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CENTRAL TRUTH: To follow Jesus means to walk in obedience to his word so that our lives bring glory to him and joy to our own hearts.
MEMORY VERSE: …… "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways (forget himself, put aside his own desires and conveniences ), take up your cross daily, and follow me” ( Luke 9:23). NLT TEXT: John 12: 24-25; Phil3: 7-8; Luke 9: 23-24 TOPIC: HOW TO BECOME A DISCIPLE INTRODUCTION:The setting of pre-conditions for discipleship was familiar to Jesus during his ministry. He said to one man, "Follow me," only to hear in response, "Permit me first to go and bury my father (Luke 9:57-62). True discipleship, however, has no pre-conditions. Having placed our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, as 1 Corinthians says, "our life is no longer our own; we have been bought with a price."
HOW DO WE BECOME A DISCIPLE OF JESUS?To become a disciple is a requirement most of us are not ready to commit. That is SELF- DEATH (dying to our SELF-LIFE); this simply implies that we must be willing to lay Aside our life plan for Jesus own plan for us. Those plans which are centered around us rather than on Him must be laid aside for His own plan for us (John 5: 19, 30; 6: 38). Believe he is "The Christ of God", Luke 9:18-20You must believe in your heart that Jesus is the Christ of God, the very Son of the one and only living God, God come in the flesh. Rom 10:9-10 That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation NKJV
Take up your cross daily, Luke 9:21-23 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."To deny oneself means a) to live daily in the spiritual reality that Paul shared with the Corinthians, "You are not your own; you have been bought with a price" (1 Corinth 6:19-20).b)to turn away from the idolatry of self-centeredness".. Once we place our faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior we become his bondservant, and we begin to learn to live our lives to fulfill his will, not ours. We will need to deny our self-confidence, self-adequacy, and self-sufficiency. Either Jesus is Lord of our lives or we are. We cannot have it both ways. The key attitude of our new lives in Christ is stated in the words of our Lord the night before he died on the cross for our sins: "Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done" (Luke 22: 42). "..TAKING UP YOUR CROSS DAILY means to: a) die to your-self. Gal 6:14 As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of ourLord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in all the attractive things of the world was killed long ago, and the world's interest in me is also long dead. TLBAccording to Paul, he no longer cared for his worldly personal ambitions. He no longer coveted the world’s applause, praise, awards, honor and glory. He only desired to follow Jesus and walk in His divine life plan (Gal 2:2 0). Jesus is saying “ Let go of the old self life” Trust me to have your best interest at heart.The Roman cross was an instrument of shame, humiliation and death, used by the government to punish criminals. When the Jews watched a criminal take up a cross and be led by a squad of Roman soldiers to the hill of Calvary, they all knew the man was making a one-way trip to his death. The criminal takes up his cross under duress, the Christian does it willingly, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
b) I admit that it was my sin of envy, rebellion, pride, lust, murder, adultery, slander, etc., that put Jesus on that cross. But when I placed my faith in him, I died once and for all to the power of sin, and now because he lives I am able to live a new resurrected life of righteousness by his resurrection power (Romans 6). The cross of Christ is a daily reminder that our flesh needs to be put to death. The apostle Paul said years later to the Galatians, "Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5: 24-25). c) We are not to pamper or embrace our flesh, nor give it any encouragement or even tolerate it. Instead we are to reject it together with its selfish desires. We are to nail the flesh to the cross daily. Paul tells us that if Jesus is Lord, then "...we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you" (2 Cor 4:11-12).
FOLLOW ME..." There were many disciples who were willing to follow Jesus for a while, but then they left him because he continued to offer them a spiritual kingdom when they wanted a political kingdom. But the offer of the Lord was that true disciples would not only deny themselves and take up their cross, but also follow him wherever he led them, even to their own physical death on a cross if necessary.Paul told his spiritual son, Timothy, some 30 years later that, "...all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim.3:12). The writer to the Hebrews reminded the Christian community that they would be made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. Let us make sure that when we invite men and women to become disciples of our Lord, we do not present some watered-down version of what Jesus asks of each of his true followers. CONTRIBUTION OR COMMITMENT; The self life requires that we commit our selves completely to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of our life. Most Christians will rather prefer to make a contribution than be willing to really commit their lives to the Kingdom of God. God doesn’t want anything you have –He wants you.
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