Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Discipleship: Trusting and Serving, Part 1

The title of this week's study, Lesson 8, in the Study Guide is Experiencing Discipleship.

The opening page of the Study Guide contains the following statements:

  • Discipleship is an experience. To be a true follower of Christ, we need to have an experience with Jesus.
  • Head knowledge is not enough... To be a disciple of Christ, you must have had a personal experience with Him, one that has changed and is still changing your life.

I fully concur with the direction and theme of this week's lesson. There is an additional facet added to the definition of a disciple. Putting it with last week's definition, now a disciple is a learner/follower of Jesus Christ who has and is having a personal experience with Him. Whereas the opening weeks of this quarter's lesson gave a rather rigid view of disciples and discipleship, as we enter the second half the overall picture seems to be getting much more malleable and subjective. After all, no two individuals are ever going to have the exact same discipleship experience.

Although every discipleship experience will be different from all others, I believe that the ultimate purpose of the experience is the same for all. God will allow and lead each of His disciples in ways that are custom tailored to accomplish His purpose. Just because another of God's disciples doesn't act like us or believe exactly like us (and they may even behave in ways and believe things that we think are wrong) doesn't mean they aren't true disciples. (In fact, some -- many, even? -- may not even be Christians...) Therefore here is another reason for the warning against passing down judgment on others.

What is this purpose of discipleship? When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he responded:

Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31, ESV)

My "broken record" mantra is that to love God is to trust Him. To love others is to serve them. Thus the title of my post, Trusting and Serving. That is, I believe, the purpose that discipleship is aiming to accomplish. Trusting and serving are the examples of Jesus' life and if we are to become more like Him through our walk with Him, then we are to learn how to trust God more and serve others more. I add Part 1 because this week's lesson is mostly about the trusting aspect. Next week looks more at the serving aspect. However, neither can be totally separated and neither can one be studied in isolation from the other. Because to trust God is to serve others. Conversely, one cannot really and selflessly serve others without trusting God.

Upon going through this week's lesson, I discovered that nearly all of it (and actually all of it, if some points and applications are stretched a bit) can actually be found in Mark chapters 8 and 9.

Mark 8 and 9 contain the following major stories, in order:

Mark 8 and 9 Lesson Comments
Feeding of the 4,000   Bread of Life discussion follows feeding of the 5,000.
Demand of a sign (by the Pharisees)   Crowd demands sign immediately preceding the Bread of Life discussion in John 6
Warnings against being deceived (the yeast of the Pharisees) Wed. - Olivet discourse Deceptions may take different forms, but their goal is to take our eyes away from Jesus
Discussion about bread (mentions the feeding of 5,000) Sunday - Bread of Life discourse The point of both discussions is that Jesus is the Bread of Life and He is able to supply everyone's needs; to consume the Bread of Life is to trust Him in everything
Healing of a blind man   2-stage healing, partial and then complete healing; illustrates the need of the disciples in their spiritual vision
Peter's confession   The first stage of spiritual sight restored (John 6 has an earlier confession of Peter following the Bread of Life discourse)
Peter rebuked Thursday - deny self, take up your cross, and follow Me Shows how the disciples are still not seeing clearly
Cost of following Jesus - self-denial and death Thursday - deny self, take up your cross, and follow Me With the disciples now having partial spiritual sight, by expressing their confidence in Jesus as Messiah, they are able now to receive the more difficult teachings; i.e., the true Messiah is going to follow a path of rejection, suffering, and death.
Transfiguration Tuesday In the midst of confusion the disciples are facing, God provides evidence that Jesus is the Messiah (A Glimpse of Heaven - George Knight, commentary on Mark)
Jesus foretells his death and resurrection   Jesus continues to try to explain His real mission
Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy   Illustrates the contrast between lack of faith and confusion vs. belief; illustrates the nature of Jesus' mission (A Glimpse of Hell, Knight)
Jesus, again, foretells his death and resurrection   Jesus again tries to explain the real nature of His mission
Who is the greatest? Jesus illustrates with a child Monday - Children and Discipleship Children are an illustration of both trust/dependence and humility/service
Anyone not against is for   The real test of discipleship - selfless service
Priorities in following Jesus Wed. - Olivet Discourse The importance of not falling to temptations and deceptions, but rather to persevere

By looking at the experiences found in Mark 8 and 9, I draw out the following points which I think represent types of experiences that today's disciples of Jesus experience. We shouldn't be surprised when we experience them.

  • Deceptions that attempt to take our eyes away from Jesus and back onto self.
  • Feeding on the Bread of Life in order to satisfy our spiritual hunger.
  • Opportunities to help us grow in our trust in God.
  • At times, fuzzy vision and confusion because God's ways are so different from ours.
  • Difficult lessons, some which may take multiple repetitions before we "get" it.
  • Opportunities to share our faith.
  • Spiritual highs.
  • Spiritual lows.
  • Choices about who/what to ultimately trust.
  • Choices about who/what to place at the center of our lives.
  • Temptations to walk the easier road.

What does it mean to "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me?" Many sermons have been given and treatises written upon this subject. A succinct answer that I've formed this week is based on this:

The cross represents the place in time and space where Jesus demonstrated full trust in God, and demonstrated the depths He would go to serve the people that He created.

Thus to "deny... take up his cross... and follow" in my mind is to have the same motivations as Jesus did upon the cross -- to fully trust in God and place the needs of other people above my own desires. It is to live my life with the same love, passion, purpose, and mission as Jesus lived His life. This, I believe, is experiencing discipleship.

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