Introduction:
Jeremiah 29:12-13 (NKJV) “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to
Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you
search for Me with all your heart.”
Jesus always called upon the Father, He had an intimate relationship
with the Father. We encourage you to complete each assignment before
progressing to the next lesson. It is important to do as the Lord told His
servant to do. Eat my words, and I believe it means to take it to heart what
God tells us; in order to pass it on. Pay attention to these verses below.
Ezekiel’s Commission
Ezekiel 3:1-4 “1Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what
you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” 2 So I opened
my mouth, and He fed me this scroll. 3 He said to me, “Son of man, feed your
stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.” Then I ate
it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth. 4 Then He said to me, “Son of man,
go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them.”
Jeremiah 15:16 “Your words were
found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my
heart; For I have been called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.”
God feeds us with the message that He taught the disciples and now He
tells us to go the whole world and make disciples.
Objectives
1 You should have a clear idea of
what the Bible refers to as a true Disciple in God’s Kingdom.
2 Evaluate where you are at and
how you perceive a Disciple in your church compared to how God looks at one.
Introduction:
If we check the Scriptures, we will see that
discipleship existed for many centuries already. I quoted some verses in the beginning, which
I want to talk about a little to start this lesson.
First of all, we need to learn to call upon the
Lord and go and pray to Him as Jeremiah 29:12-13 (NKJV) teaches it very
clearly.
Ø Then you will call upon Me
Ø And go and pray to Me,
Ø And I will listen to you.
Ø And you will seek Me and find Me,
Ø When you search for Me with all
your heart.”
There is only one way to talk to the Lord and communicate with Him.
Let’s follow His command. He says: ‘Call upon Me’, ‘Go and pray to Me’. ‘I will
listen to you’ says the Lord. ‘You will seek Me and find Me’.
We cannot expect to find God, if we go only to listen to the pastor
preach on Sundays. We need to do our part to engage with God personally. We are
asked by Him to seek Him with all our heart.
Secondly, we
need to do as God tells us. Imagine being in Ezekiel’s situation.
Let’s read it
here again.
Ezekiel’s Commission
Ø “Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what
you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.”
Ø So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this
scroll.
Ø He said to me, “Son of man, feed your
stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.”
Ø Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my
mouth.
Ø Then He said to me, “Son of man, go to the
house of Israel and speak with My words to them.”
God gives us our Spiritual nourishment to every single one of us, just
as He fed His people Manna in the desert. He feeds us, teaches us how to enjoy
and absorb it and make the best use of the same. God told Ezekiel, “Son of man,
eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go to the house of Israel”. God told
him to eat the scroll. He needed to take to heart first and digest the Word God
gave him so that he would be able to speak that same message to the house of
Israel. That is why God sent us the Holy
Spirit to dwell in us; so that we can have an intimate relationship, and learn
as He teaches us.
Now, if we compare that to what Jesus taught his disciples, we will see
that Jesus not only taught them; but, they had to learn to eat it and digest it
also. We can only feed others with comfort from the Lord if we already received
the same food of comfort, and learned how to process it. You and I need to learn likewise.
Jeremiah 15:16 “Your words were
found and I ate them, and Your Words became for me a joy and the delight of my
heart; For I have been called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.” The
prophet tells us that God’s Words were found by him.
-
The Word only can be found if the person seeks for it.
-
Once we process it we will learn to taste it.
-
It becomes joy and a delight to the heart as the prophet says.
Once we learn to take in the Word of God, it
brings joy to us and we learn to delight in our hearts about the nourishment we
receive from our God. God calls us to go in all the world and make disciples.
We need to learn to take in the Word, digest it, be nourished by it; so that we
can live by His Word and teach other people how to live by it as well. Amen,
praise God.
Thirdly: The Bible tells us in the Old Testament
in several passages where discipleship was at hand. We will quote a few people
here.
Moses: In Deuteronomy 4:29 (NKJV) “But from there you will seek the Lord your
God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all
your soul”.
Moses is teaching Joshua and
all the people that were in the desert with them the instructions God gave to
Moses for His people. Pay attention, this is how a leader brings back people
that have drawn away from the Lord.
· ‘You will seek the Lord your God,
· And you will find Him if you seek Him
with all your heart and with all your soul’.
· We must have the desire to seek Him,
and when we do so with all our heart … we will find Him.
We have another passage that
tells us how Moses was taught and he followed what his fathrt-in-law made him
aware of.
Jethro’s Advice
Read Ex. 18:13-26 to see how Moses’s father-in-law was there to coach
Moses how to do his work a better way. He got together, checked out the
situation and then he taught him how to coordinate the whole situation in a
more effect way. And in verse 24 it says: “So
Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said.”
Here we see the picture of discipleship as we learned before: ‘If you are someone's disciple, you are
influenced by their teachings and try to follow their example. ó You
are a follower.’ Jethro influenced Moses and he heeded his
teaching and performed thus way.
Question nº1: How well is discipleship
executed in your congregation? Is it practiced as we have learned in the lesson
so far?
Forth: Discipleship is one of the subjects we commonly hear about in the
church. But what exactly does it mean to disciple someone? Who qualifies as a
disciple, and what is required to become one? I believe the answer is the
following:
A
disciple is one who has accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, yielded to Him as
Lord, and received Him as one’s very life. A disciple is someone who can say
with the apostle Paul: “I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
All ‘Born Again Christians’ are disciples, but not everyone that attends
the church is a disciple. Those who only listen to sermons without applying
what they learn, nor share their faith are not disciples. A true disciple
hungers for Christ and His Word and as a result grows in his/her Christian
life. The difference between the two is: a Christian lives in Christ as the
apostle Paul stated and lives according the Word of God, as he learns every
week in Church or the Congregation where he participates as a believer. A
person that is not a born again Christian, but only one that listens to God´s
Word; does not bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. A Christian listens and applies it, just the same way as Jesus taught
the disciples to do it. Remember what Jesus said to Peter? “Do you love me?
Then go and feed my sheep.”
Many churches today are
more focused on numbers than discipleship, but; Jesus was never impressed by
the crowds that followed Him. In fact, He sometimes made difficult statements
that caused the people to leave Him. This was the situation in Luke 14:25-33.
When large crowds were following Him, He told them what was required to be His
disciple. Now remember a disciple can be good, and can be bad. A disciple can
be active and avoiding to be active/in-active.
Journal
nº1: How do you see yourself
based on the above description based on Luke
14:25-33? Active or in-active?
Good or bad?
Blessings on to you all.
Antonina Penner.
A. PENNER PUBLISHING.
Discipleship according the heart of God
ISBN NUMBER: 978-0-9881063-2-1
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