Rick Warren - What It Really Means to Be a Disciple of Jesus - Part 3

Jesus frequently took a very common word like student, pupil, disciple, apprentice,

and he adds new meaning to it. He infuses it,

He injects new meaning into it. And so I want

us to look at Jesus definition of what it means

to be a disciple, because about ten times in scripture,

Jesus says, if you do this, then you're my disciple.

If you do this, then you can follow me. Look

at this verse on the screen. If you continue and

what I say lives in you continues in you, then

you can ask anything you want and it'll be yours.

That's quite a promise. In prayer said, if you're living

in me and my words living in you, you can

ask for whatever you want, it'll be yours. You give

glory to my father when you produce a lot of fruit,

and therefore show that you're my disciples. Now, he says,

you got to continue. It's a process, it's a strategy,

it's a journey. If you're going to continue to grow

the rest of your life, and that's what I'm trying

to help you do, You're going to need a couple things. First.

You need a plan, You need a track to run on.

You need a pathway, you need some guidelines, you need

a trail, you need a process. Jesus had a plan

for helping his disciples grow from immaturity to spiritual maturity.

And he starts off where they were, not where they

ought to be. He starts off where they are. He

loves them, and he takes them through each step to growth.

Now when they're growing, he loves them at every stage.

Listen to this. Jesus loves you. God loves you at

every stage of your maturity. But he does want you

to grow, and you need a pathway. Jesus had a plan,

and that pathway was teaching his disciples first to know

him and then to love him, and then to grow

in him, and then to serve him and then to

share him. It's like a baby. A baby has to

learn to breathe, then it learns to eat, Then it

learns to walk, and then it learns to talk. We

all grow at different stages and greats, but every one

of us went through those exact same physical stages, and

there are spiritual stages in spiritual growth too. If you

want to grow, you must develop good habits. Would you

write that down? Spiritual growth is a matter of good habits,

and in the Christian life, you are the sum total

of your habits. You see, character is a matter of habit.

It's something that you do habitually. For instance, you can't

say you have the character quality of honesty unless it's

your habit to always tell the truth. If you tell

the truth seventy percent of the time, you're not honest.

It's not a habit. It's not a character. You got

to be honest. It has to be a habit. In

your line, if I say to my wife, honey, I

have the character quality of faithfulness to you, and I

will be faithful to you twenty eight days a month,

Well that doesn't work. Partial faithfulness is unfaithfulness, right, Does

that make sense? You're not being faithful at all if

you're faithful ninety percent of the time. No, I'm not

faithful to my wife unless I am one hundred percent

faithful to her all the time. Now, that's true in

every area. It's developing good habits. Now throughout the centuries,

for two thousand years of the church, Christians have used

these habits. Sometimes they're called spiritual disciplines. Sometimes they're called

devotional practices. I don't care what you call them. We

call them habits at saddleback, stuff that you learn, like

how to have a daily time with God, a quiet time.

How to pray, that's a habit. How to read the Bible,

that's a habit. How to be in a small group fellowship,

that's a habit. How to tithe your money, that's a habit.

The habit of solitude, silence, being quiet before God, the

habit of fasting, the habit of journaling. There are hundreds

of good habits. Some are more important than others, but

they are the building blocks for growing the spiritual maturity.

And notice the results of spiritual maturity. It says that

when you have these habits, and when you grow and

you do what Jesus tells you to do, it says

you will produce fruit, a lot of fruit. Jesus said,

by their fruit you will know them. This is what

we call radical discipleship. Radical devotion is I love God

with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.

Radical fellowship is I'm as committed to you as I

am the Jesus Christ. Radical discipleship is when I I

develop the habits to become more and more like Jesus.

Every year of my life Number five, the fifth qualification.

To be a disciple of Jesus, I must serve others unselfishly.

I've got to learn to serve others. And service is

a very very important part of your spiritual growth and

your spiritual development, because God says it's not all taken in,

it's giving back. The Bible says, if you want to

be the most important person, you must take the last

place and be the servant to everyone else. See the

world's value system says get everybody to serve you, and

Jesus says, no, no, the real leaders Leadership is not

dependent upon how many people serve you, but how many

people you serve. He says, the best leaders are those

who are helping other people, not using the people to

serve themselves. The world says, live for yourself. God says,

give your life away. Now, why is this so important?

Let me give you a little advice. The key to

happiness in life is to find significance. Happiness does not

last unless you find significance in life. And everybody wants

their life to be significant. The problem is we look

in all the wrong places for significance. Success does not

give significance because You can always find somebody who's more

successful than you and you start feeling bad. You can

be successful and it won't give you significance. A salary

doesn't give you significance. You can make a lot of money.

