ECIPLESHIP for Passionate Christ-Followers

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???

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…

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????

All of the heroes of faith, honored in Hebrews 11, staked their lives on the word and character of God, no matter what the results of their faith acts might be. And not every faithful person was rewarded with a storybook ending. Listen to verses 35b – 38:

“But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. ³⁶ Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. ³⁷ Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half,^[d] and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. ³⁸ They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.”

Key phrase in there: “They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.” Yep! That’s right! Because an awful lot of them bit the dust placing their faith in God. They believed that whether they lived or died, as long as they followed hard after God, they would also be safe, whether in life or death. The three young mavericks in Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego said it so well when facing certain death by fire. Refusing to worship the king’s gold idol in a foreign land, the godly rebels declared, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.”

Biblical faith is only faith when it presses through fear. The fear of failure, fear that God’s way won’t be as good as yours, fear that something tragic will happen, fear that God won’t come through like He says He will, fear that God won’t provide, fear of pain,  fear of what others think…. Our fears are endless! Authentic faith is what enables us to overcome fear.

Fear paralyzes us from significantly following after God. Fear is the number one thing that keeps us from being and becoming everything that God has in mind for you. We have a nation filled with Christians who are living an acceptable lifestyle, according to the church’s standards today. We measure our Christianity according to the expectations of our Christian culture and fellow believer-friends. Many of us measure up quite well.

How does God see you? Are you living a lifestyle of risk-taking faith? Are you crazy for God?

Would others say you are?

Christ followers have a Hall of Faith! Similar to the Hall of Fame for football in Canton, Ohio, or the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, the Christians’ Hall of Faith is located in Hebrews 11. Residing there is an amazing assortment of unique and high-achieving individuals. All of them have exhibited a degree of startling and rare faith. Beginning with Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, to Zechariah the prophet, we are reminded of heroes to admire from A to Z! And we can learn from them too.

The common element of faith demonstrated by all in The Hall is that they were crazy! Really. At least they were from our human perception.

• Imagine being in the heat of battle so much so that you get rid of 30,000 soldiers in order to fight with only 300! And you do that with only a few clay pots, some ram horns and ancient torches! And then you win! Meet Gideon.
• Consider a prostitute in Jericho, a city about to be annihilated by the Jews crossing the Jordon River into their Promised Land. Rather than living out her days in hopelessness and despair, she heard of the God of Israel that performed the impossible on behalf of His people. She simply believed, even though her life was twisted, ugly, and godless. Her unlikely faith and life-saving actions on behalf of Israel’s spies secured her place in The Hall. She even became an ancestor of Jesus! Meet Rahab.
• Daniel (one of the prophets alluded to in verse 32) shut the mouths of lions!…and also of a few pagan enemies of God too. Even though Daniel was a man of eighty years old at the time (ancient for sure in those days of old), he was arrested for praying to the God of Israel. He didn’t wane in His devotion for God, nor shrink in the face of certain death. He totally entrusted His life into the hands of Yahweh who he knew so well. (He had spent lots of time talking with Him.) By faith, He never stopped being on task for God, entrusting Him to take care of all the details…even when he was dropped into a pit of blood thirsty ravaging lions. The beasts enjoyed a Persian meal the next morning after Daniel was surprisingly protected.

Fairly crazy people, don’t you think?

Every person in the Hall of Faith pushed through their fear. I’m sure they were often terrified to the core, but they refused to let fear win the day, even when their actions seemed ludicrous. They staked their lives on the word and character of God, no matter what the results of their faith acts might be.

The disciples were on a steep learning curve after Jesus left planet earth. Thank goodness, He gave the gift of the Helper to enable them (and us) to do and be things that were way beyond their reach. As a result, these unlearned and simple disciples were oozing with character, even early on in their new world-changing venture.

Acts 4 tells the story of the Peter and John in the midst of some pompous and angry Jewish leaders. This council of religious elites was fed up with the ridiculous story of the recently crucified Jesus being the long promised Messiah. The disciples were threatened, flogged and told to never speak of this Jesus again. But here’s the statement I really love in this story – “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus,” Acts 4:13. The sense given in this verse is that there was not so much facial recognition as character recognition. Peter and John had actually morphed internally to become like their Master! And it was recognizable to others!

We catch another glimpse of God’s transforming power when we read about the early Christians in Antioch (Acts 11). It was in this city that the believers were first called Christians, literally meaning “little Christs”. Yes—these passionate disciples had morphed into people who lived their lives and character in such similar fashion as Jesus that people coined them with this new name. It stuck!

Scripture tells us to ALL become like Jesus:

• To be “growing in every way more and more like Christ,” Ephesians 4:15
• To be “be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13
• To “have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had,” Philippians 2:5

One of the things that God, by His spirit, wants to do for each of us is to transform us into Christ-likeness from the inside out. There is a vital partnership required, however, in order for this to truly happen. God will always do His part – we need to make sure that we do our part.

Our part is NEVER accomplished in a casual ho-hum way. We will never mature in our relationship with God by focusing primarily on worldly things. We will miss out on God’s best blessings if we follow a “life-in-the-rut” sort of Christianity.

Instead, Jesus was radical, crazy, startling, living on the edge, pushing the envelope, unbound by traditions, and mission driven! God wants to do His work in us to make us like THIS!

Want to be like Jesus?

Perry Noble is a fellow blogger and church leader that I admire. I’m passing along his thoughts from yesterday because they are so good. You can find his site in “Blogroll” in the side panel, or go to www.PerryNoble.com.

