Anything worth doing in life requires focus. And those things that are really important require a singular focus. Both to keep us moving forward and to prevent us from looking back. The focus of athletes desiring to be Olympians comes to mind.

What about when it comes to the life of discipleship? Focus is required to ensure our life, priorities, and purpose are aligned correctly. Jesus spoke often of the focus required to be a disciple of His, for example in places like Luke 14:25-27 and Luke 9:62.

To be a disciples of Christ, our focus must be completely on Him. He must have first place in our life, even above important groups of people like family. Our focus must also drive us forward in pursuing maturity because it can be hard at times. It can be easy to become distracted by things around us, pain, hurts, or doubts.

That’s what we focused on in this service as part of The Discipleship Challenge. Here’s what we did together. Continue Reading…

Here’s the paradox of following Jesus: we can’t pay for the privilege since we have nothing worth offering, yet at the same time God asks for everything we have when we decided to do so. That’s the discipleship challenge we looked at this past week – the cost.

Life, especially life with God, is full of tension. One of the tensions is that we are freely able to choose to receive God’s forgiveness and grace through the completed work of Christ on the cross and that it doesn’t cost us anything while at the same time it is a costly choice because God asks for our all in trusting and following Jesus not only as Savior, but as Lord. (How did you like that mighty sentence?)

We spent time in two main passages on this day: Mark 6:8-11 and Luke 14:28-33. We also drew attention to how God provides us with gifts and abilities to be able to fulfill the good works He has created us to do. There was an opportunity for some practical response in this service.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

Our journey through the Discipleship Challenge continued this morning as we looked at serving, and the key to serving – humility. Our focus was the example that Jesus set for His disciples when He washed their feet in John 13.

There is a great amount of depth in this passage. Not only did Jesus visually bring together a great amount of teaching about what it meant to be part of the Kingdom of God, but also reinforced who He was, what He had been doing, was about to do, and what it means for us. As He said, if we follow His example, we will be blessed.

One of the takeaways from the message this morning was as we looked at the role of humility and pride in relation to serving. Humility isn’t so much about thinking less of ourselves (also called false humility), but thinking of ourselves less.

In our worship time, we focused on remembering that our identity and fulfillment are found in Christ, especially as we follow fully in His ways with the Discipleship Attitude.

Here’s what we did together: Continue Reading…

What is discipleship really about? What does it mean to really follow Jesus? We continue to explore the discipleship challenge on Sunday mornings.

This week, we were in Luke  9:23-27 which contains one of the most well-known verses describing the cost of following: that we must deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Him. And we must do it daily. Part of living the discipleship life will mean taking a risk. Giving stuff up, even good stuff, in order to know the best of what it means to be a child of God.

As we looked at this core aspect of discipleship, we also took time remembering who Jesus was and what He did through the cross.

Here’s what we did together. Continue Reading…