You're listening to A New Beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God.
Visit our website and learn more about Harvest Partners at harvest.org. Today, Pastor Greg Laurie launches a series on discipleship. Disciples are those who make a concerted effort to follow the Lord and to learn. You know, it's one thing to be on the team. It's another to be in the action.
It's one thing to watch from the bench. It's another to get in the game. And we hope many will be in the game for this weekend's Harvest Crusade in Anaheim, California.
Details at harvest.org. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us chart a course for getting in the game called discipleship. And he begins by commenting on a previous evangelistic outreach that had just concluded. We're still rejoicing that over 10,000 people made a profession of faith a short time ago. Notice I used the phrase profession of faith. They don't say 10,000 people were saved or 10,000 people became Christians because I don't know if they became Christians. I hope they did.
I pray they did. But only time will tell, right? Because the Bible says by their fruits you shall know them. The Bible says faith without works is dead. So we're praying we'll see the fruit spiritually in their life. The results, the works that follow a true conversion.
Because it's not enough to just come forward. We need to go forward spiritually and then we continue to grow as followers of Jesus Christ. That's really what the Christian life is. It's a lifetime of discovery. It's a lifetime of growth. It's a lifetime of learning.
It's a lifetime of transformation. Last Sunday I was at our church, Harvest Kumulani. And they all say aloha to you. And we had a great time there. It's just exploding. So much excitement. And every week we're seeing people come to Christ.
It's an amazing thing. So I attended a number of board meetings while I was there. By board meetings I mean on surfboards. And I'm a really bad surfer by the way. I never surf in California but when I'm over there a lot of people from our church get up very early in the morning and go out for what is called a dawn patrol.
Right? Very early. And so it's so cool because you're out with like 15 people from our church and everyone is giving waves away and cheering each other on. God bless you you know. Not fighting for waves or anything like that. So I've been trying to learn how to do stand up paddle. Do you know what I'm talking about? As opposed to laying down at a board and paddling with your arms.
Stand up. You have this really big board and a paddle and you paddle into waves. And it's been challenging I have to admit because I'm not very stable.
I fall a lot. And so when I caught a few waves and I even got a little watch. There's this little digital watch and it will tell you how many waves you caught. I have a friend named Jim who always tells me how many waves he caught. He says, look I caught 27 waves. So I got my wave watch on and after I was done I looked at it and the screen said, seriously? And what is this? And then I pressed a button and it said, such a loser. I couldn't believe that so I disabled the mockery.
No this is not true. I think I caught seven waves and that's really being generous. But here's what I discovered. You catch the wave. You're in the wave. You're riding the wave in. And then when the momentum of the wave stops you slow down and that's where I always fall. And so you got to keep paddling.
You got to really dig in once the wave has stopped to turn around and go catch another wave. And so I discovered stall and you fall. Hey listen what is true of stand up paddle is also true of the Christian life.
Stall and you fall. The Christian life is one of constant growth. Constant learning as I said.
Constant transformation. But here's the problem. Some will make what I would call a profession of faith. They'll pray a prayer. Because maybe they want to get well fire insurance. They don't want to go to hell when they die.
So they want to cover that base. I mean they're willing to take Jesus as their Savior but not necessarily as their Lord. They're willing to take on Christ as their friend but not necessarily as their God and they stay in sort of this baby like state. You know babies are cute. I love babies don't you. Every now and then I get to dedicate babies. And you never know what a baby will do.
That's the fun part. I've had them throw up on me before of course while I'm praying for them. And now as I have been doing this for a while I'm meeting more people that are young adults and sometimes not even that young that will say you dedicated me when I was a baby.
And I'm looking up at them going wow. So you know babies are cute when they're babies. But babies have to be cared for.
Initially you have to nurse a baby. Then the baby learns how to eat soft foods and then you cut the food up into little bite sized pieces for them. And one day the baby picks up a spoon or a fork and they start learning how to feed themselves and they get more food on them than in them. And I feel sorry sometimes for servers and restaurants after a toddler has been in there. You look under the high chair there's just mounds of food everywhere splattered up against the wall on the ceiling you know. That's a little baby learning how to eat.
