Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] God's plans are really good in our. For our lives. Yeah.
[00:00:09] Romans 8, verse 31 says, if our God is for us, who can be against us? And the Israelites were a testimony to this. They saw that if they followed God's plans, they obeyed his laws, and they did as he said. Things were pretty hunky dory for them, but the minute they turned their backs from. From God and they decided to try and do things their own way, that protection that off. The protection that God offered to them would fall away and the other nations would come along and that they would oppress them. And so God appointed these judges, these leaders to help lead the Israelites back to his safety each time. And if we were to read the Bible from COVID to cover. If you flick back one page in your Bible to Judges 21, verse 25, it says these words. In those days, Israel had no king and everyone did as they saw fit.
[00:00:57] Are we not living in those same days? The days where people are choosing for themselves what is good and what is evil based on their own wishes and feelings? The days where each of us are doing as we see fit, rather than looking to the Scriptures, God's very words, to shape and mold our lives around the way we behave, our purpose, our beliefs.
[00:01:18] James Emory White is a really insightful Christian author. I really like him. But he describes this idea of autonomous individualism, which is the idea that each person is independent in terms of their identity and their accountability.
[00:01:31] It's this idea that each person answers solely to themselves and that we live how we live our lives is determined by our own personal pleasure. And if it doesn't harm anyone, then it's okay to go about and do that.
[00:01:43] But we know that as Christians, we answer to a higher authority, which is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and his name is Jesus.
[00:01:51] And as a society, we've decided truth can be whatever someone wants it to be. And as for Christians, it leaves us in this tricky position where we're trying to sift through what the world is saying through this sieve of the Holy Spirit to work out actually how are we meant to live our lives? What is the truth?
[00:02:09] Jesus says this about himself in John 14, verse 6. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
[00:02:17] No one can come to the Father except through me.
[00:02:21] Jesus tells us so clearly he's the only way worth following.
[00:02:26] He's the only truth worth acknowledging, the only life worth living. And we're called to be his disciples, someone who is deep dedicated to following him wholeheartedly, sold out.
[00:02:39] We're called to follow his example, to live and model our lives on how he lived. We're called to live counterculturally, set apart holy and righteous for the sake of seeing God's kingdom here on earth, for the sake of the truth.
[00:02:55] And this is the truth.
[00:02:57] God loved this world so much he sent his Son Jesus as a vulnerable baby to grow up and experience the highs and lows of humanity. To then be sentenced to death on a cross as a price for our brokenness and sin. Sin he was tempted by but did not succumb to. Sin he did not deserve, but chose willingly to bear so that through his death and resurrection, we might encounter the freedom of living on this earth and spend spending eternity with him. God in his power.
[00:03:32] Before Jesus returned to the Father, he left his followers with one final command for them to follow. And you can find it in all four Gospels and the Book of Acts. So we know this command. He's not messing around with. He's really serious about this. And this is how it's recorded in Matthew's gospel, chapter 28, verse 19 to 20. Therefore go and make disciples of all, all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, not just some things, not just the things that fits our view of how the world should look. All things.
[00:04:09] And it says, surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.
[00:04:15] The command is not just to tell people about Jesus, but to shape people to look more like Jesus. It's not about getting a boatload of people who just believe Jesus was real, but it's about raising people whose lives are completely transformed, sold out for the kingdom of God. Because Jesus is alive today and he is coming back for a glorious bride very, very soon.
[00:04:35] The truth and reality of the Gospel is that it's not just nice words to live by, it's somebody to live for.
[00:04:42] The truth of the gospel is so radical that it should not just make us nice people people, it should make us righteous people.
[00:04:49] The purpose of discipleship is to encourage and help one another to both follow the way of Jesus, but also to reflect Jesus to the world around us by the way we think behave, interact with both our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also those we're praying in to be part of our family and those who might never make that decision.
[00:05:10] Hebrews 10:24:25 captures it this. It says, let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Not giving up meeting Together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
[00:05:29] So as Christians, if the goals are to encourage one another in love and good deeds and to reveal Christ to the world around us, how are we going to do this? Well, what is discipleship? How do we do it?
