The Real Purpose of Daily Disciples

Continuing in His Word

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

So this verse, Jesus says that the way to become a true disciple of him is by what?

Huh?

Knowing the truth?

Continue in my word.

He says, if you continue in my word, that means if you stay in it, and you obey it, you listen to it, and you do it, he says, then are you my disciples indeed, or true disciples. So we have to continue in his word, and verse 31 says, so Jesus said to the Jews that had believed him, see, he had a group of people he was talking to there, and they were listening to him, and it says in there, and some believed him, believed on him.

So he turns to the ones that believed on him, and said, if you continue in my word, then are you my true disciples. So the ones that didn’t believe on him, but they said they were his disciples, they followed him. They said they didn’t believe on him.

So we have to abide in his word. The ESV says, “If you abide in my word, you are my true disciples.”

Transformed into a New Creation

So we learn that there’s true disciples, and there’s false disciples. Some that say they’re disciples, but aren’t really true. A true disciple is someone that has become transformed.

Remember we talked about transformation? We have to be transformed into a new creation, a new creation by the new birth experience, the death, burial, and resurrection. So when you obey the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection, you repent—I mean, you turn away from your old lifestyle—and you’re baptized in Jesus’ name, you bury your old man, put it in the grave, and then you’re raised again to new life, you become a new creation, a new creation.

People are like, well, how can you become a new creation, a new person?

It happens. Don’t know necessarily how it happens in that water when your sins are washed away in that water, and you come up, you’re a new creation. Can you explain how the butterfly goes into a cocoon, a caterpillar, it comes out a butterfly? How does that happen? But God made it happen, didn’t he?

God created that system for a caterpillar to go in, wrap itself all up in a cocoon or in a grave, buried, right? We bury ourselves, but when we’re raised again by the Spirit of God, we are a new creature. A butterfly goes in there for a while, a caterpillar, well, I get the butterfly mixed up. The butterfly goes in and comes out a caterpillar. How does that happen? I don’t know. But the caterpillar goes in for an amount of time, a certain amount of time, then it comes out a beautiful butterfly, and its life is different.

Why? Because it don’t always crawl around anymore. It has the ability to fly now. A new life.

So, saying you can become a new creation, a new creature in Christ, God can do anything. God says, is there anything too big for me? No. He can do anything. He can speak the world into existence. So, yeah, He can make it to where we can go in water and bury ourselves in water in His name and come up a new creation. Beautiful.

So, that’s how we become a new creation. And, a disciple indeed is someone that does that experience, the new birth experience, and is walking now according to His word and they have a relationship with Him. They start a relationship with God to become a new disciple indeed.

The Importance of Relationship

So, relationship with Him is important. Why? Why did we, when we talked about before, why is a relationship so important with God, with Jesus?

Yes. Okay. If you want to be like Him, you have to know Him. Okay.

What’s Matthew say about the relationship with God? Matthew chapter 7 verses 21 and 22, 23. If we don’t know Him, He will tell us to depart, right? If we don’t have a relationship with Matthew chapter 7 verses 21 and 23, I’ll read it out of the ESV, you can read it, King James or whatever you have, NIV, RSV, LIV, whatever. Matthew 7:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”

Why is a relationship important with God, with Jesus? So we will be known by Him. A relationship is important with Jesus. If He don’t know you, He’s going to say in that day, on that day, “I never knew you. Depart from me.”

He shows a picture of a true disciple and a false disciple. False disciples are going to say, “But Lord, we did all these works in your name.” He’s going to say, “I never knew you.” Why? Because they didn’t have a relationship with Him.

So it’s important. Relationship is important.

Then we talked about we need to be like Mary and stop, slow down, and sit at His feet and learn of Him. Right? We talked about that. Sitting at His feet and learning of Him. We need to find a private place where we can be alone with Jesus and pray and read His Word. We need to find a place like that. We need to nurture our relationship with Him and start becoming a disciple indeed, a true disciple of Jesus.

