Jesus-Style Discipleship: Spiritual Disciplines for Transformation

``We end this message in this series where we started. Jesus gave his church, us, the mission to make disciples of him. Now my friend, Tom McElroy, who spoke a couple Sundays ago, he said this, for a disciple to grow in Christ likeness, he or she must grow as a disciple maker. He went on to say this. He says, until we recognize and begin to create cultures where this is the expectation for every believer in our churches, we will continue to turn out truncated, immature, ineffective, and unhappy disciples, end quote. See, we were made to do this through Christ and and find our greatest joy in doing this. [01:08:02] (52 seconds)  #DiscipleMakingMission

Now it is easy to neglect prayer. I was just talking to somebody I love, about a week ago and we were talking about things of the faith and they just said, I sometimes forget to pray. Listen, the enemy of our souls doesn't want us to pray or to meditate on God's word. He wants to keep you from prayer by distracting you or discouraging you or whatever other tactic he can use to keep you from praying because he knows there's power in prayer. Jesus knows that too, which is why he not only encouraged his disciples to pray, but he taught them to pray and he modeled it. [00:56:47] (41 seconds)  #DontNeglectPrayer

Now it's often most effective to share the gospel in the context of also sharing your testimony of salvation, conversationally with someone with whom you've developed some level of trust. And let me tell you, that level of trust doesn't sometimes it can happen in a matter of minutes. When Jesus called his disciples to follow him, he made it clear that following him would result in them being used to rescue others. Matthew four nineteen, some people have memorized this verse. Right? And he said to them, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. Jesus did so with the first disciples, and he will do the same with us. [01:06:07] (45 seconds)  #ShareGospelWithTestimony

And it begins with witnessing, right, evangelism so that others can come to know God truly by believing in Christ and what he did to save them. And then it continues as we help them to grow in their love, which is also known as obedience and love towards him and others, which means that they will become more like him. And then that includes encouraging them to go and serve him in the church in the world with the primary aim of what? Making disciples. This too takes discipline. It takes dedicated time to meet with people, to disciple them, and to be discipled yourself. It takes effort. It takes prayer. It takes fellowship. It takes time in God's word individually and together. It takes serving. It is a discipline that we are called to do. [01:08:53] (60 seconds)  #DiscipleMakingDiscipline

God works in us. And with his empowerment, we're to work it out. There's responsibility. There's efforts, not in becoming saved, but in living out our salvation. And, therefore, we are discipled, and we're to disciple others. We are to teach others, as Jesus said, to observe, sometimes translated obey, all that I've commanded you. Not just, hey, know the information. Make sure they just know all the information. No. Teaching them to observe, obey all all that I've commanded. [00:37:11] (36 seconds)  #LiveOutSalvation

Every believer in Christ is gifted by the spirit for the good of the church, and we're called to serve. It's an outworking of love. Much more could be said, but suffice it to say for our purpose, today, it takes discipline to serve. Right? To serve takes time. Depending on the type of service, you have to discipline yourself to make preparation, to be at a specific place at a specific time, to pray for God's blessing upon your service, and so forth. So part of disciplining others, discipling them involves helping them to discern how they have been gifted and to further equip them for the work of the ministry. [01:04:56] (49 seconds)  #GiftedToServe

So regardless if they are listed as separate disciplines or subdisciplines, meditation on God's word and prayer are the most foundational disciplines. Right? None of you this was not news to any of you coming in this room today. Oh, the disciplines of the faith. What are they? Reading the Bible? Meditating on God's word? No way. Guess what I learned today in church? Oh, I should be praying? You're kidding me. Wow. Of course not. We know them, but blessed are you if you do them. But they aren't the only ones. And much more briefly, I'm gonna look at five more. [00:59:14] (40 seconds)  #PrayerAndWordFoundations

Right? His words bring life. They encourage us. They comfort us. They instruct us. They correct us. We learn what he has for us, what he wants for us, what we learn about how we are to live. It keeps us from sin and shows us what we are to do. Second Timothy three sixteen seventeen, all scriptures breathe out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man and woman of God, that word could be used to speak to both, may be complete, equipped for every good work. [00:44:54] (33 seconds)  #ScriptureBringsLife