Years ago I read something that stuck. I don’t remember the title of the book or the author’s name, but one simple point from the contents remains with me. The author wrote, “Christianity is a whole lot more than a Sunday stroll with Jesus.”
How true that statement is. Genuine discipleship is a seven days per week commitment. It’s an all or nothing proposition that leaves no wiggle room for the half-hearted.
Here are a few more quotes from a recent article that again reminded me of the implications of following Jesus. Reminders like these help us take inventory. I hope you find them helpful.
Stay focused, Mike
“The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn’t like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so cumbersome to believe.”
– Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
“Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian Faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one time decision.”
– David Christian, unChristian
“When Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who labor and are heavey burdened,’ he assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.”
– Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
“Fortunately, God made all varieties of people with a wide variety of interests and abilities. He has called people of every race and color who have been hurt by life in every manner imaginable. Even the scars of past abuse and injury can be the means of bringing healing to another. What wonderful opportunities to make disciples.”
– Charles Swindoll
“It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes.”
– Oswald Chambers
Quotes From The Lookout, June 2014. “Disciple-Making Disciples” by Tyler Edwards
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