Core Discipleship

 

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 2nd Timothy 2:15

 

The Bible

 

There is nothing more fundamental in our relationship with God than what God has to say and the Bible is where He speaks.  Getting to the point where we don't rely only on the teaching of pastors and teachers, but to become a self-feeder should be the first goal.  While there are many approaches people take when they approach the Bible, there is only one way to correctly handle the word and that is in a historical-grammatical approach.  You can read my work on Bible Study for more information, but there are some key points to remember.

 

• The Bible is Gods only word to us.

• The Bible was meant for you to understand even if it takes work

• The Bible is the Christians only guide.

 

Spiritual Gifts

 

The only way as Christians we will stop focusing on ourselves is by turning our focus towards others.  At the moment of our salvation, we are given the Holy Spirit and through the Holy Spirit we recive our spiritual gifts.  While there is much talk about finding your spiritual gift or asking for your spiritual gift, I’m not convinced that we are to seek out our “one spiritual gift” so that we can ignore aspects of other areas as “not our gift”. If you are prayerful and submissive to God and strive to love one another and serve each other, your gift will blossom and you will be using it even if you never defined it.

 

To read more about using your time, talent and treasure for God, please see my work on Life In The Church.

 

Evangelism

 

The first step in making a disciple or follower of Christ is the teaching part of evangelism.  There is a true Gospel of Christ and there are false Gospels.  To remain true to God's word, the following need to be covered adequately for the hearer.

 

• The Law

  • God has a moral law (10 commandments)

  • You are born a sinner

  • You are an active participant in sin

• The Punishment

  • Hell is real

  • We are not guarenteed tomorrow

• The Payment

  • Jesus paid the price that we could never pay

• Recieving the free gift

  • Repentance

  • Trust

  • Discipleship (follow Christ)

 

If we tell them anything other than this, then we are a false witness.  To omit any of this information as a way to salvation is being a false witness.

 

Many times we fail to give the true gospel for the simple reason that we've never considered the gospel messae after our own salvation because we're "in" and "safe", but our primary mission is to make followers of Christ and evangelism is a key componant of that.  It may be that you know the gospel, but you don't know how to craft a message or response to objections to the gospel.  I would highly reccoment "The School of Biblical Evangelism" by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort.  In there you will find 101 lessons on the gospel and common objections or questions people will give.  See the following clip demonstrating how the gospel is given using the law to convict of sin.