There's nothing wrong with making money. But you can make

a lot of money, but it won't give you significance.

I probably know a dozen billionaires. I can give their

names and you'd know who they were, and they would

tell you that money does several things. It makes life easier,

it removes some worries, it can make you more comfortable.

But money will never give you significance. And that's the

key to happiness. And we get tired of things, and

so that's why we have to redecorate. So significance doesn't

come from salary. It doesn't come from success. It doesn't

come from status, the little symbols on your car, on

your shirt. It doesn't come from sex. It comes from service.

Because God wired the universe that the only way your

life takes on significance is you give it away. Why

God wants you to learn to be like him unselfish.

The most miserable people in life are self centered. It's

all about me. I'm living for me, my pleasure, my needs,

my comfort. It's all about me, and that's the way

to be a miserable person. The happiest people in life

are those who give their lives away. They're serving others.

Whether they got money or not, it doesn't matter. Their

significance gives them their satisfaction, their meaning, their purpose, their

value in life. So he says, give your life away.

And who's our model for this, Jesus. Look at the

next verse. Jesus said, for even I, the son of Man,

came here not to be served, but to serve others

and give my life as a ransom for many you

might circle to serve and to give. He said, I

came to serve and I came to give. That defines

the Christian life. And the more you learn to serve,

and the more you learn to give, the happier you're

going to be, the more fulfilled you're going to be.

Because when you do that, God says, I've found somebody

who gets it. I'm going to pour blessing into their lives. Now,

why is serving so important to spiritual growth? Because you

can't just take in, You've got to exercise, and spiritual

exercise is when you do something unselfish when you serve others,

when you minister to others, you can't just sit soak

and sour. You can't just keep taking in. If your

whole Christian life involves just going to church, listening, sitting down,

taking notes and going home, it ain't gonna work. Impression

without expression leads to depression. You have to exercise. Ministry

is movement. As I said, you got to move it,

move it. And if you do that, then you're gonna grow.

You know, if all you did was eat the right food,

you wouldn't grow. You have to exercise too. It's not

enough you got. You know, sometimes people they just are

spiritual feeders and all they do is listen, and they

come to church and they listen, and then they turn

on the Christian radio and they listen, and they go

to a Bible study and they listen, and you just

start getting better and better, and you're eating more and

more spiritual food and bigger and bigger, til you're so

big we have to roll you down the aisle. And

that's where we get the term holy. If you don't

move it, move it. If you don't have any exercise

in your life, you will not grow spiritually. You got

to develop some muscle how by serving, Jesus said, if

you want to follow me, you got to learn to

be the servant of all. One of the things that

God wants us to do, and he says it over

and over scripture is to practice gratitude. I don't know

if you've ever noticed that the more grateful a person is,

the happier they are. That's the power of gratitude. Now

I've put together a brand new Bible study called the

Power of Gratitude, and in it you'll find scriptures and

teaching and exercises that will help you develop the habit

of gratitude. You'll discover how to state in God's will,

how to defeat discouragement, how to conquer complaining, how to

reduce stress, and how to experience God's blessing through gratitude. So, today,

when you partner with me by giving a gift, a

financial gift to daily hope, to help us take the

certain hope of Jesus to people all around the world,

I'm going to have my team sends you the Power

of Gratitude Bible Study. I just want to say, thanks

to you. I'm going to be grateful for you. You

know your support is essential for us taking the daily

hope message of Jesus all around the world. Now, there's

another thing that this first teaches, and that is you're

never going to grow spiritually until you learn to sacrifice.

Spiritual growth requires sacrifice. Why Because it's all about love,

and the essence of love is giving. It's the essence

of love. If you've never had the sacrifice for anything,

you don't know the deeper levels of love. You know

shallow love, But the deeper levels of love are the

levels of sacrifice, losing your life to find it. And

Jesus said it like this, and Matthew sixteen, if anyone

wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take

up his cross, and follow me. Notice three three definitions

of sacrifice. First, he must deny himself. What does that mean.

It means I say, God, I'm putting my agenda on

the shelf, and I'm going with your agenda. It's not

my plan, it's your plan. It's not my purpose for

my life, it's your purpose for my life. I'm gonna

deny myself my plans for my life. I'm gonna say, God,

what did you put me on this earth to do.

I want to go with your plan. That's denying yourself,

that's sacrifice. Then it says take up your cross. What

does that mean? Take up your cross literally means be

willing to sacrifice for good and for God, even if

it means dying, because the cross was an instrument of death.

Only God can turn a negative into a positive. The

cross is a symbol of torture. Now today we don't

understand what means to take up your cross because we

think of these cute little crosses we were on necklaces,

you know, around our neck, and it's just a nice

little pretty piece of jewelry. But the cross was a

symbol of torture. It was a device for capital punishment,

extremely cruel and excruciatingly painful, invented by the Romans. Today,

the equivalent would be wearing an electric chair on a

chain around your neck. What do you wear an electric

chain before? Because it'd be wearing a symbol of torture.

