Table of Contents
What is discipleship?
Discipleship is simply the process of learning and imbibing the doctrines or philosophies of a specific teacher. In this case, it is the process involved in a person becoming like Jesus.
When I think of discipleship I think of apprenticeship but a lot more. Because as an apprentice, you learn a trade but as a disciple, you imbibe the teacher’s philosophy of life.
Who is a disciple?
A disciple of Jesus is a person who loves people like Jesus and does what Jesus would do.
Do you know that Jesus has put in place a spiritual system to help you access the same power, love, joy, and wisdom with which he operated?
Everything about Christianity is supposed to be about following Jesus and becoming like Jesus.
In a final instruction to the first disciples before Jesus ascended into heaven, Jesus commanded the disciples in Matt 28:18 to make disciples of all nations! They were to do this by baptizing them and teaching them to observe all the commandments of Jesus.
In other words, find people, share the good news with them, if they believe baptize them, and teach them to do all that I commanded you to do. If this is well done, the new disciples will be making disciples.
So you see now that every christian or believer in Jesus is expected to be a disciple of Jesus. And every disciple is called to Make Disciples.
If you would like to learn how to make disciples even as a busy professional, I invite you to take my BiVo Minister Course.
My first experience with discipleship
When I first received Jesus as my saviour and friend, I was so full of joy and I expected everyone to share in my excitement. But this was not the case. A few people were happy that I was happy and others couldn’t care less.
And soon, I found myself wandering away from the Lord and the truth I had received. Although I had begun the journey, I did not have a road map and I was just wandering along.
After a couple of years, I went to highschool and found a group of friends who were growing together in their faith and relationship with Jesus.
They had books, sermon tapes (audio), and they shared these amongst themselves. I was so happy to join this group. It was then that I really learned how to walk with Jesus and live for Him.
It was in high school that I first discovered Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible.
You can listen to my podcast interview with one of those high school friends called Dr Joe Omofuma.
What are the major characteristics of true discipleship?
True discipleship should lead the disciple into being like Jesus – A true disciple of Jesus is a person who loves God with everything and loves his or her neighbor as themselves.
Discipleship isn’t just learning some doctrines. It involves changing your previous philosophy of life and imbibing that of the teacher. This process would be different for each individual because our philosophies are also different.
So for us to agree that true discipleship is happening, the discipleship program should include:
- Conversion and Baptism
- Studies of Scriptures
- Learning to hear from and speak with Jesus
- Making of other disciples ( Repeating a-c above with other people)
The Cost of Discipleship
Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. (Luke 9:23 NKJV)
Jesus talked a lot about the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:27-29; Matt 16:25-26). As a lead pastor since 2005, I have found over and over again that there is a cost attached to following Jesus.
Jesus never hid the cost. In fact, He made a point of highlighting the cost to the disciples from time to time. I share some of the cost of my discipleship in this podcast (cost of ministry).
Sometimes, we do not want new disciples to know the cost of discipleship.
We feel that if we tell them that “your friends may make fun of you, you may lose your job, family members may not invite you to parties, you may be imprisoned, you may need to go into some dangerous places to find other lost people etc” that they would not want to continue.
What we forget is that when we first surrendered to Jesus, we did not care about all these things. We were too happy to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God to care.
It cost something to follow Jesus. However, it pays much more!!
What is the cost of discipleship? Your life! Discipleship costs your life. You would need to lay down your life and take up Jesus’ life.
The benefit of Discipleship
There are a few more passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about the cost of discipleship such as ( ). However, Jesus talks more about the benefits of discipleship.
What is it? It is the Kingdom of GOD.
When we follow Jesus, we get the Kingdom of God. We get to live the life of Christ. We become children of God. We also get set free from the bondage of sin and the consequences of sin.
As a disciple of Jesus, we really get to live like Jesus on earth. We can live a life that is full of love, joy, peace and the power of God over evil, sin and all the work of the devil.
This life is what is called eternal life. Eternal life starts here on earth and continues for all eternity with God.
Take note that Jesus does not promise us a life without challenges, trials or temptations. What He promises is peace even in the midst of the challenges of life.
In fact, Jesus kept on reminding his followers that the Kingdom of God is so valuable that one would gladly leave all they have so that they can receive the Kingdom.
For the last couple of Saturdays, we have been playing Monopoly as a family. The boys are loving it and we are happy that we get to teach them money and investment in a fun way. Monopoly usually takes a couple of hours, so we take photos of the state of things and continue on the following Saturday.
Why am I sharing this? Well the Lord reminded me recently that receiving the Kingdom of God is like leaving lots of monopoly money and riches, to get real riches in dollars.
Monopoly money is real in the game. It can do a lot in the game but it ends there. The truth, however, is that we live both in the monopoly game (1 hr a week) and in the real world. Anyone of us would gladly lose monopoly money to get real-life dollars.