It's ok. It's cute. That's what babies do. That's how babies roll actually.
But it would be sad if someone was still behaving that way when they're in their twenties. Right. You still have to feed them and you still have to make airplane noises when you're coming in with a bite to keep their attention.
Alright. Well what is true of babies can also be true of us as we grow spiritually. We all start out as babies. We all start out with a hunger for the Word. In fact the Bible says in 1 Peter 2 as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow thereby.
And by the way there's no shame in that. That very hunger for spiritual truth is an indicator of spiritual health. Because a healthy person is a hungry person. If you're not feeling well and you go to see your doctor one of the first things they'll ask you is are you hungry? How's your appetite? Well I'm always hungry so I know I'm in good health right now. I'm perpetually hungry.
I don't know if I'm alone in this. But that's true spiritually too. If you're hungry for God's Word. If you want to hear God's Word that is a good thing.
It's something you should be desiring. And if you're a young Christian. If you're brand new in the faith I'm so glad you're here because we're here to help you grow up spiritually. Here's the objective. We want to take you from getting your food in bite sized pieces and that's effectively what a sermon is.
I sort of prepare it and cut it up and give it to you. But we want to teach you how to read the Word of God. Process its truth.
Learn how to think and then live biblically. On my granddaughter Ally. She has lost a couple of her front teeth. And so she has a really hard time eating like a nectarine. She loves nectarines. So she'll always say to my wife Nama. That's what she calls Kathy. Would you cut the nectarine up so she can eat it?
She doesn't ask me. Because when I cut a nectarine up it's a scary sight. I don't know why it mystifies me. How these slices are so perfect and minor.
All strange shapes and I don't know. It's crazy. But she needs it cut up in bite sized pieces. That's what we all need initially. But then we need to grow up. You know when I was a young person in school I had many teachers say to me, Greg Laurie will you just grow up? Because I was always acting like a little kid.
And sadly I just heard this yesterday from my wife and a grandchild. Because what happened was we ate dinner and there was a store that had just closed their doors and there were still some sales people in there. I shouldn't even admit this.
I don't know why I'm saying it. You know there are people in there. My wife is standing there looking in. My grandkids are looking in. So I knocked on the window and then ran off. And so everybody turned.
There's my wife standing there. She says, Greg will you just grow up. Stop acting like a sixth grader. And then my granddaughter Riley said, Papa you're a pastor. You shouldn't be acting like a sixth grader. And she was right of course.
It's time to grow up. Is the term disciple synonymous with believer? Is every believer a disciple? Pastor Greg answers that important question in just a moment.
Hey everyone. I want you to know about our app called Harvest Plus. Think of it as a Harvest version of Netflix.
We have all of our resources in one place. We have our movies like Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon, Johnny Cash, The Redemption of an American Icon, A Rush of Hope, and much more. Then we have our television program, Daily Devotions, and much more.
So go and download the Harvest Plus app. Well, Pastor Greg continues now with his kickoff message from the new series, Discipleship, The Road Less Taken. Discipleship is all about growing up. It's about going to the next level if you will. It's about really living the Christian life to its fullest. Living the Christian life as it was meant to be lived. It's called being a disciple.
Then in turn going out and making disciples of others. That brings us to our first passage. Matthew 28. These are the words of Jesus.
Now these are familiar words. Words that many of us have even committed to memory. But I want you to consider the fact that these were the last words of Christ before He left earth. This is after the crucifixion. He is risen again from the dead.
And He is going to ascend into heaven now. So this is the final charge from the Lord. You know last words matter. If someone is on their death bed and they have one last statement we always want to know what it was. There is an emphasis on last words.
And so these are the last words of Christ to us. And they are a charge. They are a command. They are a commission.
