Disciples

Disciples means :
1. a student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher and the servant to be his master
(Matt 10 : 24 – 25)
2. 1 John 2 : 6 said : “Who ever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did”
3. Remember me (Jesus) in everything & for holding to the teachings just as I passed them on to you (1 Corinthians 11 : 1)
4. Disciples are living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ

The building blocks of discipleship :
1. Teaching, preaching and Healing (Matt 9 : 35)
2. Baptized, and Live in God’s House (Acts 16 : 15)
3. Disciples are no longer aliens and foreigner, but Fellow citizens with God’s people & member of God’s households (Ephessians 2 : 19)

What do we have to prepared to be His disciple?

The Israelites and Us


The nature of God’s covenant relationship with His people demanded a place where they faith could be exercised and displayed to all nation. And before that can happen, the people of God – the israelites- had to live obediently before Him, or they will be punished. The reward of their obedience is the possesion of Canaan, the ‘merchant people’- known as Israel- Judea- now Palestine- and since the Israelites disobeyed the Lord, they didn’t experienced His blessings, they fail to live obediently before God and it had to take 40 years before the Israelites –led by Joshua- can posses Canaan. God need a new generation who will obey Him before they can entered Canaan, the promised land.

Even after they possesed the promised land, they still disobeyed God, so God had the babylonians punished them in exile for 70 years before they can go back to Israel. But the impact of the exile are astounding. They are all the witness of God and God kept them alive so the world may know that our God is the true God!
God had prepared carefully for the next stage in his great plan of salvation.

The paragraph above explained to us about us, of how we should live in obedience to God himself. All we have to do is to live obediently before Him, and He’ll give us His promises. By living obediently within the world, through us the world would see Him as the one true God... He wants us to live faithfully for Him
So, live and influence others by word and action from our lives.
Learn how to think and approach life like Abraham, Moses, Paul so we’ll deepen our appreciation of God’s word

God wants His people in the game, not on the bench.

The problem is, we often only focused on the destination – God’s promise for us- ,
but we often forget the journey itself!
We ignore the world around us!
We forget to influence the world!

In order to do that, we have to be God’s disciples.
Disciples are more than converts
Discipleship is more than an interest in learning the fundamentals of faith.
It appears that progress toward discipleship is more a goal for the few than a passion for all followers for Jesus.
Then what is a disciple?

A disciple is someone who have passion, desire, commitment and fire to imitate Jesus’s life, His teaching and His actions, not only to their beliefs but to being like Jesus himself.

Jesus, not like the rabbi in his time, picked his disciples..
Not scholars, not wealthy people from big cities like Decapolis or Sythopolis, not educated or religious people..
For that is God’s way...

5 fishermans from Galilee,...
who don’t know anything about Jesus. Yet, they followed Him..
And from this 5 simple Galileans, by their words and the witness of their lives, there were 80.000 or more followers of Jesus by the year near 100 after Christ.
How could this ordinary, simple people changed the sophisticated cultured world of Galatia and Asia Minor – the wealthy countries- ?
Only God’s power can accomplished such a thing, and His power worked through His disciples.
Their lives became the gospel, the message and the text of the good news of Jesus.

What about us?
Do you believe that God had picked us, The ‘no one’ and the ‘nothing’?
Have we been God’s deciples?
Have our lives became the gospel and the message of the Lord?
Have our lives became the witness of God?
Or are we just the people who ignore the world around us?...

Lesson 1 : when the rabbi says " COME"

Looong time ago, in ancient days of the testament, the people of Galilee were the most religious jews in the world in the time of Jesus. They are passionate to learn about tanakh, the hebrew bible (old testament).

from 5 years old, they began their religious education in beth sefer (elementary school) and the BEST STUDENT continued to beth midrash (secondary school). A FEW of the MOST OUTSTANDING beth midrash students sougt permission to study with a famous rabbi often leaving home to travel with him or a lengthy period of time. so they find a famous rabbi and ask whether they can learn from him and become his talmid (student). Then the rabbi will analyze the student before he said "okay, come with me..."

As the rabbi lived and taught his understanding of the scripture his students (talmid - singular, talmidim - plural) listened and watch and imitated so as to BECOME LIKE HIM.
With passion, eagerness, desire and spirit the talmidim learn to be like the rabbi...
they dedicated their live to be like the rabbi..
this is the beginning of a word - disciples -

the unique part is that Jesus, the rabbi... pick His disciples and not the other way around like usual pattern. Jesus came to a village called galilee,.. He didn't come to Decapolis, Scythopolis or to a big city like Jerusalem to pick His disciples.. why?
He also didn't pick talmidim talmidim, instead He pick fishermans...
Peter, Philip, Andrew, James & John
They didn't know HIm and they definitely didn't come to Him, but He says : "come with me...."
He use the same way to pick me.. for who am i?

He pick me and not me coming to Him
by the grace of God He picked me!

He said :
" I CHOOSE YOU because I BELIEVE in YOU!"

so in the world now..
if the word disciples still means the original meaning..

are we His talmidim? or just beth midrash?
can we be called the disciples of Jesus?
the disciples spent time with the rabbi to learn to BE LIKE HIM
do we have those things if we called ourselves HIs disciples?

in order to be called disciples, ....
How much times do we spent our time with GOD to learn about HIM, to know about HIM? Do we have the hunger, desire and passion to be like our GOD?
How badly do you want to be like Jesus?
so, can we called ourselves - HIS DISCIPLES? -