No Christian man wants to fail Jesus. But how to we keep our inner fire to live for him burning hot when our failure, disheartening circumstances, and seemingly unanswered prayers pour buckets of water on those flames. That is the question we want to answer as we consider an approach to discipleship that ignites the heart.
Discipleship is at its core a response to Jesus’ call, “Follow me.” In Matt 4, we read, While walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea. And he said to them, “Follow me.” (vs 18-19). A few weeks later we read, Jesus saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me” (Matt 9:9). When we remember that discipleship is our response to Jesus’ call, our walk with Christ is fueled by the heart passion we need. Os Guiness points this truth out. Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service.(The Call). Let’s consider why remembering that the Christian life is a call from Jesus refuels our passion for obedience to him.
A. Christ’s call to us is personal—from Jesus to us. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a “called one.” Our calling as Christians is first and foremost, a call to Someone (Jesus), not to something (such as fatherhood, practicing law, or teaching). Neither is our primary calling to somewhere (such as the inner city or Denver). The Christian life is primarily responding to a call from the lips of Jesus. There can be no calling unless there is a Caller. The point is that our everyday mission is personal. It is Jesus, who planned us from before the creation of the world, and sovereignly drew us to himself with the cords of love (which is what the technical, theological term, “calling” means.) It is Jesus, who gave his life for us who alone is worthy of our unwavering allegiance. His call is not a casual suggestion. He is so awe inspiring and his summons so commanding that only one response is appropriate—a response as total and universal as the authority of the Caller… Discipleship is the natural and right response to the lordship of Christ. (Ibid).
Not only is discipleship our personal response to Jesus’ call, his call is personally addressed to us. The Caller sees and addresses us as individuals—as unique, exceptional, precious, significant, and free to respond. He who calls us is personal as well as infinite and personal in himself, not just to us. So, we who are called are addressed as individuals and invited into a relationship (“I have called you by name,” God said). We are known with an intimacy that is a source of gratitude and soul-shivering wonder (Ibid).
The one calling me knows all of my sinful ways, weaknesses, and frailties; yet he calls me to himself and to his mission for my life. He CHOSE me—not because of anything in me. Yet, Jesus’ words, “You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit” have the power to ignite our passion—he chose US for this mission. God’s call begins by “singling us out.” What an honor! What a privilege! What a responsibility. Now what am I going to do about it? Will I live a life worthy of my calling? Discipleship is a personal response to a personal call from Jesus.
B. Starting each day remembering, “my life is about responding to Jesus’ call” also ignites our hearts by giving purpose to our lives. Deep in our hearts we all want to find and fulfill a purpose bigger than ourselves. Knowing that what I do today matters can inspire us to heights we could never reach without that sense of personal purpose. Here are five ways knowing our purpose energizes us (from Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life.)
- Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life. We were made to have meaning. When life has meaning emotional strength is martialed and you can bear almost anything; without meaning, nothing is bearable.
- Knowing your purpose simplifies your life. It defines what you do and don’t waste energy doing. It helps you avoid the stress of trying to do too much.
- Knowing your purpose focuses your life. It concentrates your effort and energy on what’s important adding joy because you avoid distractions and succeed where it matters most.
- Knowing your purpose motivates your life. Purpose always produces passion. Nothing energizes like a clear purpose. On the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack purpose. It is usually meaningless work, not overwork that wears us down, saps our strength, and steals our joy.
- Knowing your purpose prepares you for eternity. At the end of the race marked out for us, when we look back, all that will matter to us is how closely we have listened to Jesus—how well we have answered his call.
Answering the call of our Creator provides us the ultimate reason for everything we do in life. It is the highest source of purpose in existence. Not only does living out of our calling energize us because discipleship becomes personal, it further ignites our passion because it links our everyday activities to God’s highest purposes for our lives.
C. Heart-ignited discipleship also results from having a clear picture of what Jesus’ call to follow him as his disciples actually looks life, day by day. To have compelling objectives for our lives as Christ’s disciples awakens and focuses our energy. To forge this clear picture, though, we need to understand what the term disciple meant in Jesus day.