[00:05:41] And the first thing I want to bring is that I believe discipleship starts in relationships.
[00:05:46] John 13:34, 35 says, A new command I give to you. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
[00:05:56] By this, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another.
[00:06:01] Jesus himself recognized that through love and relationship that discipleship is evidenced as I have loved you. We need to start with our relationship with God. How are we supposed to be a follower of Jesus if we don't actually know who he is?
[00:06:17] God loves you. If you take nothing else from this morning, you have to hear, God loves you without condition, without you having to do anything, without measure. God loves you. Jeremiah 31:3 says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I've drawn you with unfailing kindness. Before you were born, before you even heard the name Jesus, he loved you and there's nothing you can do about it.
[00:06:43] He loves you so much. When you love someone, there's an outward expression of that love. And God's outward expression to us was sending Jesus to the cross.
[00:06:54] Choosing to accept his love is the best decision you will ever make.
[00:06:58] It continues to be the best decision for so many of us in this room. It's the best decision I ever made. Jesus is the love of my life. He is incredible. He is awesome in power.
[00:07:09] He continues to pour out his love on us day in, day out.
[00:07:13] But love in relationship works both ways. If James and I didn't spend any time with one another, I'm just putting that out there. If we didn't spend any time with one another, our relationship would suffer. The we wouldn't be united in our plans for the future. We'd likely be raising and heading for a pretty failed marriage. Which is why we have to put date night in the diary on a regular basis in order to spend time with each other. But relationships require a commitment and investment from both parties. God is always ready for us, but sometimes we can neglect our relationship with Him.
[00:07:45] The Bible is really clear about the way we show our love and affection for God.
[00:07:50] John 14, verse 15 says this. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
[00:07:56] It's pretty simple.
[00:07:58] If you love me, keep My commandments.
[00:08:02] How are we going to know what his commandments are?
[00:08:04] Big old book called the Bible. We've got the word of God to tell us exactly how we ought to live.
[00:08:10] Friends, we need to start to pick up our Bibles again and read it for ourselves. We need to be feeding our spirit rather than our flesh so we can remain strong in the Lord and in who he says we are. We need to be prioritizing and organizing our days around when we're going to be spending time with God, not just fitting it in or squeezing in an hour. Our day should revolve around the time we are spending with God. And I appreciate we are all really busy people, but isn't God worth it?
[00:08:38] Isn't eternity with him worth it?
[00:08:41] We need to start picking up these spiritual practices, meditating on the Word, day and night, prayer, fasting, worship that we're reminded of on a Sunday, but we can so often neglect during the week.
[00:08:53] If we're going to be disciples of Jesus ourselves and to disciple others to be more like Jesus, we have to spend time with him and he needs to be our priority.
[00:09:04] And Ruth understood this. You can't follow somebody that you don't know. When Naomi tells Ruth to return to Moab to find another husband, Ruth gives this really moving speech to Naomi where she says, wherever you go, I will go, and your God will be my God. Ruth trusts and knows that then Naomi and therefore trusts the God she serves.
[00:09:28] Ruth chooses. In this moment, she's going to invest into understanding the God of Israel, even if that means saying goodbye to some of her religious practices. Even if it means saying goodbye to comfort idols in her life and traditions. She's going to have to give up the things which have given her purpose and fulfillment for so long. But I can tell you here, here and now, Jesus is the only one that can ever fully satisfy us. He's the only one that can give us absolute purpose in our lives.
[00:09:54] Aren't we willing to let go of some things for ourselves that we have maybe become distracted by? In order to pursue Jesus as a disciple of him, we can trade the things of this world for the one true God.
[00:10:09] Our relationship with God has to come first. Secondly, our relationship with others.
[00:10:15] When we truly understand the truth of God's love for us and how he sees us. This has a direct correlation with the way we see ourselves.
[00:10:23] When we understand that God has called us son and daughter, it shifts our perspective. It improves our sense of self, our mental health, our identity. Because we need to stop relying on external validation and the narrative of other people around us, and instead find freedom and acceptance in the love of the Father.