When you start doing that, your life will change. Our life will change. When we finally decide, “I’m going to be a true disciple of Jesus,” and we start working on that relationship, we start nurturing that relationship with Him, our life will change. It will change. And people will notice a difference, and you will notice a difference. You will notice a difference.

The Purpose of Daily Disciplines

So, let’s get into what we’re going to talk about, the purpose, the real purpose of daily disciplines.

If you’ve been a Christian for very long, you have likely been taught about importance of spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and Bible study and worship. You’ve probably been encouraged to make these a part, these spiritual disciplines a part of your life. Faithful attention to such disciplines has been used to measure one’s spiritual health. These activities are important, and no spiritual-minded person would question their value, because they have value.

We’ve been talking about relationship. These spiritual disciplines build that relationship. They nurture that relationship.

How would you rate your faithfulness to these daily disciplines? That’s a question we need to ask ourselves. We need to be honest. Do we tend to view these needful activities as more of a joy, a chore, or somewhere—or somewhere in between?

How do we—how do we look at them?

“Oh, I gotta go pray. Oh, I gotta read the word. Oh, it’s time to worship. Gotta do some fasting.” Nobody likes fasting, but it’s needful.

Do you find spiritual disciplines easier to practice than others? Are some of them easier than others? Which ones and why?

Because, see, the word discipline generally carries a negative, you know, connotation, right? “You need to have some discipline in your life.” That’s usually not a good thing. People usually don’t. “Yeah, I do. I do. You’re right. I need to discipline myself.” No. It generally carries a negative.

Look, people don’t like it. Why? Because you have to basically corral yourself, bring yourself under some pressure or whatever, you know. “You need the discipline of exercise in your life.” “No, I don’t.” That’s my look at it.

And it’s like, disciplines are not good. They are good, but they’re not looked at as good. So, when you become a Christian and your pastor or your mentor in your life says you need to have some discipline in your life, it’s usually a little bit of pushback or, “No, I don’t, do I really need that? Do I? Really?” That’s how we look at things.

Because, see, activities that we discipline ourselves in, we—or like exercise, we endure it hoping for some benefit at the end, right? We endure this thing, discipline, you know, eating healthier, we endure it for some hopeful benefit in our life. Hopefully, we’ll live longer or we’ll feel better, things like that. The activities that we discipline in our life, we bring into our life, we discipline our bodies, we bring it under subjection, what we’re doing.

So, but we’re hoping for some benefit. So, these spiritual disciplines, we’re hoping for some benefit in the end. What’s the benefit we’re hoping for? To be known by God. To have a stronger relationship with Jesus, right? That’s what we’re hoping for. And we’re hoping with that relationship stronger that we make it to be with him in heaven.

There’s an important connection between spiritual disciplines and our relationship with Jesus. Without understanding this connection, spiritual disciplines can easily become an obligation to fulfill and a joy. Because we don’t understand why we’re doing it. You’ve got to understand why you’re doing it. So, it would become a joy instead of a burden. “Oh, I’ve got to go pray. Oh, I’ve got to read my Bible.”

If it’s not a joy, you’re not really getting anything out of it. You can, because if you’re reading your Bible and you don’t really like it, you can. God can speak to you. Do that. So, it is important to read it.

Some people, growing in a relationship with Christ is a fundamental purpose of spiritual discipline. Prayer isn’t just a religious duty to fulfill. Bible study is not a chore to endure. Worship isn’t something we do to check off a box in our lives and say, “Yeah, we did that.”

See, the point of spiritual discipline is relationship. That’s the point of the whole discipline in our body.

The Discipline of Prayer

So, let’s talk about prayer, the discipline of prayer. Is the primary focus of prayer to get things?

It’s not? Why are you laughing?

I think it’s some of my worst words. Thank you for that. You caught yourself doing that, right? I have, too. I’m like, all I do is ask.

That’s not the primary purpose of it. It’s getting him, not getting things. Primary prayer is to get him. The main objective of prayer is relationship, building a relationship, spending time with Jesus.

Look at the husband and wife, spending time with each other is to get to know each other, right? It’s a relationship. We’re building relationship, so it goes that way.

