The Ins & Outs of Discipleship

Doxology:

This is my Bible. It is God’s Holy Word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path, and I will hide its words within my heart, that I might not sin against God. Amen!

Scripture Reference: 2 Timothy 2:1-7

Context

For the last couple of weeks, we have been digging into this thought of discipleship. We looked at Matthew 16.24

Matthew 16:24 NKJV

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

We broke down this verse and discussed that discipleship isn’t just something that you loosely toss around. Jesus teaches that discipleship is a must if we are going to follow Him. To follow Him is to be a disciple.

We also talked about the seriousness of choosing to be a disciple. He said that if we are going to follow Him, we must take up our own cross and follow Him. We discussed how serious it is to take up our cross, and the ramifications of what that means.

Today, we want to go one step deeper and talk about what discipleship is exactly. What does discipleship look like? How do we implement discipleship in our lives?

2 Timothy 2:1-7 is going to be where we hang out today. Let’s read that together:

2 Timothy 2:1–7 NKJV

1 You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 3 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. 5 And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 The hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops. 7 Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.

Let’s pray…

The foundation of the message is going to come from verse 2:

2 Timothy 2:2 NKJV

2 And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

What is discipleship? It is becoming a servant leader. It is to be a student and a leader all at the same time. At its very core, the ministry of discipleship is to learn from others how to get closer to God and then teach others what we have then learned. To be a disciple is to be a conduit in which the Word of God flows. You take in the Word of God, you apply it, and then you pour it into others who are not quiet where you are just yet.

In other words, the purpose of discipleship is to replicate Jesus as many times as you possibly can over the course of your life. It is to learn from Jesus, to become like Jesus, and then to teach others how to also become like Jesus, who will then also teach others to become like Jesus.

This is discipleship, but how does it work? What are the basic principles of disciple making?

Content

Personal Devotion

The first principle we see in discipleship is that of personal devotion.

2 Timothy 2:2 NKJV

2 And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Paul tells young Timothy that in order to teach others, you must first be taught. “The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses,” Paul says, “commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

This means that in order to disciple others, one must first be intentional in their own personal spiritual growth themselves. This personal growth is going to come by way of intentionally seeking out God in one’s life. This means intentionally reading the Word of God, intentionally praying to God, intentionally fasting on a regular basis, intentionally attending every church service that you can possibly attend, intentionally making time throughout your week for quietly meditating the things that God has poured into you, and intentionally removing things from your life that you know are not spiritually healthy for you.

Listen, discipleship is not going to happen by itself. If you are going to disciple others, you are going to have to be intentional about your faith. You cannot pour from empty cup. It’s just not possible. Before you can pour into others, you must first have something to pour. You cannot provide what you do not have.

And let me just go ahead and say that you cannot fake this. It is not something to where you can simply rely on your years of experience in the church, or your years of attending Bible study. Remember that it is not just knowledge that we are wanting to pass on, it is the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can gain knowledge, but knowledge doesn’t save and knowledge doesn’t sanctify. It is God who gives the increase, and God blesses those who are diligently seeking Him.

I can tell you from personal experience, the more I intentionally seek God in my own personal life, the more of His blessings I see poured out on me, on my family, and on the church. It is not about skill…just forget any notion of that. It’s not about what you can do and what you can’t do.

James 1:17 NKJV

17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights…

Being a disciple, and discipling others, is all about opening up one’s heart to receive the fullness of who God is and determining that you will allow yourself to be a conduit of His blessings. It is God’s grace that saves, and it is God’s Spirit that transforms, but God has chosen to move and operate through faithful men and women of God who have intentionally sought Him out in their lives.

Endurance

The second principle of discipleship is that of Endurance.

2 Timothy 2:3 NKJV

3 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

We covered this in some detail last week. Jesus told us that if we are to follow Him, we must take up our cross and follow Him. We must be willing to endure the hardships that come with being a disciple of God.

These hardships are internal and external hardships.

The external hardships are the ones we think of the most. It is the relationships that we lose as we choose to follow Christ. It is the snide comments, the jokes, and the exclusion from certain things.

But the internal hardships are just as bad, if not worse.

It is the onslaught of evil oppression. Do not think for a moment that the devil is going to take your decision to follow Christ sitting down. When you choose to be a child of God, you are also choosing to be an enemy of Satan. So he is going to come after you with everything that he has. He is going to tempt you and try you in every way possible.

