Tag: Discipleship

Service Principles

September 22nd, 2017

John 13:13-15

You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘Lord’, rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should was one another’s feet. 15 I have set you and example that you should do as I have done.

The night before his crucifixion, in the upper room, Jesus taught his disciples much. He shared a Passover meal with them, and tied it to his coming sacrifice. He left the observance of bread and cup as a perpetual reminder of his sacrifice, and he washed his disciples feet.

what was Jesus teaching? He was teaching us how to be a servant, more than what to do. Sure, sometimes we have foot washing ceremonies, but that is not what Jesus was trying to accomplish. He was teaching the principle of service; see the need, meet the need. Jesus says (v15) “do AS I have done” … not do WHAT I have done.

So, quickly, what are the service principles I see here?

1. Recognize

you call me teacher and Lord

There is a difference in calling him “teacher and Lord”, and actually allowing him to be those things to you.

phoeo = to name, to call, to cry out. We have called him teacher and Lord, but are we actually learning from him and obeying him? We cry out to him for our needs, but are we listening when He calls to us to serve Him by serving others. We need to recognize him as teacher and Lord

Lord – kyrios = lord, master, owner, ruler. To be his servant we have to recognize he owns us, he leads us, he rules us, is the boss, Sovereign in all things including my life. If we recognize him as Lord, we will never say, “But Lord,”… we will just say “Yes sir.”

Teacher – didaskalos = master teacher. Sure we don’t always know how or what … but we have a teacher. He will teach us didactically, thoroughly, if we allow him. More on that in a moment. But

we also need to recognize the need. In this case, dirty feet. There were no servants in this house, so the custom was for the first guest to wash the other guest’s feet. But no one had recognized the need by action. Why? Pride. The disciples often fought over who was greatest. So, they weren’t going to serve. But Need is greater than pride or position. Recognize the need

Need > Pride/Position

2nd principle

2. Ask

To the disciples credit, they did often ask, when they didn’t know. Of course they spent 3 1/2 years with Jesus, who was doing stuff that they weren’t used to seeing. So, they often asked:

Lord teach us to pray

Lord Increase our faith

Lord help my unbelief

v6 Peter said “Lord are you going to wash my feet?” i.e. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?

We have to ask. Remember James 4:3, “you have not because you ask not.”

Jesus said “God is always at work around us.” If we want to know what the need is ask. If we want to know what to do, how to do it, ask. And our teacher and Lord will tell us, teach us, how, what, when, or who

principle #3

3. Watch / Listen / Learn

Can you imagine the stunned silence while Jesus didn’t scold them for their lack of service. They failed to do the most obvious thing in the room. This wasn’t something they didn’t know, they knew. This was custom, this was expected, they just didn’t do it. But often, refusal to serve is contagious. First guy showed up and no one was there to wash feet, so he should have taken up the towel and served, but he didn’t. So, the next arrives, and he doesn’t serve, “well he didn’t do it, he should have, well I’m not.” And then each one that arrived made the same decision. Pride reigned. But Jesus is Lord, they called him Lord, and when Jesus reigns, the need reigns. See the need, meet the need. So, Jesus took off his privileges, and put on service. This is Philippians 2:1-11 in action. When we watch our Lord and Teacher, we can’t help but serve.

now that I have … I have set an example that you should …

We have to pay attention. We have to practice, to try. Don’t fear failure IN action, but failure TO act. The only failure is if we don’t try. Trial and error is learning. Failure to try is disobedience and failure to learn.

The final principle is

4. DO

Trying, practicing, learning, leads to DOING as a lifestyle. Service then becomes ingrained in life.

This is not box we check with a one time action, and then we are done. We don’t get our “service badge”. No, we serve, humbling ourselves, recognizing the needs, following the example of our Lord and Master Teacher, laying down our lives for others. That is the love of Christ within us. That is a spring of living water bubbling up out of us.

Please know that I am not writing this as Mr. Service, like I have all this together, but as a learner trying to learn.

But as we learn. As we stop trying to please ourselves, serving others, we find our pleasure we find our happiness.

v17 “now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

– markarios = blessed, happy, fortunate. Oh we have it backwards. “If they would just do for me, I would be happy, fortunate.” NO … the blessing, the fortune, the real happiness, is in serving. Happiness follows service, because service follows Jesus, and following Jesus causes the Father to say, “well done.”
Cut Off Your Right Hand?