Until we understand this, it’s going to be a chore, it’s going to be an obligation that we have to do, or something we only do in time of crisis, or when we have a great need. Do you find yourself running to him only when you have a crisis, or do you have a relationship with him?

To many, Jesus is like a plumber, or a doctor, or an electrician, or an attorney. You only go to him when you have a problem. How many have a personal relationship with an attorney? No, you only call him when you have a problem, right?

How about a doctor? You have a personal relationship with a doctor? I come close. I spend a lot of time with a doctor. My cardiologist, one cardiologist I had, we sat there and talked about sports and everything else more than my heart. It was like, hey, I was with him a lot. When you’re with somebody a lot, you get to know him, right?

Yeah, so that’s how we should look at prayer. We’re spending time with Jesus. We should be getting to know him, what he thinks, how he talks, what he would do in a certain situation. That’s how we should look at it. He shouldn’t be like a plumber or a doctor or an attorney to us. Only call him, go to him when we have a problem. “Lord, I need you now.” “You didn’t need me the rest of the week?” No, we got to change that.

Many people don’t have a personal relationship with him. They only go to him when they have emergency. You kind of see that a lot out in the world out there. You see a problem happening or a hurricane happening or whatever and then you hear a lot of people say, “You need to pray.” What about all the other times during the year when there wasn’t a hurricane? Why aren’t they on the news saying you need to pray? You don’t hear that.

It’s only when a disaster happened in America or somewhere in the world that you hear, “Our thoughts and prayers go to with them. We need to be praying.” What would be nice if America would be a lot different if the news people would say, “We need to pray today,” every same time they get on the airwaves, “We need to be praying today.” You think America would be different? I think the world would be different if that happened. Every time they got on there, “We need to be praying today for our country. We need to be praying for this country, that country.” I think the world would be different and our lives would be different if we had that mindset in our life.

It changes everything when we start seeing prayer as a communion with him. We’re going to commune with Jesus rather than getting our needs met. We’ll start thinking about prayer differently.

When you start spending time with somebody and you were building a relationship with them, when you were spending time with them you couldn’t wait until the next time to be together. It was exciting. “I get to see my girl today. I get to talk to her today.”

I called Rebecca at lunchtime every day when we were dating. Yeah, I still do. Every day at lunch I call my girl. “How you doing? How’s it going?” I like to hear her voice. And there are days when she will say, “I’ll be at my mom’s today,” and I don’t forget. I can’t call her. I miss her. Sometimes I send a text or sometimes I’ll forget and call her anyhow. It’s like, “Hey, how you doing?” I like to hear her voice.

We should have the same relationship with Jesus. We should like to hear his voice. It’s a—it’s a—it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort.

The Discipline of Bible Study

Let me talk about Bible study. So what are the first thoughts that come to your mind when you see or hear the words “Bible study”? What’s your first thoughts? Anybody have any thoughts when you hear it?

Yes, David?

Studying the word of God? Okay. What’d you say? Okay. Just study the word of God.

Huh? Looking up words?

Anybody else? What’s your first thought? Okay. Okay. Breaking it down?

How many has ever had a thought, “I don’t like to study”? Who’s ever had that thought?

In school, I hated to study. So before I got into ministry, started growing in Christ and becoming in ministry, I didn’t like to study. It’s hard. Studying is hard. That’s why I didn’t go to college. No.

Some people don’t like to study and some people don’t understand how to study. Right? There’s a technique to studying that you go through when you’re studying a subject or whatever. There is a technique that you’ve got to do to go through of how to do it. And people, different people have different ways of studying. But the process of studying is something you have to learn and acquire.

So when people say, “You need to study the Bible,” if you don’t understand that person or know that person, you could just be throwing any kind of word because they don’t even understand what you’re talking about. “I don’t know how to study.”

So we need to teach people. If they don’t know how to study, we need to teach people how to study the Bible, how to walk. They can sit down and what they need to do is to study a subject in the Bible or a book of the Bible. “Okay, we’re going to study this book. We’re going to go through it and learn the culture of that Bible, of that book, what they’re talking about, who they’re talking about, who they’re talking to.”

