What are you sacrificially passionate about? Whatever you are sacrificially passionate about is what you are living for.
You were created by God to worship God. Worship is simply a part of your design. The devil can’t change this so he wants to hijack it instead. Everybody everywhere is always worshiping. Romans 12:1 says presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice is a spiritual act of worship.
We all sacrificially giving our time, talents and treasure for whatever is in our heart: relationships, hobbies, GPA, fashion. If you worship your job or money, you become a workaholic. If you worship your reputation, you are totally worried about what everyone thinks about you. list goes on
Whatever you are sacrificing your existence for is the object of your worship? Sacrificial hours devoted to overtime at the expense of relationships in your life in order to pay for your dream car positions those relationships on the sacrificial altar as the car becomes the object of your worship. What we sacrifice for, we glory in and this is the essence of worship. Finding my deeper sense of identity in the nice car I drive, the relationship I’m in, the job I have, the neighborhood in which I live, etc. It is all a misappropriation of worship.
A gluttonous, indulgent, entertainment-addicted, social media age filled with illicit desire has produced bored and boring people who lack purpose for which we were created!
When we worship God above all else, we are free to enjoy these things without being mastered by them. Are you sacrificially passionate about Jesus?
Luke 9:23-25 (Jesus) said to them: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? NIV
Making believers and making disciples are two totally different “makings”. A believer raises their hand and believes on Jesus to be saved. This decision is the most important decision you could ever possibly make so I in no way want to minimize it. The problem is that we’ve built religious structures around the ability to gather believers as conveniently as possible and this violates the essence of discipleship. Most people simply don’t understand what it means to be a disciple.
Discipleship wasn’t something new that Jesus introduced. This was very common in ancient days. Socrates was born 400 years before Jesus. We know Plato was a disciple of Socrates. In the West we don’t follow Jesus we tend to invite Jesus to follow us inviting his input when we need his blessing.
Jesus was very straightforward when he invited people into a relationship. Come and follow me. Not accept me and go to heaven after living your life the way you think you should live your life. Come and follow me mint come and be my disciple. Learn my ways, and let my ways become your ways. Not follow me like I follow you on Instagram, and like all your pages and pictures, but follow me like lay down your life and sacrificially surrender to the purposes of God as I demonstrated them for you to know.
The number one focus when you followed a rabbi was to be with that rabbi 24/7 following the rabbi, and being with them a common declaration, among those fortunate enough to have a rabbi to follow Would be a declaration of blessing. May the dust of your rabbi cover you. In other words, following your rabbi from town to town may the dust he kicks up rest upon you.
The number one goal was to be with your rabbi. Number two was to become like your rabbi. Your goal was to become a carbon copy of the person you believe God had purposed to mentor you in the ways of God. You would follow him around, copy his form of dress, capture his tone of his voice, and carry his yoke as the expression of your life, having been trained, equipped and marked by that person’s life.
Number three, you do what your Rabbi did. By the way, but this earlier in your notes, but when you are being interviewed by a rabbi and the rabbi deems you a qualified apprentice, the rabbi would commonly say something like this, come and follow me. Now back to this portion of the notes, the goal was for you to not only become like your rabbi, but for you to become a training expression yourself, that was the true reflection of the rabbi, which meant that rabbi’s yoke was impacting generation, after generation after generation
Translating this from ancient Israel into modern day times we want to first and foremost learn to be with Jesus, he did not say go make fishers of men he said come to me, and I will make you fishers of men.
#1 we must learn to be with him!
#2 we must learn to be like him!
#3 we must learn to do what Jesus did and because this isn’t merely rehearsing the teaching behaviors of who was our rabbi but learning to die to ourselves so our living rabbi can love, serve and give through our surrender!
You cannot go deep if you do not slow down.
You can’t expect for God to tell you the plan for your life when you are in a rush giving him a five minute slot of prayer and listening. It just doesn’t happen that way. I know for a fact you are not a person who hears God.
We Bring GP2RL Action Point:
Slow down and make room for practices and disciplines you know existed in the life of Jesus.
Passionately Pursuing
DISCUSSION GUIDE
Click here for a downloadable PDF file of this guide.
Every year we devote the first 40 days to focusing on foundational truths that speak to our identity, as a church family. We are OUTRAGEOUSLY LOVING people who PASSIONATELY PURSUE the Lord with IRRATIONALLY GIVING lifestyles as we CONSISTENTLY SUBMIT to God’s desires and EFFECTIVELY DISCIPLE others to do the same.
Peter endorses the idea of rehearsing foundational things with the intention of leaving them firmly planted in the heart of the next generation.
2 Peter 1:12-15 So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in (them), I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live…and I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things. NIV
Great encouragement comes from rehearsing God’s Word. It is God’s plan is for us to spend time drawing close to his heart and hearing his voice together as a family. This is why we start each meeting with this question first:
DISCUSSION QUESTION:
1. Where are you reading in your Bible and what are you sensing from God?
Ask each person in your group to answer the discussion questions below after reading the verses. Realize there is great power in just reading the Bible together and allowing the Holy Spirit to awaken his conversational nature in the group.
Luke 9:23-25 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? NIV
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
2. Have each person give a 60 second summary of what these verses are saying, in their own words.
3. What do these verses teach us about God?
4. What do these verses teach us about people?
5. What should you do this week in response to what we are reading and what God is revealing?
6. Who comes to mind when considering a person you might share this with this week?
We Bring GP2RL Action Point:
Slow down and make room for practices and disciplines you know existed in the life of Jesus.