1. Since bands of disciples with their masters were common during Jesus’ lifetime, everyone knew that a disciple (the Greek word is mathetes) had the deepest kind of personal friendship with the master; he was devoted to his master as they walked through life together. So, every Christian’s calling begins with the call TO CHRIST to enjoy a love relationship with him. This first part of our calling is expressed in the great commandment, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30). Jesus also said to his disciples, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love (John 15:9). The bullseye of our mission objective as Christ-followers is, therefore, enjoying and deepening our love relationship with Christ. As you and I get up to start work tomorrow morning, our highest mission objective is loving Christ and marinating our souls in his unconditional love for us. Being called TO CHRIST means being intentional about building my love relationship with him. Here are some practical reminders for growing this bond of allegiance:
- Be honest with the Lord. Let him know if you are angry with him, or don’t even want to talk with him. If you have been resisting his promptings, and don’t feel like obeying him, ask him to make you willing to obey him, or at least willing enough to ask to be made willing to obey him.
- Express sincere thanks to God for his blessings. This discipline builds the character of gratefulness, which softens hardened hearts. Thank him for making you spiritually alive when you were dead in your sin, empowering you to look to him in faith.
- Be eager to get to know God better. This may happen by taking note of God’s attributes that you in Scripture, by reading the gospels again and again because Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God, or in reading books like Knowing God, by J. I. Packer, or The Prodigal God, by Tim Keller.
- Bother God with the little things in life that worry you. I love the JB Phillips Translation of Phil 4:6-7, Don’t worry over anything whatever; tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus. Nothing is too small to take to Our Great High Priest who fully empathizes with our weakness.
- Remember that the key to spiritual fruitfulness is growing this bond, i.e. abiding in Christ. It is our connection to Christ that gives us the power to overcome our sinful nature and produce the fruit of the Spirit—godly attitudes in our hearts. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).
The first part of our calling addresses the core issue of our heart’s primary loyalty, asking, Who is our first love? Being called TO CHRIST means we will have no other gods in his place, allowing no person or thing to usurp his place as first in our affections. We delight ourselves in the Lord. We don’t allow his earthly blessings to compete with love for him but make us more grateful to him for such blessings.
2. The second part of our calling addresses the issue of our heart attitudes: Who are we going to be like on the inside? Everyone living in Jesus’ day knew that the disciple patterned his whole life on the teaching and example of his master. The disciple’s greatest goal was to be like his master. Being Christ’s disciple means being called TO BE LIKE CHRIST (to Christ-like character). This second part of our mission is described by Peter, (God) has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (1 Pet 1:4). Jesus revealed the prominence of this part of our mission—our heart attitudes being transformed—by beginning his portrait of kingdom living (Matt 5-7) with eight kingdom attitudes that reveal the new (transformed) humanity: humility, grief over the damage caused by sin, surrender to Christ, as the horse yields to its master’s reins, hunger and thirst for the restoration of rightness to the universe, a heart of mercy towards the sinful and wounded, decisions driven by unselfish motives, a commitment to restore broken relationships, a willingness to suffer by taking a stand for what is right. Tomorrow morning, our mission is to show Jesus to whomever God has placed in our world by demonstrating attitudes like these. We are called TO BE LIKE CHRIST.
3. The third part of our calling addresses the issue of our actions, What am I to do? How am I to serve Christ. This third aspect of discipleship was also much better understood in Jesus’ day than it is today. Jesus’ followers knew that a disciple enlisted in the cause of his master. Back then they understood that cause—not that the gospel is just the good news of personal private salvation (an eternal life-insurance policy to be signed), but the good news that the second Adam has come to overthrow Satan, sin, and death, fix everything that has been broken by sin, and establish the rule of his kingdom of righteousness over planet earth.
This mission is what Jesus was talking about when he taught them to pray, “May your kingdom come.” Jesus was NOT saying that one of the five pillars of daily prayer is to ask Jesus every day to come back to earth soon! Rather, Jesus explained what he meant in the words that follow this instruction in Matt 6:10. Jesus’ words are “May your kingdom come—then he explains what he means—may your will to be done ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.” In heaven, there is no sin; righteousness reigns. The kingdom coming refers to the advance of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over earth. The more that happens, THE MORE THE KINGDOM OF EARTH WILL BE LIKE THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. That is what it means to pray for God’s kingdom to come—that God’s righteousness from heaven will spread over the earth. That is what Jesus was talking about when he commanded his followers, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” i.e. the rule of King Jesus and his righteousness over 1) the loyalties of their heart, 2) their heart attitudes, and over 3) every inch of the planet, which Jesus claims as his own.
