Discipleship

I’m teaching a seven (or quite possibly eight) week study on The Path to Discipleship, based on our Methodist tradition. Over the next few posts I’ll be sharing different thoughts from it.

Discipleship is about learning to walk with Christ. We stumble. We fall like toddlers learning to walk. But we pick ourselves up and go on. Like parents and grandparents surrounding the children who are quick to pick them up, we are surrounded by a church family who picks us up, holds our hands and keeps walking with us. We keep growing. We keep moving into a more God centered life. We keep becoming more like Jesus.

What is a disciple’s path?

Luke 10:25-28 ²⁵ On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Discipleship begins with love! Love of God and love of each other. We will act on this love. And it will transform us into an image of Christ. When we are followers it’s not just head belief, we have to do something. Act out our love for God and for others. And it’s growing, we don’t stay the same.

The discipleship pathway is the way we grow as followers of Christ. Christ is not just subscribing to and claiming a set of beliefs, rituals or spiritual discipline. It is a way of life.

The grace of God loves us enough to meet us where we are, but loves us too much to leave us there.