Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Hello friends. Welcome back to unpaid Christianity, where we seek to reconcile our human experiences with God and his work so that we can love God and love others from pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith. We are in the middle of a three part series where we are looking at what it means to image God, how we image God in a broken world when we ourselves are struggling with sin and then how we help others learn how to image God as well. In the last lesson we discussed, how, how that question? How do we image God? When we ourselves struggle with sin, how do we reflect God? We discuss in the first episode that to image God essentially means to reflect goodness and beauty that he demonstrated in his creation. And we image God by taking care of, of his creation. We image God by pushing forward his purposes and creating cultural possibilities that reflect his good design.
Speaker 1 00:01:18 And we image God by living in loving communion with each other, and ultimately being conformed to Jesus and suffering and death. But as no man chose to rebel against God. And instead of image of God, man, images themselves really kind of ultimately images the beast serpent. And so there's chaos and there's sin and there's all kinds of brokenness and strife. And we all feel that even those of us who have the first choice of the spirit who have repented and given our lives back to Jesus, but we, we may still feel at times sinful patterns and full tendencies. And how do we reflect God in a broken world when we're struggling with brokenness with him. And what we discussed in the last episode is how God made a covenant through Jesus made a covenant with his people and because of his covenant through Jesus, because what Jesus has done, we have the opportunity to help come back is the covenant relationship.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 God, when we learn how to trust God, and a part of that is living with a rhythm of repentance. And we, we image God, we reflect God, not by trying to act like God on our own, but by regularly repenting and just entering into this relationship with Jesus, where we learn how to live like Jesus by his power, by the power of the holy spirit, the goal of humans is not to be perfect. The goal of humans is to show their progress and how the spirit of God is changing us. And in showing revealing progress, we demonstrate to the cosmos, the goodness and wisdom of God and through his plan of uniting, all things in Jesus Christ. In this episode, we're gonna discuss how we, as Christians, as we're being conformed to Jesus, we're called to make disciples. Sometimes we act like we're called to make converts.
Speaker 1 00:03:20 We're trying to be perfect. And then we make these converts and we have maybe have a quick prayer that we lead them through and then a set of things that they should adhere to if they're gonna be a good convert. And we forget that actually what we're called to is discipleship, which is learning this new rhythm of trust, rewiring our trust and mechanism so that we default to repentance so that we default to humility and just walking in a trusting relationship with, with yah through Jesus, that's messy, that's hard work. And we're gonna into this deeper into in today's episode,
Speaker 1 00:04:14 What is discipleship? Okay. So we're created in the image of God. We are called to image God throughout creation, yet we rebelled. And so there's a world that is not, people are not imaging God, and we're trying to help them to image God again. And we're creating a new culture, new environment on the earth, where we as people, part of the kingdom of God, as people saved in a trusting relationship with the Aiwa, we are actively imaging God learning to image God. And we're regularly repenting as a part of that. So what is discipleship? What is, how do we make disciples? What does discipleship for us look like? Discipleship is essentially in, in a quick summary, it is learning how to image God and then helping others learn how to image God. So learning how to be put others first, think of Philippians too, where we consider others as more important than ourselves instead of putting ourselves first, the default of humanity is to be self-centered.
Speaker 1 00:05:20 Discipleship is learning how to be other centered, even where we're willing. We are willing to get dirty and into the ditches of this messy creation, just like Jesus did by becoming obedient to the point of death, even though he was equal with God and he thought nothing of saying, Hey, I'm equal with God. But instead he, he laid that aside and he came to earth to restore us, to restore our relationship with God. And so we're learning to image God. And, and a part of that is learning how not to be selfish, but instead be others focused, putting others first. Uh, we, we learned to image God, by how we handle our money, like is, is, is our money about us and getting more things to make us feel at peace inside an internal peace or more comfort, or is money about leveraging it for people who have needs about taking care of our family and then helping to take care of others who don't, regardless of whether they deserve it or whether they can pay me back.
