The Process of Discipleship Part 2 | Wednesday Night Service

I'm excited about what the Lord has put on my heart. But before I jump in, I just find this story funny. I don't even know if it's going to be relevant to what I'm talking about. But can I just tell you a story about my life really quick? So this summer, my wife and I, we celebrated our three year wedding anniversary.

We have two kids. So, you know, trial by fire right there. But something I learned pretty well. I don't know how quickly because I can be a slow learner sometimes, but I have since learned in three years how to speak and is not a language. All right?

And you might be saying, Pastor Cole, Puerto Rican is not a language. They speak Spanish in Puerto Rico. Well, it is. Someone said it is. Puerto Rican is a language.

Okay, I'm still working on Spanish, but here's the thing, okay? There is one vein. The P in Puerto Rican stands for passionate. Okay? And sometimes it all just sounds angry.

But as you, as you, to the untrained ear, it can just come off like, man, they're always mad, but once you get to know them, you're like, oh, I see that everything is filtered through the lens of passion here. So early on, we probably had been married less than six months at this point. My family, we are notorious sleep talkers, sleepwalkers. I think my oldest daughter has started to show the sign, so pray for us. But early on, I started sleepwalking probably around 12, 1am and understandably so my wife is very afraid because it's just not natural for someone to just wake up and start doing whatever sleepwalkers do at 12 or 1am and what I was doing particularly is I stood up on the middle of the bed and our fan is going.

And I'm yanking the chain to change the speed of the fan. And I'm kind of in this like half sleep, half awake state where I'm doing this for a reason and I know it's important. And you know when you just keep going one too many and you're like, God, now I gotta go back around. And I keep doing that. So I'm getting frustrated.

And then she is like, what are you doing? Like, you know, if she was here, she could do it a lot better than me. But she's scared, but it's coming out very passionate and it kind of catches me off guard and I instantly wake up out of whatever the stupor this was. And you know, in my mind, I know exactly why I'm making this change. And it's because that was required for me to perform some skateboard trick that I was intending to do.

So I respond, I'm trying to do a skateboard trick. And as I'm saying it, I'm like, what am I talking about? So. And I just lay back. You know, I don't really know what I'm doing.

And I just lay back down and try to go back to sleep. And she's like, uh, oh, you're not going back to sleep. I'm scared right now. And, you know, suffice it to say, I learned very quickly on there is such a thing as Puerto Rican language. And I'm grateful for my wife and, man, we have so much fun together.

So many stories like that where, man, I am just a little clueless. And she helps me understand, you know what. What you're doing isn't making a lot of sense right now.

But again, I don't know if that'll have any relevance to the night. We'll see. I just. I love telling stories, guys. And you're all family, so now we can hop in.

Sorry if I wasted your time, but I had a good time, so it's okay. All righty. If you didn't know, I have the privilege, me and my wife do of running our discipleship school here. Refuge. Discipleship school.

And that is what we're passionate about, Something that the Lord really did in our hearts. Because I went through RDS a number of years ago.

It's funny. Time. Time keeps going by and the years keep growing. I know I'm still young up here, but I'm like, man, we're about to be a decade from whenever I graduated high school, and that feels super weird. Anyways, some of you might be like, I'm several decades from when I graduated high school.

I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. But tonight we're going to talk about discipleship hitting close to home. And I really want to hit on, you know what. What is?

Under the choir are the disciples of the church. I feel like you're here. The disciples of the church. I feel like you're here. So how do we help other people in their discipleship process?

And I did create a PowerPoint for this. You know, I. I channeled my inner Marcelo for this one. And. And really, you know, don't expect too much, because I'm not Marcelo, but I really want to focus in on what is our call as disciples. How do we help other people?

So first century Judaism, first century education in Israel looked a little bit different from our education system here, right? We all know you learn information, you study for a test, you pass the test, you, you move on, you probably forget the information the next day. In first century Israel, their education system revolved a little bit more around training in a way to become what you are learning, right? So basically there's three levels of their education system. What would be their equivalent of primary or elementary school where every boy would attend their secondary education.

