Embracing the Cost and Call of Discipleship

1. "What is a disciple? What is a disciple? Well, a disciple, according to the Bible, is a student, a learner, or someone who completely follows the teachings of another person. It's very simple. A disciple is someone who's a learner. They're a student of somebody else. They follow. They follow that other person, and they follow them completely. The Greek word for disciple is in the Bible, in the New Testament, 261 times. That's a lot. And most of those are in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." [15:39] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "A Christian is someone who believes. Someone who believes in Jesus Christ and has accepted him as their Lord and Savior. Or maybe I should just say as their Savior. A Christian is someone who believes and has accepted Jesus as their Savior. But a disciple, a disciple is a follower of Jesus. Committed. Committed. Someone who has committed their life. Someone who has committed their life to following his teachings. Now, can there be a difference? Sure there can. Sure there can. I know lots of people who claim to be followers of Jesus. But they live their lives as only just believers. They just believe. That's it. They go on and they live their lives, the rest of their lives, the way they want to live." [17:30] (50 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Discipleship is a process. It's a process of learning and growing in your faith. And the goal of discipleship... Discipleship is to become more like Jesus. Remember that definition I gave you? That a disciple is a student, a learner, who completely follows the teaching of another. So, discipleship is a process of growing in your faith. It involves Bible study. It involves praying. It involves fellowship with other believers. All of those things are things we all struggle with. If we claim to be believers and we claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ, then we ought to be in His Word on a daily basis. Getting into His Word and getting His Word into us." [19:04] (51 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "But Jesus was very clear about the cost of discipleship. He said in Luke chapter 14, verse 33, Those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciple. That's pretty... Harsh. He was serious about the cost of following Him. Being a disciple is more than wearing a cross around your neck. It's popular in our society. It used to be a little more popular than it is now to wear a cross. If you wore a cross, you were cool. You were in. But being a disciple is about carrying that cross on your back. Day by day. Discipleship requires a daily commitment to let go of the control that you have over your life and let Jesus lead your life." [21:39] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "The call to discipleship is personal, it's costly, and it's the greatest adventure you will ever be on, because it involves your entire self and your entire life. But it's personal, and it's costly. So first of all, the call to discipleship is personal. It's personal. So let's look at it. It says, Then he said to them all, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Now, this verse is sandwiched right in the midst of some other things that are happening." [25:38] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Jesus is calling you to a life-changing relationship with him. Life-changing. Just as the Shakespeare book, the life of the Lloyd�에서. Just like the plumber's apprentice. Not just a salvation, but to discipleship. Remember what I said earlier. I was talking about the difference between being just a Christian and a disciple. You can be a Christian. You can believe in Jesus and accept him as your savior, but if that's as far as you go, you're missing the whole picture. You're missing the boat. It's not just about salvation. It is about salvation. but it's not just about salvation he wants all of you the call to Jesus isn't for the faint of heart it's not an add-on to your life it becomes your life ask yourself today have I responded to that call of discipleship not just to believe in Jesus but to truly follow him with everything you've got" [31:59] (67 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Notice the three things that Jesus requires of his disciples deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow me those three things deny yourself discipleship means that we put what Jesus wants first in our lives it means that we deny the desires that we have to put ourselves first that's hard we don't want to admit that we want everybody else to think oh that we're kind and caring and and thinking of others type of people but we think of ourselves way too much the apostle paul said it this way in philippians 2 verse 3 Nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus." [37:34] (70 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "To follow Jesus means to model your life after His. That kind of begs the question, do you know what His life was like? Have you read the Gospel accounts of Him? Are you well versed in what the Bible says about Jesus and how He lived? How He treated people? How He loved people? To follow Jesus means to model your life after His, to go where He leads, to surrender control of your life to Him. He also gave us some promises, though. I love it when God does this. He will give us ultimatums and He'll say, look, this is the way it needs to be. If you're going to be My disciple, then you need to do this. But I love it that He doesn't leave it there. He doesn't ever leave it there. He says, look, if you will follow Me, here's what you'll get." [46:11] (63 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "The hard truth here, is that you can't follow Jesus while you're holding on to your life. You can't follow Jesus while you're hanging on to everything else. You can't be His disciples and still live for yourself. Discipleship means letting go. So it's time to ask yourself, what are you holding on to that is keeping you from following Jesus fully? Is there something? When I ask that question, I would think that there ought to be something that comes up in your mind that is so important to you that you know that it's gotten in the way of your relationship with Jesus. If you can't think of something, that doesn't mean you're perfect. That means that you need to really pray and think about this." [50:48] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "You've got to let go of the old life to grab a hold of the new life that He is calling you to. Let's call the musicians back up. We're going to have a time of invitation. This is discipleship. This is what it means to be a disciple. We're going to have more lessons on this in the coming weeks. We're going to look at this in a little bit more depth. We're going to see some more examples. But here's the challenge for us today. Jesus doesn't call us to comfort. Although we think He does, He doesn't. He calls us to commit and He calls us to discipleship. And that means saying yes to Him and no to yourself. It means daily taking up your cross and following wherever He leads." [53:02] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)