June 29th, 2015

Oswald Chambers says “there never has been a saint yet who did not have to live a maimed life. But it is, better to enter into life maimed and lovely in God’s sight than to be lovely in man’s sight and lame in God’s”
Jesus is seated on the hill overlooking Galilee teaching. But he isn’t teaching easy stuff, he is teaching the “much more” life of the Kingdom, the hard stuff. Jesus doesn’t speak about canceling the standards of the law, no he enlarged it, he went deeper. The moral standards of God were never done away with in the “grace age”. They were taken to a more full meaning. In this “sermon on the mount” Jesus says “hate=murder” and “lust=adultery”. So if our thought life is important, if our desires lead us astray, this is important stuff.
Peter taught us to “make every effort to add to your faith goodness … knowledge … self-control … perseverance … godliness … kindness … love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. If anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from the past sins. Therefore … be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure …” (2 Peter 1:5–10 NIV84)
Peter was getting us to Jesus’ point of these radical words in Matthew 5 and the sermon on the mount. Jesus says if your eyes are a problem, pluck them out. If your hand v30 causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better to lose one part of your body than your whole body to go to hell. Then Jesus continues with the radical interpretation of the depth of the commands of God. So then, there are things, relationships, activities that might seem normal, even “right handed” but if they get in the way of our relationship with God, they have to go.
Really?? Would Jesus have me deny myself?
Luke 9:23 “If anyone would come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
ANYONE(tis)=”who, what, what sort of person” the Sort of Person that denies himself to embrace coming AFTER him
After =Jesus Denied himself according to Philippians 2. He Emptied Himself. He Employed Himself in the service of others.
So, if we will come AFTER him … we come after him cutting off what we think we need, but do not, in order to keep what we want … viz a viz HIM … being LIKE, AFTER, CONFORMED to His Image.
So, is this OPTIONAL for the Disciple this life of denial?
Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not HATE his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes even his own life – he CANNOT be my disciple”
Hate(miseo)=hate, love less, disfavor
It is not saying that the way of discipleship is hatred or rejection. If they will go the way of Christ, fine … but the Way of Christ supersedes all OTHER ways, relationships, passions and purposes … Yea Even Your Own Life
Jesus continues then in Luke 14 by saying that you have to count the cost of completion before you start a building project.
So, if you are building a life of discipleship, it often involves, as Chambers puts it, personal maiming, spiritual surgery
Denial is part of the process
Matthew 5:40 says if someone wants your shirt give them your jacket too
v41 if they want you to go a mile, go another mile
v44 love your enemies, pray for your persecutors
WHY? Why should we adopt these RADICAL ways? So we will …
v48 Be Perfect, there fore as your heavenly Father is perfect
The Perfection being sought IS the Goal of Discipleship, to Look Like Jesus
It doesn’t happen magically, it happens decidedly. It comes in surrendering as a pot to the hands of the potter.
The lump of clay is not thrown on the wheel and told to “be a beautiful pot”. Jesus never worked that way with Humans. He spoke the world into existence and everything in it, but he SHAPED man with his own hands. And he still does. Yes we are “declared righteous” when we receive Christ, and positionally we are immediately. But, he is shaping us to look like him.
So that LUMP on the wheel receives the Master’s Hand and the pot begins to take shape. And so then again, in 2 Peter 1, we see picture. Verse 4 says we are participants in his divine nature … SO v5 add to your faith
“No thanks … I’m good with faith that’s enough for me …”
NO … Peter says ADD(epichoregeo) = give, supply, support – Support, supply, give to your faith … So many Christians stay in the “faith zone” and don’t ADD to it.
But the thing we are told is to ADD … but we CAN because v3 says “his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” His Glory and Goodness provides us what we need, through who he is and what he has said, we canparticipate v4 (koinonos)=partner, a companion. We WALK with Christ, come after him, and we add to faith goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, love. These additions each develops the next. Faith leads to goodness, which helps have have greater knowledge of God, which leads us to self-control enabling us to persevere, which makes us more godly, leading to kindness, which finds us fully in love.
And so a pot in the hands of the potter will look up and realize we are becoming beautiful, useful, effective, and productive … Perfect for his Purpose
Cut off a hand?
To become beautiful and useful? Maybe.
To become Perfect for HIS Purpose? Gladly.
The Frightening Prayer of a Disciple

July 1st, 2014

Are you Acquainted with Suffering? Are you Acquainted With Jesus?