But the main subject is you’re going to learn about Jesus in studying that book or that subject in the Bible.

In John chapter 5, verse 39 through 40, Jesus is talking. He says:

“You search scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

What’s he saying there? What’s Jesus saying there?

“You search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me.”

What’s Jesus saying?

Okay. First, you got to ask yourself the question, is there eternal life in the scriptures? Is that what he’s saying? He says, “You search scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.” How do we look at that? And he says—then he says, “And it is they that bear witness of me, about me.”

Yes. Okay. Right.

Anybody else? Any other thoughts?

He’s, yes. Okay. Okay. Right. That’s good. All right. All right. That’s good. Yes.

Because Jesus is saying, “You think there’s eternal life in their scriptures.” He’s not saying there’s not. He’s just saying that’s what you think. Okay. You’re thinking that.

But he—then he made a clear point. He says, “It is they, the scriptures, that bear witness about me.” Like you’re saying. They’re missing what the scriptures are saying. They’re missing Jesus in the scriptures. They don’t—they’re not seeing him in the scriptures.

He says, “Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have eternal life.” He’s saying, “That’s what the scriptures are telling you that you’re missing. You’re missing me.”

And we need—we need to understand why we’re searching the scriptures. If they understood why they were searching the scriptures, they probably would have found him. They would have found him. Because he’s saying, “The scriptures bear witness of me.”

Jesus was speaking to a people who were searching the scriptures for salvation, but they couldn’t see what they were looking at. So there, what greater motive for searching the scriptures were they missing? They were missing—we talked about Jesus, right?

A person can study the word for many reasons:

• To find wisdom for how to deal with difficult issues.

• To satisfy a spiritual curiosity.

• To learn about ancient history or world religions. (There’s a very good book for that. There’s a lot of world history in the Bible, and religions in the Bible. It is a very good book to learn about that stuff.)

• And to find answers to deeper questions of life.

You can find a lot of answers in the Bible about life, how to deal with life. And a lot of people do search that, for the Bible for that, but they miss the other, about salvation and they miss everything else. But Proverbs has good wisdom in it. Yeah, it does. It does. But they’ll search the Bible for that. But they won’t search the Bible for salvation and Jesus Christ.

So you can search the Bible for a lot of different things and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But disciples indeed, people that are true disciples indeed, understand the difference between knowing about him and knowing him, right? That’s the difference between the disciples, a true disciple and a false disciple. A false disciple knows about Jesus. “Yeah, I know him. I’ve heard that name. I’ve heard people talk about him. I know him.” But they don’t know him.

And a true disciple knows him because they built a relationship with Jesus. So they know him. They’ve understood the difference.

Disciples indeed know an encounter with his word is an encounter with him. When you encounter the word of God, you get to open that Bible, you’re encountering Jesus. We got to have that thinking. We got to change our thinking.

The Bible is more than a biography of an ancient person or historical account of ancient civilizations. It’s more than that. It is far greater than a compilation of wisdom and moral principles. It’s different. It’s very important.

In John 6:63, Jesus said:

“It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

So, what did Jesus say about his word? They are spirit and life.

So, when you open the Bible, when you open up that Bible, you’re encountering spirit and life. That’s a different outlook, isn’t it? That’s a different outlook.

See, God’s word is alive. It’s a living word. Even though it was put into written form centuries ago, it is living. The Bible is just not what God spoke. It is what he’s speaking now. He’s still speaking now. Even though it was written many, many centuries ago and it was put down on paper, it wasn’t—it’s not just what he spoke back then. It’s he’s still speaking now.

So, when you open up the Bible and you start reading the book of Genesis or Leviticus or Deuteronomy, Chronicles, all them hard books to get through, when you open them up and you start reading them, he’s speaking right now to you. He is speaking. It is his—the word of God is his very breath. His very breath.

So, when you open up his word, you are sitting at his feet, learning about him, learning him, learning to hear his voice. You’re learning to hear his voice.