That is why we call this the Great Commission. Matthew 28 verse 16. Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus told them to go. And when they saw Him they worshiped Him.
But some of them doubted. Jesus said to His disciples, I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you and be sure of this.
I am with you always, even to the end of the age. There it is. We are all commanded to go and make disciples.
But listen to this. It takes one to make one. So we say we should go make disciples.
Right. Let me ask you this question. Are you doing that? Are you fulfilling the Great Commission? Are you making disciples of others? You say well I am not really sure what that means. Good.
That is what we are going to talk about. Because before you can make a disciple you have to be a disciple. Sort of like when you fly and you are seated there and they are going through the routine of what to do in case you lose altitude and you need to use your oxygen masks. And so they will say if the oxygen mask should come down put it if you are traveling with the child put it on yourself first and then on the child.
That seems counterintuitive. It seems like oh man if we are losing altitude I should take the mask and put it on the child first and then put the needs of the child. No. First. No.
Put it on yourself first because I can't help the child if I am blacking out. Right. The same is true in discipleship. I can't help somebody else be a disciple of Jesus if I am not first a disciple myself. Again it takes one to make one.
So listen to this. While it is true that not every person who makes a profession of faith is a Christian it is equally true that not every Christian is a disciple. Let me put it another way. Every disciple is a Christian but not every Christian is necessarily a disciple. Let me say that again. Every disciple is a Christian but not every Christian is necessarily a disciple. So you should not say well this doesn't apply to me.
I am happy with fire insurance and I will leave it at that. No. If you are a true follower of Jesus you should want to be a disciple. And I am asking you this question. How many of you are disciples of Jesus? So let me ask you this question.
How many of you would consider yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ? Raise up your hand. Ah.
You didn't all raise your hand. Because you know I ask trick questions don't you? Yeah. Well I think I am. But I want to see where He is going and then I will decide if I am a disciple. And you know that is ok. That just shows you are actually very smart.
That is all that shows. But really every one of us should be able to say I am a disciple. Not a perfect disciple. Not someone who has this totally down but I am a growing disciple of Jesus.
And everyone should be a disciple of Jesus. Because really what is discipleship? It is living the Christian life as it was meant to be lived. Discipleship is living the Christian life as Jesus taught it. As the early church understood it.
It is real Christianity. But I think some are reluctant to want to live that way because it seems well radical. That is why I call this series discipleship the road less taken. Because some don't want hardship. They don't want a challenge. They don't want difficulty. So they take the path of least resistance instead of discipleship road.
And listen to this. Discipleship road is challenging but it is fulfilling. It is hard but it is more than worth it. Because as I said it is living the Christian life as it was meant to be lived. And so here is what it comes down to. Every one of us should be a disciple. And then as a disciple we should either be being discipled by someone more mature than us or we should be discipling someone less mature than us. Every one of us should either be being discipled or discipling someone else. Really what it comes down to is you take a new believer under your wing. You are hoping them to grow spiritually as you teach for them and model for them what a Christian looks like.
Or you should be being discipled by someone more mature than yourself. I will tell you what. Right after I accepted Christ on my high school campus I could have fallen through the cracks so easily. And some guy I had never met before walked up to me. I have told you about him before. His name was Mark. And Mark effectively discipled me. He said, Greg I am going to take you to church.
And he did. And then he took me home and I met his parents and we had Bible studies around the dinner table. And he kind of helped me get to that rough spot. And then I started hungering for it myself and pretty soon I found myself doing it for others.
Can you be that for someone else? If you know someone that accepted Christ I hope you will seek them out and say, I want you to come to church with me. And I want you to go out to lunch with us after church. And I want to help you grow spiritually.
That is what people need. And not everyone is a disciple who claims to be a Christian. You know it is interesting. When Christ walked our planet He spent a lot of time with those 12 handpicked disciples. Matthew 5 we read, One day as the crowds were gathering Jesus went up to a mountainside with His disciples and He sat down to teach them. And this is what He taught them. And after that comes a sermon on the mouth. So we envision Jesus on the sermon on the mouth speaking to the multitudes. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are they meek. Now that message was given to His disciples who were gathered around them you see. So the point is that He took time with these guys.
