Without discipleship, we are just a bunch of people fattening our souls under wonderful sermons while passively disobeying the Lord’s Great Commission. The act of weekly slogging with our discipleship groups is what makes us grow stronger, faster and sharper in the spirit.
Author: Jojo Agot
Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.
A Glimpse of the Holy
From my Facebook post on July 14:
I am convinced that most of us have no idea how much the Lord is working silently in the background of our lives. We have no inkling how much He is keeping us, how much he is holding back evil from happening to us and how much grace is exerted to sustain us. If He were to open our eyes so we can see the outworking of His care for us, we will be astounded at the magnitude of His kindness and grace. We will be shocked to find that He is more good than we give Him credit for. And instead of arrogant prayers and misguided declarations of faith, we will just fall down on our knees in awestruck reverence for Jesus. We would want to cry and be silent at the same time. We would want to offer a thousand praises but no appropriate words will come out of our mouths. No human vocabulary could express the million things that our hearts are bursting to say. Not even all the Hallelujahs and the Amens in every language known to man will be enough. Words will literally fail us. Our hearts will just burn with the fire of the Holy Spirit. We will just shake our heads and cry in silence while the grace of God consumes every fiber of our being. In that moment, we get a glimpse of heaven and see the hem of the garment of the King of Kings who is seated on His throne. All our human troubles will melt into insignificance because we will see that in the final analysis, only God matters.
Facebook Post, July 13
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (John 14:1). After 2000 years, the power of these words is not diminished. Whatever is troubling you today, remember that God is far bigger than your worries and you can rest assured that He will come through for you.
When to Stop Reading the Bible
Geoffrey Thomas, quoted in Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life:
Do not expect to master the Bible in a day, or a month, or a year. Rather, expect often to be puzzled by its contents. It is not all equally clear. Great men of God often feel like absolute novices when they read the Word. The Apostle Peter said there were some things hard to understand in the epistles of Paul (2 Peter 3:16). I am glad he wrote those words because I have felt that often. So do not expect always to get an emotional charge or a feeling of quiet peace when you read the Bible. By the grace of God you may expect that to be a frequent experience, but often you will get no emotional response at all.
Let the Word break over your heart and mind again and again as the years go by, and imperceptibly there will come great changes in your attitude and outlook and conduct. You will probably be the last to recognize these. Often you will feel very, very small, because increasingly the God of the Bible will become to you wonderfully great. So go on reading it until you can read no longer, and then you will not need the Bible any more, because when your eyes close for the last time in death, and never again read the Word of God in Scripture you will open them to the Word of God in the flesh, that same Jesus of the Bible whom you have known for so long, standing before you to take you for ever to His eternal home.
The One Thread
F.B. Meyer on expository preaching:
“We possess nothing so precious, we value nothing so much; we have no source of good so full, fruitful and enduring; we have nothing to compare to the Lord Jesus Christ;. To Him we bear witness.” “Whom we proclaim,” cried the apostle, “admonishing every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.”
Brethren, let strive and labour towards the same end! Let our Lord Jesus be the one abiding reality with us, in our innermost thought, our private devotions, our ministry, and our preaching! Let Him be first, and last, and midst, and all-in-all! Let us wake with Him in the morning, walk with HIm all day, and lie down to sleep in the quiet sense of His presence! To present Him to men, by life and ministry and written and spoken speech, must be the thread on which are strung all the incidents of our varied experiences!
Delighting in the Gospel
John Flavel on the importance of gospel delight:
Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer’s soul and they promote sanctification. We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration, and the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God. The soul is so constituted that it craves fulfillment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual ones.
The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of a Savior’s presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers. By the enjoyment of the love of Christ in the heart of a believer, we mean an experience of the “love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us” (Rom. 5:5).
Jojo Agot 