Chapter 01: What Have I Become?

[00:00:01] Chapter one what have I become? [00:00:05] Questions what comes to your mind when you hear phrases like got saved, becoming a Christian, born again, or accepted Jesus? [00:00:16] Define discipleship in your own words. [00:00:20] How would you define the Holy Spirit? [00:00:25] Take a few minutes to write down your Jesus story. What was life like before Jesus? How did you come to believe in Jesus? What has changed? Or maybe what is God starting to change? [00:00:38] As you write, thank Jesus for His work in your life. Don't miss the chance to celebrate Christian. [00:00:47] Christian is a word that might come with baggage. It can trigger images of anything from emotional youth camp services to angry protest signs to outlandish tracts handed out by strangers. Christianity is associated with political parties, specific policies, genres of music, and lots of other things that have little or nothing to do with Jesus. The term has become a cultural designation rather than a way of believing or living. [00:01:16] That's why we like to consider synonyms like following Jesus, disciple or apprentice to Jesus. [00:01:23] These words communicate the same thing without becoming a Christian. No matter. The term means that you believe that Jesus is God and that through his life, death and resurrection you can be forgiven and reconciled to God receiving new life now and in eternity. [00:01:42] That's the simple explanation. Here's the bigger picture. Our world has been marked by sin and darkness and is ruled by those things. [00:01:50] We have each been born into the system of sin and we have bought into it. We are givers and receivers of sin one and all. God, because of his deep love, would not leave us in our sin, but rather faithfully guided us to the point of redemption in which Jesus revealed his kingdom or new reality. [00:02:11] This kingdom reality means there is a new and better way to live. Jesus took the full measure of sin and darkness upon himself and died as our representative. He rose to life again, defeating sin and death, offering us forgiveness and reconciliation to God if we simply believe that it is true and trust that he has done it. The work of Jesus on the cross is the beginning of his remaking of the world. [00:02:39] Sin and darkness have been defeated and they will be evicted. [00:02:44] Evil does not have the final word in our lives or our world. Because of the resurrection of Jesus. [00:02:51] We will rise again as Jesus did. In the end, everything will be made right for eternity. Scripture calls this a new heavens and new earth. [00:03:03] There are lots of opinions about what this will be like. What we know is that Jesus is returning. Death will be drowned in the resurrection of believers and all will be made right and new. [00:03:16] For some of us, there is a clear moment carved into our minds, marking the instant we chose to follow Jesus. We raised our hands, prayed a prayer, went to an altar, etc. Others find it hard to pick one instance, but can point to a season of life in which we realized that we do believe and follow Jesus. Jesus. [00:03:35] There are lots of analogies used in Scripture about this process. [00:03:39] In John 3. 3 it's called being born again, which points to the new life we receive in Jesus and the putting aside of the life of sin and darkness. Romans 10:9 calls it being saved. Sin was killing us, destroying us and our world. Jesus saves us from the clutch of sin. Jesus in the book of Matthew often puts it as simply as follow me, stop the way you were living and follow him in his ways. 2nd Peter 3. 9 calls it coming to repentance. This is the realization that we have done wrong, we have participated in the harm to ourselves and others, and now we've changed our minds and chosen to trust in Jesus. [00:04:22] Here's what all of these analogies have in common. They are all about what Jesus did. You didn't give birth to yourself. You couldn't save yourself. You don't follow your own ways or choose to believe your own ideas. Salvation, as the decision to accept the forgiveness of Jesus and follow his way is generally called, is about believing in who Jesus is and what he did. Here's why that's important. It's not about what you did. You did not earn the love of Jesus. Jesus loves you unconditionally and he died to give you new life. [00:04:55] You do not deserve forgiveness. He offers it as a gift. Deserving is an incompatible concept with the gospel. [00:05:03] It's not about what we do, it's about what he has done. Salvation is the most extravagant gift imaginable. We are offered hope and forgiveness, and all it takes to receive it is to believe that it is true and to trust in the giver. That's what following Jesus is ultimately about. We believe that Jesus offers salvation and invites us into the life for which we were created. [00:05:29] If we believe this, then we live as he teaches because we believe it is the right way to live. [00:05:37] It also means that you choose to accept Jesus as Lord and follow in his ways, joining with him in the work of bringing his kingdom into the world. [00:05:47] When you believe that Jesus is in fact God, you are also believing that the things he taught are the life you were created to live, and you are accepting his rule and reign over your life. [00:06:00] Ephesians 2:8, 10 says, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by