Devotionals: Discipleship Archives

Whose Disciple are You?

By Andrew YoungAugust 10, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“You are somebody’s disciple. You have learned how to live from somebody else.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: John 8:31-32 I had originally thought that there might be more I could write on the subject of “The Gift of the Holy Spirit” using Herman Bavinck’s chapter on this topic, but re-reading my notes, and the chapter concerned, I think we have exhausted the substance of what it has to say. I hope that this series has stimulated you to think more about the role of the Holy Spirit and the place he has in our daily lives. Turning from that subject, […]

Apprentices in Kingdom Living

By Andrew YoungAugust 11, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“Therefore anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man that built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24) Bible Reading: Matthew 7:24-27 Nothing is clearer in the Gospel records than that Jesus fully intended people to become his followers, or, as Willard puts it, his apprentices in kingdom living. To suppose that being a “disciple” or “follower” of Jesus is limited to believing certain things about him and about ourselves as the result of him dying on the cross is to misunderstand who he is and what he did. Being a […]

Doers of Jesus’ Words

By Andrew YoungAugust 12, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“Doing what he said… we step into the flow of God’s ways, we ‘enter the kingdom of the heavens.’” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Matthew 7:13-23 Nowhere is our calling to be “doers” of what Jesus said taught more clearly than in the final section of what we call “The Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 7:13-27). As familiar as we might be with this section, it bears looking at again under the guidance of Dallas Willard. There are four “pictorial contrasts” in this passage, Willard points out, so that we might not miss the path into “the community of prayerful love” […]

Being With Jesus

By Andrew YoungAugust 13, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“If I am to be someone’s apprentice… I must be with that person.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Acts 1:1-11 We have noted that Dallas Willard (helpfully, I believe), speaks of Christian discipleship in terms of being “apprentices of Jesus in kingdom living.” If that is indeed the case – if discipleship can be likened to being a student, or learner, or apprentice of Jesus – then the question arises, “How are to be with Jesus in order to learn from him?” For, as Willard stresses, being “with” someone is the “essential condition” of being an apprentice or follower of that […]

Living in God’s Kingdom Now

By Andrew YoungAugust 14, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“The personal presence of Jesus… is the practical reality of the kingdom of God now on earth.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Acts 8:26-40 What it means to be and to live in the kingdom of God now is something Christians struggle to grasp and have different ideas about. Jesus’ own disciples mistakenly thought of it in terms of a visible, political reality – the rule of God’s Messiah from Jerusalem over the nations (Acts 1:6). If it is not that, what is it? Willard argues that it finds practical reality in the “personal presence of Jesus with individuals and groups […]

How to Be a Disciple

By Andrew YoungAugust 15, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“…being a disciple, or apprentice, of Jesus is quite a definite and obvious kind of thing.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Acts 10:34-48 Willard heads up a new section in this chapter we are studying with the title, “How to Be a Disciple”. He then goes on to affirm “the simplicity of discipleship. “Being a disciple, or apprentice of Jesus,” he says, “is a quite definite and obvious kind of thing.” That might surprise you. The issue of knowing whether or not a person is “a true Christian” is often – for us anyway – shrouded in mystery. We ask, “Have […]

All-of-Life Disciples

By Andrew YoungAugust 16, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“The whole of my daily existence is the focus of discipleship.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Matthew 6:25-34 In the last devotional, we noted how Dallas Willard tried to be a disciple or apprentice of Jesus by learning from him “to live my life as he would live my life if he were me” (The Divine Conspiracy, 310). This sounds very much like the approach used in the popular “What Would Jesus Do?” movement (WWJD). Willard would insist, however, that the two approaches are not the same. The WWJD movement encourages people to live by trying to imitate what Jesus did […]

Following Jesus in Your Job (1)

By Andrew YoungAugust 17, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“…not to find your job to be a primary place of discipleship is to automatically exclude a major part, if not most, of our waking hours from life with him.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Matthew 5:13-16 One thing should be abundantly clear about discipleship by now: that it is about doing as much good as we possibly can during our “days under the sun” as we seek to follow Jesus in the real life that we have in this world. There is nowhere that this becomes more relevant than in the places where we work – whether that be to […]

Following Jesus in Your Job (2)

By Andrew YoungAugust 18, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“A gentle but firm non-cooperation with things that everyone knows to be wrong… should be our usual overt manner.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: Ephesians 5:3-7 In our last devotional, we began to look at Willard’s practical advice for being a disciple in the places where we work or spend most of our waking hours. We saw, to begin with, that it is not by becoming the “Christian nag-in-residence, the rigorous upholder of all propriety, and the dead-eye critic of everyone else’s behaviour.” But if this is not how Jesus would have us follow him in our daily work lives, what […]

Following Jesus in Your Job (3)

By Andrew YoungAugust 19, 2017Devotionals: Discipleship

“In some situations, it is only words that can help towards understanding.” Dallas Willard Bible Reading: 1 Peter 3:13-17 Up to this point, Willard’s advice on what it means to be a disciple at work has focused on general attitudes and actions. We are not to be arch-critics of everyone else’s behaviour, we are to be marked by a spirit of genuine servant-heartedness, and maintain a spirit of prayer for all that our work entails and the people engaged in it. But there will be occasions, Willard tells us when specific instructions Jesus gave regarding the behaviour of his followers […]