You have chosen to be a Child of God, and there is nothing he can do about that, but he will do everything in his power to keep you from leading others to Christ. This means he is going to attack your mind. He is going to attempt to make you feel weak, incapable, and unworthy. He is going to try to make you feel less than. Someone who feels this way doesn’t really share their faith with others because they do not think they can make a difference.

He is going to try and destroy your witness through sinful temptations. He is going to dangle whatever he can in front of you, just hoping that you will bite:

It may come in the form of drugs and alcohol. Someone caught up in addiction will rarely be able to serve inside the local church.

It may come in the form of the opposite sex. If he can destroy your marriage, not only will he disqualify you from certain positions in the church, he will then also have a better footing to attack your children.

It may come in the form of food. If he can get you to indulge in all the unhealthy foods of the world, he might just be able to kill you sooner than expected from a plethora of health issues.

It may come in the form of power or control. If he can get you to thinking that you are somehow more important than others and that you should be running the show, then you will go about spreading gossip and negativity every time something doesn’t go your way, which can lead to separation and division within the body.

It may come in the form of finances, either by riches or poverty. Either one can lead to a lack of focus on spiritual things and cause an entire host of problems to occur within the family and the individual.

It may come in the form of jealousy, anger, laziness, fear, and a ton of other things.

Whatever the temptation might be, the devil is going to fight against you. This is why we must remain focused. This is why we must remain close to God, so that we can see these things for what they are. Sometimes, the sin in our lives is purely secret. We can bounce back from these things much easier because we only have to get our own hearts back right with God. But other times, the sins we commit causes brokenness within others, and these things are not so easy to bounce back from. Not only do we have to get our own hearts back in tune with God, but we also have to deal with the damage, the hurt, the pain, and the suffering that we have caused to them.

Notice the terminology here. He calls us a “good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

That is military language. When you go into the military, you train. You don’t just train, you train hard. Every day you are exercising and running drills, and I have been told that the training never really stops. As you progress through the ranks, each new rank offers a whole new level of training that is required to reach the next. You practice day in and day out so that when the enemy is standing before you, you are ready and prepared to do battle.

And training is not easy. It is in a sense a hardship. Training is designed to push you to your limits so that you might grow beyond those limits and discover new ones. Training is designed to challenge you. It is designed to test you. It is designed to improve you.

We must endure these hardships because it is through them that we grow. It is through these hardships of life as a Child of God that we become more equipped and take on more serious situations.

Discipleship is much the same way. When you are discipling someone that is not as close to God as you are, you are going to share spiritual principles with them. These things at first are going to be challenging to them. There may even be times when they don’t see the value of what you are trying to teach them. But we must endure, we must not give up. We must keep on keeping on. We have already lived through what they are going through, so we know better, but they don’t. So we must be there alongside them as they push through, as they apply these principles to their lives, so that they don’t give up, so that they don’t quit.

We must endure.

Engagement

The third principle of discipleship is that of Engagement.

2 Timothy 2:4 NKJV

4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

Notice that word engaged. To be engaged is to be involved. It is to be checked in, so to speak. It means that you are present, not just in body, but also in mind and spirit. It means that you are aware and that you are paying attention.

As Christians, we are in a battle. Every day of our lives we are in the battle between good and evil, God and Satan, Light and darkness. We cannot lose sight of this. It is imperative that we stay engaged. The moment we disengage from this reality is the moment that we stop making a difference.

Notice what Apostle Paul says here, “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life...”

If you are in the heat of battle, you do not have the time or capacity to be worrying about trivial things. If you allow yourself to become distracted, it might very well cost you your life, and the lives of the other men fighting alongside you. These other things that are fighting for your attention, might very well be important, but they are not more important than the enemy who trying to destroy you. That is where our focus must be.

To be engaged is to be diligent. To be diligent means that you have your head on a swivel. It means that you are constantly and consistently looking for where the next enemy strike is going to come from. It means that you are looking out for your safety, as well as the safety of your brothers and sisters who are fighting alongside you.

One of the areas that the devil has had the most success in over the past couple of generations is in this very area. He has caused Christians to be disengaged.

I hate to hear that, but as long as it stays out there in California, we will be alright.

You do you and I will do me. You worry about yourself and I’ll worry about myself. Mind your own business.

As long as I do what God has called me to do, I will be good. Every other person must do the same.

All of these phrases speak of checking out. In all of these situations, the person is choosing to disengage from the spiritual warfare that is brewing, and it is because we have disengaged for so long that we are where we are right now in this country.

We must be engaged. We must be active. How do we do that? We seek out someone to disciple and help them grow in their faith. Then we encourage them to do the same with someone else.

