibility, but a critically important one. That’s why you’re here! That’s why, when you gave your life to Jesus, He didn’t immediately take you up to glory. YOU HAVE WORK TO DO!!!! You can’t reach everybody, but you can reach somebody.

Who?

Who had God placed in your life that needs a witness? To whom have you been made a watch-person? Whose life is in the power of YOUR words???

It’s all up to God. He does what He wants to do!

The earth is wet with rain this morning. I love it! I’ve always loved rain since our lively hood depended on it while on the farm. I get this warm happy feeling inside when the clouds roll in. At the first drop of rain on my windshield, I’m smiling inside. It represents the providence of God.

So consider this amazing verses from Job 37:

¹¹ He loads the clouds with moisture,
and they flash with his lightning.
¹² The clouds churn about at his direction.
They do whatever he commands throughout the earth.
¹³ He makes these things happen either to punish people
or to show his unfailing love.

That last verse blows my mind! Only God could take the same storm system and bring justice to some and lavish His love on others. His ways ARE above our ways, His thoughts ARE above our thoughts!

It’s all up to God.

Living primarily for ourselves and our self-made puny dreams relegate our ability to persevere to wimpy wisps of air in the hurricanes of life.

Harvest season was always intense on the farm. All of the crops needed to be brought in before the Minnesota winter set in. On one particular day, while emptying wagon-loads of feed into the silo, I ripped my knee wide open on a rusty protruding nail on a fence post. The nail actually flipped me completely over as I was running by. But I was on a mission! There was no time to worry about an open knee (a three-inch gash that allowed me to see the inner workings of my knee joint). I needed to get the wagon empty and get back to the field where my Dad would be waiting. A little pain could not stop me from doing what needed to be done.

Do you get the picture? I think we Christ-followers are often on a theoretical mission that has failed to grip our soul and infuse our passions. We do what good Christians do, but fail to be unrelenting in our pursuit of God-things. As a result, trials come and overwhelm us, derail us, and render us useless for the Kingdom.

Here’s the truth of the matter: When we passionately engaged in what Jesus told us to do, the trials of life are never our primary focus, but rather, opportunities for God to morph us even more into the image of Christ.

If we fail to be hungry students of scripture, we fall back only on what we have learned and known from the past. It’s all we’ve got because there is nothing new, fresh, or germinating in the present. What we’ve learned in the past is fine, but we must always be learners in the present.

Check out Colossians 2:8:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

So many Christians today are captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies depending on human tradition. I’m not just talking about “those other churches” either. I’m convinced that the vast majority of evangelical church-goers are living on what they’ve received in the past rather than what God is giving them today. We depend on the way things were done a generation or two or ten ago, but fail to embrace the new things God wants to teach us and train us in for today. As a result, we have a shell of a faith that’s hollow, irrelevant to a needy world, and dull in it’s ability to be light in the darkness.

I’ll never forget the Sunday morning that I was preaching on vision. We had just moved into a new and much larger worship center. One of the statements I made drew a rare and hearty applause. I said, “We need to become a church that more than culturally Christian but radically biblical.” As the congregation affirmed the statement, I found myself thinking, “Most have no idea what this will cost them.” And I was right…

The Christian faith, lived out in the context of our world today, looks much different than it did 15, 30 and 50 years ago. We need to be passionately biblical, culturally sensitive, careful to never base our lives and ministry on human traditions and principles of this world.

We MUST be all about Jesus. Forget the rest…

I’ve missed blogging the last two days because I’ve been hiding out! I hunkered down in a nice cozy lake cabin to continue writing Morph. My brain hurts! Really–it does. I’ve had a headache since last night. I don’t think my brain is accustomed to working that hard. But it was good as I experienced God teaching and leading me as I wrestled with some life-changing concepts and wrote like a crazy man. Thanks to all of you who prayed for me.

Next week — same thing. I need two or three uncluttered days and I should have it. Just pray my head holds out…

So here’s a sneak peek at a section of Morph. Enjoy…

Nobody likes to be stupid. God doesn’t want us ignorant either. Our Morph passage states, “and in your moral excellence, supply knowledge,” 2Peter 1:5b. This “knowledge” is referring to information, facts, and data.

On a recent trip with my son, he was trying to figure out where we were, what directions we were going, what roads connected with what highways, etc. I found myself laughing repeatedly at his lack of information. I was glad to be able to tell this young driver where to go! Yes—good information is critical when traveling from one place to the next. It’s even more critical while traveling through life. Yet, many Christ-followers are characterized by ignorance rather than by knowledge. It spells TROUBLE. We find ourselves in all sorts of predicaments because we don’t really know what we’re doing.

I once read a book about making the Bible central in your life. It was entitled, “If All Else Fails, Read the Directions”. Good idea!

A friend recently sent me a quote by Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro. He may not be a Christ-follower, but He knows what spiritual growth is all about!

“Spiritual growth is the process by which we move from the known to the unknown, from the given to the not yet given, from the safe to the risky. Spiritual growth involves knowing what we have never known before, feeling what we have never felt before, doing what we have never done before.

Spiritual growth is not comfortable. It isn’t comfortable because it challenges all our presuppositions about ourselves and the way we view life. Everything we know about ourselves and others, everything we know about life and the way it ought to be lived, is based on past experience. Spiritual growth pushes out of the past and into the present. It forces us away from the isms we hide behind into the is we are hiding from.”

I’m consumed with writing a study for our whole church this fall. It’s called Morph. It will begin on the first week of October and last eight weeks all the way through November. I’m excited about what God will do in us as we digest these amazing life-change principles together.

“Morphe” is the Greek word for form or shape. There is another word for shape in the Greek – it’s the word scheema. It’s important to understand the difference between the two as we begin to engage in Morph.

Scheema refers to the outer shape of something…usually someone. It refers to the recognizable appearance. So when Philippians 2:8 states that Jesus, “being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,” it uses the word scheema for “appearance”. That particular verse is emphasizing that, even though Jesus visually appeared to be only a man, He was truly God in the flesh.

“Morphe”, however, refers to the inner shape or reality of someone. In the same Philippians 2 passage, we read that Jesus, who “existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant,” verses 6-7. “Morphe” is used for both of those words for “form” in this passage. This tells us that Jesus was God through and through! His inner shape was totally and completely God. But it also tells us that when He became a man, He was totally and completely a bondservant to the core! He didn’t just put on a show or present Himself in a humble way, He was truly that through and through. His morphe describes who the real Jesus really was.

As you study the concepts in Morph, you will realize that God wants to change your inner shape. It’s not your outer appearance that He wants to change first. The inner you, the part of you that no one but God sees is what He wants to transform in the eight weeks of Morph. He’s eager to do a Holy Spirit work to Morph the real you into the likeness of the real Jesus.

Are you ready to Morph????