Quotes about Discipleship

The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies.

Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. It comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles.

So today, at the end of the twentieth century, we have a phenomenon unthinkable in any other century: churchless Christians. There is a vast herd of professed Christians who exist as nomadic hitchhikers without accountability, without discipline, without discipleship, living apart from the regular benefits of the ordinances.

To carry our cross is to have such a commitment and identify with Jesus Christ and what He accomplished that I am willing to suffer the repercussions to that identification.

Shouldn't we just admit the obvious--that the New Testament call to discipleship, compassion, and giving leaves no room for the way many of us are thinking and living? Is it time to get beyond the theoretical stance of 'I'd be willing to give up anything if God asked me to,' and start actually giving up things in order to do what He's commanded us?

Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.)

Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31

if you have not learned to pay the smaller prices of following Christ in your daily life, you will not be prepared to pay the ultimate price in God's calling.

Nearly every deliverance God has brought to me has been progressive and has come about by believing and confessing the Word of God. John 8:31,32 and Psalm 107:20 are my testimony. In John 8:31,32 Jesus says, "If you abide in My word,… you are truly My disciples. And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free." Psalm 107:20 says of the Lord

In his Sermon on the Mount, [Jesus] declares to his disciples: No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matt. 6: 24) The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.

Being a disciple maker is as simple as helping someone else experience the risen Jesus and draw closer to Him—just as happened in our own lives.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen. Matthew 28:19—20, NKJV