Authentic Discipleship
The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:8
One of the most common problems in our society today is that young people have few if any real mentors to teach them how to live. Much of their learning is from the streets, so to speak or from television and movies. To be a mentor implies that you’ve spent enough time around someone to have influence on their behavior. But, in our society it seems positive role models are lacking.
To be an authentic disciple of Jesus, which is what we are called to, we must have positive role models as mentors. We must have sufficient time spent with a mentoring individual in order to learn from him or her. St. Paul knew the power of mentoring, and he was confident enough in his own walk with Christ to be an influencer on the many churches where he ministered. He invited them to follow his example and they would indeed find the peace of God.
What’s lacking in your life? Many people in churches today say they are drifting week to week and have no real peace in their lives. It seems what they believe hasn’t made a sufficient enough impact on them to find real peace. As such, our churches are filled with many lonely and hurting people who believe, but have no place to work out those beliefs in a constructive way, a way that brings lasting peace from their faith in Christ.
We must have more mentors. The Apostles like Paul, and their successors like Timothy and Titus, knew that the church would never survive unless it had the kind of leadership that lived out the way of Jesus. They knew the faith had to “caught” not “taught”.
As Christians, we must walk in the power we’ve been given, the power of the resurrection; it’s transforming power can make us into the mentoring leaders which are so desperately need. The call of our times is to rise to this challenge. What a privilege it is to be called to disciple someone in the faith, and that is exactly what Jesus called His followers to do. He didn’t call them to build big churches, but rather to build, “big disciples”. Our call is still the same. We must go and make disciples. We can do it if we remember, Christ is risen…and so are we!
Grace & Peace,
+Pastor Brad
Prayer
Lord, help me to be an authentic disciple. Help me to learn from those you put in leadership over me, and lead me in turn to show others your way. Amen. Alleluia!
Image credit: https://nmsp6.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/why-im-not-a-fan-of-jesus-defining-the-relationship/
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