Works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. [00:06:23] We do not earn our salvation. God's forgiveness has nothing to do with earning anything. It is God's love for us that motivated Jesus to die for us. But God has created a life for us that is right and good. And in that life there are good works for us to do. At New Life, we think of it like we are in relationship with the King. Jesus is friend and brother. We are loved, forgiven and accepted, but he is still king. [00:06:53] That means we either obey or rebel. We are still loved and forgiven when we rebel, but it is rebellion nonetheless. [00:07:02] Jesus is making things new and he is inviting us to participate in that for ourselves and the world around us. [00:07:10] Christian philosopher Dallas Willard said it like grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning disciple. [00:07:21] Disciple is a word that is used but not often defined in church. In Scripture it means student or learner. The confusion is that in modern culture, a student is someone who learns information. [00:07:35] This has led many of us to think of following Jesus as believing the right things and learning more of those right things to then believe biblically. Being a disciple is an immersive experience. [00:07:47] Here's how we say it at New Life. Discipleship is choosing the lifelong journey of living the way of Jesus with the people of God. [00:07:56] Being a learner of a rabbi or teacher, as Jesus is often called, is about learning the life of the teacher, not just the ideas of the teacher. [00:08:07] Discipleship is less about what you do and more about who you are. It's about becoming like the RAB in thought and deed. Therefore, discipleship is about learning to live the life into which Jesus is inviting us. Christian philosopher Dallas Willard said it like this. How would Jesus live my life if he were I? [00:08:29] We believe that discipleship is the ultimate goal of a Christian. The goal is to become a disciple, and discipleship is a lifelong journey. We like to use the analogy of learning music to think of discipleship. But you can replace music with almost any skill. To see the analogy work, imagine you decide to become a musician. Your goal is not to know music or even to play music. Being a musician isn't something you arrive at by completing a course or playing a show. It's something you are. [00:09:00] To become a musician, you would learn some basic skills. You'll learn the basic seven note major scale. You learn to use those notes to make chords. You learn to make those chords on a guitar or a Piano. [00:09:13] You learn to play within a specific rhythm, probably a 4. 4. [00:09:17] These practiced skills and basic knowledge form the foundation of all music. [00:09:23] You also have people. You have an instructor, a band, a class, or maybe a couple of friends. You send songs, playlists, or riffs back and forth with. Almost everyone who learns a hobby learns it with people in one form or another. [00:09:37] As you grow, you learn to use those basic skills efficiently. You add to those skills. You practice those skills until they are second nature. Then the basic skills create the space for complicated growth. You learn variations of scales, different chord phrasings, and complicated time signatures throughout the process. You play your music with people. You learn from others. You have a teacher, but you also help other people learn. You perform for an audience or for your kids at bedtime. [00:10:10] Other people are intrinsically part of being a musician. Why? Because you are a musician. The basic skills and the people you learn with are the foundation. You never grow past the basic skills and you never stop needing other people. But you do add to those skills. You add different relationships. You are a musician or you are a basketball player. You have basic skills, a team and a coach. You keep practicing the same skills and you continue to need people to play the game. [00:10:41] Or you become a ballerina. You have basic skills, a teacher and a ballet company. You continue to learn and grow in your use of those skills and interaction with those people. [00:10:52] This is discipleship. There are basic skills that all disciples practice. We call these skills life on mission. These are our seven note scale, or our dribbling, exercise and shot form, or our pirouette. [00:11:07] There are relationships that we all need. We call these our circles. These are the relationships that we follow Jesus within. Like your band, team or company. We never grow past the need for these skills or the need for other people. But we add to them. We learn to use them differently. They become second nature so that we can learn new and deeper things. The goal isn't to live a life on mission or to have circles. Those are the basic needs to accomplish the goal. The goal is to be a disciple. [00:11:40] One of the common fallacies for many Christians is the thought that being a Christian means simply believing in Jesus. But believing in Jesus means becoming his disciple. Jesus cannot be reduced to simply the cross and resurrection. In his book How God became King, theologian N.T. wright explains that the cross is the climactic moment of history. [00:12:05] But it is climactic because of everything else in the story. [00:12:09] Our life is not only about going to heaven when we die. It's about living the