Another substitute for discipleship is . Our Lord referred to this when He reproached the Pharisees for their habit of tithing mint and anise and cumin while at the same time omitting the weightier matters of the Law such as justice, mercy and faith.
Literalism manifests itself among us in many ways, but it can always be identified in that it lives by the letter of the Word while ignoring its spirit. It habitually fails to apprehend the inward meaning of Christs words, and contents itself with external compliance with the text. If Christ commands baptism, for instance, it finds fulfillment in the act of water baptism, but the radical meaning of the act as explained in Romans 6 is completely overlooked. It reads the Scriptures regularly, contributes consistently to religious work, attends church every Sunday and otherwise carries on the common duties of a Christian and for this it is to be commended.
Its tragic breakdown is its failure to comprehend the Lordship of Christ, the believers discipleship, separation from the world and the crucifixion of the natural man.
Literalism attempts to build a holy temple upon the sandy foundation of the religious self.
It will suffer, sacrifice and labor, but it will not die. It is Adam at his pious best, but it has never denied self to take up the cross and follow Christ.
verse
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
— Mark 8:34
thought
It is commendable to fulfill religious forms in doctrine and practice. It is quite another to fulfill them substantively from the heart in daily life. It is the latter that expresses true discipleship.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trying to follow You without taking up that self-death instrument daily.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The absence of the concept of discipleship from present-day Christianity leaves a vacuum which we instinctively try to fill with one or another substitute. I name a few.
Pietism
.By this I mean an enjoyable feeling of affection for the person of our Lord which is valued for itself and is wholly unrelated to cross-bearing or the keeping of the commandments of Christ.
It is entirely possible to feel for Jesus an ardent love which is not of the Holy Spirit. Witness the love for the Virgin felt by certain devout souls, a love which in the very nature of things must be purely subjective. The heart is adept at emotional tricks and is entirely capable of falling in love with imaginary objects or romantic religious ideas.
In the confused world of romance young persons are constantly inquiring how they can tell when they are in love. They are afraid they may mistake some other sensation for true love and are seeking some trustworthy criterion by which they can judge the quality of their latest emotional fever. Their confusion of course arises from the erroneous notion that love is an enjoyable inward passion, without intellectual or volitional qualities and carrying with it no moral obligations.
Our Lord gave us a rule by which we can test our love for Him: He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my words. . . He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings (John 14:21-24).
These words are too plain to need much interpreting. Proof of love for Christ is simply removed altogether from the realm of the feelings and placed in the realm of practical obedience. I think the rest of the New Testament is in full accord with this.
verse
Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. . . .
— John 14:23-24a
thought
One way to avoid obeying Christs teaching is to maintain ignorance of that teaching.
But can we do that if we love Him?
Real love seeks to know His will in order to obey it!
prayer
Lord, there are times when I emotionally and orally express love without obeying You. Forgive me. I want to lovingly obey You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.' Luke 9:23
In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death.
Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional which the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all.
It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ (that He died for our sins and rose again) and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of Lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he ?takes? Him as his personal Savior. The idea of His Lordship is completely ignored.
thought
Can we receive Christ as Savior and deny His lordship over us? Surely there is room to grow in our understanding of who He is and what it means to folow Him in daily life. But can He be our Savior without being our Lord?
prayer
Lord, I bow to Your lordship in all of my life. Make me fully Your disciple and a discipler of others for Your sake.
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
— James 4:4
What, then, is that world against which we are warned by the apostles? . . .
. . . Here are a few infallible marks of identification:
. . . 3. Godless philosophies. Whether they know it or not, they who belong to the world live by a creed, and by their fruits we may know what their creed is. The man of the world, despite his protestations to the contrary, actually accepts the sufficiency of this world and makes no provision for any other; he esteems earth above heaven, time above eternity, body above soul and men above God. He holds sin to be relatively harmless, believes pleasure to be an end in itself, accepts the rightness of the customary and trusts to the basic goodness of human nature. And even though he be an elder in a church he is part and parcel of the world.
4. Externalism. The man of heaven lives for the kingdom within him; the man of earth lives for the world around him. The first is born of the Spirit; the other is born of the flesh and will perish with it.
To sum up: whatever promotes self, cheapens life, starves the soul, hopes without biblical grounds for hope, adopts current moral standards, follows the way of the majority whether it be right or wrong, indulges in the pleasures of the flesh to make bearable the secret thoughts of death and judgment ? that is the world.
?Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him? (1 John 2:15).
thought
Being friendly with the world is not friendliness with the people of the world. It is adopting the values of the world, its philosophy, its lifestyle, its god. �
prayer
Lord, there seems to be such confusion today among Your people as to what constitutes worldliness. Help me to be sensitive to and clearly distinguish between the world of people You love and the world system You reject. In Jesus' name.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
— James 1:27
What, then, is that world against which we are warned by the apostles? That world whose friendship constitutes spiritual adultery, the love of which stands in opposition to the love of God?
It is the familiar world of sinful human society which swells about and beneath us as the waters of the flood once surged and churned around the ark of Noah. No Christian need fail to recognize it, provided he wants to know what it is and where it is located. Here are a few infallible marks of identification:
1. Unbelief. Wherever men refuse to come under the authority of the inspired Scriptures, there is the world. Religion without the Son of God is worldly religion. To have fellowship with those who live in unbelief is to love the world. The Christian's communion should be with Christians.