Similar to a college where only a small portion of the primary school students would go on to further their education. And then beyond that, an even smaller portion would be selected by a rabbi to train under for a period of two or three years. And they would be chosen by this rabbi with a command, something along the lines of come, follow me. And they had really three purposes in following a rabbi was to be with their rabbi, to become like their rabbi, and to do what their rabbi did, right? They would copy his mannerisms, memorize his sayings, try to mimic his speech.

Everything they would do was centered around these three goals. Being with our rabbi, becoming like him, and doing what he did. At the end of this period, if the rabbi felt his student was ready, he would say something to the effect of go make disciples. Now you go, your turn to be the rabbi. Similar to the command we read about in Matthew 28:19.

Almost forgot about 28:11. Oops. 28:19. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples all the things that I've commanded you.

We probably most of us know that famous verse. We hear it and I believe in sometimes an out of context way where we get saved and then it's all right now go and make disciples. Go and do the stuff. Go support the ministry. Right?

And there is biblical evidence for stepping into ministry roles. That's not what I'm saying, but I think what we have seen is a severe lack of spiritual formation and discipleship in the modern evangelism movements. Get people in the church so they can get more people in the church. And we've kind of cut out the part that's us becoming like Jesus, right? And that's really unfortunate because as we look at the modern state of the church, you know, we're seeing where the representation of Jesus is not very good because we don't focus on becoming like him.

And that is the essence of discipleship. So that's what we're going to talk tonight about is this process of discipleship. How do we practice that? What does that look like? And thank God, it really is so simple, you know, it's really.

I've boiled it down to three real steps, and there's only really one thing required of us. So what is discipleship?

I said a disciple, and this is Webster's definition, not mine. One bound by indenture to another for a prescribed period, with a view of learning an art or trade, and one who is learning by practical experience under skilled workers. A trade, art or calling, hence emphasis on practical experience, AKA not head, knowledge, but actually becoming something rather than knowing something. It's the process through which we were and continue being saved. It is the process that ties justification and sanctification together so that we might live as Christ in this life and receive the full inheritance of God as His children and in the life to come.

Amen. Amen. So where does this process begin? Really? Discipleship begins in our life even before we or the person we're walking with ever even acknowledge Jesus as Lord, right?

Jesus begins this process I called awakening. I'm sure you've heard it a million different terms. But this process where he begins to breathe on our hearts, right? He begins to hover over our lives and we start to feel things that we never felt before. We start to feel conviction.

We start to feel a burden for our sin. We start to feel a draw towards spiritual things. And that's because God has already initiated this process in our lives. There's nothing we did to kind of trigger that. There's nothing, you know, we didn't hit a certain mileage on our.

On our, you know, our chain effect. It was just somehow caused this chain effect. It was God having mercy on our lives to say, I see you, I love you. I want you to respond to me.

So awakening again, super simple. It's when God begins to breathe on our hearts. We begin to feel his stirring and his conviction in our lives. Only God is responsible for this.

First, John 4:19 says, we love because he first loved us. And Romans 5, 8 similarly says, But God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

All, right? So once that happens, right? The only two possible outcomes in this is we can either resist it or we can submit to it, right? We can either say, I'm good. I'm going to continue on this path that I'm living for myself, or we can say, I'm going to ride the wave of awakening.

And that's when we come into something I've called acknowledgement, where we acknowledge Jesus is our Lord.

So simply to acknowledge him is to say yes to Him. And this is what we would know as the point of conversion or salvation, also known as justification. Right is our acknowledgment. We recognize our depravity and sin condition. We recognize our need for a Savior, and we recognize our desire for Him.

To put it simply, we allow his love to permeate our lives. So we're involved slightly more in this stage of the process, but still all of the legwork God is doing on our behalf. Right? We're just saying, yes, I'm going to do this, or no, I'm good.

Romans 10, 9, 11 says that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. John 1:12. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. And Revelation 3:20, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

Amazing, right? We don't deserve that. We don't do anything. God doesn't benefit from it if we say yes or no. He just loves us.

