True Disciples

I saw a devotional today by Pastor Greg Laurie about True Disciples. I often think about Jesus call to his disciples to “Come, follow me”, and how they gave up everything – their career, their family & friends, their home – to go and follow Christ… to learn from him what it means to be a disciple and then to go out and change the world with the message of the gospel.

I think his call to us today as disciples is still the same – “come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” – and “go and make disciples of all nations”. However, I think that often our response to the call is far short of the dedication & surrender that his disciples had. Lets continue to strive to surrender every area of our lives to Christ and to grow closer to loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. To do this we must put God 1st in our lives, our family, our time, our finances, our every decision each and every day.

Daily Devotional with Greg Laurie for Wednesday August 20, 2008

True Disciples

“These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”
Acts 17:6

The Christian life is more than just saying a prayer or walking down an aisle and getting “fire insurance,” as it were. The Christian life is meant to be dynamic. It is meant to be exciting.

It is meant to have a radical effect on the way that you live and your outlook on life, because Jesus Christ not only wants to be your Savior. He wants to be your Lord. Not only does he want to be your friend, but He also wants to be your God.

But I’m afraid that many today are living a substandard Christian experience. That term is really an oxymoron in many ways, because if it is a Christian experience, then it shouldn’t be substandard. In a sense, that isn’t even a technically correct term.

You really can’t be a substandard Christian. Yet there are many who are failing to receive all that God has for them.

How did a handful of ordinary people living in the first century turn their world, as they knew it, upside down? They did it without television, without radio, without megachurches, and without all the resources that we think are so important today in reaching the goal of world evangelism.

How is it that they were able to do it? I think you could sum it up in one word: disciple.

They were disciples of Jesus Christ;not fair weather followers, but true disciples. They weren’t living an anemic, watered-down, ineffective version of the Christian life. They were living the Christian life as it was meant to be lived;as Christ Himself offered it and as the early disciples apprehended it.

If we want to impact our culture today, then we, too, must be disciples.

Copyright © 2008 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.