Speaker 1 00:06:24 You look at, you read through the book of Luke. It's, it's hard. Like you are supposed to throw a feast, not for people who can turn around and throw a feast and invite you. This is Luke 14. You're supposed to throw a feast for the people. The outcast, the ones that others would think is shameful to have at your table. You honor them, you celebrate them. You invite them into your ha habitat of glory and praise and beauty and goodness. And even though it, some may think that you're staining your environment. That's actually learning to be like Jesus, by inviting the outcast closest to you and giving them the opportunity to know Jesus as well. Another way is, you know, if, if you're a master, you treat your, the, the people that work for you with fairness and dignity, if you are someone who works for somebody else, you, you honor them as if they are a brother in Christ.
Speaker 1 00:07:23 You know, as, as if your work is being done for Christ, even though it's being done for this person, all these different ways that the, especially in the new Testament we see in, in Paul's writings, in Peter's writings and, and the teachings of Jesus, especially to, to not be bitter, to not hate one another, but to, to care for the least of these, to, to speak the truth. This is what discipleship is. It's messy. We are learning to pattern our lives, our thoughts, we're learning to image God. So we're called to make disciples not converts. And so converts are when we, we have this really clearly defined way of saying, oh, you are in, you're a convert, right? So you prayed this prayer or you stopped smoking, or you left your girlfriend and all these clear things. And I'm specifically mentioning things that are good, right?
Speaker 1 00:08:20 Like if you're cohabiting with a girlfriend, boyfriend, and girlfriend, that's not right. That's not sexuality. According to God's design. If you're smoking, you're, you're damaging your body. Part of expressing our repentance and our need for the savior is gonna involve prayer. Right? So all of these things, it's not that they're bad, but when we have clearly defined these check marks that, oh, once you've done done this, then, then I know that you're in. We probably have a convert mindset. We're looking to make converts. Discipleship is a lot messy. You know, a question that I've often asked myself is when did the disciples become converted? When were they saved? Were they saved? When Jesus looked at them and said, Hey, follow me. And they left, everything came and followed him.
Speaker 1 00:09:09 Or what about Judas? He abandoned Jesus. So salvation. Wasn't just that moment when they followed Jesus, you know, he seems to have died apart from Jesus. I don't think we're gonna see Judas in heaven. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. Was it confession? So like Peter is a ways into their following. Jesus, Peter confesses. He says, who do you say I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ. Jesus says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but the spirit of God is revealing. So is that the moment? Well, what about all the others? We don't see the others ever confessing, at least in that personal way. Like Peter did. I would just say, I think we think about salvation all wrong. We are called to follow Jesus. And there are gonna be a lot of things in this process of following Jesus that make us feel like abandoning him, make us feel like giving up.
Speaker 1 00:10:10 And if our biggest question is like, okay, at what point are we safe? Eternally, we probably have a lot to learn about Jesus yet. Cause it's not about figuring out my eternal destiny. It's about learning to image God right now, right here. And that's a process. That's a whole journey years of following Jesus and being with him for us, we're not walking with Jesus, but we have, we have the scriptures where we can study his word and we can see the message. We can see the, the patterns, the story that preceded us, and then what Jesus enables us to do. And, and we're trying to pattern our lives after that. And it it's gonna be, we're gonna fail at times. We're gonna look a lot like the world and, and to have this rhythm of repentance, but a lifestyle of we're with you. Jesus, we have no other place to call home.
Speaker 1 00:11:05 So we're gonna stay with you. We have no hope, but in you, you have the words of eternal life. That's discipleship. That's what we are called to. And we're called to invite people into that, not to make these converts we're okay. Now you're now we, your name is on the list. Go, go, live your life, go do whatever. Or like some of us know, it's not just about, you know, saying a prayer and then going and doing whatever, but we still kind of live like, oh, it's, it's about making these certain behavioral changes. And then we gotta keep you on track. Like make sure, oh, when, when you start making changes, then we're checking in on you. And we're not in a rhythm of just daily lifestyle, caring for each other and be like, Hey, how are you doing? Like, man, you, you lost your brother the other week.
