Grace For Your Day January 18

Discipleship has been described as the act of simply telling someone about the Lord. It is the process of finding someone who knows less about Jesus than you do and showing them what you know. Sometimes it takes one shape and sometimes it takes another but the end result is always the same: you lead them closer to Christ.

To illustrate this, the story is told of how an anonymous woman once gave a Bible tract to Richard Baxter. He was instantly converted and went on to write a book called The Call of the Unconverted which was used to save a man named Philip Doddridge. Doddridge proceeded to write a book called The Rise and Progress of Religion which was used to lead William Wilberforce to the Lord. Wilberforce then published a work entitled A Practical View of Christianity which was used to save a man named Leigh Richmond who went on to write an evangelical tract called “The Dairyman’s Daughter” that helped to save hundreds.

The point is that this is how discipleship works. This is what it looks like. One person tells another about the Lord so that they can tell another and another. The Gospel is shared with lost souls so it can grow and spread.

This is important because it is what Jesus told us to do. Matthew 28:18-20 says,
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 

Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations which means that we are to leave no one out of this. We should reach out to everyone that we meet and He also told us to teach them all that He commanded which means that we should not leave anything out of the message. We should give people the entire Word of God. He also says that He will be with us “to the end of the age” implying that this is how long the discipleship process will take. It will continue until Jesus returns which is what we are going to talk about this week at Grace Fellowship Church.

As we continue our series on the government, this week we are going to talk about “The Role of the Church.” We are going to look at what God has called His people to do because you cannot understand the role of the government if you do not understand that. You cannot understand the job of one institution if you do not understand the job of the other and it is the church’s job to make disciples. We exist to tell people about the Lord.

The church does not exist to collect votes. It does not exist to create new laws. It does not exist to make money or get more power or build up its own military. It exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to to tell people about Jesus. It exists to lead them closer to Him. So much confusion could be avoided today if we would just go back to that and that is what we want to do this Sunday morning. Please join us as we look at this wonderful and insightful passage. The message will be pre-recorded and made available on our You Tube Channel. – Jeremy Cagle