27.Sep.2008 Connecting to the Church
Philippians 3:17 Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. 18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.
The foundation of discipleship is that we are connected like family. Being a believer has a different meaning than being a disciple. Being a disciple means instilling certain patterns of behavior in your life. Believers are born; disciples are made. Our act of faith gives us a re-birth, and we become a believer. But Jesus says in Mark 16 to go into the world and make disciples. You aren’t born with all of the things you need to be a fruitful person. You get those things from being nurtured, fed, cared for, taught and instructed. You need to learn by following those instructions. The process of growing a Christian (little Christ – one that can emulate Christ) is like raising a child. Once you become a mature believer, you can start to nurture and instruct others. We work hard to maintain a healthy environment so that when people are born into God’s family in this church, they can be healthy and grow.
If the new believer is born into a healthy environment, they will begin to grow. Pretty soon, that believer is going to start yearning and desiring more. The Apostle Paul talks about the milk of the Word vs. the meat of the Word. They need to be fed more as they grow. If you don’t feed them, they will die, their growth will be stunted or they will look elsewhere for food. New believers also need covering and a home. The church is the place that God set up to shelter and nurture new believers. The church also brings leadership, discipline and guidance. Getting people discipled – or disciplined – requires leadership. We are a family, and there are certain things that have to be in a family for it to function. Families need parents and leadership. Parents need to bring vision, direction and covering. When that’s in place, there is the potential for awesome things to happen in that family.
Paul made the decision to start teaching this model of family and leadership in the church, even though he had only met many of these people once in his life. He had very little interaction with most of the churches he planted. He would put things in order, appoint leaders and move on to the next city. He would teach the leaders to emulate him – be a disciple – and then raise up more leaders in the same way. “Brothers and sisters, pattern your life after mine.”
In Paul’s day, there weren’t many churches. If you didn’t like the leader, you couldn’t just jump down the road to the next church, so the major things stayed major and the minor things became minor. You had to submit to the church and its covering. Today, there are churches on every corner and people bounce around and don’t get planted. There are valid reasons for leaving a church, like when you aren’t being fed. But the church is meant to be a family. We are meant to be joined into the family. If there is anything in the modern church that is threatening it like a cancer, it is its inability to submit to authority. The spirit of how we live in the Kingdom is not one of independence, but one of submission. Despite what we see in the world, the Kingdom is based on interdependence and interconnectedness. The benefits of being connected and covered are unlimited. Living outside of God’s covering and structure can be devastating. You can’t move from believer to disciple if you aren’t connected in this kingdom kind of way.
What is it that stops one from moving down the path of discipleship while others grow in Christ? It’s pride. The kingdom will challenge your humanity. In our hearts, we are selfish. Without Christ, we are only living for ourselves. If the seed of the kingdom doesn’t get into us and flourish, we aren’t going to move forward and partake of the benefits of God’s kingdom. We have to walk in God’s process. It requires that we lay down our lives, not take up our lives. Paul says we are all connected. You can’t act independently of the church anymore. We are one.
“Pattern your life after mine and learn from those who follow our example.” Learn from those who are living in and for this Kingdom. Learn from the people that God has joined you to and that he brings into your life. God will position people in your world. Sometimes they are people who, in the natural, you may not want to respect. That is where the challenge comes in. Are you going to submit and trust that God put them in your life for a purpose? God will bring people into your life that you would consider the last person you could learn anything from. But God works all things for good for us. If we are proud, we won’t receive what God has for us or what God is trying to get to us through these people. Pride will stop us from receiving. It will keep you crawling when you should be running. It will keep you walking when you should be soaring. God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble. The Kingdom mindset is connectedness, humility and submission.
