Category Archives: discipleship

The Difficulty of Sharing Our Faith

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All The Right Answers: Reasons It’s Difficult to Share Our Faith

By On April 27, 2012

This is part four of the series The Difficulty of Sharing Our Faith. I’ve often heard people say the reason they find it difficult to share their faith is because …

Intolerance: Reasons It’s Difficult to Share Faith

By On March 30, 2012

This is part three of the series The Difficulty of Sharing Our Faith. It can be difficult to share our faith. Sometimes when opportunities arise to share our faith, we shrink back …

Relationships First: Reasons It’s Difficult to Share Our Faith

By On March 23, 2012

This is part two of the series The Difficulty of Sharing Our Faith. We often find it difficult to share our faith because we want to first form relationships with people. …

Preachy Christians: Reasons It’s Difficult to Share our Faith

By On March 14, 2012

This is the first in the series The Difficulty of Sharing our Faith. Very often we find it difficult to share our faith. Whether we’re in the workplace, neighborhood, or a …

You have authority in Christ

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RAY ORTLUND|11:02 AM CT

“Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”  Luke 10:19

In Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard Lovelace proposes that one of the “primary elements of continuous renewal” in a church is “authority in spiritual conflict,” pages 133-144.  We are not on the defensive.  We have authority from Christ himself.  The blows we do receive from Satan “come from a retreating enemy,” as Lovelace says, because of the decisive victory of Jesus on our behalf.

Lovelace draws from Scripture five fall-back strategies of Satan:

1.  Temptation

“The enemy strategy here is either to disfigure a Christian’s witness through public scandal, to gain some evidence through which his or her conscience can be accused and discouraged, or to weaken faith in the possibility of sanctification in some contested area.”

2.  Deception

“Negatively, demonic agents induce a strong conscious aversion to biblical truth, an inability to comprehend it and a distaste for what little can be understood. . . . Positively, the forces of darkness inspire and empower antichristian religious counterfeits . . . . The deceiving work of Satan can even be done in and through Christian believers, as Christ’s famous rebuke of Peter shows.”

3.  Accusation

“Demonic agents italicize the defects of Christians and the churches in the minds of unbelievers and cause true Christianity to be branded with the image of its own worst exemplars . . . . They are also particularly active in dividing Christians from one another into parties . . . . Finally, satanic forces attack Christians directly in their own minds with disturbingly accurate accounts of their faults, seeking to discourage those who are most eager and able to work for the kingdom.”

4.  Possession

“The Gospels plainly describe a condition in which human victims come almost helplessly under control of alien personalities.”

5.  Physical attack

“From data in the Gospels it appears that demonic agents can occasionally cause illness, at least psychological and neurological ailments like dumbness and epilepsy.”

More should be said about all this, and Lovelace does say more.  But he wisely affirms, “The battles we fight against [demonic powers] should not be occasions of anxiety.  They force us back to reliance on Christ’s redemptive work and enhance our dignity and authority as redeemed saints who have the power to judge angels.”

 

Truth Obeyed Will Heal

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Truth Obeyed Will Heal

by Josh Etter | May 29, 2012

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J. I. Packer:

 

Truth obeyed, said the Puritans, will heal. The word fits, because we are all spiritually sick — sick through sin, which is a wasting and killing disease of the heart. The unconverted are sick unto death; those who have come to know Christ and have been born again continue sick, but they are gradually getting better as the work of grace goes on in their lives. 

The church, however, is a hospital in which nobody is completely well, and anyone can relapse at any time. Pastors no less than others are weakened by pressure from the world, the flesh, and the devil, with their lures of profit, pleasure, and pride, and, as we shall see more fully in a moment, pastors must acknowledge that they the healers remain sick and wounded and therefore need to apply the medicines of Scripture to themselves as well as to the sheep whom they tend in Christ’s name.

All Christians need Scripture truth as medicine for their souls at every stage, and the making and accepting of applications is the administering and swallowing of it.

 

 

J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 1990, reprint (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 65, paragraphing added.

Gospel Diagnostic Questions from GCD

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Preaching the gospel to ourselves and to others is an art all of us must grow in if we seek real, lasting change in our lives. It is often assumed that the gospel is only for those who have not yet trusted Christ. This is a faulty view of the gospel and limits its work to a personal salvation experience rather than the explosive power and catalytic dynamic for renewal in our hearts on a continuous basis.