Speaker 1 00:11:59 How's that going for you? Like when I lost my mom, there were a lot of questions that I began to face about God, about goodness, is that something you're you're dealing with? Or whate whatever. Like maybe you don't have that specific story to kinda lean into, but I'm sure you've struggled with sin, right? Just talking with each other, Hey, how how's your personal life going? Like I know I struggle many times. I I've, every day I want to serve myself and there's every day a call an invitation to deny ourselves and to serve Jesus and to press into him. How are you doing? Like, there's gonna be times where people we thought were on fire for Jesus who were living so well are now back into doing drugs or maybe just live in a nominal life. They're not sure that they care about, or, or there's gonna be people who are on fire for God, really doing well, maybe not on fire, but they're just progressing well.
Speaker 1 00:13:06 And then they were hurt by those of us who were Christians before them. And it's really disillusioning for them. And part of the messy grind of disciple making is walking through that and being patient it's okay if they're not showing up at church for a while, but we're still checking in on them. We're still pursuing relationship with them. Sometimes we, we think discipleship is all about inviting people to church. We're inviting people to say a prayer and then if they don't, then we're just like, okay, you know, it's your choice. It's whatever. And we're not pursuing them. Like God ultimately was pursuing us. And we as disciples, we need to be pursuing, not just each other, we need to pursue each other, but also be pursuing our neighbors, be pursuing our coworkers, our friends, or like, do we care about them knowing Jesus and having that place of peace, Shalom peace.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 Do we care about the Shalom of God and his creation being restored, where people are learning to image him right now to today and a part of us imaging him right now, today is making the freedom and the forgiveness that is possible. Making sure others know that and have a regular invitation into that family to join this kingdom, this family, whatever language we wanna put to it, we see both analogies used making converts might be faster. And it also might give us something a little more glorious to talk about, to write newsletters. Updates about discipleship is not glamorous. There have been many times, you know, in our, in our family's past, we have written updates, newsletters of different things. And eventually it's like, sometimes you you're working to create like an interesting story because people won't read it if it's not, but there isn't anything right now God is doing work.
Speaker 1 00:15:17 It's good work, but there's nothing like splendid to tell about. It's been, it's been messy and sometimes quite frankly, ugly and difficult and challenging. God is still at work. The problem with making converts is that it sets people up to misunderstand the story. God is writing with this world. God is not writing a story of where he's creating this click or this group. God's writing a story where, of people who are designed to reflect his goodness and beauty, but instead chose to just kind of go their own way and led a world of chaos and sinfulness. They are now learning how to reflect his goodness and beauty and the earth and creation becomes to look beautiful. Again, that's the story. God is writing. God is restoring his kingdom through a covenanted people so that it looks and reflects the goodness that he has set forth from the very beginning of creation.
Speaker 1 00:16:21 God's kingdom is a kingdom of righteousness and justice. That's, that's what righteousness and justice are pretty interchangeable. So if, if all God cares about is converts, then once you express faith in him, then you should just take it to heaven, right? That's not what he's after. He's after making a place that his Shalom piece is experienced. A place where justice as he designed is experienced on a regular rhythm regular basis. And that's why we are to be conformed to his image right here, right now through the rest of our lives. That's why we make disciples who are conforming to the image of Jesus as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And obviously like these three episodes kind of give bird's eye view, and it's not, there's not a ton of practical examples. I would love to hear your specific example. What is your situation and, and what are the questions you have about imaging God, about making disciples about living in the kingdom, in your unique circumstance?
Speaker 1 00:17:33 In the last episode I talked about, I touched on sexual struggles as well as a current day, struggle, a personal struggle of just being patient and living in a patient with a patient attitude. And I'm not getting upset or angry because things don't go my way. There's a lot of things we face. We, my family has lived in settings since, before I was married and then therea and I, as a married couple, I've lived in settings where we have regular relationships that are discipleship relationships. They're maybe new to the faith, or maybe haven't expressed or made a commitment to follow Jesus yet. But we, we invite them into our life and, and have Bible studies with them or, or even just try to have regular connection with them. That facilitate conversation about life, about faith, about God, that that is a habit that we have sought to, to live out in our regular life.