[00:10:43] And Naomi, I believe she lost sight of herself for a little while.
[00:10:47] When her and Ruth return to Bethlehem, the crowd are surprised to see her, and they say, amongst each other, can this be Naomi? But Naomi, she turns to them. In chapter one, verse 2021, she says, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara. Because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord had brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.
[00:11:12] But the name God had given her was Naomi, which means pleasantness, delightfulness.
[00:11:19] And then as she's saying here, she's saying, I want to be called Mara. I want to be known for my bitterness. But what I love in this bit of the story is if you read the book of Ruth, you'll see that nobody calls her Mara, they just call her Naomi.
[00:11:35] Your circumstances, whatever you go through, whether it be the highs and lows, when we go through sickness, grief, trauma, it can feel really hard to remember the goodness of God in our lives because everything around us feels so overwhelming and heavy. But your name doesn't change who you are, doesn't change because God doesn't change. And he has called you son and he has called you daughter.
[00:11:59] We aren't alone when we go through hard things. The psalms are full of David crying out to God for him to save him, pouring out his emotions and turmoil before God.
[00:12:08] Part of being human is going through hard things.
[00:12:12] You can do hard things because Jesus went to the cross for us and did it before us.
[00:12:20] We can choose whether we let the hard times make our hearts hard.
[00:12:24] We can choose whether we're going to believe God is still good or whether we're going to allow ourselves to doubt his compassion towards us.
[00:12:33] The women in the story, they don't call her Mara, but instead they listen to her hurts, her frustrations, her pains. But they choose to affirm the identity God had placed on her.
[00:12:45] And this is where I believe fellowship and disciples can support us to have a positive relationship with ourself.
[00:12:52] My brother and I.
[00:12:55] Thirdly, we need to protect our relationships with one another. My brother and I growing up, we would have these big.
[00:13:01] I don't want to say punch ups, but they were punch ups at home, these big old blowouts.
[00:13:06] And it was quite common for us to fall out with one another. But if anybody said a bad word against my brother in school, there would be an uproar from within me, and I would defend him wholeheartedly. And so, just like in our biological families, there's gonna be times where we don't always get on with the people around us.
[00:13:24] We're going to get things wrong. We're human, we make mistakes. Who's made a mistake this week?
[00:13:29] Yeah, we're human. We make mistakes.
[00:13:32] And this is the same for our church family.
[00:13:35] We will let people down. Sometimes we'll disagree, sometimes it might be difficult to forgive, but this is part of authentic family life. As part of the church family, we must show grace when someone gets it wrong. If we do not show compassion and grace towards one another in our moments of weakness, disunity begins to creep into the body.
[00:13:57] In 1 Corinthians, Paul warns the church of this. He says, I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you would be perfectly united in mind and thought.
[00:14:14] And as a young adult group, we're going through a study on the book of Acts. And what I was reading this week, which I absolutely loved, was that in Acts 2, verse 34, when it talks about the early church, it says all the believers were together and they had everything in common.
[00:14:30] Everything.
[00:14:31] Not just some things, all things. And I don't think that's because they had the same interests, hobbies or anything like that. James is incredibly into airsoft. Not for me. I prefer my arts and crafts and sticking bits of pretty washi tape. But I think it's more that they didn't have the same interests and lifestyles, but rather they were so fixated on Jesus that anything which might cause disagreement among them just fell away.
[00:14:57] They were so fixed on the son of God that anything which could cause division just kind of slipped away.
[00:15:06] Someone asked chatgpt if they were Satan, what they might do to make people distance themselves from God. And this is what they said. It would create divisions. It would ferment division within families, churches, communities over doctrinal issues, politics and social matters.
[00:15:23] Division leads to bitterness and strife, which weakens faith and unity in the church.
[00:15:28] And it's so easy to let bitterness creep into our lives. We see it with Naomi that she says that she wants to be called bitterness and had this bitten has not been dealt with, it would have been stuck in the community and would have began to rot. The good things that God was doing there.
