My thoughts on the subject (Part 2)
In a recent post, I addressed the subject of discipleship. I thought I would come back and unpack the subject a little more…and hopefully get a conversation started.
In the article, I referred to discipleship as a stretching process. In my view of things I am becoming more and more convinced that the christian life is a journey. In Luke 9:23-27 we read:
Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:23-27 NIV)
That same passage can be found in Matthew 16:24-27 and Mark 8:34-9:1. In all of those passages the key term and focus is on “following”. Now, I know that there may be some who might say that the key idea in those passages might be taking up your cross….and to be quite frank I used to lean to the idea that “taking up your cross” was the key focus of discipleship….but I think I missed it and stuck myself in a performance mode as a result.
Let me see if I can unpack this some more….
In Jesus’ time He always walked where ever He needed to go. For Him the thing he seemed to enjoy was travelling. It seemed for Him that the everyday tasks of life were important and that He derived much joy from them.
It seems in discipleship now-a-days we are more geared towards the classroom instruction method and conferences and techniques and all sorts of cool tools that are supposed to revolutionize our spiritual lives and somehow make the walk with Jesus that we have become powerful and supernatural.
But the more I look at Jesus and how He lived His life I am becoming convinced that discipleship has to be a one to one experience where people are changed because they had an incarnational relationship with the word of God.
Stay tuned for more as I journey….
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