I'm a Disciple

Pre-Note: Sing the above title of this post to the tune of Destiny's Child 'I'm a Survivor', guaranteed to make your booty shake ;)

So we've talked about Salvation and what it means to be saved but what comes next?
Do we just accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour and then go ahead and everything is rosy from then on in?
Unfortunately no, just because we accept that Jesus is the Son of God and Lord and Saviour of our life doesn't mean that we automatically walk around with halos above our heads constantly singing choir songs. (Some of us do that anyway but it's definitely not a pre-requisite for being a Christian).
We live in a broken world with broken people and we've still got a lot to learn. We might still have a lot of healing to do ourselves, we might still have bad habits we need to break and we are needed in other people's lives as well. We need to gain insight, discover the specific gifts God has given us and work out what God wants us to do with our lives.
In order to do this we gotta follow Jesus' example and in order to know what Jesus did we gotta learn about him. We gotta be students of Jesus.

In old Jewish Culture (that is still alive and pumping in many different forms today) a young man of about 12 years old would start learning from a Rabbi every day in the Synagogue. So essentially a Rabbi would be an older teacher that would be wise in the Scriptures (part of what is the bible today) that would have younger followers walking in his footsteps and doing life with him every day so they could learn from him. The Synagogue was like a church.
This is what Jesus did and then he became a Rabbi himself with followers (disciples) until his death.
In order for us to be disciples of Jesus we need to walk with Jesus through prayer and through reading our bibles (the scriptures) every day.

We need to make sure our influence is Jesus and not let other things in life like negative people and peer pressure get in the way. That is essentially what the point of discipleship is, learning to listen to God in life, not other negative influences.

But, remember, discipleship is not easy. It is a challenge that can involve pain and difficulty at times...

Take a moment to think about how you learn in life. How did you learn to ride a bike? How did you learn to kick a footy? How did you learn to read and write?
We learn by watching and copying others. When we are in school sometimes we learn stuff by being told but it never really comes real for us until we do it...
Like getting your driver's license. You read the book on the road rules, you might even read a car manual to learn how to operate a car, someone might even tell you what to do. You sit for your L's, you get all your Give Way questions right and you're given your license with a cute photo of you on it. But that doesn't mean you know how to drive right? It's not until you get behind the wheel of a car that you learn (really quickly for most of us) how to steer, how much pressure we need to put on the brakes and remembering to use our indicators...

If we have a bad driving instructor we're going to make some serious mistakes when we get out on the road. It could end in us being in a car accident that might even lead to our death! So we need to make sure we choose a good instructor, someone we trust and someone that's going to care about us if we make a mistake.
The same can be said for our lives...
Choosing good role models in our lives is really important. Who we follow will determine what kind of people we will be. It's really important we follow people who are good, who we trust and who care about us no matter what happens...

Think about it, pray about it...