Basic Beliefs: Discipleship - AFC 1997

Seeing in Secret

Matt. 5:1--18; Ps. 51:10; Luke 9:23--26

Discipleship requires training in spiritual practices and disciplines.

Discipleship is persistent devotion that takes advantage of every opportunity to know God better and live in a way that is faithful to that relationship.

Discipleship is a struggle
Is this statement too strong?
The way of Christ is always alien to the way of the world.

Disciplines - means to means
The end: "to love God and enjoy him forever"
The means of loving God is loving others, expressing his character in the stuff of life, delighting in him;

Some common means of learning to do this are training disciplines:

• almsgiving - an exercise in choosing to give as an act of self denial
• prayer - an exercise in wrestling or exulting with God about anything at all
• fasting - an exercise in choosing to do without something needed in order to shake up the habits and sharpen one's focus on depending on God
• worship - an exercise in deliberately celebrating God
• confession - an exercise in honest acknowledgment of the truth about ourselves
• submission - an exercise in relinquishing control to God via another person
• study - an exercise in learning the ways of God from the standard reference and all available sources

As disciplines, they are excursions beyond our comfort zone motivated by our sense that, having tasted his grace, we yet want God to keep shaping us.

Discipline sometimes feels like loss of self; it hurts deeply, as if being pruned.

"The way of the world is self-reliance. The way of Christ is trust, obedience, and absolute dependence on god. It takes courage to live in hope in a cynical world that raises self indulgence to an art form and views all introspection as mere therapy."

• How have we used disciplines to nurture our live with God?
• Are the disciplines really necessary, or are they just old-fashioned ways?
• Why is the way of righteous living difficult? Who makes it difficult?
• How do we recognize where we might need pruning?
• Can we confuse the means of discipleship with the end of discipleship?
• How can we measure the discipleship of another?
  

A lot of people over a lot of years have found that exercises in Christian disciplines have greatly strengthened and deepened their life with God. How about us?