Not Having to Fake It – The Cost of Discipleship Purity 812

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of a sunset on the horizon to the right of a mountainous cloud formation comes to us from a friend who captured the scene at Wabasso Beach, Florida, and shared it on social media back on August 1st. Well, it's Wednesday again, and I thought my friend's photo was good to share today because it is a beautiful sight, and that peaked cloud formation on the left could adequately visually represent arriving at the hump of the work week. Not only have we arrived at the midpoint of our work week, but we have also officially made it past the mid— midpoint of the month of August. And although it is not as epic as saying As the saying from Game of Thrones, I will say it, "Autumn is coming." I know, I know, let's let summer be summer, but apparently I am not the only one who is always looking forward. I saw Halloween candy at Walmart this past weekend. Halloween in August. I don't even look that far ahead, but in truth, I guess I do. And that's a good thing. Be prepared, right? Currently, I am in the early stages of getting prepared for this fall's men's Freedom in Christ discipleship course that I will facilitate on Tuesdays for Freedom in Christ Ministries, but I have also felt led to do a solo project for my audio podcast and the YouTube channel. It has been on my heart to do a class or a book study on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, and I have decided to pull the trigger and finally do it on Thursdays this fall. For someone who encourages others to experience their freedom in Christ by walking on the path of Christian discipleship, I have always felt that the cost of discipleship um, is the text on discipleship, and it should be taught to anyone who comes to faith in Christ. Bonhoeffer's exposition on the Sermon on the Mount unapologetically spells out what it means to follow Christ and exposes cheap grace in our church cultures. For someone who was seeking to be an authentic Christian after a lifetime of worldly living, The Cost of Discipleship provided me with the education and motivation to progressively surrender to the Lordship of Christ. Bonhoeffer's book is so good that I will have difficulty in choosing not to— what not to share. Currently, my early efforts at creating lessons from his book has resulted in me merely creating headings to spell out the count— the content of his text and creating bullet points from it. I taught classes in the past from Dr. Neil Anderson's books, in which I have said 90% of the content of the class is straight from Anderson's work, and that percentage may be even higher with Bonhoeffer, as his writing is just gold. So the new Bonhoeffer class will be a labor of love, but it will, it will be very humbling, as I will just try to get out of the way and let Bonhoeffer posthumously speak for himself. I believe that Discipleship, whose original German title is simply Nachfolge— sorry, German people— literally, which literally means following or the act of following, which was originally published in 1937, stands the test of time because it is based on the Word of God and is timeless because it answers the question What does it really mean to be a Christian? And in our current age of Christianity, with its vast spectrum of denominations, non-denominations, and differing doctrines and practices, I believe Bonhoeffer's work is more relevant today than it when he originally wrote it. Bonhoeffer wrote to address the hypocrisy of cheap grace and nominal Christianity in an age where the vast majority of the society he lived in proclaimed to be Christian, where Christian denominational institutions were a key part of the fabric of society. Could you imagine what the Christian martyr would say today in light of today's multiplicity of Christian choices and the diversity of faith systems to confuse the cause of Christ? I honestly don't know if Bonhoeffer would be shocked or not, but I believe that he would undoubtedly give the same advice. To follow Jesus. While I know that is a simple instruction, I understand the difficulty and confusion that can be involved in following it. I don't seek to whip anyone into shape because I know that is not how our faith works. It's a walk, not a forced march. It's an invitation to follow, not an order that cannot be refused. It's a relationship, not religion. I understand that we have to learn to crawl before we can walk, and we have to walk before we can run the race. But the Word of God and books like The Cost of Discipleship encourage us that we can— we really can be the people God calls us to be. We really can be authentic Christians. Yesterday, as I was reviewing the reasons that some of the men gave for wanting to take the Freedom in Christ course this fall, I thought of a line of dialogue from Oliver Stone's film Platoon. Somewhere early in the film, the new Army Private Chris Taylor, played by Charlie Sheen, contemplates being put in the jungles of Vietnam, and his narrator's voiceover says, "Maybe I finally found it." way down here in the mud. Maybe from down here I can start up again, be something I can be proud of without having to fake it, be a fake human being. One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity is the quote-unquote fake Christians. But I'm here to tell you, from someone who came from way down in the mud, in the darkness of his past, that with Christ You can start again. You can be something you can be proud of without having to fake it. Jesus Christ really is the Son of God and God the Son. Because of your faith in him, you can live. And if you decide to follow him, you don't have to fake it. You can be— you can really be a Christian. Bonhoeffer knew it, and I know it, and I encourage all who read or hear this message to follow Christ. Christ, uh, right. Oh boy, uh, Christ, uh, yeah, follow, follow Jesus Christ with how you live your life and you can, and you can know it too. Man, I screwed that up. Uh, see, it shows you even if you follow Christ, you're not going to be perfect. Uh, if you found Jesus as your Savior, you found what you needed, but that was just the beginning of all that the Lord has for you. So keep walking and talking with God. Um, today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is Isaiah 40:31, and it says, but those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Today's verse speaks of the strength that one will find when they trust in the Lord. Hey, this might surprise you, but you do know that when you come to faith in Jesus Christ that you enter into a supernatural realm? Uh, I mean, we do make peace with God and are welcomed into