Tag: transformation

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Christian Living

Discipleship takes the Long View: It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint.

The idea of being a growing disciple and a disciple-maker requires patience and a willingness for thinking long-term – like preparing to run a marathon. I like this illustration from Robbie Gallaty’s Rediscovering Discipleship:

    A student asked the president of his school whether he could not take a shorter course than the one prescribed. “Oh yes,” replied the President, “but then it depends on what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years. But when He wants to make a squash, He takes six months.

Ha! Great point. Are you seeking to be a squash or a mighty oak?
photo of large tree symbolizing the idea of discipleship being a marathon
A mighty oak of course. So how will you get there? You need to be thinking of your Christian life as a marathon, which takes a very different type of preparation than a sprint.

For such a life-change, I keep encouraging you to consider joining a small discipleship group. Here’s why I’m sold on them… because they have been instrumental in changing my life.

First, through a one-on-one Paul/Timothy model with a Mr. R.G. who mentored & discipled me as a college freshman and sophomore. (As he is still doing this with others in various places around the world, we try to keep his name off the internet so as to not pose difficulty for him entering certain countries.)

Then at FBC Bay St. Louis, Al Green invited me to be part of a group of pastors including LaRue Stephens, Paul Crowley, and D. Broughton. This group had a huge impact on me! And from there, several men in my Sunday School class at BSL formed a group that provided great growth. And in Newton, I have been in several groups with men of all ages, and each has challenged me in unique ways.

God has changed me through D-groups and continues to do so through them. Wherever I am, I guarantee that I am going to find a small group of men to be in a d-group, so that they can encourage me, support me with prayer, and hold me accountable to walk more like Christ.

Robbie Gallaty:

    Are small groups indispensable for life change? Ed Stetzer and Eric Geiger think so. In their book Transformational Groups they provide evidence to support the indispensability of meeting in a smaller context. The findings revealed that people in a group read the Bible more attentively, pray more regularly, confess sins more frequently, share the gospel more freely, give more generously, and serve more faithfully than those by themselves.

Wow. The research shows that d-groups create mighty oaks for God. Isn’t that what you said you wanted to become?

I believe that the reason such groups are so impactful is due to the fact that the group members are holding each other accountable to reading God’s Word. God’s Word transforms lives. And yet too many of us are reading too little of it. We read a brief devotion that has 1 scripture verse, a ½ page of comments, and a prayer to recite. It is not that these don’t have some value, but the Bible is meant to be read in larger chunks. And a chapter of a day isn’t much. Make the commitment to read large chunks (at least a chapter a day) of God’s Word. It will transform your life.

“The Word of God contains all the practical, real world advice a man needs. When you get in the Word, you learn how to be a better father, a better parent, and a better follower of Christ.” (Robbie Gallaty)

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Categories
Christian Living

Discipleship Doesn’t Occur In a Vacuum. It Requires the Help of Others.

Discipleship does not occur in a vacuum. If you want to see radical growth in your Christian life, you have to surround yourself with others who will disciple you to more maturity. Can growth occur without others? Perhaps. But that would be rare. Even the Gideon Bible in the hotel room that you pick up to read by yourself was placed there for you by someone else who cares about your walk with Christ. The plan of God is for us to teach Jesus’ commands to one another. One of the best ways to accomplish this is in a group that meets with transparency and accountability to sharpen one another’s Christian walk.

picture of a person potting a plant symbolizing the need to plant ourselves in a place for maximum growth. Discipleship doesn't occur in a vacuum.
Have You Planted Yourself In A Place For Maximum Growth?

Robby Gallaty:
By yourself, you are incapable of producing spiritual fruit, but you can plant yourself in a position to experience it. That’s the value of being in a group where you are intentionally pursuing Christ with other believers, what I’m calling a D-Group. Discipleship is more than a weekly group gathering, but never less.

And this isn’t a new concept:

Around 30 A.D., Jesus walked with the 12. They were disciples. Jesus was the disciple-maker.

About 60 A.D., we read in 2 Timothy 2:2 that Paul had discipled Timothy and challenged Timothy to do the same with others.

Robbie Gallaty points out that around 400 A.D., Augustine’s preaching indicated the need for groups and that such groups would be a means of unity, a method of spiritual growth, and would develop healthy Christian friendship.

In the 1600s, Phillip Jacob Spener established what he called “gatherings for piety.” Gallaty states, “Going against the Catholic practice of one-on-one confession to a priest, Spener insisted that truths learned from Scripture are meant to be lived out in a community. Spener despised individualism, claiming that ‘it acted like a medicine which was more dangerous than the disease it was supposed to cure.'”

And in the 1700s, we find John Wesley developing and encouraging discipleship groups as well.

All this simply to say that groups matter. Disciple groups were important in the past. And they are still important today. You need to find a group. If there isn’t one for you to jump into, then you need to pray that God would put some people in your mind to start a group with. And then get them together to start meeting and growing!

Gallaty provides encouragement regarding this:

Start a discipleship group. I know that seems obvious, but at some point you actually need to get started. You can begin investing today. If you are a man, find a group of men to disciple. If you are a woman, gather several women together. It’s challenging to take someone on a journey you have never been on yourself, but it’s not impossible. You don’t need another Bible study to get ready for this. Take the Bible you already know and study it with two or three other people weekly.

And if you need more help getting in a group or starting one, let me know. I would be happy to provide you with the tools that we use at FBC Newton to get a group off the ground!