2. Impenitence. The people of the world will readily admit that they are sinners, but their lack of sorrow for sin distinguishes them from the children of God. The Christian mourns over his sin and is comforted. The worldling shrugs off his sin and continues in it.
thought
Seeds of doubt concerning God's Word, slowness to confess and forsake sin mark as infected with wordly pollution. But there is deliverance through Christ!
prayer
Deliver me, Lord, from worldly pollution. I want to turn from the negative and engage the positive.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
— Psalm 19:1
To persons brought up in the Judaeo-Christian tradition the thought that anyone should actually worship nature seems absurd, but we have only to step across into almost any of the cultures we call pagan to learn that such worship has been and still is common enough. Indeed there is scarcely a natural object anywhere that has not been worshiped by someone.
The created world is to be prized for its usefulness, loved for its beauty and esteemed as the gift of God to His children. Love of natural beauty which has been the source of so much pure music, poetry and art is a good and desirable thing. Though the unregenerate soul is likely to enjoy nature for its own sake and ignore the God whose gift it is, there is nothing to prevent an enlightened Christian who loves God supremely from loving all things for God's dear sake.
This would appear to be altogether in accord with the spirit of the psalms and the prophets, and though there is less emphasis upon nature in the New Testament much appreciation of natural things may be found there also.
thought
The created world declares God's glory but so many of us fail to hear that proclamation. Rather than the Creator declared, some worship the declarer
prayer
Your awesome creation witnesses to You the Creator, Lord. There is no creation without a creator. Your creation declares Your glory. So would I.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
— 1 John 2:15
The New Testament teaches that to be a follower of Christ it is necessary that a man turn his back upon the world and have no fellowship with it. Our Lord drew a sharp line between the kingdom of God and the world and said that no one could be at the same time a lover of both. This was also the teaching of Paul, James and John (2 Corinthians 6:14-18; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17). It is therefore of critical importance that we who claim to be disciples of Christ should check our relation to the world. The question of the Christian and the world is not, however, as simple as it might seem.
There is much difference of opinion among Christians as to what constitutes the world. Before we can be sure of our relation to something we must first know what it is. The fact is that two worlds coexist around us. One God made out of nothing; the other man made by taking the materials that originally came from God and fashioning them into a moral caricature of the original.
thought
John's prohibition against loving the world or anything in it could hardly be directed toward the natural world or the world of people. Jesus lived in both and so do we. No, it is the world system controlled by Satan that is our adversary ? one not always easy to detect.
prayer
Father, give me discernment to recognize the world system and, in recognizing it, to turn from it.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
— John 14:27
The remedy for distractions is the same now as it was in earlier and simpler times, viz., prayer, meditation and the cultivation of the inner life. The psalmist said ?Be still, and know,? and Christ told us to enter into our closet, shut the door and pray unto the Father. It still works.
?Let us return to ourselves, brothers,? said the Greek saint Nicephorus, ? . . . for it is impossible for us to become reconciled and united with God if we do not first return to ourselves, as far as it lies in our power, or if we do not enter within ourselves, tearing ourselves ? what a wonder it is! ? from the whirl of the world with its multitudinous vain cares and striving constantly to keep attention on the kingdom of heaven which is within us." Distractions must be conquered or they will conquer us. So let us cultivate simplicity; let us want fewer things; let us walk in the Spirit; let us fill our minds with the Word of God and our hearts with praise. In that way we can live in peace even in such a distraught world as this. ?Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."
thought
Experiencing God's calm in all of the noise of life will mean choosing the simpler life, conquering the distractions and daily walking by the Spirit. Are we ready to so live?
prayer
I want to know Your peace, Lord, not mine but Yours. Peace despite problems, turmoil and all the distractions. You have given me Your peace. May I receive it and live in it.
But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.
— Deuteronomy 4:29
In the normal course of things a certain number of distractions are bound to come to each one of us; but if we learn to be inwardly still these can be rendered relatively harmless. It would not be hard to compile a long list of names of Christians who carried upon their shoulders the burden of state or the responsibilities of business and yet managed to live in great inward peace with the face of the Lord in full view. They have left us a precious legacy in the form of letters, journals, hymns and devotional books that witness to the ability of Christ to calm the troubled waters of the soul as He once calmed the waves on the Sea of Galilee. And today as always those who listen can hear His still, small voice above the earthquake and the whirlwind.
While the grace of God will enable us to overcome inevitable distractions, we dare not presume upon God's aid and throw ourselves open to unnecessary ones. The roving imagination, an inquisitive interest in other people's business, preoccupation with external affairs beyond what is absolutely necessary: these are certain to lead us into serious trouble sooner or later. The heart is like a garden and must be kept free from weeds and insects. To expect the fruits and flowers of Paradise to grow in an untended heart is to misunderstand completely the processes of grace and the ways of God with men. Only grief and disappointment can result from continued violation of the divine principles that underlie the spiritual life.
thought
Even though scattered among the nations and subject to cultural influences drawing them from God, if Israel will seek God with all their heart and soul He will be found. So with us today. Surrounded by evil influences and a myriad of distractions, we may find God if we seek Him with heart and soul. Are we so seeking Him?
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for cluttering my life with unnecessary distractions. I throw them aside and look to You.