He spent time with these guys. And the basic definition of the word disciple means a learner. You are a learner. You are someone that is listening and you are processing. And these disciples listened and followed Him around. And there are sort of like three phases we can go through. And I was reading a book on discipleship written by Dwight Pentecost.
It is out of print now. But the title of it is Design for Discipleship. So I borrowed this from him.
I wanted to give him credit. He had three words he used to describe different phases of where people are at spiritually. The three words were curious, convinced, and committed. And you fit into one of these categories today.
Category number one. Curious. Jesus had a lot of curious people gather around Him. Especially when He performed a miracle.
And by the way His most popular miracle was when He multiplied the fish and loaves. I mean healing blind people. That is awesome. Restoring deaf to those that can't hear. Fantastic. Curing a leper.
Amazing. Free lunch. Now we are talking. So when Jesus would show up the crowds would show up. They would listen to Him. But it wouldn't really impact them for the most part.
They would go on back home as they did before. So we would classify those people as curious. And that may be you. You are here today. You are curious.
I will go to church today. But some of you have already mentally checked out. You know you are updating social media. You are looking around for Pokeman still.
Even though that is long over with. You are still looking for him. Or you are distracted. You are curious but not that curious. You are already checking your watch and planning your exit plan.
But then there is the next level which is interesting. It is convinced. It is convinced. In other words you believe these things are true. You would sit here today and say, Greg I actually agree with everything you are saying.
It is all true. Now maybe it doesn't impact you personally but you give intellectual assent to it. Which is an important step. So that is being convinced.
Here is an interesting passage. We read that the first miracle Jesus did turning water into wine. In Cana of Galilee in John 2.11 it says, He did that miracle and His disciples believed in Him.
Wait. What? His disciples believed. I thought they were already believers.
Well they were in a sense. See they had gone from curious to convinced. They were so convinced they were starting to follow Him. But at that point at that miracle they went from convinced to committed. Have you?
Have you gone from convinced to committed? You say well what does it mean? What it means is it impacts you and the way that you live. And you say now I want to be a disciple and I want to make disciples of others. Pastor Greg Laurie with good counsel today on the importance of discipleship. It's the first message in a new series called discipleship the road less taken.
And there's more to come here on A New Beginning. So curious, convinced, committed. In your heart of hearts where are you on that journey? If you've never taken the step of coming to the Lord to have your sins forgiven and asking Him to be your Savior, you can do that today. Pastor Greg what would you say to someone listening who's at that point right now?
I would say that God is just a prayer away. You know it doesn't take years to become a Christian. It doesn't take months. Frankly it doesn't even take hours.
It can happen so quickly. It just starts with you saying to God I know I'm a sinner. I know that you love me. I know that you sent Jesus to die on the cross for my sin and pay for those sins. And then to rise again from the dead and I want Him to come into my life. So here's my question to you.
Have you done that yet? Because Jesus who did die on that cross and rose again from the dead three days later is alive and standing at the door of your life right now and He's knocking. And He's saying if you'll hear my voice and open the door I will come in. Would you like your sin forgiven? Would you like to know that when you die you will go to heaven?
Do you want Christ to come into your life right now? If so why don't you just stop whatever it is you're doing and pray this prayer with me. You can pray it out loud. You can pray it in the quietness of your own heart. But pray this prayer to God. Say Lord Jesus I know that I am a sinner. But I know that you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. I'm sorry for my sin and I turn from it now.
And I choose to follow you from this moment forward. I ask all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Listen if you just prayed that prayer the Bible promises that God has heard your prayer and has answered that prayer. The Bible says that we will confess our sin. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So God bless you.
You've made the right decision. The decision to follow Jesus Christ. Yeah that's right and listen as you begin to live this new life we want to send you something to help you get started off right. It's Pastor Greg's New Believers Bible.
