WHAT IS DISCIPLESHIP?

A word that you might have heard in church often but aren’t sure what it means is discipleship. So what is discipleship?

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Well to be a disciple is to be a follower of Jesus and the act of discipleship is to go through a process of becoming more and more like him through the Holy Spirit in your life. Through spending time in Scripture, through prayer, by being led by the spirit.

When Jesus was building his crew of twelve disciples, he would walk up to them and say, “Follow me, I’ll make you fisher’s of men.” You see, Jesus was Jewish and when a rabbi invited someone to follow them it was an incredible honor. It gave them unlimited access to the rabbi to ask him questions and also to experience firsthand how the Scriptures should be lived out.

Becoming a disciple required a commitment to submit to the rabbis authority, but it also meant that every day was full of opportunities to learn new things about God. And as a rabbi this is the kind of relationship Jesus invited his disciples to experience. For them, following Jesus included sharing his enthusiasm for declaring the good news and spreading the teachings around the world.

And it’s the same for us today. We should be going through a massive life change when we become disciples - when we accept Jesus into our hearts. We’re no longer dead to sin, but alive and the spirit is living inside of us.

We are called to living to higher standards now. But one thing I see so often in the church is that you can’t tell the difference between someone who is a Christian and someone who isn’t. Which is so far against what we see in Scripture. It’s not a repeat this prayer and you’re good type of thing, it’s a full on life transformation. And when we become disciples, we’re supposed to be bringing in more disciples. Every person that’s a believer is a “fisher of men” as Jesus put it. And if there isn’t a life change and people aren’t making more disciples then maybe they need to revisit what all of this means. Not from a place of judgement but from a place of concern. But yo, a lot of things are supposed to be different now. Like, I love God with all of my heart, soul, and strength, and now I need to go out and make disciples.

I need to learn about God,
I need to spend time with him,
I need to hear from him,
And through all of that I need to bring more people in and help them live a transformed life as well.
That’s what real discipleship is.

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