Isaiah 53:10 says “He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and familiar (acquainted-KJV) with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not.” (NIV84)

This is such a precious and lovely verse. Chapter 53 of Isaiah contains some of the most beautifully written word pictures in scripture. Of course the Holy Spirit inspired all of scripture, but working with the personality of the writer, He communicates the words of the gospel. I would venture to say that perhaps this passage could only be compared with John 1:1-14 as the most beautiful in all of scripture.

When we talk of what Christ did for us, these words are beautiful, but if we dare challenge the modern Christian to be a disciple of this way, that idea won’t sell a whole lot of books. “Despised … Rejected … Sorrows … Suffering … Despised … without Esteem” – My Savior? Yes … Me? No Thank You.

But this is just the way of salvation, right? It isn’t the way of a disciple is it? Well don’t tell the Apostle Paul that. In Philippians 3:10 he says “I want to Know Christ …” . I am with you Paul, I want to know Christ too … But the Word, ginosko, means “to learn, to understand, to be familiar with” i.e. “to know by experience”. There is a physical tactile component to this. It doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by intentional action. So Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming LIKE HIM in his death.”

Want to be a disciple? Take up his cross and follow him (Luke 9:23). Fellowship (koinonian) commune with him in suffering (passion) of Christ. This same word for “suffering” or passion is in Romans 8:18 when it says “our present sufferings are nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed.” Becoming “like him” (symmorphizo – similar in form) to his death.

We like Philippians 3:12, “press on to talk hold … forgetting what is behind … straining for what is ahead”. But Paul is talking about the previous image of being conformed to his death. And so he says “I’m not there yet, but I’m pressing forward to share in his suffering. Forgetting what is behind, forgetting accolades, forgetting accomplishments, forgetting station achieved, forgetting failures, I press onto fellowship with him in suffering. This doesn’t mean needless suffering, nor self-inflicted suffering, or self-serving suffering, but as Isaiah says “suffering that brings peace”.

Jesus was Despised (contemptible, thought lightly of), Rejected (made detestable), Sorrows (pain), Acquainted with (familiar, experience, recognize), Grief (sickness, suffering, disease, affliction), not Esteemed (think about value, considered)

Are we willing to be thought lightly of, made detestable, have pain, experience suffering and afflictions, to be under valued, not even thought of, in order to follow Christ? Well, how badly to you want to be a disciple?

Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost for His Highest”, (June 23) says “we are not acquainted with grief in the way in which our Lord was … We endure it, get through it, but we do not become intimate with it”

Yet, fellow traveler, it is, and has been the way of the disciple of Christ for every generation. The Apostles knew it, the Martyrs knew it in the Colosseum, St. John of the Cross knew “The Dark Night of the Soul”, Martin Luther knew the isolation of the Castle in Eisenach as he hid away from a death threat while translating the New Testament into German. Calvin, Wycliffe, Huss, all knew suffering. Isaac Watts penned the most poignant hymns in history because of a life of suffering and physical pain. Every Generation of Christian disciple has known. Missionaries like Jonathan Goforth (no relation) knew suffering, sickness, imprisonment. Lottie Moon also in China refused to eat giving her food to those she served with the gospel. Martin Luther King knew the Birmingham Jail, that he might have a dream.

Walking with Christ is to Fellowship with his Suffering, Conformed to his Death.

Do I want to be a disciple or just a scholar, a student? Oh there is nothing wrong with knowledge but head knowledge without experiential knowledge does not make a disciple. I disciple must follow in the footsteps, and the footprints of Jesus walked the via Dolorosa, the way of suffering.

“I want to know Christ” – The Frightening Prayer of a Disciple

Tag: Discipleship

Service Principles

Cut Off Your Right Hand?

The Frightening Prayer of a Disciple