Three Arguments That Sound Spiritual But Are Actually Stupid August 3, 2010

#1 – “The Church Is Not A Business But Rather A Hospital For Sinners.”

Uh…ok, the problem with this argument is…a hospital IS a business…and if it is not ran properly then it will have to close its doors, thus losing its effectiveness in helping those it has been called to reach.

Like it or not in church world today leadership matters.  God made sure we knew that leadership IS a spiritual gift and the reason it has been given was to help the church be more and more effective.

I personally believe the church should be the best ran organization on the planet because God has gifted and called leaders to lead AND filled them with HIS Holy Spirit so that they can do so.

#2 – “Too Many Churches Are Just Chasing Cool and Relevant.”

Uh…so what’s the opposite, chasing uncool, boring, predictable and meaningless?

Sure, churches can go off the deep end and worship creativity rather than the Creator.  But to say that a church should not embrace creativity and inovation and leverage them for the use of the Gospel is insane.

Church should not be a place where people come and see what life was like on this planet during the 1960’s and 70’s…but rather a place where people encounter Jesus Christ and the preaching of HIS Word in an environment in which they understand.  (One does NOT have to be sacrificed for the other!)

We are created in God’s image and called to be like Him…which means that we ARE creative beings.  Somehow I believe that the church is supposed to be reaching kids WAY better than Disney…they have a mouse…we have the MESSIAH who gave His life and rose from the dead.  Our message is SO much greater and should be told in the most effective way possible.

#3 – “Too Many Pastors Today Are Obsessed With Dressing Cool And Shopping At Buckle.”

This one always cracks me up because, well, I happen to like shopping at Buckle (they actually have jeans that fit me!)  I am not so sure about the dressing cool part…but I really do like their clothes.

Honestly, I was not aware that surrendering to ministry meant that I also had to surrender to the pleated/cuffed khaki, sweater vest, comb over club!  (We could really go back and forth all day on this.)

Bottom line…there is a WAR going on for the battle of the souls of men and women…and fighting over clothing styles should not be a fight we dive into!  Dress how you like to dress…and if others want to obsess about it you should feel sorry for them and not fight with them.

I constantly think about what the church is here for. Here is a top five list:

1) To honor God by bringing Him great pleasure. Children honor their parents most when they bring joy into their lives. Whether that is through obedience, relationship together, partnering in a cause, laughter, or feeling a parent’s pain as if it were their own. The oneness experienced in relationship brings great honor to one in authority in that relationship.

2) To love God by loving those that He loves. When I love someone, but another person I love doesn’t love that person, I’m conflicted. There is a lack of depth in that relationship because of the inconsistency in who we love together. God values everyone, but especially mentions the weak, sick, hurting, homeless, hungry, imprisoned, orphans, widows, and forgotten. In other words, the people we so easily overlook are the ones that God implores us to passionately pursue.

3) To obey God by helping others become whole–hearted followers of Jesus Christ. This command to engage in the Great Cause of making disciples was Jesus’ last statement before leaving us these 2000 years. Pretty important. Yet, the church tends to do everything BUT this. Making disciples, as Jesus stated it, is not primarily meant to grow people “deep”, although this is very important too. He did say, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”. But what Jesus really meant when He told us to make disciples is that we are to lead others to a relationship with God. A disciple, according to scripture, is someone who has embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior for five seconds or fifty years. Jesus was telling us be radically evangelistic. We don’t get this in our churches very well.

4) To be the Body of Jesus in the flesh down here. We have all been designed differently and gifted perfectly. When each of us find our God-designed nitch, and then function primarily in that realm, we will blow the world away by what God does in and through us. We are each to be Jesus in our world, but also display the beauty and power of the Body of Jesus together.

5) To encourage one another. Life down here stinks much of the time! We live in a broken world. God tells us to be one another’s best cheerleaders! There is no spiritual gift of criticism, no calling to be judgmental of others. This is all too rampant in the church way too often. Instead, we need to all know that we have entire church who is cheering us on to become everything we can possible be in Christ. Just think of what would happen if we lived like this day after day, week after week, year after year. Watch out world! We’ll blow your mind…and touch your heart.

Let’s be the Church!

One of the most memorable statements I’ve heard in quite some time was in response to my question, “What do you have to lose if you give God your everything?” The answer? “My freedom.”

That may not seem so memorable unless you also realize that the guy I was talking with was on the other side of a glass wall and we were talking through a couple of handsets. During his few daily hours of  ”free time”, I came to check up on the inmate to give him some unconditional love and timeless wisdom.

The prisoner’s “freedom statement” highlights the bent of all of humanity — we want to rule our own lives. Even in prison we cling to the last vestiges of freedom we have…the freedom to own our own lives, think what we want to think, do what we want to do (even if it’s in our mind or imagination). We have a sin-induced aversion to letting God be Lord (absolute ruler) of our lives.

When my friend made the freedom statement, I thanked him for his honesty. And then I said, “How much freedom do you have?”

“Not much right now,” he responded.

I clarified, “And you will have even less if you don’t let God fix you. The devil’s intent is to kill, steal, and destroy you…and he’s winning right now.”

Yes — we are all slaves to something. The two big categories are that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness. Real freedom is found when we are no longer slaves to sin…when Christ has truly set us free. There is no freedom like that freedom. If Christ has set us free, we are free indeed!

Romans 6:16-18 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.