Wednesday 10 July 2019

Accelerating discipleship

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8.34-35

These verses are the centrepoint of what it means to follow Jesus. In his demanding call, the believer can see the three things which accelerate discipleship- that speed up the rate the believer becomes more like their saviour. Those three accelerants are: Surrender, Suffering and Sacrifice.

Recently I read a book called Discipleship. It is a collection of Tozer's writing relating to the topic of discipleship. The book is excellent. What is most striking is the amount of time Tozer spends on conversion and its role in discipleship. It can be summed up in the phrase, 'easy conversion, hard discipleship'. Tozer's point is that our presentation of the gospel is too often distorted. Rather than calling rebels to repentance before a merciful Lord, we end up as sales people for a Jesus who sells them forgiveness and makes no demands. Is it any surprise when these 'converts' then baulk at the idea that their lives should change or should be radically different from those around them?

We need to be open with the unbeliever, that the faith that brings salvation is not merely an intellectual assent to what Jesus has done. Instead it is a Surrender, a complete capitulation to him, an acceptance that our lives have been lived wholly at odds with him. The heart of evangelism is a call to rebels to choose surrender rather than destruction. In this is real conversion and true discipleship.

But this does not just apply to the new convert. The whole Christian journey of discipleship is a working out of that surrender. The believer should have a strong sense of convertedness. As John Stott quotes in the Cross of Christ, 'All progress in the Christian life depends on a recapitulation of the original terms of one's acceptance with God'

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