[00:15:44] Proverbs 16, verse 28 says, A perverse person stirs up conflict And a gossip separates close friends.
[00:15:51] We need to be careful about what we're speaking amongst one another. Des spoke about it last week how we have to tame our tongue to ensure we're using it to build one another up rather than tear each other down. Let's choose to be united with one another in Christ.
[00:16:06] Let's be willing to do life alongside one another, to pray for each other, to encourage one another in the adventures of God, to let aside our own pride, our own personal agendas and that get in the way of displaying a unified and loving family of God to the world around us.
[00:16:24] So we have to get these free relationships right with God, ourselves and others so that discipleship is more likely to be sustained.
[00:16:33] And I want to talk a little bit about what I believe discipleship actually looks like from looking at the story of Ruth. I'm a children's and family social worker during the week, so you'll have to excuse a little bit of child development theory, but there's a social learning theorist called Albert Bandura, and he says that children learn best by following four simple attention, retention, reproduction and motivations. Or in other words, imitation.
[00:17:01] If discipleship is the process of learning to love and follow Jesus and becoming more like him in our attitudes and actions, the best way for us to be like him is to imitate Him.
[00:17:13] Ephesians 5:1:2 says, Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us, gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
[00:17:28] And we've talked about how we need to prioritize that relationship with God and spending time in His Word to learn more about who he is and how it applies to our lives.
[00:17:36] But we also need to learn how to pursue God for ourselves by looking up to those we trust who have done it first. In Paul's letters to the Philippians, he tells them, follow my example, brothers and sisters. And just as you have us as a model, meaning the apostles, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.
[00:17:55] The Church needs men and women, younger and older, to make a decision that they're going to follow the way of Jesus not just for themselves, and not just for the sake of those around them, but for the sake of a lost and broken generation that is out there. Others are looking at you to see how you think and how you act.
[00:18:13] Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, teenagers, young adults, children are looking at you and how you will walk the walk with God and they will copy your behaviors and what you do.
[00:18:26] We need to ask ourselves what kind of generation we are raising within our church.
[00:18:32] Parents, if you're prioritizing the practices of prayer and reading the scripture in your homes, your children will carry that into their future lives as adults.
[00:18:42] But also if you're prioritizing other things on a Sunday morning like sports, clubs or, or other events, I can tell you what your children are going to prioritize when they're older. And it's not going to be church and it's not going to be the way of Jesus.
[00:18:54] Proverbs 22, verse 6 says, Train up a child in the way they ought to go on, and when they're old, they won't depart from it. We learn through imitating those around us.
[00:19:04] I was watching Bryony and Hayden at a Monday night prayer a few weeks ago and Bryony was in this moment of worship with her arms outstretched towards God. And I watched Hayden look at his mum watch what she was doing and then screw his eyes shut and then go holy.
[00:19:21] And it was this beautiful, beautiful moment of a child imitating what those that have gone before have been bestowing into his life and modeling to him. We learn through imitation and through copying one another.
[00:19:36] And this is what I believe, the integration of generations and, and how it can be so beautiful. There's so much learning and wisdom that we can gain from being around those who are younger, older, or in the same place as us.
[00:19:48] In the story of Ruth, you have this intimate one to one relationship with Ruth and Naomi, these two women who have shared in the ordinary parts of life with they've shared their knowledge, their experiences, their grief, their encouragement during a really difficult time with one another.
[00:20:06] Naomi would have felt the love, would have felt loved by Ruth's insistence to go back with her to Bethlehem despite it not being in Ruth's best interests. She would have had support from Ruth to do some of the more demanding tasks that she was no longer able to do.
[00:20:20] But Naomi would have instructed her and shown her how to do those things. She would have enjoyed Ruth's company, her questions and stories from being out in the field all day. And she would have felt pride and fulfillment from watching her grow in the ways of God and seeing his plans and purposes come to fruition in her life.
[00:20:39] Naomi did not just give Ruth instruction, but honesty and a safe space for Ruth to process her own emotions and thoughts.
