I recently spoke at all three services of First Baptist Church Orlando. Many have asked for a link to the service. Okay here is one of the morning services:
http://honeylakechurch.com/bw-testimony.php
Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of every nation”. It’s the last thing He ever said prior to His ascension into heaven as recorded in all four Gospels and is often referred to as the “Great Commission”.
Many churches and spiritually based organizations are sounding the discipleship trumpet. Countless programs are being developed to do just that and it’s a very popular buzzword around modern churches. And well they should because this was not a request it was a command!
All that is well and good but I say that prior to jumping on that wagon we must first become disciples of Jesus ourselves.
What is a disciple? The dictionary defines it as a follower, believer, supporter, enthusiast, devotee, adherent, student, aficionado, admirer, and learner, (someone who believes in and follows the teachings of a leader). I define it as someone who is completely sold out and devoted to Jesus Christ regardless of any consequence for one’s belief system.
As I remarked yesterday theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was jailed and hung for his discipleship. Christians are already beginning to be persecuted for their belief system right here in the U.S.A. and I have no doubt that the day is coming when many of us who stand firm for Christ will face Dietrich’s same fate.
With that in mind would you describe yourself as a disciple of Christ?
Hmmm . . . Take it from me if we speak out against homosexuality or abortion as being sins; we are already being labeled as right wing fundamentalists, and declared to be intolerant bigots. Anti-Christian forces are becoming more powerful and bold and persecution is well underway in our beloved United States of America. I predict that if our country does not change course that the next step will be to label teaching the truths as recorded in God’s Holy Bible a crime . . .
I was thinking of the irony of this situation the other day. I went to prison in my youth because I rejected Christ and became evil. If I live long enough, I will likely be sent to prison again only this time for accepting Jesus and becoming a disciple of His.
Huh?
There are those of you who continue to stick your heads in the sand and blithely attempt to pretend that all is well and scold anyone who calls an “ace an ace, and a spade a spade”. I know this because I receive your nasty comments daily. As I sadly watch our country disintegrate with its lack of morality, greed, lusts, violence, arrogance, foolish pride, and lies, I see the parallels to other once great civilizations that crashed and burned such as the Nazi Germany of Bonhoeffer’s day, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Herod’s Israel and Nero’s Rome. Their citizens went along in order to get along too. Go figure . . .
Last night I got in late from a Worldwide Ministry meeting in Tampa and watched a news program where someone was asked if they called our President a liar for declaring over and over again that “if you like your current insurance policy you can keep it under ObamaCare”. (Incredibly he was still saying this even yesterday, in spite of having full knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people are receiving cancellation letters for their insurance daily and millions more are predicted to follow suite in the ensuing weeks and months.)
In a very cautious, diplomatic, politically correct, and lawyerlike manner the lady being interviewed danced all around the issue and stated that maybe it was better to phrase it that the prez committed a form of “fraud” on the American consumer.
COM’ON!
He told an outright lie and continues to do so! It is what it is – a damned lie! Abortion isn’t a choice it’s a damnable sin; homosexuality isn’t a lifestyle, it’s sin; pornography isn’t free speech, it’s sin. Our country was founded as a Christian nation and while one is free to worship other religions as they please or not worship at all, no one should lie about the facts that this country was founded on the Holy Bible and Jesus Christ and strip that fact from history books.
Yesterday I wrote about Dietrich Bonhofeffer, (one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century). His book, “The Cost of Discipleship” is a call to discipleship, a term that he described as the “adherence to the words of Jesus”.
Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, he made a distinction between what he called “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “is the grace we bestow on ourselves . . . grace without discipleship . . . Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again . . . It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
Perhaps the most famous quote in Bonhoeffer’s book is as follows: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
Today we are fed a steady diet of “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the comforts of forgiveness.” The main defect of such a statement is that it contains no demand for discipleship.
In contrast to this is what Bonhoeffer calls “costly grace”: “Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
So what are you going to do, take the cheap or the costly? As for me I’ll take the costly . . .
This Sunday at Honey Lake Church Kenny Munds will be speaking about discipleship. You won’t want to miss it. Have a great weekend and go to Honey Lake Church (or somewhere) this Sunday! (Go to church even if you stay up late at the football game – It’s the right thing to do!!!)
1 Cor. 16:13
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
November 1, 2013 – Click here to listen