The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—anybody ever heard of him? Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, “When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now, God is speaking with you.”

When you open up the word, when you read the Bible—so when you sit down on your couch or your bed or your lawn chair or wherever you’re at, when you open up the Bible and you start reading it, you should be thinking, “Right now, right here and now, God is speaking to me. Am I going to listen? Am I going to hear? What’s he want to say to me?”

“But all you’re reading is the chronological of the Jews.”

Jews, he’s still speaking to you. He’s still speaking to us because he’s telling you where he came from. He’s telling you where he came from. Because if you study the word of God and you go all the way back, you’ll find out that he’s talking about where he came from, his family history, his genealogy. That’s what all that is.

Where did Israel come from? Where did the tribe that Jesus came from, where did it come from? How did it start? Who started it? You’ll link—you’ll find that you can link the history of Jesus all the way back to Adam through the chronology of the Bible. That big word I can’t say right now because my tongue is twisted and tied.

But he’s speaking to you. He’s saying, “You want to know me? You want to know where I come from? How I was born? Why I became, why I came into existence? Why I would come to the earth to bring you salvation and how that happened?”

Then you get into Matthew and he goes—he starts going down to the history of where Jesus came from. He’s speaking to us. No matter where we open the Bible, he’s speaking to us.

The Bible, studying the Bible is more than learning about him. It’s an encounter with him. Bible study is not to learn about him. It’s to know him better. It’s to know him better.

Revelation chapter 1, verse 1:

“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John…”

The first phrase: the revelation of Jesus Christ.

See, we think the book of Revelation is a book about end time events and Bible prophecy, right? You think of the book of Revelation, somebody says, “Turn to the book of Revelation.” “Oh, we’re going to hear about the end time. We’re going to hear about prophecy.”

That’s not what it says. John says the revelation of Jesus Christ. John is writing, he’s basically saying, “I’m writing this book to reveal Jesus Christ to you.”

But we don’t think it that way. We don’t think of it that way. While Revelation may contain these subjects, which it does, it is not the book’s primary purpose. That’s not the purpose of that book. John tells us plainly the purpose of his writing: to reveal Jesus Christ.

See, the book of Revelation is a revealing or unveiling of Jesus Christ. The whole Bible is a revelation of Jesus Christ. The whole Bible. Jesus is a central figure of the entire book of the Bible. He’s a central figure. From Genesis all the way through Revelation, Jesus is trying to reveal himself. He’s trying to reveal himself.

So John, at the end of our Bible, John is thrown on an island for preaching the word of God. Jesus comes to him and says, “John, I need you to write a book. I need you to write a book, John, of what things are going to happen in the future.”

John says, “The revelation of Jesus Christ.” One last book to reveal him to us. The entire book is about Jesus Christ. Above all else, our motive for studying the word is to know him more intimately. All the other reasons are secondary. Studying the word of God.

The Discipline of Worship

All right, let’s talk about worship. We all like to worship, right? All Christians. Christians love to worship. We love to turn on our favorite song, worship song, when we get in the car, pop in our earbuds, crank up the music. When we’re working around the house or working out in the gym, which some do, some don’t. We look forward to all we gather with our church family to worship on Sunday. Have a good worship service. It’s what we want. There’s nothing quite like it.

Why do we worship? Why do you worship? What are the underlying motives of our worship? What are some motives to worship that we may not—be less than the best? Do we always worship correctly? Or why do we worship? We ever ask ourselves that? “Am I worshiping correctly? Is there a correct way to worship? Is there a bad way to worship?”

Spiritually healthy Christians are worshipers. They do worship. God created us to worship. You were created to worship.

What? Yeah, God. You were created to worship God. And worship is an essential daily activity. You should do it daily. Not just on Sundays or Thursdays or Wednesdays whenever you go to church. It’s not just daily. It should be a daily activity.

Like, however, like all other spiritual disciplines, worship should be first viewed as a path to a deeper relationship with God. Do we look at it as that? As a deeper—a way to go deeper with our relationship with God? Does our worship have that connotation? Does it go that way?