[00:20:47] Much of discipleship is about offering safe spaces for people to voice what they feel God is saying to them and to seek prompts and guidance about how they might pursue that Voice. Further discipleship is all about connection. It's not about control.
[00:21:05] Naomi never forces Ruth to do anything. She offers reflection, she offers her what she thinks would be best, but she doesn't force anything because Naomi is invested in connection. Ruth then comes home with stories of Boaz and she's willing to listen to Naomi, her mother in law, to say, what do I do about this man in the field?
[00:21:25] And Naomi is able to offer insight and wisdom into the situation because there's trust between them. There's that history.
[00:21:33] Naomi models to Ruth during this time how to grieve, how to go through hard times with God. She feels so heavy and low, but she's being brave and sharing this with the women around her. It's messy, it's real. It acknowledges that wrestling with God that each of us go through. When we go through difficult times, our young people, teenagers, young adults, what we need faithful Christian men and women who are willing to model and share the testimonies of how God has carried them through hard times. We're not interested in a feel good gospel. We're not interested in a fluffy gospel which says everything will be perfect because I'm a Christian, because that isn't the truth. The Bible doesn't promise us a pain free life, but instead it says, in this world you will have hardship, you will have tribulation.
[00:22:20] But Jesus promises that we can take heart because he has overcome the world.
[00:22:25] And we need to see men and women who are willing to be real about the hardships in this life, who will choose to hold to their faith so others can see the testimony that God is good through it all.
[00:22:38] And discipleship is not just about those further ahead speaking down to those coming up behind them. There's this duality of discipleship where we desperately need one another to learn and grow in our walks of God.
[00:22:50] I've learned so much from the mouths of children in Sunday school than I do from sitting in some of these main sessions. If you haven't found a place to serve or build community within the church, can I just encourage you find a place to serve, whether it be children's or welcome or refreshments or worship.
[00:23:07] When we have opportunities to serve, it automatically places us in a community which can grow our faith and our service of God.
[00:23:16] Been in church for a really long time and it's the same everywhere I go. It's the same few people that volunteer every single week to do the same things week in and week out. But as Christians, making disciples is a mandatory part of our faith.
[00:23:30] It shouldn't be something that we just do in our spare time. It's mandatory and I'm speaking to myself here too. I can become really comfortable in just turning up to the stuff which I feel like feeds me or that feels like it's gonna do something good for me. But actually when called to think less of ourselves and to think more for the needs and cares of others, there's a. Sometimes I can forget that there's a others needs within the church body and that they need people to come alongside and serve and minister to those leads. I want to make sure the legacy that I leave behind is that people knew I loved Jesus and that I was able to facilitate space space for others to love him too.
[00:24:10] When I was in youth there was probably a core group of us of probably about.
[00:24:16] Probably about 8 of US girls and we'd meet every single week for Bible studies. We'd turn up to youth on a Tuesday night it was at the time and our youth leaders would pour into us and then we'd do Bible study on a Friday night and then we'd do worship night on a Saturday night and then on Sunday we'd come in and we'd serve on different teams and then we go back to whoever's mum's house who'd cook all this amazing food for us. And you see in that model there are different men and women from the very youngest to the very oldest that are modeling what it looks like to give our all for Jesus.
[00:24:50] I can imagine that turning up to James mum's house every single month for 30 teenagers to eat you out of house and home probably wasn't what she would have done as preference on a Sunday.
[00:25:01] But because she loved Jesus and she knew that there was a generation that needed Jesus, she chose that on that Sunday she would feed 30 odd of us. And it was every single month probably for about five years she did it which was just incredible as an adult I get it now. The joy of serving, the joy of seeing young people become excited about Jesus and walking of the Holy Spirit.
[00:25:24] Those who discipled me as a young person were paramount to my walk with God.
[00:25:29] Their names are part of a history and legacy of my life.
[00:25:32] But my journey is far from done.
[00:25:35] As adults, we all need those who are ahead of us to speak into our lives and to offer wisdom and knowledge.
