Disciples and Faith Sharing

October 23 – Disciple-Making Leads to Justice and Faith-Sharing – Acts 2:42-47; Galatians 5:22

Outside of disciple-making, evangelism becomes an awkward ministry that we feel we must do to grow our churches. However, we never truly own and live into evangelism because faith-sharing is not a natural part of our spiritual DNA. The path of discipleship leads to organic and authentic evangelism. The result of evangelism is not new members, but more people living out of their real and lasting lives and joining God’s rescue mission through the church.

Read Acts 2:42–47.

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

 Read Galatians 5:22.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control

The Acts passage gives the reader a great description of the essentials needed to grow disciples of Jesus. The key essentials are worship, fellowship, learning, and serving. This community produces people who live together the life of Jesus.

Galatians gives us an account of what the life of a follower of Christ looks like. Read again the fruit of the Spirit. It’s interesting that a certain kind of community (Acts 2:42–47) produces a certain kind of people (Galatians 5:22).

Discipleship is so much more than simply learning about God. Discipleship is about a relationship with God. Earlier we talked about how the Jewish people in Jesus’ day had a way of knowing God. Their elementary-school experience involved memorizing the first five books of the Bible. That’s right—they memorized Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy! Middle school was about memorizing the rest of what we know as the Old Testament. Then, the best and the brightest would apply to learn from a rabbi. If the rabbi believed the student could live his life and take on his yoke, then the rabbi would invite the student to follow and learn from him. A student not yoked to a rabbi would learn the family business.

Where did Jesus find his disciples? They were already at work in the family business. They were not the best of the best! But Jesus invited them to take on his yoke because he believed they could live his life. Jesus believes that we can live his life! He believes that we can serve others and share our faith in ways that change our communities and world. God gives us a community in which we can grow up to live Jesus’ life.