Riches and fame on earth are like monopoly money. You can afford to lose them to gain real money which is like eternal life. The interesting part is that many times after letting go of your life, so that you can receive eternal life, you actually get a much richer and fulfilling life. You get what you were looking for in the first place.
What does discipleship Involve?
Learning
As a disciple of Jesus, you need to learn all that Jesus commanded. You also need to learn how to how communicate with Jesus. The primary learning material for a disciple is the Bible. It is a good thing for every disciple of Jesus to read through the Bible and have an overview of the redemption story from the creation of the world to the second coming of Jesus.
There are many ways to learn from the Bible. Some of them include, daily personal Bible reading, group Bible studies, reading of christian literature, regular attendance at a weekly worship service etc.
Just learn as much as you can learn and practice everything you learn. There is no use learning if one does not intend on practicing.
I have found in my life that, as soon as you begin to practice what you learn in scriptures, you begin to have opposition. This is why it is important to have a group of other disciples that you are connected with.
Repenting
Repenting is a big part of discipleship because, the Holy Spirit would use scriptures to convict you. You will find many things that you are doing that you shouldn’t be doing. You would also find many things that you should be doing that you aren’t doing.
As a disciple of Jesus and a BiVo Minister, I encourage you to repent as soon as you discover a sin in your life. I remember, when the Lord first started to teach me about unconditional love. I still get some lessons on it till this day.
The Lord would rebuke me a lot for my negative thoughts. When I would feel offended by what someone said or did. I would think something like, this person is wicked and mean. And the Lord would remind me that he or she is like that because they don’t know Him. I would have to say sorry Lord.
Not only would you need to repent for things you do wrong. The Lord would even correct you for things you did and thought were ok earlier in your discipleship process.
I remember the Holy Spirit, leading me to tell my dad that I had misplaced his Bible a few years back. The truth was that I had misplaced my dad’s bible and because I did not want to look foolish and careless, I had pretended to help my dad search for the Bible when he asked me about it. I had to tell my dad the truth.
As you develop your relationship with God, He will purge you of things that would be a problem for you now and in the future. Mine was pride and He has been dealing with it in me.
Reaching out
Every disciple of Jesus is expected to go out and find other disciples. You are expected to tell other people about what Jesus has done for you. Jesus calls us the light of the world. Every disciple should be in the ministry of making disciples.
The first step in reaching out is praying for the lost!
Teaching others
Are there special people that can help other disciples on their discipleship path? No! All disciples are commissioned to teach as well. You are encouraged to share all you have learned with new disciples. You are also encouraged to introduce them to your church family.
However, it important to mention at this point that we are all called to help other believer grow. Are you currently helping anyone grow?
I hear a lot of believers complain that they don’t have the time. And for any believer that says that, I gently remind them that this is what we are here for. It is a priority. We need to make time for it. It is what Jesus came to do. I talked more about this in my article – Are You a BiVo Minister?
How is your discipleship going?
Remember that we are all disciples of Jesus. We are all being transformed into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. The situations, circumstances, trials, temptations, relationships and victories in our lives are being used daily by our Lord Jesus Christ to mold us.
What are you learning these days? How are you being transformed? True repentance is not usually a bad thing for a disciple of Jesus. As you are being transformed by Jesus, you will find a lot of things that you are doing wrong. Each time you repent and make amends, you step forward.
Lately our Lord Jesus has been challenging us that our church model is not making it as easy to multiply disciples for Him. He has been helping us to focus a lot more on discipleship.
I have had to repent for not doing this earlier. Although we focused on discipleship, many of the members of our church family had never led anyone to Christ, most are not helping anyone become a better disciple. This is not because we did not talk about discipleship, but we did not create a system that would make it easier for any member to make disciples for Jesus.
Are you making disciples?
Have you led someone to Jesus this year or in the last 2 or 3 years? I know that there are some who have never led anyone to Christ since they became a disciple of Jesus.
If this is you, don’t panic. I thank God that you read this blog up to this point. Making disciples for Jesus does not have to be difficult. You can even do it, with a busy schedule.
You can make disciples for Jesus even if you are not a big “people person” or extrovert. Usually, the reason that many disciples of Jesus do not make disciples for Jesus is because of limiting beliefs. If you change those beliefs, and take up biblical ones. You will find that within the next year or two, you will be discipling one, two or 3 people. In some communities you may be making disciples in 6 months.
I have created a video course on Making Disciples as BiVo Minister. It is a free course made possible by my partners. I strongly suggest that you check it out. Take the course today. It would really make a difference in your personal discipleship.
Conclusion
This is the summary of discipleship in the church. Every believer is called as a disciple of Jesus. Every disciple is commissioned to make disciples. And Every disciple is being discipled as long as they are on earth.
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