It's an easy to understand translation plus hundreds and hundreds of study helps especially for those who are new to the faith. Millions of people have been helped by this resource. So get in touch for your own New Believers Bible. We'll send it your way free of charge. Just call us at 1-800-821-3300.
That's 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org and click Know God. Well Pastor Greg we're excited to hear from so many people who tell us how they're enjoying the new animated cartoon series called The Adventures of Ben Born Again and Yellow Dog. One listener said my granddaughter loved the first installment.
She's watched it about five times already. We can't wait for more. Let me ask you what cartoons did you watch the most when you were a kid? Can you remember?
Oh yeah sure. Well I watched all kinds of cartoons. I watched all the Looney Tunes because they were on television you know Dappy Duck and Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. I really liked the Road Runner and I don't know why I liked him so much but maybe there was less dialogue and just more funny things happening and Wile E. Coyote.
Of course big fan of that. I also would watch all the Hanna-Barbera cartoons. I loved the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Hey Boo Boo. And I also liked the Peanuts cartoons. They started to animate those in the 60s and I was a big fan of the Peanuts cartoon strip and I even corresponded by letter with Charles M. Schultz the creator of Peanuts and he graciously responded to me on more than one occasion. So I just liked all kinds of cartoons.
I also liked the Pink Panther. There was hardly any dialogue but I just thought it was a hilarious cartoon. In fact I downloaded it recently and I was showing it to my grandkids.
I'm not sure that it aged perfectly. They sort of looked at it rather quizzically like okay what? But yes I watched so many cartoons on television and I was a real cartoon aficionado. Just yesterday I was showing one of the Ben Bournegan cartoons on my phone to a lady who was not a native English speaker. So sometimes there's a little bit of a communication breakdown but I'll tell you what that cartoon she understood everything. She understood it perfectly and was even repeating the words as they were unfolding and I was amazed at the power of art and animation to bridge the gap and reach someone.
Who maybe wasn't familiar with English or also to reach a child. And so I'm always looking for new ways to engage new people. As I've said before we want to reach unexpected people in unexpected places with an unexpected message. So we do this through our films, we do it through animation, we do it just through our general radio ministry. So often I'll have people say I was just flipping you know the dial on my radio and came across your program and they didn't even know they were listening to it first. They thought it was some kind of a really awful comedian speaking and then they realized it was a preacher. But I've heard stories of these people coming to Christ and so it's sort of like fishing.
You just throw your nets out, you throw your line out just hoping you get a bite because there's so many people that are searching for truth. And I want to go out there and get to where they are and reach them with the only truth that can change their life. So this month we're offering a special resource called the Ben Born Again New Believers Growth Book. This is a brand new resource, we've had a version of it out for years but we have revisited it, rebuilt it and redrawn it with these new characters. Ben Born Again and Yellow Dog and we'll offer it to you for your gift of any size. This would be a great resource to share with your child or with your grandchild. And I encourage you when you order this New Believers Growth Book that you are generous.
Because that enables us to continue to come your way on our radio broadcasts, through our podcasts, through all of our other ways of communication and also through animation. So whatever you send will be used to continue to bring the gospel to our generation. And in advance let me say thank you. Yeah, yeah that's right we're very grateful. So get in touch right away with your investment and as the Lord leads ask about becoming a Harvest Partner.
One of the faithful inner circle of our friends who support us each month. And then let us thank you tangibly with our new Ben Born Again New Believers Growth Book. You can call us anytime 24-7 at 1-800-821-3300. That's 1-800-821-3300.
Or go online to Harvest.org. Well next time Pastor Greg offers more good counsel for those of us reluctant to stand up and be counted as one of the Lord's own. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher, Greg Laurie. This is the day, the day when life begins. The preceding podcast was made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. Learn how to become a Harvest Partner, sign up for daily devotions and find resources to help you grow in your faith at Harvest.org.
