Title: Discipleship Series
Characteristics of a Disciple-1
Date: 27th February, 2014.
Beloved in the Lord, greetings in the wonderful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Today, we are looking at what I title Characteristics of a disciple part 1.This is necessary because the Great Commission handed down by the master, Jesus to the first Apostles was to “go and make disciple”. But on the contrary what we are seeing in today’s Church is a complete deviation from the command. The Church of today, quite disheartening is doing everything but not much of this. It is common these days that in a Church of a thousand worshipers, only just a handful are disciples.The larger part is the ”crowd”.
It is against this background that we want to by the help of the Holy Spirit, look at what makes one a disciple. Lets begin by defining the word DISCIPLE. The Longman Dictionary of contemporary English defines it as a follower of any great teacher. There are certain qualities that qualify a person as a follower of another.This is what we want to attempt to look at in this message.
1. SEPARATION FROM THE WORLD
A follower of Jesus is expected to be separated from the world by not conforming to this world system. He or she should be distinct from the worldly people in reasoning, in speech, in eating or drinking, in action, either in the wok place, at home, or where ever he or she finds himself or herself. Everything about such an individual suppose to stand him or her out such that people should be able to say of him or her ”this is a follower of Jesus Christ”. Jesus Christ says in John 17:16, while praying for the disciples ” they are not of the world even as I am not of the world” That is it! we’re not of the world, though we are living in it. We are expected to be different from it even as our master was. He lived in this world but did not allow it to influence him , so should we as well.
We will continue this message the next time, pls. Thank you and remain blessed.