He wants us to be with him in that.

Again, we just allow his love to permeate our lives. That's all acknowledgement of him is saying, God, I want to receive that. I know I need you. I know how broken I am.

And if you read ahead, then you probably know we never really leave that place of acknowledging our need for Him. We're constantly dependent on Jesus. We're constantly in need of a Savior. We're constantly needing his love to penetrate our lives. And that leads us into the final stage.

Not the final, but the stage that we will currently occupy until we get to the final stage. And that is something I've coined the cycle of sanctification. All right, so at this point, the process transitions from linear to cyclical, and it marks a defining moment of moving from mere acknowledgment of God to real relationship with God. So really, I guess the deepest change that occurs here is we're actually going to do something about our acknowledgment of Him. And that's still not a whole lot on our ends and a world of things on God's end, thankfully.

But there are four stages in this cycle of sanctification that we're going to look into.

All right, so relationship is the crux of this cycle. It's not just mere religion. It's not just something that we're meant to, you know, robotically go through life in this way. All right, so it all starts and is rooted in the love of God. That's where this cycle starts.

It's where this cycle ends. This is the foundation of our sanctification process, is we have to remain in love with Jesus. It is the place that we recognize his nature and his perfection and fall in love with Him. Right? We've acknowledged Him.

Now we're falling in love with who he is and what he has done for us.

In light of our revelation of who God is and the love for him that is birthed in our hearts, we also have a revelation of the sin that is present in our lives that is different from the holiness we see in him, and that leads us into conviction, which is a very good and healthy thing. If you feel convicted, I'm very glad, because that means you are responding to Jesus. If you don't, you might want to take your pulse because you might be dead, Physically or spiritually. Neither is very good.

So love leads us to a revelation of our own lives and the sin present. It is the revelation that there are ways that we are not like God and that breaks or should break our hearts. Romans 2, 4 tells us, or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? His love is there so that we can be shown the error of our ways, not in a gotcha way, but in a hey, there's better for you way. Hebrews 12, 6, 7 said, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son who whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom His Father does not discipline? It goes on to say, if he didn't discipline us, we would be illegitimate children. I don't want to be an illegitimate child of God.

I want to be an actual child of God. Therefore, we have to frame the way we see conviction as a good thing, right? It's not bad that the Lord disciplines us. It's not bad that we deal with sin. We're humans, right?

God knows that we're gonna deal with things. He wants us to respond to him in a way of saying, oh, God, I don't want this in my life because it's keeping me from closer relationship to you, rather than just saying, oh, well.

So once we have experienced conviction, it should result in a heartbrokenness that we are reconnected with our desperate need for him and the cross. And that leads us into the crucifixion of self.

Galatians 5:24 says, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Do you belong to Jesus? You gotta crucify your flesh. And I'm just gonna be honest with you guys. This is the hardest part of the process because it requires total sacrifice, right?

If you only give a piece of your life, then you're kind of stuck in the cycle and you're never gonna progress into the life that Jesus has in store for you, which I can guarantee you is going to be infinitely better than whatever it is that he's asking you to lay down.

Now, that doesn't make it less difficult, but it does make it worth it.

Crucifixion of self is the way God has given us to find freedom from sin cycles we have been victims to our whole life. It is this process of crucifixion that we yield ourselves further to God's will in our lives. And it is this process that we die to ourselves. It is the most difficult part of the process because there has to be total sacrifice on our part. And this is where the grace of God is crucial to our lives, because we can never hope that to submit to it in our own strength, ability, power, merit, et cetera.

Though this is the hardest part, it leads us to the most rewarding part. And I'm going to pause here because I want to paint you guys a picture of what this looks like. And I'm going to use my own life as an example to show you guys. Man, it's difficult. Here's the reality of it.

There's things that we believe about ourselves, about God. There's insecurities we carry that are just not in line with God's word, right? And maybe they come from childhood wounds, maybe they come from trauma, from family member, a parent. But there are real things that keep us victims rather than conquerors in Christ.

