#disciple

God is not preparing you for anything; obedience is its own end in the purpose of God; be faithful to Him. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#faith

When Jesus calls his disciples 'brothers' and 'friends', he is contradicting general Jewish usage and breaking through into a new concept of brotherhood which is not tribal, but open to any person. ↗

— David Kirk

#breaking #brotherhood #brothers #calls #concept

God in His sovereign goodness often uses the painful and at times debilitating injury of a spear thrower to make us readier for His service. ... One thing you discover about spear throwers is that though it’s not necessary for them to be good, it’s essential for them to appear good. ↗

— Erwin W. Lutzer

#hypocrisy #submission #forgiveness

My life is too short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world. ↗

— George Eliot

#home

The Christian message has a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has to be accepted. So God is not a fit object for man’s detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say “How interesting!” God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ … We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek … Christ’s promise is plain: "Seek and you will find. ↗

— John R.W. Stott

#christ #cost-of-discipleship #experience

The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said. ↗

— Dallas Willard

#faith #faith

Jesus did not command us to "develop" leaders. He commanded us to make "disciples". The world "develops" leaders, the Church "disciples" them. The two are not the same. ↗

— John Paul Warren

#discipleship #leadership #voice-of-the-nations #leadership

The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, “God called me there.” If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#sovereignty-of-god #life

Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#maturity #obedience #life

Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.) ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#discipleship #giving #grip #hoarding #kingdom