#disciple

Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do ↗

— John R.W. Stott

#christ #cost-of-discipleship #cross #grace #change

God's way leads always into trial, so far as sight and sense are concerned. Nature always will be tried in God's ways. ↗

— George Mueller

#trial #nature

Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#christianity #discipleship #honor #humility #respect

To be a Christian is to believe we are commanded and authorised to say certain things to the world; to say things that will make disciples of all nations. ↗

— Rowan D. Williams

#believe #certain #certain things #christian #commanded

Being that 'reason is not antithetical to faith' (Woods) and that Pentecost established the Reality of super-nature (Lewis) and that 'theology matters' (Wimber), then 'empowered evangelicalism' (Nathan) is the natural expression of discipleship." ~R. Alan Woods [2013] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#duna #evangelicalism #faith #faith-reason #mis

When obedience to the Divine precepts keeps pace with knowledge, in the mind of any man, that man is a Christian; and when the fruits of Christianity are produced, that man is a disciple of our blessed Lord, let his profession of religion be what it may. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#blessed #christian #christianity #disciple #divine

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me. ↗

— John Lennon

#his #jesus #me #ordinary #right

Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them. ↗

— Josh McDowell

#appeared #been #bodily #christ #dead

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position. ↗

— Josh McDowell

#disciples #empty #first #first thing #form

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world. ↗

— Scot McKnight

#discipleship #hope #inspirational #justice #religion