Following Jesus' Way: Intentional Life-to-Life Discipleship

``Have you ever been intentionally taught through the bible how to live the Christian life? Now there, you have your intentionality and your transformation. But notice the end of it, by a friend who modeled that life for you. This is life to life discipleship. When two people get together or three and one puts their arm around the rest and says, here's how you do it. Follow me as I follow Christ. And so, Jesus's discipleship was relational. It was life to life. [00:42:21] (40 seconds)  #LifeToLifeDiscipleship

Christianity is more caught than taught? Raise your hand if you ever heard that phrase. Yeah? Few of you have. Yeah. It's more caught than taught. All that means is, hey, there is benefit to teaching, but it tends to be hard to grasp until we see it lived out in someone's life. And when we see it lived out in someone's life, we can we can get excited about it. We can say, I wanna be like that. Oh, I see how this works. And so that was Jesus's way of discipling. [00:44:08] (35 seconds)  #CaughtNotTaught

But here's something I'd like to highlight, and I know this is gonna be a message on discipleship, and we're delving into the connection between discipleship and evangelism. But I just wanted to say every movement of the gospel in the history of the world has been fueled, and I would dare even say driven by everyday disciple makers like yourselves, like me. Just everyday saints, everyday followers of Christ. If a movement is planning on starting just with ministry professionals and their activity, it'll never be a movement. [00:37:29] (40 seconds)  #EverydayDiscipleMakers

This didn't surprise me at all. It didn't surprise me at all. In fact, I expected that result, and that's why I asked those two questions because I wanted the men of this church to understand that if they want to truly help someone to become a transformed believer in Jesus Christ, someone who's becoming like him, someone who is becoming a disciple maker, that if you want that to happen or if you want evangelism to happen, that's the way you do it. Build into someone else who will then share the gospel. [00:34:41] (36 seconds)  #MultiplyThroughInvestment

Have you ever been in a setting like this one or maybe in a big classroom bible study with a dozen or more people and someone just stood up or raised their hand to tell the group or the audience that their marriage was in trouble or that they were in financial trouble or that they were having trouble with anxiety or depression or they were battling some kind of sexual sin or that they couldn't shake an addiction? No. It doesn't happen in settings like that. It's not normal. It's not human. It's not it can happen, but it usually doesn't. [01:07:05] (42 seconds)  #VulnerabilityNeedsSmallGroups

And I didn't let him off the hook. I said, let's keep trying. Let's keep working. Let's do it phrase by phrase. We're working it together. There were times when I needed to rebuke my friend Enrique, and that was possible because he knew I loved him. He knew that I was praying for him. He knew that I lived life with him and loved his family. And when you have that kind of relationship of trust and love, it can bear the weight of things like correction and rebuke. [00:52:38] (32 seconds)  #CorrectionFromTrustedLove

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and consider the result of their conduct imitate their faith. That's the way God made us to grow, to see other Christians who are living the Christian life and saying, I want that. I see how that's done. I want it in my life. So one of those few things, think about doing them yourself. Being discipled, starting to change your thinking from big group to small investment, and thirdly, maybe actually start a discipleship relationship with someone else. [01:13:12] (44 seconds)  #ImitateTheirFaith

You may say, well, Jesus invested in 12. So, I'm going invest in 12. Couple things there. One, we don't we won't do it as well as Jesus. Number two, they lived with Jesus. They walked with Jesus. That super accelerated everything that could happen. That's usually not the case with us. Right? Now, we can take the principles of doing life together. Right? My time with Enrique was not spent in the church. It was spent in coffee houses and pancake houses in my home, in his home. [01:11:38] (35 seconds)  #DoLifeTogether