[00:25:42] Sue, a couple of questions for you to think about.
[00:25:45] Who are you discipling?
[00:25:48] What is the legacy that you want to leave behind?
[00:25:52] It's not just about who we're bringing up behind us, but discipleship. Is about those we present ourselves to to be taught and to imitate to ensure our own walks with God are reflective of the will and the way of Jesus.
[00:26:05] Are we humble enough to recognize that we need help and correction at times we need to be walking in humility. We need to be teachable. Because I'll be really honest, the older I get, the more I realize I really don't know it all.
[00:26:21] I thought that when I'd get into my 20s, everything would be hunky dory. I'd know exactly what I was doing with my life. I'd understand the will and the ways of Jesus like the back of my hand. But the reality is I'm still learning.
[00:26:33] I think we're all on that journey in this room. We're still learning what it looks like to be an authentic follower of Jesus.
[00:26:41] So another question. Who are you looking up to and who are you imitating?
[00:26:47] Ruth promised to be with Naomi no matter what.
[00:26:50] Ruth has encountered the truth of God Almighty through Naomi and is now so determined in her purpose to be with Naomi that she persists in telling her that she's not going anywhere.
[00:27:02] Discipleship is about the persistence and determination to follow Jesus wherever he may ask us to go. It's the sacrifice of setting aside our own personal dreams and agendas to make room for God's kingdom to be reflected through his way.
[00:27:18] Whatever God has in store for us, I want to hold onto it and embrace it wholeheartedly wherever it may take us. But we need people around us who will encourage us, teach us, support us in those God dreams on our lives.
[00:27:34] Ruth positioned herself so that she was able to be discipled.
[00:27:38] I encourage you to position yourself and to seek out someone that can speak into your own life, who can come alongside you and encourage you, who you give permission to offer correction and guidance and advice. Someone you trust.
[00:27:53] We all need it. Proverbs 19:20 says, Listen to advice, accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.
[00:28:03] How many of us want to be counted among the wise?
[00:28:07] The older I get, the more I realize I haven't got it all together.
[00:28:12] We need to be proactive in beginning to put healthy accountability around our lives so we might not fall short and that we would be rooted in church, family, kids, youth. You got one minute. I want you to listen up for you're never too young to have an encounter with Jesus.
[00:28:31] Start making your own history with God. Ruth didn't grow up knowing God. She encountered him through her mother in law and then made her own history with Him. Trusting God to guide her through grief, trusting him to provide for her as she was a single woman in society. And she would not have been able to provide for herself.
[00:28:49] She would have had to invest time into digging deep and wrestling with the big questions of life.
[00:28:55] God is big enough to handle your questions.
[00:28:59] We are all on this discipleship journey together, learning about what it looks like to follow Jesus and imitate his ways.
[00:29:07] Ruth turned to Naomi for opportunities, guidance, coaching, and reflection.
[00:29:12] Naomi turns to Ruth for companionship, purpose, and to pass on a legacy.
[00:29:20] The other women, they surround Naomi and Ruth. They show Ruth how to collect the fallen barley. They promote both women's identity and relationships with one another and with God Almighty.
[00:29:31] We all need one another in our discipleship journeys, from the very youngest to the very oldest.
[00:29:39] I want to create a little bit of reflection space and to be a bit of a family together in this. So bear with us. We're going to muddle through this together.
[00:29:48] But in the Old Testament, the musicians were given the responsibility of prophesying of the prophetic, but it said that they would be prophetic, but it would be accompanied by music. And so there's a song that I want us to listen to and play. And what I'd encourage us to do is gather with some people around you, and we want to declare this song that's going to come up in a minute over our church, over our communities that we're in, over those that haven't yet come through. We want to build family together. And this beautiful song, it's called the Church, and it talks about the unity of being one under Jesus. And if there's people that you don't normally go and pray with, can I encourage you to be really brave? Go and pray with those people? We don't want anyone to be left out of this. So we're going to. We're going to play this and we're going to pray with one another. And then I'll pray at the end and we'll close. Is that okay?
