The Believer's Honors Class

A young man I know was having trouble with his math homework. His mom suggested that he call a very bright friend of his who is in an accelerated math honors class for help. He replied, "No, they aren't as far as my class in the book yet." And why, you wonder? He continued, "The honors classes go slower than the rest of us. They are there to really learn the materials and they work over and over again with it until they do."

Discipleship is not a 13-week class that you attend for one hour, answer 70% the questions correctly, and then graduate. It is a lifelong process. And who is charged with making disciples? For that matter, what is a disciple?

The usual answer is that only God can make a disciple. And since we are co-laborers with Christ, there is an element of this answer that is true. However, Jesus charged his church with making disciples. Gasp! "Go ye, preach the Gospel, and make disciples," goes this very binding charge.

The word "disciple" comes from a word that means "discipline." A disciple is one who has disciplined himself to follow Jesus Christ. He follows hard after the Lamb wherever he goes. And what is discipline? It is the training of the mind and character of a person to live and think within certain parameters. For a Christian, to discipline yourself (be a disciple) is to know the Word of God, live a life of prayer in communion with others, to learn to love and serve both the saints of God and the world, and to work towards the conversion of souls all the while growing in personal piety and becoming a worshipper of God.

Whew!

The young man in the math honors class doesn't seem as far advanced as his peers because he isn't as far along in the book as his friends. That is because his teacher is working with him with painstaking patience until he has not merely familiarized himself with math, but until he has mastered it. It is rightly said that when you can apply a subject you have studied, you have become a practitioner. When you can teach a subject, you have committed yourself to being a lifelong student of that discipline.

True disciples often undergo long periods of dryness and aloneness with God. They learn the art of being hidden in Christ, of abiding moment by moment in his presence, whatever their task and circumstance. Disciples live for an audience of One. It is God, and God alone, they live to please. Knowing Him is their end, living in Him is their overriding passion, and bringing Him honor and glory their obsession.

Disciples are those who say No to things that are even OK if favor of spending unbroken time with God. They aren't ruled by a fearful legalism striving to earn God's favor, but are instead ruled by an inner drive to cherish the favor they already have with God and will allow nothing to violate their standing with Christ. They do not work to earn the love of God, but strive to abide in that love moment by moment.

In all my years as a Christian, I've seen people come and go in the kingdom of God. There are those who immediately sprout up and seem to flourish. When trials and persecutions come, and they always do, these seeming disciples wither up and blow away. They have no deep roots into God and know nothing of the fellowship of his sufferings.

True disciples don't seem to "advance" in the kingdom as men count advancement and promotion. They do labor for God in the world and equally, they delight to allow God to work deep within themselves where no one else can see producing fruit that remains.

If God has invited you into his Honor's Class, don't expect to graduate with a degree in four years and have a guaranteed cushy corporate job waiting in his kingdom. Commit yourself to the long haul and let the Spirit of God take as long as he needs to work in the secret places of your heart. Let him afflict and heal, crush and remold, prune and take away all that is not of Him. Take the discipline however unpleasant it seems for a season, knowing that it is the only true road to being a disciple of Christ. Anything else is a fraudulent short cut to the wide road that leads to destruction.

God's standards for his genuine disciples never change. Luke 9:23 "And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."

Used with permission from:
Bryan Hupperts
© 2000 SheepTrax Ministries
4744 Stone Hill Drive
St. Louis, MO 63128
Sheeptrax@saintly.com
http://members.igateway.net/~bryanh

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