Daily writing prompt

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

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I find hope by looking beyond the past, the present, and the future. The discipline of God the Holy Spirit gives life and hope. Jesus calls the Spirit’s discipline discipleship. (Proverbs 5:23)

Jesus said to go and make disciples. (Matthew 28:19-20) To make disciples is to train, empower, and inspire people to be aware of, attentive to, and activated by God the Holy Spirit in their daily life. (John 16:12-15) Then they can be transformed by God’s power (Acts 1:8) from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) and become effective witness to the actual presence of Christ living and working in and through them. (Colossians 1:27)

To make disciples we need to help people encounter, obey, and fully surrender all to the living resurrected Jesus Christ. Simply put, disciple making is helping someone love Jesus more. The focus of Christianity is too often on filling religious buildings with church members, but Jesus wants us to fill the world with totally committed Christ-lovers who consistently follow and obey Him.

Too many Christians are educated but not discipled. They’re taught but not trained. They’re informed but not empowered. They’re instructed but not inspired. (2 Timothy 3:16) They are lectured but not Spirit-led. (Romans 8:14)

In much of contemporary Christianity, direct revelation from God (Matthew 16:17 & 1 Corinthians 2:9-10) has been exchanged for human wisdom. (Proverbs 3:5-6) Heart-to-heart relationship with God (John 15:14-15) has been replace by routine religion. (Mark 7:13)

Jesus wants His followers to go and make disciples, not to passively sit together and make an audience. To make a disciple you must be a disciple. It’s so much easier to simply be a Sunday morning spectator. Dare to make disciples, not just to invite people to attend church! Unless Christian converts are converted into true disciples, they’ll gradually revert to their old habits and lifestyle patterns, even if they continue going to church.

Christ’s goal isn’t to make us safe and secure in our own nation. It’s to save us from self-focus and to set us free to consistently love, serve, and obey Him (John 14:15) and to love other people, even our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) Many churches and Christian leaders have begun to make political activists. Meanwhile Jesus is still waiting for us to make disciples who will deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Him. (Luke 9:23)

Is the way church is being done an effective way of making disciples? Answer honestly. Does Jesus really want churches to make Christians into Sunday bench warmers on the sideline of life who are required to listen to a weekly religious lesson?

Disciples do
What Jesus
Tells them to.
How about you?

For my books on discipleship, google: The Joy of Early Christianity and/or Beyond Church Ekklesia.