discipleship on Jesus

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way.

A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...

In these two little Illustrations, C.S. Lewis demonstrates how a life of discipleship, of following Jesus, does not lead to uniformity and a drab existence, but rather the opposite. Jesus takes our li...

When our daughter Sara was four years old, she burst into the house carrying a water-filled baggie in which swam a wide-eyed burst of sunshine. “Look what they gave us at the birthday party!” (Gee tha...

Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the...

Preaching Commentary Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in...

Imagine you were cast to play the role of legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in a biography of his life. You could simply follow the script, reading out what is written. How much better, though, to s...

Jesus never asks us to do something he wouldn’t do himself. He calls us to a life of faith, not a life of comfort.

“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him immediately…. A new commandme...

John's Imprisonment, Jesus' Debut John the Baptist is as good as dead when we hear of Jesus’ splash onto the Galilean landscape in Mark 1:14. Mark tells us that Jesus arrives in Galilee preac...

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

Pastor: By grace, through Jesus, God calls us His children so that we might become more like Him, setting our hope on His grace, and living as holy people who fear the Lord and love one another. Whe...

When we follow Jesus, we may find ourselves like Mary--bewildered, flustered, and even a little frustrated at times by who he is. We may anxiously search for him, but we will always find him doing the...

Pastor: Our Savior Jesus Christ commanded baptism saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” God’s Word teach...

Sometimes to follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to walk away from others or to let them walk away from us.

When Jesus invites people to follow him, he doesn’t forecast the outcomes nor guarantee change overnight. He doesn’t promise that we’ll stop cussing in traffic tomorrow and never do it again, or that ...

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that...

The disciples want to take Jesus aboard, and “immediately” they are already at their destination. Jesus’ spiritual destination, this chapter will teach us again and again, is believing disciples; futu...

Lord Jesus, your life shows us how you want us to live. So often we know exactly what it would take for us to become more like you, and yet we sit back, rather than taking a step toward your holiness....

Should anyone knock at my heart and say, “Who Lives here? I should reply, “Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me to write a new play just like it. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus a...

Context Jesus' Ministry Begins This passage is from the first chapter of John’s gospel and describes the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—fitting for the beginning of a new year. A congregation foll...

We’re all tempted to come to Jesus for what we want from him, rather than coming to him for mentoring, training and teaching about what he wants our lives to look like.

Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

It takes a lifetime to fathom Jesus; it takes a lifetime to appropriate Jesus, it takes a lifetime to be clothed with Jesus. And the question comes to each of us, have we ‘put off the old man with his...

I don’t compare myself to Jesus, but there are spooky similarities.

It's hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God's new age, a kingdom of surprise.

Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind o...

O Holy Spirit, you guide us and lead us to Jesus. You show us we are co-heirs with Christ. However, we do not follow your leadership. We refuse to live as children of God. We live selfishly, out of fe...

To become a disciple of Jesus requires intentionality—a purposeful attempt to foster the discipleship process day in and day out.