Living as Authentic Disciples in Christ's Name

The kind of people that stepped forward in the way of Christ were the kind of people that did not need a publicly relations department to make them visible. That's what Jesus said. He said, you know, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, and it also doesn't talk about itself much. It's just there. [00:12:35]

We submerge them in the Trinitarian reality. Now I want to recall to you that Jesus said whether two or two or three are gathered, so two is enough, two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst. That's what it means to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. [00:14:01]

We are given the opportunity of living and acting in the name of Jesus and that draws the resources of the kingdom to bear. See when you go down the street and you see a policeman at an intersection, that policeman is acting in the name and that means the authority and the power. [00:15:48]

We make disciples and then we don't just leave them lying on the sidewalk. We bring them into a fellowship maybe small, 2 is pretty small, it may be small but we bring them into a fellowship in which what is going on is the presence of the Trinity. [00:17:10]

The primary field of evangelism today is the Christian church. The primary field of evangelism today is the Christian church and what we're evangelizing for is discipleship. Now see that's not really strange if you look back you'll remember that the first place that Jesus went the first place that Paul went was the synagogue. [00:22:02]

He sent them out to establish beach heads of the kingdom of God. He sent them out to establish beachheads. You know what a beach head is, you know it's like well uh the beach head is like if you're if you're an army and you're coming on shore, a beach head is a piece of the beach that you capture to establish a basis of operation. [00:24:07]

Work is the most important part of our discipleship because that's where we spend most of our time. See I don't know what your work may be but whatever it is, that's the primary place of your discipleship, and your home is right in there with it so that's where we learn it's important to have the concept of place right. [00:31:34]

The main function of prayer is teaching us how to act in his power. See, when you pray, you are living in a relationship to God in which he acts with you and he accomplishes things through your action. See praying is actually acting. Praying isn't like putting in your order, you know, it isn't like that. [00:37:16]

Prayer is talking about see the person who doesn't know what to say in prayer is probably not doing anything with God or hasn't heard that that's what it's about you're talking about what we're doing together and we're we're working on what should be done we're listening and we're learning and that's a major part of what goes into our discipleship. [00:41:41]

The mission of Christ people on earth is to carry through with the great commission and the way we might do that is simply put it into practice in our church policies in our local congregational policies. That's a challenge, and we need to recognize that most of our churches are not here for that purpose. [00:45:14]

The center of attraction is the life that is in Christ and now in our time, I want to really hammer the one of the main themes of the discussion see in our time, the church has been set aside. We talk about mainline churches, there's nothing really like that now, the main line doesn't run through the churches in our culture. [00:47:32]

We will live in a different way, and we live on the basis of knowledge we will be stable, we will be consistent but not unstable because instead of mere commitment we will be have belief that is grounded in knowledge, and that will enable us without any kind of of faking or bullying or anything of the sort to just be the people of Christ in the world where we stand. [00:49:37]