For me, the biggest lie that I have believed in my life is that I am always going to amount to failure, right? I'm never going to be good enough to step into what God has for me in the fullness of it. And to be honest with you guys, I'm still navigating this. I'm still trying to find full freedom in it. And I believe in the Lord's grace and timing, I am going to have freedom.

But can I tell you, every time I come across a failure, I'm faced with this lie, right? And I'm A big movie person, if you can picture this in your mind, like in the movies, where the main character will have, like, the angel and the devil on his shoulder, and it'll be like, hey, do this. This is the good way. Or, hey, actually, this is more fun. You should do this.

I kind of feel like that in my mind. Whenever I'm triggered, whenever I do something that feels like a failure, this lie instantly comes up. You're never gonna be good enough. You're always gonna struggle. And this is just as good as you can be.

And the temptation to partner with that lie is very real if I'm honest with you, because that is how I feel, right? My feelings match up with this lie that make me think that must be true. But on the other hand, you know, I've got this in my heart, and. And I know what God has said. I know the truth.

So in those moments that I'm triggered by a lie or by a failure, and this lie comes up, also comes up as the truth of I'm more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. I'm the head and not the tail. I've been given everything I need for life and godliness. I'm a child been adopted, a child of God who's given me the spirit to cry out, abba, father. And God's children aren't failures.

So real time I'm presented with these two choices. Can either partner with my feelings and this lie, or in spite of what I feel I can say, I'm gonna partner with what I know to be true and step into that and respond based upon that and move forward rather than let this thing be a crutch that I keep going back to. Now, I'm gonna tell you the first time the Lord began to address this in my life. I remember everything in me wanted to choose this. You know, get in a fight with my wife, don't respond to my kids correctly, drop a ball at work, oh, here's that thing again.

And God says, not this time. You know the truth. You know too much. So you have to look at that thing and acknowledge that you're choosing a lie or choose the truth. You can't just be nonchalant about it anymore.

And, you know, when you're kind of frustrated at the Lord, you're like, oh, God, he backed me into a corner on this one because all my feelings are telling me to go this way. But, like, you just told me that I'm gonna have to choose a lie. You know, I'm just. I would beat myself up if I chose a lie, knowing that I'm choosing a lie. So I choose the truth in this moment, and then faith is activated in my life, and I step into something I've never stepped into before, and I'm able to move forward for the first time in a real, authentic way to say, I'm not gonna let this lie define my life.

I'm gonna step into who God has called me to be. Now, I would lie to you if I told you I got it 100% right every time. There were times I would still choose this lie and have to go back to the Lord and say, God, I'm sorry, I don't want to believe a lie. But the amazing thing that happened and is happening currently as I'm choosing the truth, is that I'm starting to believe what God says is true. I'm starting to respond out of an identity of knowing what God says about me.

And I feel like I have nothing to do with that. I don't know why that is. I don't know how that happened. I just know works. And whenever you crucify what you feel, what you believe, everything that the world has told you on the altar of God, he will bring about transformation into your life.

And that is the fourth stage of this cycle of sanctification, which is, in my opinion, one of the most amazing parts of this whole process. Because it's when God's resurrection power comes into our life and takes us from where we are to where God has called us to be. Somewhere we could never get ourselves, something we could never do in our own power, freedom we could never have in our own strength God brings about in our life like that. And I can't explain it to you guys. All I'm saying is I've experienced it.

And it just works when you do things God way.

So 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, and the new is here. Likewise, Second Corinthians 3:18 says, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Transformation is the resurrection power of God at work in our lives to bring us from who we were into who God has destined us to be. And it's not just mere behavioral change. Sometimes we can fake a behavior, sometimes we can act like we're confident or that we know who we are in Christ, and yet our inner man or inner woman know that that is actually a facade.

And I just want to offer to you, why would we live in a substandard way when the real thing is available?

And I'll argue, what I want to teach you guys tonight is sometimes we just don't have someone to show us the way. Sometimes all we've seen is do as I say, not as I do, or just figure it out.

