Reflection On Discipleship

It was my responsibility to help her reach a different understanding. With compassion and love, I discussed with her the circumstance of her history. We read religious text together. I was able to attend her baptismal service later that week.

A one on one discipling relationship allows for the greatest accountability and requires the greatest amount of trust on the part of both individuals. This type of discipleship often is the strongest and most effective to achieve true spiritual growth. While it is quite easy to evade issues that may be struggles in your life while listening to expository preaching or in a Sunday school setting, it is almost impossible when in a one-on-one relationship with another Christian. As a result of the trust that has been developed in the course of the relationship and the permission given by both parties to ask the tough questions of each other, there is no escaping the immense amount of learning that can produce a great deal of spiritual maturity in a new Christian.

The young lady I intend to present the gospel to her name is Hee KyungLee. We have recently

The parent or mature Christian is fully engaged in the mission of Jesus Christ. People who are in this stage are those who are witnessing and discipling others, in the same manner that he or she was discipled. They are looking out for the immature Christians, and taking them “under their wing” to encourage, listen to, and strengthen them to maturity in Christ.

Jesus then goes from speaking to His disciples specifically, to calling out to the whole crowd, in which He goes from speaking plainly to once again speaking in metaphors and riddles. Within this passage Mark uses the words of Jesus to reveal the true cost of discipleship. He tells the crowd that if anyone chooses to come after Him then the condition of that decision is that they must take up their cross and follow Him. So one must ask: What does it mean to deny yourself? What does it mean to take up your cross? And when you follow Him where are you going? So then one must put this into context by looking at what has not yet happened in Mark. When Jesus denies Himself, He is essentially denying the human instinct to self preserve through a fight or flight response. When Jesus picked up His cross, He was deciding to be rejected, tortured, mocked and falsely accused on His way to Calvary where He died for the sins of all. Therefore, if you want to go after Jesus, you must be willing to commit to sharing the gospel with others at all costs, you must be willing to tortured, mocked, and falsely accused and you must also be willing to die, not necessarily for anything that you have done, but so that others can reach salvation. Historically, during this time period, the cross was a well known style of execution in Rome, and so although one reading this might see this as simply a metaphor, it is actually a foreshadowing of reality, which can be seen in the fact that all the

Thompson presents a very convicting treatise on the significance of relationships in the Christian witness. This book causes the reader to examine their own relationships, as well as their lifestyle, in order to evaluate the degree of the reflection of Christ in their incarnational witness. Through his systematic process of self-examination and relational observation, combined with intercessory prayer and discipleship ministry, Thompson offers a simple, yet profound method of using personal relationships to share the gospel of Christ with family, friends, coworkers, and complete strangers. He expounds on the principle that mankind is a relational being, created to fellowship with God and other humans, to develop his approach to personal evangelism and, equally important, follow-up

Both of us wind up considering going to Seminary of all places for some similar reasons. So, our stories have some common ground so far except her path to seminary was paved while climbing out of that pit of darkness, whereas mine came much later in a more comfortable place in life in the form of a spiritual tug of war that I obviously lost. Nadia made many a point in her book that bears repeating but there were a couple that stood out to me one is "we are simultaneously sinner and saint. 100 percent of both, all the time" (Boltz-Weber, 2013), this was like an epiphany moment for me as I always knew I could never bury the sinner in me, so following a calling to seminary was just illogical. Another ah ha moment she made was that God always moves to us in our relationship to him, we do not move to him (Boltz-Weber, 2013). Again, I found myself saying "if only I had known", because I am a stubborn human being and refuse to move closer to anything or anybody, but all this time God has been moving closer to me, understanding my hesitation to be the seeker in a

My daughter, an addict, has battled with her faith for years. She battled her faith along with the drugs. For several years she was in an abusive marriage where her husband would not allow regular church attendance or any other shows of Christian behavior. This oppression trickled down to the children as well. I still tried. I encouraged her whole family, especially her and the children, to join me at church and of course the customary lunch following the services. Regularly I included her in spiritual or inspirational quotes and other reading material. I invited her to our Women’s Bible study each week. Honestly, I physically encouraged every way I could think of. Her oldest child, my granddaughter, attended the school at my church. My granddaughter came to know Christ. My daughter did too a while later but I feared it was only for show. I was encouraged when she sought treatment for her addiction where the 12 step program remains biblically based. I saw a change in her during that time. Several months later she had completed the treatment program and was, or at least I

These past two years have made it hard for her to go through life. I asked her if the loss of my brother was something hard for her. She told me that she was very devastated, very sad, and that she felt that the world turned upside down. She always had thoughts of thinking if there was a future, but all in all, she takes it one step at a time. She always knows that God is there to help her. I connected to this question as well, I understood how we both felt, her tone of voice changed immediately, and I knew that right from the beginning. This was probably the hardest question to

I interviewed my dear friend Ashley Johnson for my Religious Experience Project. She was a natural choice for me. I admire her genuineness and kindness, but what inspired me to interview her for my project was how seamlessly her religion is integrated into her life. She is a shining example of Christianity without ever being preachy. She has a passionate and intimate relationship with her God that inspires me. This is exemplified by her response to my question “How would you describe your relationship with God?” Here simple answer was: “Like a love story.” I know I have much to learn from her and understanding her religion and beliefs would be a good place to start.

The Nature of Discipleship According to Mark's Gospel Discipleship is usually thought of as following Jesus, being a preacher and a teacher. Somebody who believes in something, or who believes in someone, and leaves everything behind them to try to make others believe the same is my personal belief of a disciple. In actual fact, the Old Testament word 'Talmid' is a 'learner', and more obviously in the New Testament, a 'Diskipolos' is a 'follower'. The other important area of discipleship is serving others. When a disciple is healing a person, they are serving them, as he serving Jesus and God.

Just what is theology? This question can have a wide variety of answers, from irrelevant facts about God thought up by men centuries ago, to complicated theories discussed by scholars. Typically, the average 21st century man does not consider theology as relevant. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Theology by definition has the characteristics of both expounding the truth, and impacting the believer with that truth (Himes, 2011). Therefore, theology and the church are intricately combined, in that the church embodies the revelation of God, and is reality, not theory (Himes, 2011). A personal practical theology must begin with revelation, not the individual (Himes, 2011), and proclaim

Matthew 9:35-38 (NIV) reads, Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Through the lens of this text God reveals to us the heart He has for His people in a lost and suffering world. Jesus points out to his disciples what we should find significant today, and that is

This five-step process begins by creating a definition for what it is we are addressing as disciples. It’s important to ask the question “what is…” because it helps us distinguish from other topics that are closely related. For example, if we are talking about what discipline is, we would want to distinguish if we are speaking about the punishment of a child, the act of training in a habitual manner, or a branch of knowledge. Our world is a very complicated, intricate, and interwoven place. Though people often want things to be straightforward, they’re not always that simple. It’s important to define exactly what we’re talking about in order to understand the topic as clearly as possible.

was owed a great sum of money by one of his servants. The king let the