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Categories
Quotes

He Is Transforming You

Know that your Lord isn’t only protecting, providing for, and enabling you, but he is working to change you as well…. The Savior is not just working through you in the lives of others, but he is also working in you as He works through you. He is not just calling you to be an agent of His transforming grace; He is transforming you by the same grace.
–Paul David Tripp

Categories
Relationships

Does Being A Christian Require You To Be A Jerk?

I am not a jerk.
Well, at least I am pretty sure I am not a jerk.

A jerk is an obnoxious, annoying person who treats other people badly.

I have known plenty of jerks, but I don’t count myself as one of them. Of course, as I think about this… most people who are jerks, have no clue that they are! So maybe I’m a jerk and don’t know it.

But what I mean is that I don’t intentionally set out to treat other people badly. I try to get along with everyone. I don’t set out with a plan to step on anyone’s toes. But I have discovered that sometimes the things I share from the Bible can “sting” a bit. So by simply sharing certain things from the Bible, even when done so out of love and with a compassionate heart, I sometimes get labeled as a jerk.

Have you ever found this to be true? That as a Christian you are commanded to speak the truth in love to others, just as Jesus did, but that people might not be very receptive to your ideas, because they might be contrary to how they are living.

But isn’t the Bible supposed to be a book about God’s love? Yes, but the Bible is also a book of conviction.

If you study the ideas contained in the Bible, what you find is that its content is going to be challenging and sometimes even painful. God tells us that His Word should change us. The Bible is not a storybook simply to be used for entertainment. Nor is it just a history book to keep us from repeating the mistakes of the past. There are entertaining, historical accounts within its pages, but God tells us that His Word has a deeper purpose.

Medieval SwordGod says to us that His Word is living and active and is sharper than a sword. If I properly understand the purpose of a sword… a sword is designed to pierce and to cut. So the Bible, by its own admission, is designed to pierce you… Ouch. That doesn’t sound pleasant. And it seeks to cut out the places in your life that aren’t in-line with God’s character… Ouch Ouch! No one enjoys being pierced or carved on. We prefer comfort.

But Jesus didn’t preach a message of comfort. He came preaching the messages of “Repent,” “Deny Yourself,” and “Follow Me.” He commanded lives be changed for God and for hearts to turn back to God. Conviction and life change should be a regular part of our lives if we are following Jesus.

God knows what is best for me and tells me to present myself to Him “as a sacrifice.” Another unpleasant word…

Sacrifice.

A sacrifice was killed – completely killed. (Is there any other way?) Not halfway killed. Not maimed. But completely and thoroughly killed. So for me to be a sacrifice means I give up everything… Everything. When we present ourselves to God as a sacrifice, we are saying we give up running our own lives and controlling our own plans. We “kill” our will and our desires in order to fulfill His. How well am I doing this? How well are you at it?

God’s goal is to transform me into the likeness of Christ. And as I am going down that path of transformation being pierced and cut, I find it to be painful. Killing my own desires isn’t pleasant. But with each step of killing more of myself, I discover that He gives me more peace and more joy and more abundant life than I had before. So the piercing and carving is painful, but brings a better end. I think the reason it often hurts so much is because of how tightly I am holding onto the things that aren’t good for me. I need to hold to them more loosely.

So even though I sometimes say things that sting, I am not a jerk. (Not usually, anyway.) And certainly not when I’m sharing God’s Word with others out of love. In fact, there is nothing more loving than helping someone become more like Christ and experience the peace, joy, and abundant life that He provides. Or course, at times, some people might not appreciate it!

So don’t be a jerk today, but do share God’s Word with others.

Categories
Christian Living

The Need for Transformation

Autobots…Roll Out! That famous line of Optimus Prime! Oh how I used to love the Transformers!adapted logo to represent transformation “Transformers, More than meets the eye…(go ahead and sing the rest…“Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons…!”) The Transformers were robots “hidden in plain sight,” and interestingly enough, so am I. What I mean is that no one knows just by glancing at me whether I am a follower of Christ or not.

I would hope that given some time, if someone studied my life, my habits, or my actions, that they could figure it out. But more important than wanting people just to see me or know me as a Christian, I want to be a Transformer – one in the habit of transforming society.

Jesus calls me to be a transformer when He calls me salt & light. salt shakerThe ideas of being salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world – these are transformational ideas. Changing something dark into something light – transformation. Changing something rotten into something delicious – that’s a hard one to stomach when you think of the image – but that is true transformation. And that type of transformation truly is the power of God – to take something putrid (my sin-filled unrighteous life) and turn it into something to savor (righteous holy living).

Our role as Transformers is to raise the moral level of society – not by dictating new laws, but by helping more people to experience a transformation like us. The problem is that… “Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender” (A. W. Tozer).

Transformation is serious business and is not just about being in the right place at the right time. Because “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car” (L. J. Peter).

“What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. The gospel is not a help-wanted ad. It is a help-available ad. God is not looking for people to work for Him but people who let Him work mightily in and through them” (J.Piper). When we allow God to work in us, we will see the transforming power of God accomplishing impossible things through us. Join me as we get out there and function as transformers! (you can even sing the song to help “energize” yourself.)

How have you seen godly people that you know transforming their world?
Today would be a good day to encourage someone who you think has done a great job of transforming their world – as we need to encourage each other more often!

— brian rushing