And it's not a secret that we are in the most fatherless generation that has ever existed. And this is where God is calling us as those who have submitted to discipleship, to step into the role of discipling. I don't even know if that's a verb, but sure, we'll go with it.

And to help those get where we have been before, to help show the way.

As we endure this process, we're transformed. And that reignites us in the love of God, saying, only God could do this in my life. God, your way is so much better than the way of the world. And we're just reignited with this burning passion for Jesus, right? This is not something the world can offer.

Tries to really hard. But if you guys have spent any time doing things in the way of the world, it's always empty and shallow and fleeting. But God's way, man, I'll just say the foolishness of God is wisdom. It's true wisdom.

So we undergo this process and it gets deeper every time. The more we do it, the more we look like him, and the deeper we go and the deeper we go. Until one day we are led to the last stage of this process, which is the stage of glorification.

Man and what a day that is. First John 3:2 says, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared Him. But ye know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Romans 8, 16, 18. The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit, that we are children of God.

And if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Provided we suffer with Him. Provided we suffer with Him. Crucifixion of self in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Thank you, Jesus, man. Revelation 21:3 4 and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe Every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things as passed away, man.

And what a day that will be when all of our present affliction is not even worth remembering compared to the glory we're going to experience. And guys, life is hard. It's not easy. I have two kids. Some of you have more than that, have journeyed through a lot harder things than me.

But where I'm at, it's hard.

And Jesus is giving us the assurance, don't worry what's to come, man. It's going to make what was hard just melt away.

And that's. That makes me hopeful. I don't know about you guys.

All right, so four stages. Awakening, acknowledgment, cycle of sanctification, glorification, and really only three, because we're not going to experience glorification until the day of the Lord's return.

And all that is really required of us just to say, yes, Lord. Your way, Lord. Less of me, Lord. And he will do. And has already done all the heavy lifting through his work on the cross.

Thank God, because it used to be there's a law that you have to uphold and we could never do it. Now. I do want to give a warning. There are two false cycles that I want to go in depth about just a little bit. There's probably more than this, but these are the two that I've experienced in my life and while walking with our students.

Cycle of legalism rooted in fear that says I'm going to be punished. I don't see God correctly, so I have to try to earn his approval. That fear leads us to unrealistic expectation over ourself. I have to check off the list. I've got to be perfect.

Which leads us into striving, trying to do it in our own strength. Striving will lead us into self condemnation or pride. That looks like self righteousness. Either we fail in our striving and we crumble in the exhaustion and weight of striving, or we look like we're doing really well, so we're puffed up with this sense of superiority. Well, I've done all this for the Lord and it's just a farce and we actually miss out on the beauty of relationship with God and in the end leads us to spiritual death.

On the other side, we have the cycle of moral licensing which is rooted in pride or self seeking, self comfort, self idolatry. Right? Living your life for yourself. We still acknowledge Jesus is Lord through Our words. But that pride of life leads us into habitual sin.

I can keep the old ways of my life. I can keep running around with these same people and living in these same behaviors and practicing these same ways of life.

And that habitual sin, you know, sometimes we feel bad for it. So then we run to the altar and we have spiritual encounter. All right, I've given my life to the Lord again. And then we feel all the goosebumps and the hype and then we have a moment of self justification. Oh, God still loves me, so I'm going to keep doing what I want to do.

And again, spiritual death is the result of that. And a cheapening of God's grace takes place. And man, it's easy to get caught up in either of these ways. It's easy to let ourselves drift into moral licensing or legalism. Because, I mean, I love our country, but we are flooded with vices of one, entertainment and comfort that tell us our life is all about what makes me feel really good.

And on the other side, we're flooded with this idea of the American dream, being a good person, that is the self made man. All right, I'm going to do it all in my own strength. Jack of all trades.

So it's easy to slip into these things. And I don't care how far in this process you've gone, there's always an avenue to fall into either of these sides. And you might ask yourself, how do I know? You gotta look at the root of your life. Are you driven by the love of God?