his kingdom as his adopted children, after all. Now, while spiritual gifts and spiritual experiences of the manifest presence of of God or the outpouring of or infilling of the Holy Spirit will vary, one of the supernatural benefits that we will know is the Lord's strength working in us and through us to accomplish amazing, amazing things and to endure amazingly difficult situations. Now the power to overcome or to endure may not be super flashy and could be easily doubted or even imitated and counterfeited by those who with no faith in God. A common testimony of the power of the Christian faith is of the receiving of a strength that was not my own. While many could claim that God's strength is just hard work or perseverance, they— that anyone could choose to do, the evidence of God's presence in someone's life goes beyond just doing it or not quitting, beyond strength that could be commanded by the force of one's individual will. The difference God makes in someone's life is shown by the growth of the fruit of the Spirit and the counterintuitive practices of the Christian faith. The Christian will endeavor to be morally upstanding and will be known by the fruit of the Spirit as someone who demonstrates love, joy, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, kindness, patience, and self-control. They'll pray. They'll read the Bible. And the Christian would also give all the glory to God and specifically name Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The strength that the Christian receives is an outflow of God's grace, and that stuff pours into much more than endurance. So trust in the Lord and find the strength to endure, to overcome, and to be transformed to faithfully represent his kingdom. As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we continue sharing from Clinton Arnold's Powers of Darkness, and we're in chapter 13, and today's topics are biblical scholarship and the problem of myth, and, and wait for it, no, and that's it today. Apparently I just decided to share that one section. So if you want to see what that's about, um, about biblical scholarship and the problem of myth, um, you can go to mtforchrist.org and check out Clinton Arnold's work at the bottom of today's blog post. So as always, we encourage people to follow the Lord Jesus Christ with the way you live your life, is what, what I tried to say earlier, and that's the up. But yeah, you follow them with the way you live your life. You just don't believe, you live it. You know, I was looking at the word believe yesterday and how we can take that word apart. And, you know, obviously we could say believe because just be a Christian, you know, be. And leave, although it doesn't spell it out correctly, you know, leaving is sound— you know, the second part of that word sounds like leave. And that's just exactly what God asked Abraham to do in the beginning of the Bible. You know, in the beginning of the Bible, he asked him to leave behind everything he knew to follow him. So when we believe, we have to be a Christian, and we might have to leave behind all our old beliefs and the way we lived to follow what God has for us. He's all-knowing, so that means he has the best wisdom, you know, he has the best advice for us to follow, you know. So we believe, we leave behind what we've known and we follow God to see what he has for us. Um, you know, another way we could, you know, look at believe is we, we take off the, uh, you know, we change the letters around and we discover words like live. You know, this is what we do. We have to live our faith, and we have to fight— another word that we can grab out of those letters is evil and lies, or lie. So we don't believe the evil lie anymore. We decide to live and be and leave everything behind to follow Christ. Yeah, I was looking at that word yesterday, and I I thought that was sort of, you know, I thought there was more to the word believe. There is, I guess, because it's more than mental assent, and it's more than being a nominal Christian. That means in name only. It means actually living it. That's the biggest thing. That's one of the hardest struggles about being a Christian is lots of people claim to be a Christian, but as we get to know them, we realize that their faith might be skin deep, or, you know, just a name, um, that it hasn't impacted their life and it hasn't impacted their heart, and it might just be a covering. Um, you know, they might be kidding themselves, as the Bible reveals, that people will boldly go to Christ and say, hey, I did all this stuff in your name. Christ will say, I never knew you. So we have to be, you know, sure about our faith and to follow him, and not just follow him with our minds, but to follow him with our heart. You know, we're to love, love the Lord. And so that's what we encourage here, is to develop your relationship with God, to follow him and to love him. You know, we're not following him in some forced march. We're following him because we love him. So we encourage you to do that. And we, we provide our teachings of our previous classes on the podcast and the YouTube channel for Victory Over the Darkness, Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ for those who are interested to grow in their faith. So those are there. And we also revere the word of God. That's why we share our Bible study we do once a week with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti called Bible Study with the Sincottis. And it's available on the podcast and YouTube channel as well. Well, it's Wednesday, it's time to go to work, uh, so we'll say a prayer. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we, uh, we just thank you so much for everything you've shown us, uh, in this, in this life, to open our eyes to our, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who leads us into good things, um, and who leads us to life everlasting. So No matter what we face, we'll find a new strength to, to overcome or to endure, uh, the things we face in this world. But Lord, we're going to ask for your help. Lord, we thank you for all the people listening today, and we thank you. We, we ask that you bless them, uh, in their walk and whatever their prayer request might be. Lord, we ask you to come alongside them in their prayer requests. We ask for you to grant them what they want. And but of course we understand that you give what, what we need. So we ask for you to open our eyes today as we go into this world. We ask you to direct our feet to go into the things you would have us do and to remember you and to give you glory every step of the way. Lord, we thank you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.