Who Are You Following? Becoming Disciples of Jesus

Think about what that means coming from Billy Graham. 215,000,000 people across a 185 countries, 12 US presidents, 61 times on the Gallup poll's most admired list. No other person in history comes close. And at the end of it all, his final warning to the church was this, the greatest deception among Christians today is believing you know God because you know facts about God. You can quote scripture, you can name the books of the bible, you can sit in church for decades with a highlighted bible and a heart full of sincerity and still not truly know him. [00:58:48] (49 seconds)  #KnowGodNotFacts

We're here to get our weapons of warfare so that we can go out there and do the work of him who sent us. That's what God called us to do. It's not Andrew's job to save the world, it's ours in Christ to save the world. He's just your leader here. He can be considered your rabbi here. Jesus is your ultimate rabbi, Andrew is your rabbi, earthly rabbi. Everything you expect him to do, you should be doing at some point. [00:44:41] (42 seconds)  #GoDoHisWork

You know who he's talking to? He's talking to the church. He's not talking to atheists, he's not talking to agnostics, he's not talking to people who party every weekend and don't ever go to church, he's talking to us. Because you see what happens is many of us spend our whole lives in church. We're ushers, we're elders, we teach Sunday school class, we memorize bible verses. I have a trophy sitting at home collecting dust, but it says I was the best bible quoter in 1965. [00:22:00] (48 seconds)  #ChurchWakeUp

If I look at you and watch your life long enough, I can tell you probably who you're following. But you definitely know And when it's held against the word of God, does it show up? Or will Jesus one day say, I never knew you. I'm glad you knew about me too bad you didn't know me. Who are you following? Let's pray. [01:02:28] (37 seconds)  #WhoAreYouFollowing

Our entire lives are organized around three driving goals and the first goal is this, to be with your rabbi. Jesus invites his disciples to be with him all day, every day. What that means is, now that I am following him and I'm his disciple, my life changes. I'm not relying on 48 Sundays a year to make my Christianity work. I'm not relying on pastor Andrew to make my Christianity work. I study the word of God myself. [00:34:42] (47 seconds)  #DailyWithJesus

They come on Mother's Day because they wanna make mama happy and they don't wanna hear about it for the rest of the year. Why didn't you come? But then there's Christmas and Easter. And Christmas is more popular than Easter because everybody can deal with a baby. A baby is non threatening, helpless, you can dominate over a baby. And when you picture Jesus as a baby, you got nothing to worry about. But when you get to Easter and Jesus becomes a man, now you got something to think about. [00:19:28] (37 seconds)  #NotJustBabyJesus

People don't wanna deal with Jesus the man because that demands something of us. It means that suddenly his words have power and we have to make a choice. Are we going to follow him or not? Oh, I prefer baby Jesus, he doesn't ask me for anything sitting there so warm and so cuddly as he was saying. And so, Jesus is a controversial subject. Either one loves him or despises him. [00:20:04] (40 seconds)  #ChooseTheRealJesus

Now, you're going to lead other people to Jesus and you're going to disciple them. They are gonna become like you. And if you made it through the gauntlet of discipleship, when he thought you were ready, your rabbi would turn to you and say, okay, I give you my blessing, go and make disciples. See, we didn't form this building to have a Christian culture club. We didn't make this building just go Kumbaya my Lord. I'm dating myself now. That's not why we're here. [00:43:59] (42 seconds)  #MakeDisciples