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Intro

A few months ago, Pastor Reed asked the question in one of his sermons, “If you could use one word to describe yourself, what would it be?” Would it be father, mother’=, son, daughter, teacher, accountant, engineer, artist, athlete? What one word would you choose? Ultimately there are many answers that we could give to this question. One of the primary answers that Pastor was trying to point us toward was ‘Christian’.

According to the Bible, there are many words that we could use to identify ourselves, assuming you are in Christ: ‘Christian’ is at the top of the list. We also could think of words such as redeemed, saint, child, servant of Christ, brother or sister in the Lord, forgiven, pardoned, elect, and many more.

Today, I’d like to focus on another term: disciple.

The Bauer Lexicon, the standard scholarly Greek dictionary that is used in biblical studies, defines a ‘disciple’ as a pupil, or apprentice, one who engages in learnig through the instruction of another, or, one who is associated with someone who has a distinct reputation or set of views.

In short, a Christian disciple is one who follows the ways of Christ. And that means that if you are a Christian today, you are a disciple. Perhaps the most famous verses that contain the word ‘disciple’ are , the Great Commission, where Jesus tells the Apostles to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’. And if you are here today as a believer in Christ, that means that someone began that work in you. Someone shared Christ with you, and started you down this path of growing as a disciple.

Of course,

The Bible tells us that the church is called to make disciples.

That is not only for church leaders, but all of us are called in some sense to the great commission. We all are called to share Christ with others.

Lead question: What is our role in our own discipleship?

Complete discipleship can only

Connect -

to others in fellowship and to God in worship