To sum up, the life of the Christian is one of continual repentance and belief, without which we slip into a boss/employee, earn/wage, work/rights relationship with our God.

It then becomes the loving responsibility for each of us to run gospel diagnostics to determine whether or not what motivates our heart and lives is “in step” with the gospel (Gal. 2:14).

Here are twenty gospel questions to ask ourselves:

(1) What is my greatest nightmare? What do I worry about most?

(2) What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live? What keeps me going?

(3) What do I rely on to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?

(4) What do I think about most easily? Where does my mind go to when I am free? What pre-occupies me?

(5) What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?

(6) What makes me feel the most self-worth? What am I the proudest of?

(
7) What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?

(8) What position of authority do I desire to give me a sense of power?

(
9) Whose opinion of me do I hold so dear that if lost I would be undone?

(10) What type of financial loss or gain would change my sense of security?

(11) What one criticism would cause me to respond in anger (wife, children, work, ministry, family, friends, etc.)? What am I most touchy about when brought to my attention?

(12) If I had ______________, then I’d be truly happy and feel as if my life has meaning and value.

(
13) If I lost ______________, I would be undone.

(14) I’m impatient because I’m ____________.

(15) I’m critical because I’m _____________.

(16) I’m angry because I’m _____________.

(17) I’m unhappy because I’m ____________.

(18) I’m in despair because I’m ____________.

(19) I have hope because I’m ___________.

(20) I feel worthy because I’m ___________.

These are only a few questions to help us be truthful with ourselves about the gospel. There is no benefit answering these questions with the “right” answers at the expense of the “true” answers (how we really feel and think).

It is only when the “true” answers come to light that the “right” answers will have any power.

We must spend time excavating our idols by asking these questions. When we sin, we do so because some idol has promised us power, prestige, influence, joy, peace, satisfaction, security, pleasure, etc. – that is far more attractive than Christ at the moment. We don’t sin with a gun held to our heads. We sin willingly because it is overwhelmingly appealing.

We need to discover why sins are so appealing by asking these questions and then remind ourselves that idols:

  • are weak 
- can’t deliver when you succeed
  • can only raise the bar
  • 
can’t forgive when you fail
  • will only condemn you
  • are harmful to you and to others
  • hurt you spiritually, emotionally, and physically
  • 
hurt others by undermining your ability to love
  • 
are grievous to God

By pursuing this idol you are saying to God, “Jesus is not enough. I also need ______ to be happy.”

Our daily struggle is to realign ourselves with the truth of the gospel, to discover new ways to surrender our trust to Christ and grow.

—

David Fairchild was the co-founder and preaching elder of Kaleo Church in San Diego and now serves as the Lead Pastor of Mars Hill West Seattle as well as a founding member of The GCM Collective. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife, Grace, and their two children, Michael and Madison. 

Check them out here! Gospel Centered Discipleship | Resources to Make, Mature, & Multiply disciples of Jesus

15 Gospel-Centered Questions to Ask

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Jonathan K. Dodson,“Gospel-Centered Questions to Ask,” appendix 1 in Gospel-Centered Discipleship (Re:Lit; Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 155–56 (formatting added):

Here is a list of questions to help you cultivate gospel motivations.

Questions 11–15 are taken from Sam Storms’s bookA Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ.

  1.  you desire more than anything else?
  2. What do you find yourself daydreaming or fantasizing about?
  3. What lies do you subtly believe that undermine the truth of the gospel?
  4. Are you astonished with the gospel?
  5. Where have you made much of yourself and little of God?
  6. Is technology interrupting your communion with God?
  7. Is work a source of significance? How?
  8. Where do your thoughts drift when you enter a social setting?
  9. What fears keep you from resting in Christ?
  10. What consumes your thoughts when you have alone time?
  11. When people see how you spend money, do they conclude that God is a priceless treasure, exceedingly valuable above all worldly goods?
  12. When people observe your relationship with others, are they alerted to the power of Christ’s forgiveness of you that alone accounts for your forgiveness of them?
  13. If you are complimented for some accomplishment, does the way you receive it drive onlookers to give thanks to the Lord?
  14. Is your use of leisure time or devotion to a hobby or how you speak of your spouse the sort that persuades others that your heart is content with what God is for you in Christ?
  15. Does your reaction to bad news produce in you doubt or fear, or does it inspire confidence to trust in God’s providence?