It is easy for worship to become more about us than him. We can get fixed on music styles or genres, gravitating toward what we like personally. “I don’t like that style of worship. I don’t like that kind of worship. I don’t like this kind of worship. I don’t like that kind of worship. That don’t suit me. This suits me.” An entire array of options. There’s all kinds of ways to worship.

But it’s also easy to worship only for spiritual benefit that it brings us. It feels good to be in the presence of God worship him, right? And we want to feel good. It is spiritually edifying. You get in the presence of God and you feel his presence on you. It gets you going, right? It feels good. It edifies us. And we had a great worship service.

But if you’re a true disciple, you realize that all spiritual disciplines are first—first and foremost to nurture our relationship with him.

So when you worship Jesus, he comes close. He comes close. And are you taking—are we taking that opportunity to get to know him when he’s close to us? Are we just getting into the music and shucking and jiving and stomping our feet and having a good time in worship service?

How do we look at worship?

While it has many personal benefits, let us view worship as an opportunity to grow our relationship with him. We need to, first and foremost, we’re going to have a good worship service and I’m taking the opportunity to build my relationship with Jesus because I—I need to know him. And I need for him to know me. Right?

A Daily Commitment to Walk with Him

So we need to choose to sit at his feet and learn of him. It’s a choice. It’s a choice. You choose what you’re going to do. God don’t make you do anything. Does God make you do anything? Nope. He gives you the choice. And if we choose or not to choose.

So we—let’s joyfully embrace our spiritual disciplines—disciplines as a means to know him better. It’s an outlook. How you think about it is going to make a difference.

So let’s commit to walking with him daily. We’re going to walk with him daily. We’re going to commit to it.

The word commit doesn’t always carry a positive connotation either. You’ve got to commit to things. That means you’re going to set aside some things. You’re going to start doing things certain ways. You’re going to commit. It’s hard.

We don’t want to get into the end of our Christian journey, right, and have served him faithfully and busily only to hear him say, “I don’t know you.” We don’t want to hear that. We don’t want to hear that.

So we have to change our thinking. Disciples, true disciples, follow his word. “You abide in me and I abide in you.” Jesus says, “You’re truly my disciples if you abide in my word.” In his word.

We’ve got to get into his word. We’ve got to understand it. We’ve got to learn to know what his word says. What’s it mean? What am I looking at? What am I reading here?

See, look at it when Philip was in Samaria. Samaria and all that happened. God says, “Hey, I need you to go here. Go over here by the way of Gaza. Over here. Go to Gaza.” So Philip goes over to Gaza and he says—Jesus told him exactly where to go.

So he goes there and here comes a chariot flying down the road. Jesus says, “Hey, go over and attach yourself to that thing.” So Philip takes off running and he gets up there and he sees a eunuch reading the Bible, reading the scroll.

What did Philip say to him? “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

Isn’t that curious? “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

How many people read the Bible and have no clue what they’re reading? Honestly, have you ever read the Bible and have no clue what you’re reading? Yeah.

So that’s where we need, like I said, we need to learn to study the Bible. We need to teach people how to study the Bible. Because some people don’t know how to study. And it’s our duty to teach them how, to show them how.

Personally, I think we fall off as churches and pastors and teachers, we fall off doing what we’re supposed to do by teaching people how to study. Because if they’re not—they don’t know how to study the Bible, how are they learning?

Some people don’t learn by just hearing. And so they have to be—people are hands-on people, right? I’m a hands-on type of guy. I like to get in there and I learn things by putting my fingers in it, my hands on it, and learning it. So when I get in and I study the Word of God, I’m in it.

Some people learn that way. Some people are different. But we got to know the people. We’re supposed to teach them for the perfecting of the saints for the working of the ministry.

If we want them to be perfect disciples, mature disciples, Jesus says to be in the Word. Right? Be in the Word. “If you stay in my Word, you’re my disciple indeed. You’re truly my disciple.”

So it’s our job to teach the people how to be in the Word so they can be a true disciple of Jesus. So I’m letting it know now. If you need help in studying…