But God took that and turned it into a positive.

Do you know what a cross is? It is a

minus sign crossed out. It's a negative turned in to

a plus. And that's what the cross does in your life.

He takes God takes the negatives in your life, the minuses,

and he makes up for it with what Jesus did

for you, and he turns your negative life into a

positive life into a plus. Now, he says, take up

your cross. That means be willing to die for Christ.

You haven't been asked to do that in America, but

all around the world, one hundred and thirty seven thousand

Christians did that this last year in the world. Gave

their lives, gave their lives, they took up their cross

because they were killed simply for believing in Jesus. Now

there's one more thing, okay, Jesus saying, if I'm going

to be a disciple, I've got to spend time with him.

I've got to love him supremely. I've got to love

all everybody else in the church. I've got to obey

him continually. I've got to serve others unselfishly. Here's number six.

To be a disciple, I must pass on the good news.

I must pass on the good news. When I hear it,

I'm supposed to tell somebody else about it. Matthew four,

Verse twenty. Jesus called out come be my disciples, and

I will show you how to fish for people. And

they left their nets at once and went with him.

And what's he talking about here? One day Jesus is

walking down the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. Peter, James, John,

and Andrew are brothers and cousins and their professional fishermen.

In those days, you didn't fish with a rod and reel.

You fish with a net, so you throw the net out.

They're on the shoreline mending their nets. Jesus is walking

mind and it looks at him and he says, well,

he's walking back. Come be my disciple, and I'll show

you how to fish for people. What's he mean by that?

I'll show you how to change lives. I'll show you

how to get people into heaven. I'll show you how

to bring people to me. I'll show you how to

share the good news. You will be a fisher of men,

he says, follow me and I will teach you. I'll

make you fishers of men. Now, the corollary of that is,

if you're not fishing, you're not following. Is anybody going

to be in heaven because of you? If you're not fishing,

you're not following. If you're not telling it to somebody else,

you are not being a disciple. You see, God expects

you to pass it on. If I knew the cure

for cancer and kept it a secret, they should put

me in prison. That should It should be criminal to

know the best news and not share it. If I

knew the cure for AIDS and I didn't share it

with anybody, that's criminal. I know something better than that.

You do too, How to have your past forgiving purpose

for living home in heaven and God calls us to

share it. Look at this verse on the screen. Paul

is talking to Timothy. Timothy was the disciple, the apprentice

of Paul, and Paul says, Timothy, take the teachings that

you heard from me, in the presence of any witnesses,

and entrust them to reliable people who these reliable people

will be able to teach others. Also to leave that

verse on the screen from minute four generations. In this verse,

Paul says, I got the good news, Timothy, and I

passed it on to you. Now, Timothy, you're to pass

it on to other people who are reliable enough to

pass it on to a fourth generation. You're gonna go

to heaven because somebody told you, and somebody told the

somebody who told you, and somebody told the somebody who

told somebody who told you. Is the chain gonna break

with you? Is anybody going to be in heaven? Because

you Christianity is always one generation away from annihilation, one

generation away. If you don't tell somebody who's going to

be there. Jesus says, to be a disciple, you must

pass it on. Look at the next Matthew twenty eight. Therefore,

he says, go and make disciples. Once you're one, he says,

you're to go make others. You're a disciple. Now, go

and make other disciples of all the nations. In Greek,

that's ta ethne. We get the word ethnic from it,

from the Greek word ethne ethnic food and ethnic language,

things like that. Go and make disciples of all Ethnics,

all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,

Son and Holy Spirit. There's a trinity. If you haven't

been baptized or baptizing today, and teach these new disciples

to do the same thing you do. To obey all

the commands I've given you. And be sure of this.

I am with you always, even to the end. Of

the age. I want somebody to be in heaven because

of you. And if you start praying about your friends

who don't know the Lord, God will make it so

easy they'll come to Christ and you can reach one person.

For Jesus, that's what it means to be a disciple.

We pass it on somebody else. What happens. Look at

this verse on the screen. If I do these six

things that Jesus says to do and I become a disciple,

here's what happens. Jesus said, if you try to keep

your life for yourself, you're going to lose it. But

if you give up your life for my sake and

for the sake of the good News, you will find

true life. But let's close with the prayer. Why don't

you pray this in your heart, Dear God. I don't

want to be a baby believer. I don't want to

be spiritually immature. I want to grow up. I want

to be a man of God. I want to be

a woman of God. I want to spend more time

with you, Jesus. I want to learn to talk to

you like you're my best friend. I want to learn

to love you supremely with all my heart and soul

and mind and strength. I want to learn to love

other disciples. I want to learn to love other Christians,

the body of Christ. I want to be a part

of this church family. I want to be in a

small group where I can practice love. I want to

do what you tell me to do. I want to

continue in your teaching so that I can be set

free from all of the hang ups that hold me back,

the worry, the fear, the anxiety, all the many things.