We have roughly 140 regular attenders at this church. If every single one of us were to find one person to disciple for a span of 1 year. And then they went out the following year and found 1 person to disciple for 1 year, as we also found someone else to disciple for that year as well. We would be able to disciple every person in the US in just 22 years. We could disciple every person in the world in just 26 years.

Think about that. We could literally reach the world over with a year’s worth of training if everyone would just do their part.

Some people might say, how do I find someone to disciple? We all have friends and family members who need to grow in their walk with the Lord. Unless you are living under a rock, we all know someone who needs help spiritually in their life. It is as simple as having a quick conversation and offering to do life with them over the course of this next year.

If you have children at home, you have a built in discipleship program. As their parents, it is your responsibility to teach them, to train them, to disciple them and get them ready for life.

Accountability

The fourth principle of discipleship is that of Accountability.

2 Timothy 2:5–6 NKJV

5 And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 The hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops.

Discipleship rarely works without accountability. Notice that in this verse, Apostle Paul is teaching young Timothy that accountability must take place. If someone cheats in a sport, they do not get the crown. Cheating disqualifies them from the podium. If a farmer is going to sell his goods, he must first try them himself to test the quality. He cannot call them good unless he knows for sure that they are.

There must be accountability.

To hold someone accountable is to call them out when they get out of line. It is to correct them when they misbehave so to speak.

This means that in order for discipleship to work as it should and at its best, we must be willing to allow someone else to hold us accountable. This is the hardest hurdle to get over, because noone likes to be held accountable. But it is a must.

I remember my dad telling me about his principle when he was a kid. The principle’s name was Mr. Jennings. He was well known within the community but even more well known amongst the kids of the school. Mr. Jennings walked around every day at school with a belt around his neck. When a kid got out of line, he would use that belt to teach them their manners and then send them on their way.

People today would throw a fit about this. They would call this absurd, over the top, and even abuse. Back then, they just called it a normal day.

Here’s the difference. Back then, adults understood a common principle. Kids must be taught how to become adults. In order to do that, discipline (or holding them accountable), was a necessary part of the process. Because this mattered so much, adults allowed other adults to hold their kids accountable. It was not their responsibility to do so, but it was appreciated. And when another adult held their children accountable, they did not come screaming and yelling, pointing their finger in their face, but rather came and apologized for how their kids acted and then thanked them for holding their kids accountable.

If we think back to the military, they utilize this very same strategy. Each person is to hold each person accountable for their actions so that they might learn and grow and survive as a unit. They are responsible for one another. I spoke with someone this week about this very thing, and he told me, “In the military, it goes both ways. You have to put your life in the hands of others, but they have to put their lives in your hands as well.”

Discipleship works exactly the same. We not only have to have someone that we are discipling and pouring into, we must also have someone that is pouring into us. We never stop learning and growing as Christians. In other words, we need a Paul and a Timothy. We need someone more advanced in their spiritual walk with God to be training us and holding us accountable, but we also need to have someone that we are training and holding accountable. In this way, we will all grow together, and stand together, and fight together against a common enemy called the Devil.

When we look at the apostles in Scripture, they also utilized this accountability to one another. That is how they ended up in the council meeting in Acts 15. One apostle called another apostle out for doing something wrong. They came together, talked it out, and moved on. So much of what they accomplished during their ministries depended on them working together. Paul would go plant a church, and others would come behind him and teach the people. Paul was called by others many times to go survey a situation that one of the other apostles were in the middle of. The worked together for the common goal of establishing the Church.

What was their drive to do so?

2 Timothy 2:4 NKJV

4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

Their goal was to please Him who enlisted them as a soldier. This would be Christ. Their goal was to please their heavenly Father in all things.

It was Jesus who discipled them. It was Jesus who taught them and trained them. It was Jesus who taught them truth. It was Jesus who taught them how to love and lean into God. It was Jesus who died for them. It was Jesus who rose from the dead and gave them eternal life.

This same thing is true for us all. We owe Jesus everything. It should be our main goal to please Him in all that we do.

2 Timothy 2:7 NKJV

7 Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.

Commitment

Some of you have never been discipled. Some of you have never discipled others. During this time of prayer, if you are ready to be intentional about your faith, i want you to come and talk to God about what Discipleship looks like moving forward in your life, and how God can use you within the realm of discipleship here at the church.

Maybe you are here and you have never trusted Christ as Savior. Today is the day of salvation. Today is a perfect time for you to surrender to the will of God in your life. He wants to save you, and He wants you to be discipled by others. Come and let me pray with you. Come and make that commitment today.