tohuvabohu

Series | Making Disciples Making disciples requires instruction, but verbal communication isn’t the end of the process. Now we come to Stage Two. Teaching others the truth is crucial. So is practicing it in front of them. Therefore our second TASK is to illustrate; to put instruction on display. The PURPOSE is exposure to the difficulties and delights of being a disciple. Our Lord left us an example in order for us to follow in His steps.

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Series | Making Disciples Each stage in our practical plan of attack includes the Task, the Purpose, the Role, the Motto, and the Principle (as the table below shows). In Stage One we insert a disciple into the very beginning of the process. To make disciples we start by proclaiming good news, specifically the gospel of Christ as revealed in Scripture. Our first TASK is to instruct and our PURPOSE to educate.

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Two years ago today my dad died. We had less and less in common after I answered the call to pastoral ministry but I still miss talking to him. There were so many things over the last year I wanted to share with him. I think that’s because for all I learned from him and everything I prayed for him, most of all I really liked him. More than a few things have kept him on my mind recently, most of which relate to Calvin.

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I finished reading Lectures to My Students yesterday. The journey took almost two years and included some breathtaking sights. The Void previously published highlights related to the preacher and praying, preaching with clarity, and holding on to the truth. While creating my index inside the back cover I retread precious, providential, faith-focusing ground concerning how God makes His ministers through difficulties. Afflictions make sensitive shepherds. It is of need that we are sometimes in heaviness.

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Series | Making Disciples Making disciples is job #1 for every Christian. So far we’ve identified the three target levels of discipleship: we evangelize unbelievers, we edify all believers, and then we aim to equip believers to make disciples themselves. Those are the goals of discipleship, or where we’re going, but how do we get there? How do we make a disciple? What is the process? Many Christians simply don’t know.

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Here’s a great start to a new series on a gospel vision for the rising generation of young people. From someone who’s in the thick of parenting and pastoring youth: living for the glory of Christ is not on hold until you are eighteen or twenty-one. There is a way for six-year-olds to make much of Christ and a way for ten-year-olds to make much of Christ and a way for sixteen-year-olds to make much of Christ.

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This afternoon at Starbucks the barista compared my outfit to the sun in a bright blue sky. I responded that no one would ever make that comparison with my personality, so I’d take what I could get.

My post on Monday hinted at some travel; boy was there traveling. Sunday afternoon I left Marysville around 2:00 pm, picked up Tim Lugg in in Woodburn, OR, and drove through the night to Santa Clarita. Our mission was to attend Monday morning chapel at The Master’s College where Micah was on tap to kick-off Spurgeon Fest. We conquered the Grapevine in time for a breakfast of champions at Noah’s Bagel’s (cracked potato peppercorn, toasted with spread) and Starbucks (quadruple shot grande Americano with light cream) and slipped into a back row in chapel right after it started.

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Here’s a BRIEFING on one-to-one ministry that compliments much of the Biblical Shepherding Bulls-eye and prepares the way for a Practical Plan of Discipleship. For a taste: Effective one-to-one Christian ministry is not limited to counseling, nor is it essentially about solving personal or emotional problems. What is it then? It is forming a relationship with another individual for the purpose of mutual growth in Christian understanding, obedience and service of others.

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Follow updates of Micah Lugg preaching in chapel at The Master’s College here.

Chuck Weinberg started a new blog to give updates on Grant’s condition and to thank God for His goodness. With his son in the Critical Care Unit hooked to a breathing machine, sitting in the waiting room unsure of what’s next, his first thought for a blog name was How good is God? This wasn’t a question for him of whether or not God is good, but a question of recognizing how good God really is.

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Series | Making Disciples The Great Commission sets our sights high; we are to make disciples of all the nations. The apostle Paul also emphasized the broad scope of his ministry, teaching every man and warning every man in order to present every man complete in Christ. Everyone falls in one of the three circles on our disciple-making bullseye. Either they are spiritually dead and need the gospel, they have been made spiritually alive and need to grow in the gospel, or they have demonstrated faithfulness and are ready to do the work of the gospel.

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Series | Making Disciples Disciple-making ends (and begins again) here. This center circle on the target represents the third step to present every man complete in Christ. Helping others follow Christ advances from Evangelizing to Edifying to Equipping. Spiritual birth and spiritual growth toward Christlikeness mark every disciple. One of the clearest signs of increased spiritual maturity is that the disciple is capable of reproducing, that is, making a disciple of their own.

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Since some reading in The Institutes yesterday afternoon I’ve been mulling over the lessons of misery under the sun, namely, misery teaches us to regard God and put our stock in another world. Even as Christians we tend to skip this required class (for some reason it’s always early in the morning) so it’s no wonder when we flub assignments like seeking things above and hating the world. Calvin points out,

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The fool loves to talk, loves to hear himself speak, loves to share his opinion. Solomon said as much in Ecclesiastes 10:14 (part of a larger paragraph on what comes out of the fool’s mouth which I preached about yesterday). A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him? I hate to love this verse. It’s so accurate, so common, and so upsetting.

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Series | Making Disciples Disciple-making continues here. This second circle on the target represents the next step to present every man complete in Christ. Helping others follow Christ moves from Evangelizing to Edifying. The Christian life begins at regeneration when God creates new life in a spiritually dead person. From the human perspective this is called conversion as we recognize repentance and belief as God’s work. But conversion isn’t the goal of the Great Commission.

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Watch and learn about Twitter in plain English just like RSS in plain English. For myself, I Twitter less about “What am I doing?” and more to answer “What am I marinating on right now?”

Our Tahoe full of five is about 90 miles north of Los Angeles as I write on my iPhone. I already can see the sun and taste the smog. This will be Shepherds’ Conference six for some of our one28 staff. We all agreed last night (when we departed around 7:45pm) that there’s not much better on our Christian calendar year than a week full of man singing, Scripture marinating, book buying, and black coffee drinking among friends.

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Series | Making Disciples Disciple-making starts here. This is the first and broadest circle on the target, meaning it encompasses the most people and is the initial step to present every man complete in Christ. Helping others follow Christ begins with Evangelizing. The Bible reveals that the God who created everything is holy and requires holiness from His creatures. But the first man, Adam, disobeyed God and every man since is by nature a sinner who also disregards and defies God’s law.

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