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ATTENTION
SKIT GUYS - THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT
I love that clip because it rings so true in my life.
I don’t know about you, but I’m much better at making resolutions than I am at keeping them.
In fact if I had a doughnut for every broken promise I’ve made myself, I could open my own Krispy Kreme.
This “broken promise” dilemma defines the futility of my will power and paralyzes my desire for change.
I know I need change, but I don’t know how to be changed.
And this disconnect between what I expect and what I experience also discourages many Christians.
Be honest!
I bet every person who really knows the Lord in this room has, at one point or another, been bewildered at the sin in their lives.
I was talking with one of my discipleship students the other day and, when I asked him about a particular sin he was struggling with and why he was struggling with it, he couldn’t give me an answer.
By the way, that very conversation was itself part of the answer.
You see, our new emphasis on discipleship here at Peace grew out of the very frustration I’m describing.
When Doug Rogers joined the staff, here, he introduced us to the concept of life-on-life discipleship and I knew it was what we needed to do.
Why?
Because I had seen the people who had made professions, but didn’t stick with it.
I was tired of Christmas Theaters, many of which I myself had directed, which yielded 30 or 40 first time decisions for Christ, but with very few long-term results.
I was tired of personally leading people to the Lord who ended up just walking away and never coming back.
I knew that part of the problem with our church was a lack of follow-up and discipleship, but I didn’t know exactly how to change it.
Praise the Lord!
He sent someone to show us how and now I can report to you that God is using several of our members and staff to bring about real life change in the hearts of others through life-on-life discipleship.
NEED
And I realize that you’d expect me to be convinced, right?
After all, I’m the preacher, I’m supposed to believe, but my confidence may not be yours.
I’m aware that in this congregation some of you aren’t that certain about this whole discipleship emphasis.
For some of you it’s a matter of information.
You are, quite simply, uninformed.
You still haven’t made the discipleship connection because you don’t even understand exactly what we’re talking about.
I want to do a little bit of explaining today and I want to encourage you to seek further information.
God may even want you to take Doug’s class on discipleship offered in Life University.
I want you to find out about this whole discipleship thing because I do believe it can solve the change dilemma.
Others of you aren’t uninformed.
You know what life-on-life discipleship is all about, but you’re not sure it is the answer we believe that it is.
You’re not uninformed, you’re unconvinced.
You think we’re pursuing a path that is either ineffective, unsustainable, or unnecessary.
Listen this morning.
I want to tell you why discipleship is so important.
For others, you’re not uninformed or unconvinced, you’re simply uncommitted.
You understand the concept and you may even believe it’s what we need to do, but for whatever reason, you’ve just not become involved.
I want to give you some biblical reasons to commit.
I take those reasons from Philippians 3. We’ve been talking about this chapter and discussing how good enough Christians can become great believers.
If you wanted to summarize the main thought of this message you could do it with this statement.
Good believers become great by being properly discipled.
Did you catch that?
Here it is again: Good believers become great by being properly discipled.
You see a picture of this discipleship drawn in Phil 3:17 where Paul says:
Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern
Paul, in this very brief description, tells us that life changing discipleship involves at least 2 actions.
In the first place,
DIV 1: DISCIPLESHIP IS IMITATION
EXPLANATION
Now you may be a little hesitant about the word imitation.
You may be afraid that you’ll simply be a copy of someone else if you become a disciple or, even worse, you may be afraid of absolute humiliation.
I read that President Calvin Coolidge invited some people from his hometown to dinner at the White House.
Since they did not know how to behave at the White House, they thought, “Well, I’ll just watch the president and do what he does.
Things went ok until it came time to serve coffee.
When President Coolidge’s coffee came, he poured it into a saucer.
As soon as the home folk saw what he did, they did it too: They poured their coffee into their saucers.
They kept watching as the President poured some milk and a little sugar into the coffee in his saucer.
The home folks added milk and sugar too.
They thought for sure that the next step would be for the President to begin sipping that coffee concoction from his saucer.
But he didn’t do that.
No, He leaned over, placed the saucer on the floor and called his cat.
Maybe that’s how you feel about this whole discipleship, imitation thing.
You fear it means giving up your individuality or it means turning you into a mind-numbed robot.
That really isn’t the case.
This imitation of Paul was no formal copying of the apostle.
It was not a mindless or mechanical activity.
Instead, it impacted both the attitude and the behavior.
When Paul had been physically present with the Philippians, he had set a concrete, godly example for them to follow.
Now that he is physically absent, this letter becomes his substitute.
He is exemplifying with his words the conduct they are to assume.
He expects them to imitate him.
And what is it that he wants them to imitate?
He wants them to imitate his attitude about Jesus expressed in vv 8-11.
He wants them to hunger for God the way He does.
He wants that hunger to take them beyond feeling to action.
He wants them not to just know Jesus, but to become Jesus in their love for and relationship to those who are lost around them.
And just in case they couldn’t figure out what Jesus would do in some situation, he tells them to simply do what they knew he would do if he were there.
He says, FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE!
This isn’t the first time the Apostle has asked his spiritual children to imitate him.
In fact when he wrote the church at Corinth, he told them to imitate him as he imitated Christ.
He told the church at Ephesus to imitate God and then he told the church at Thessolonica to imitate him and the Lord.
That word “imitate” in the Greek is mimetai and it is related to our word “mimic.”
Paul is saying “mimic” me.
Do what I do!
This is the essence of discipleship!
It is taking a believer who doesn’t know how to really live for the Lord and loving them enough to spend time teaching them the Word of God and then caring enough to show them how to live out that Word in their lives.
Discipleship is imitation!
ILLUSTRATION
Apologist and author Ravi Zacharias recounts a story found in Marie Chapian's book Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy (Bethany House, 1980).
The book follows the Yugoslavian Christian church's suffering under a corrupt church heirarchy:
One day an evangelist by the name of Jakov arrived in a certain village.
He commiserated with an elderly man named Cimmerman on the tragedies he had experienced and talked to him of the love of Christ.
Cimmerman abruptly interrupted Jakov and told him that he wished to have nothing to do with Christianity.
He reminded Jakov of the dreadful history of the church in his town, a history replete with plundering, exploiting, and indeed with killing innocent people.
"My own nephew was killed by them," he said and angrily rebuffed any effort on Jakov's part to talk about Christ.
"They wear those elaborate coats and crosses," he said, "signifying a heavenly commission, but their evil designs and lives I cannot ignore."
Jakov, looking for an occasion to get Cimmerman to change his line of thinking, said, "Cimmerman, can I ask you a question?
Suppose I were to steal your coat, put it on, and break into a bank.
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