Wow! Everything that I read in or heard about this book is just phenomenal! Since reading this book, I’ve learned that discipleship is more than I ever thought in my life! It’s crazy to think that discipleship is more than just defining the word disciple. Being in a discipleship program, here at Freedom Valley, has been such a huge learning experience and a great way to be disciplined. Area’s you never think you’ll have to face and such, it comes out when you are living a life for God constantly. When following God, we think it will be the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not always that grand. People get persecuted every day for the faith and that’s just crazy to me. If we could change first ourselves, impact the people around us, then impact our world for the cause of Christ, that’s what I’ve learned about being a disciple. We need to be working on ourselves from the inside out, following Jesus’ example. On page 45 it gives this passage from Hebrews 12:1-3. That is something where our GMC team needs to just go to God in, with arms wide open, holding nothing back, running the race to be disciples for God's kingdom!
In the Bible, we are told to be disciples and to go make disciples. Another way to explain that is doing the Great Commission! The first thing honestly, though most people may say this, but it’s true, the first thing to catch my attention was, “Christianity without disciple is always Christianity without Christ” (Hull 15). God called us all to the Great Commission and to seek and save the lost. We can believe in God and follow him for ourselves, but how does just that help the kingdom? In my opinion after taking time in this book, I’ve learned that we need to be sent out, making other disciples, encouraging those around us to follow Christ. Hull tells us in this book that there are three streams of thought in regarding discipleship. Those three different streams are classic (one-on-one/bible study), spiritual formation (process of new believers taking on Christ attributes), and environmental discipleship (including community/congregation and how people get along). I love that the book defines disciple, disciple-making, discipleship, spiritual formation. In the discipleship-making process, I like how it breaks it down into deliverance, to development, and then deployment. You know, that’s how I feel it is with missionaries. They learn, pray, and ask. The next thing they do is develop and then get sent off. That is so fascinating to me. We can be totally transformed when we allow God to work through us. We just need to give him the time to be with us each day. We need vision to inspire us, we need accountability in training, and we also need structure in order for us to empower us.
Overall, I just love how broken down Bill Hull makes this book about discipleship. I like that chapter 4 explains about imitating Christ. That’s a principle that we should all be going after. We should all be Disciples of Christ no matter what we do. The origin as well as the development of discipleship is great to learn but that also didn’t interest me as much as the 4th chapter of imitating Christ. One of my favorite parts in the book is talking about the 6-fold definition of being conformed to Christ’s Image. We need a transformed mind (believing what Jesus believed), character (live the way Jesus lived), relationship (love as Jesus loved), habits (train as Jesus trained), service (minister as Jesus ministered), and influence (the way Jesus led). When talking about community, it’s always good to be disciple-making people. It is also in that way, as well as our own personal time with God, we can be transformed spiritually.
Either way, throughout this book, I’ve learned that as we are learning to grow into mature followers of Christ personally, we also need to work on the outside in humbling ourselves and each other to empower those around us, be an accountability and vision. We need to ask God to work on us first. After that come your family friends, small groups, congregation, and eventually our world. We need to pray and really think about pressing through to run the race and not quit until we are done. It’s great to be able to read and learn what’s in these books. I only pray that we become strong disciples of Christ and make disciples all over the world. That is my vision after looking at this book.
-Unfortunately, I’ll be honest; I worked on the book as best as I could. I probably read about 5-10%. :( My schedule and priority list prior to this week could have been better. In the past few weeks though, with my schedule improving came, just a spiritual warfare or something. I've felt like I couldn't get anything done or focus. I feel it is under control now though. :) I apologize; I did read some of the book but not too much. I’ll do much better on the next one.
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