In other words, the rule of King Jesus and his righteousness over our heart loyalties is the first part of our calling: CALLED TO CHRIST—to enjoy a love relationship with him. The rule of King Jesus and his righteousness over our heart attitudes is the second part of our calling: CALLED TO BE LIKE CHRIST—to Christ-like character. The rule of King Jesus and his righteousness over every square inch of the planet refers to the third part of our calling CALLED TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST (i.e. to implement Christ’s agenda in our role as husbands, fathers, employee or employers, neighbors, church members, stewards of resources he has entrusted to us, and as ambassadors of the kingdom—every sphere of life.) Jesus’ discipleship call to you to follow him means believing that God has specifically placed you in every sphere of relationships you have—your family, friends, work associates, neighbors, church body so that you will devote yourself to accomplishing his righteous agenda there. You were not placed in the middle of those relationships by accident. It is in those specific spheres that you are to bring about Jesus agenda—loving your wife and children well, loving your neighbor well, advocating for human dignity and justice in the workplace, etc. (BTW the purpose of this podcast is to identify Christ’s specific agenda in each of these areas).
We have seen that when we view our everyday lives through the lens of Jesus’ personal call to us as his disciples, our heart passion is ignited. The problem is that the voice of his calling is drowned out by so many voices demanding immediate attention. One of the chief hindrances to effective discipleship today is men’s tendency to live driven lives. Over the years, I have compiled and presented the following Portrait of the Driven Man to hundreds of men, who have said, “That’s me!” Do you identify?
- His life is hectic and very fast-paced, yet doesn’t seem to have a very clear direction.
- Often his life seems out of control. He “bounces off” whatever happens to be in front of him.
- He spends 98 percent of his time and energy focused on the outer world, giving his inner, private world the leftovers.
- He is haunted by vague doubts about whether he is really following God’s priorities for his life.
- He is very busy, exhausted by the pace of life, yet inwardly not that fulfilled. Tired, bored, unmotivated—he feels like his heart got left behind.
- He has little sense of clear mission for his life. At work, he has goals, strategy, priorities, a plan. In his personal, spiritual life he reacts his way through life.
- Truth be told, he is not leading his home very well. He has vague goals, little sense of direction, and no game plan as the spiritual leader of his family.
Gordon MacDonald, in his book, Ordering Your Private World, argues that men are leading driven lives because the sound of Jesus’ call is not heard above the clamor of the outer physical world. He writes: Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies. And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action.
The key to passionate, heart-driven discipleship is turning our back on the driven lifestyle. When we get alone with Jesus into our private inner world, where we can hear his CALL—our heart is ignited with a passion to be faithful disciples of his. Os Guiness points to this pathway to heart inspiration. To those whose spiritual life has grown stale, whose spiritual tanks are on “E,” he asks:
Do you have a reason for being, a focused sense of purpose in your life? Or is your life the product of shifting resolutions and the myriad pulls of forces outside yourself? Do you want to go beyond success to significance? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.
Do you want to know a truth that in the momentous challenge of our modern world will be at once a quest to inspire you, an anchor to hold your fast, rich sustenance to nourish you, and a relationship you will prize above all others? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.
Do you want the best and most wonderful gifts God has given you to decay, spent on your own self? Or do you want them set free to come into their own as you link your profoundest abilities with your neighbor’s need and the glory of God? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.
Do you want to accept a challenge that will be the integrating dynamic of your whole life? One that will engage your loftiest thoughts, your most dedicated exertions, your deepest emotions, all your abilities and resources, to the last step you take and the last breath you breathe? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.
For Further Prayerful Thought: See your show notes for additional questions
- What stood out to you about disciples being CALLED by Christ?
- What aspects of The Driven Life Portrait do you identify most with?
- What can you do to better Christ calling for your life?