life of Jesus as ambassadors and Co workers in his kingdom, on earth and in heaven. If we believe in Jesus, we believe that he is our Savior, he is our King, he is our Teacher, he is our friend. Believing in Jesus is a bit like skydiving. If we believe that parachutes are safe and skydiving is fun, then we jump out of the plane. But if we don't jump, then we don't believe. If we believe in Jesus, then we follow in his way. If we don't endeavor to follow him, then we don't believe in Him. [00:12:47] Humans tend to reduce things to their simplest form. Following Jesus forces us to resist that urge. We live in a tension. That is the tension of being completely loved by Jesus. We receive his complete forgiveness and acceptance. If we simply believe that he has accomplished that work for us, nothing that we can do can change his commitment to us, reduce his love for us, or upend his forgiveness while acknowledging that if we do believe in him, then we become his disciples. There is more to following Jesus than getting into heaven when we die. There is more than being forgiven. As beautiful as those things are, there is more. That is what the becoming journey is all about. [00:13:34] Becoming disciples of Jesus, living in his kingdom now and in eternity. [00:13:40] Into the mystery. [00:13:42] Lastly, before we can fully dive into the journey, we need to understand one more thing. The great mystery of Christianity is something called the Trinity. [00:13:52] We accept in faith that there is one God who eternally exists in three Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. [00:14:01] This doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit in the finite reality. And that's okay. We don't have to understand it. One being, three persons, completely united. [00:14:11] God exists in deep community and relationship in his very being. [00:14:17] It's worth stopping here for a sidebar. There are very few places that we as Christians just say it's mystery. [00:14:24] God shows us his character and faithfulness. He encourages us to ask questions. We do not hide behind the word mystery history. Because God has made Himself known and we can trust in Him. He proves Himself trustworthy. The renowned atheist thinker Antony Flew committed himself to follow the argument wherever it leads. He didn't want to believe in God, but he did want to follow the clearest evidence. The evidence led him to reject atheism and become a follower of Jesus. You can read his story in his book There Is a God. [00:15:01] Because the way of Jesus actually makes sense and because God proves His character to us, we can trust him in the few places where mystery is the only word that fits our God is infinite and beyond us. He chooses to be known by us. When we look at something like the Trinity. We look at a gorgeous mystery that is beyond finite comprehension, but well within God's good and loving character. [00:15:27] The third person of the Trinity, God, the Holy Spirit, often doesn't get much attention. We make much of Jesus, but miss the Holy Spirit. If you have chosen to follow Jesus, then you are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is in you, empowering you to follow in his ways. You do not pursue discipleship in your own power. You do not reject harmful and sinful beliefs and behaviors by your own strength. The Holy Spirit is in you. The process of surrendering to the lordship of Jesus is the process of allowing the Holy Spirit to form your heart and mind. We do not do this alone. God, in his infinite grace and mercy, pursues us, forgives us, redeems us, and partners with us in our transformation. [00:16:12] As you pursue discipleship, you are pursuing surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Theologically, these practices and conversations are called means of grace. One of the professors at Indiana Wesleyan University University used to say in class that we get under the spout where grace comes out. [00:16:30] We are continually surrounded by God's grace, but when we commit to discipleship, we are putting ourselves into the position to receive the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. Something we often say at New Life is that God is raising the bar and lowering the pressure. God has a beautiful life for you. It's not an easy life. Healing hurts. Surrender isn't fun. Bringing the goodness of God's kingdom to a dark and sinful world is often painful work. The bar has been raised, but the Spirit is in us, empowering and sustaining us. The pressure is on him, not on us. We just obey. The pressure has been lowered. [00:17:12] At the end of each chapter, you will find a prayer that roots us in church history and aligns with the discussion. [00:17:18] Read this alone or with your life group. Let this prayer be your own, and let these words remind you that this journey is a journey that believers have taken for generations. [00:17:29] The Watch Night Prayer John Wesley I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me, with whom you will put me to doing, or put me to suffering. Let me be employed by you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you, or brought low for you. Let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and fully yield all things to your pleasure and use. And now, glorious and blessed God, you are mine and I am yours. So be it. This covenant which I have made on earth be ratified in heaven. Amen.