Speaker 1 00:18:38 Sometimes it's organized. We have kids ministry that is targeting kids and, and their parents. Sometimes it's very unorganized where it's just our neighbors and different people we connect with. Uh, sometimes it's with youth, sometimes it's with parents, older people, sometimes it's with people of our own similar background in our church and just processing struggles that they're dealing with. And sometimes it's with people from completely different background, different culture, even, and learning to navigate the, the, the communication gap between cultures and even just lifestyle together. And, and what is a righteous life look like in a different culture? Where, where it might look a little different than me and therea. There's a lot of questions that we engage as we seek to make disciples. And so I would, I would be really curious to hear what are questions you have about making disciples? What are questions you have about being a part of God's work to restore all things?
Speaker 1 00:19:44 Are there any objections you have to the last three episodes? Like anything? You're not quite sure you said this, and I don't understand that, or what do you mean by this? I would love to hear that. And, and then I will, I will shoot another episode where record another episode where I respond to those questions and, and we can have some back and forth in that way. What you just got is a, a piece of, of course, that I've created begin beginning this year called finding my place in God's story. There are five modules to this course, and one of the modules focuses on how does the Bible frame the gospel? And in that module, we look at the gospel, not as a heaven, hell construct, but rather as creation, covenant and kingdom. And that's really how the Bible kind of lays out in, in the biblical narrative.
Speaker 1 00:20:44 We don't see this heaven in hell construct. Like we've come to think of the gospel. Like if we're gonna tell somebody about the gospel, we probably immediately think of, you know, headed to hell. Jesus helps us go to heaven, something along that line, the Bible doesn't really frame it that way. Um, rather it's framed in this bigger overarching picture of creation and then God's covenant and then kingdom that he is of his people who walk and trusting relationship with him as their king. That's the third module out of five modules. And we are about to open up enrollment. We open up enrollment for that course two times a year, the beginning of the year, and then the middle of the year. And we are about to open that up again. I'm excited. I will, I will tell you when it is open, when it is live and when you can open it up, it's not gonna be open for very long.
Speaker 1 00:21:35 It'll be open for about a week because we like to keep the group kind of intimate, where we can have, uh, at the end of every module, we have a live recording, a phone call, uh, a zoom call together where we, we can discuss things that they're learning and questions they're processing. But the whole purpose of the course is to learn how to read the Bible, how to see God's story, and then just learn the story. Like what is the story of scripture, but then ultimately, because a lot of us can probably kind of have at a glance. You know, we kind of understand the story, but ultimately where you and I fit into that story specifically, like where our unique journeys, not just kind of as a whole, like humanity fits in here, but you, me Asher, whi someone specific, where do you fit to God's story?
Speaker 1 00:22:31 Finding my place to God's story, we will be openly moment for that. Stay tuned for more hateful about it. I'm excited. I I've enjoyed taking this first batch of students through it this year. We are still wrapping that period up. We stretch it out over a length of time so that you have plenty of time to do it. It's not a doesn't demand a lot of time and energy. You can do it along with the rest of your life. Uh, it takes at most two hours a week. Uh, sometimes it's not even that. And so if you would like to dive deeper into how can I really understand scripture and how can I understand what God is doing in this world? And where is my place in it? This is a course for you. And I, I look forward to letting you know, when it's open and joining that journey with you until next time, grace and peace.
Speaker 1 00:24:10 Our FA Christianity is brought to you by our members at Patreon as a part of the membership program. You receive two deep, dead essays a month and expanded versions of all our podcast interviews. If you would like to become a member visit www.whipper.com/a fit Christianity podcast is also a part of two networks. The restorative faith collective, where we have conversations about race perspectives and relationships, and in Baptist context to learn about more articles and podcasts visit www dot restorative faith, collective.org. The second network is the kingdom outpost, where we talk about what it looks like to live as Jesus' nation in today's world for more podcast and articles, visit kingdom outpost.org. Thanks for listening.