I want to develop some spiritual muscle this year. I

want to learn to serve you unselfishly, and I want

to pass on the good news. Help me to find

one person that I can bring to you can become

a part of your family and be in heaven because

I shared with you. Lord, I can't do this on

my own that I ask you to do this. I

make these six things my new Year's resolution, and with

your help, I will keep them in Jesus' name. Amen. Today,

I'd like to read a testimony that really blessed me.

It shows how even when you make mistakes, God's faithful

to forgive you, and that He's always working in your

life to bring about everything together for good in your life.

Not everything is good in your life, but God works

at all for good in your life. Now, this is

from a man who says he's a recovering addict, and

this is part of his story that starts when he

listened to a Daily Hope podcast. Here's what he wrote

past Rick. A couple months ago, I started a twelve

step program. In working the steps and in turning my

addiction over to God, I searched out many sources for

daily inspirational, daily devotionals, daily meditations to help me reconnect

with the Lord as a support for the progress in

my recovery. Now, in what just seemed to be a

random chance, seemed to be I just came across your

Daily Hope podcast and I blindly just picked a message

from early July. I'm sure some of a lot of

other people have done that too. Well. The very first

one I listened to was on Roman seven, which is

all about why do I do the wrong things that

I don't want to do when I know what's wrong?

And what makes me do that? I can't believe that

was the first one you listened to. Well, knock me

over with a feather. It was a bolt of lightning

that I needed to hear, and it was followed by

tears of joy because the very next podcast, of course,

was Roman's eight, which is the solution to my dilemma.

That's right, folks. Roman seven explains the mess we're in.

Roman's eight explains how to get out of it. He says, Rick,

it was like a smack on the head by divine intervention.

So I joined a small group and I haven't missed

a week since and I love it. And I have

a weekly Bible study with a close friend who graciously

offered to help me. And I subscribe to your daily

devotional email, and I've continued to listen to your podcast

when I go for my morning walk. He says, the

spiritual growth that I've achieved in a relatively short period

of time is really nothing short of remarkable. It's a

miracle and it's a blessing, and it's helped me turn

my life around. I now understand why God allowed me

to suffer through all my addiction, and that the path

of recovery is through Jesus Christ. From the bottom of

my heart, Rick, thank you for all you do through him.

Well wow, wow, wow. This testimony is a powerful reminder

of how God can take everything in our lives, the mistakes,

the sins, the failures, the hurts, the bad decisions, even

destructive habits, and guess what God can even bring good

out of them. The Bible says in all things God

works for the good of those who love him. It

doesn't say all things good, because not all things are good.

But in all things God is working for the good

of those who love him. That's Romans eight twenty eight.

Now this story is a beautiful example of Romans eight

twenty eight and that truth. Listen very closely. No matter

what we've done, I'll say it again, no matter what

we've done, we're never outside of God's master plan for

our lives. Your life is not random. In this case,

God led somebody to Daily Hope podcasts just at the

right moment tear exactly what he needed. Now, God could

have used any method, He could have used any person,

He could have used any podcasts, but God, in this

instance chose to use Daily Hope. You know, friends, it's

because of your support, your prayers, and your giving that

we're able to make Daily Hope Bible teaching available to

over thirty five thirty five million people every month. So

thank you, Thanks a lot. I mean this from the

bottom my heart. Thank you for your support. This man,

who is a recovering addict was helped because you. You

cared enough to support this ministry. So let me just

say it again. I don't ever get tired of saying it.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. One of

the things that God wants us to do, and he

says it over and over scripture, is to practice gratitude.

I don't know if you've ever noticed that the more

grateful a person is, the happier they are. That's the

power of gratitude. Now I've put together a brand new

Bible study called the Power of Gratitude, and in it

you'll find scriptures and teaching and exercises that will help

you develop the habit of gratitude. You'll discover how to

state in God's will, how to defeat discouragement, how to

conquer complaining, how to reduce stress, and how to experience

God's blessing through gratitude. So, today, when you partner with

me by giving a gift, a financial gift to daily hope,

to help us take the certain hope of Jesus to

people all around the world, I'm going to have my

team send you the Power of Gratitude Bible study. I

just want to say thanks to you. I'm want to

be grateful for you. You know your support is essential

for us taking the daily hope message of Jesus all

around the world.