Are you driven by. I'm making my decisions based on an overwhelming sense of I just cannot get enough of this Jesus of Nazareth and I have to give him all of my life. Even if I know there are parts that I'm gonna that are gonna be really hard. Or are you in a vein of self seeking? Look at your life.

How is your time used? What are your resources committed to?

Does the church get the leftovers? Does your family get the leftovers?

I mean, just being honest, it's easy to get there because we're working for the man on the other side. Are we driven by fear? Do I have this expectation that my life is going to crumble around me if I can't, if I can't continue the race, if I can't continue to produce, if I can't continue to be good? Do right.

When we look into our heart, the fruit of these ways of operating are going to be evident.

Right? If you love God, you're gonna be progressing towards Jesus you're gonna display grace in your life. You're gonna be gracious with other people around you. You're gonna love people well, you're gonna be generous on every occasion.

If you're living in some other vein, you might be thinking about what's in it for me.

I don't have time for this person. Today, the blessings of God just feel like burdens because they're taking away from things I want to do or man, they should be doing what I'm doing because I'm. Man, I'm crushing it. Look at how much I serve, look at how much I give. Look at all these things.

But really both of those things are empty.

So I want you guys to be aware of these things because as you're journeying with people, Pastor Nathan just spoke phenomenal word. Sometimes we got to snatch people out of the fire. We got to see in their lives, huh? Your fruit doesn't taste like the fruit of the spirit. And I'm concerned that you're missing out on the fullness of a life with Jesus Christ.

I love you because I am rooted in the word of God. And I want better for you like Jesus wants better for you. And that's why he came into the world to die for you. And that's why I will lay my life down for those around me. So what now?

Only two steps. All right. We have to live it out. We have to practice what we preach, right? Gen Z. I'm at the.

I don't know how to say that, the older end of Gen Z.

And one thing about my generation that is kind of a double edged sword, I'll say is we have an act for sniffing out inauthenticity and it's kind of resulted in cancel culture, which is not great, to be honest with you. But the benefit if it's used in the Lord's hands is that we demand what is real, what is genuine.

So if you're not practicing what you preach, if you're not living out this cycle of sanctification and you're trying to disciple someone in my generation, they're going to sniff it out from a mile away and they're not really going to want anything to do with it. And that's where the drawback has become, this pride in my generation to say we're going to figure this thing out on our own way. We know better. We really need you guys to pull us along. We really need you guys to show us the way.

Because man, again, fatherlessness is at an all time high and true fathers of the faith are even more rare to come by. And mother's sorry. When you read Paul a lot, it's all fathers and brothers anyways.

Number two, you just gotta walk through life with others, be there for them, love them, hold them accountable, laugh, cry, rebuke, do all these things in the love of God, and people will see Jesus in you and end up being more like Jesus themselves. And you will as well.

So let me tie it all up in a little bow and we'll pray and we'll get out of here. So three steps of acknowledgment or awakening Acknowledgment. Cycle of sanctification.

All right? Then we live it out, and then we just do life with those around us and we say, man, I've encountered Jesus in a pretty awesome way that I want you to as well.

That's all it is. There's no.

Thankfully, Jesus doesn't try to add things to our plate, right? Everything is demanding our time nowadays. Everything is demanding more and more of you. But the way of Jesus is so simple. It's so freeing.

And it just says, I want you to be a way. I don't want you to do something and then just do life with people.

The way I felt the Lord asking to end this time is, man, I just feel to pray into the love of God for us in this moment. I think that, like I said, guys, it's so easy to just exit that place of being infatuated with God. And I am the first to say, man, I'm so quick to exit the love of God in my life, Start looking at the bills I have to pay or the things I have to get done, what projects are coming up, what people need from me, all the things of life. But man, whenever you're just in that place where you cannot get enough of Jesus, doesn't feel like work, doesn't feel like there's expectation on you. It just feels like you can truly be.

And that's a place where we experience abundant life. And that's what he died for us to have. I came that he might have life and life more abundantly.