And Discipleship Quotes & Sayings

The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And then, remarkably enough, even though he lives amongst a 'Christian people,' he incurs the same peril as he did when it was dangerous to openly confess Christ. And because of the follower's life, it will become evident who the admirers are, for the admirers will become agitated with him. Even these words will disturb many - but then they must likewise belong to the admirers. — Soren Kierkegaard

This is what the Apologists can teach us about the world, culture, and philosophy. The pendulum steadily swings between contempt and wonder. The aim is not compromise between these stances, rather we need both the extremes of the swing simultaneously. Each extreme taken on its own is too confined for Christian teaching, and so: neither unconditional rejection, nor unconditional embrace. — Dariusz Karlowicz

Luther had said that grace alone can save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation to discipleship ... The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid "rocking the boat," and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their influence has been limited to alterations at the margins. So, despite having the subcultural tools to call for radical changes in race relations, they most consistently call for changes in persons that leave the dominant social structures, institutions, and culture intact. This avoidance of boat-rocking unwittingly leads to granting power to larger economic and social forces. It also means that evangelicals' views to a considerable extent conform to the socioeconomic conditions of their time. — Christian Smith

Dallas Willard warns us too of the "cost of non-discipleship." We may be able to live with some pain, but when our whole self becomes more and more rotten, the cost is far greater than dealing with the problem as soon as possible. This is why I think following Jesus, though challenging, is much easier than following anything else. The world has nothing better to offer me. Jesus has come to right my wrongs and to make me refreshingly new. — Dallas Willard

You can't counter a heroic impulse with a mundane and bourgeois response. You can counter it only with a more compelling heroic vision. — David Brooks

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I had received Christ as my savior when I was a child, but I didn't know anything. I didn't have any knowledge. I didn't go to church. And I had a lot of problems, and I needed somebody to kind of help me along. And I think sometimes even people who want to serve God, if they have got so many problems that they don't think right and they don't act right and they don't behave right, they almost need somebody to take them by the hand and help lead them through the early years. And that's really what discipleship is. It's helping people. — Joyce Meyer

This wasn't a legalistic play. He simply wanted more and more of God. — Matt Chandler

The more loftily we see Christ enthroned, and the more lowly we are when bowing before the foot of the throne, the more truly shall we be prepared to act our part towards Him. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Alas! it is but little we have done for our Master's glory. Our winter has lasted all too long. We are as cold as ice when we should feel a summer's glow and bloom with sacred flowers. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Spend some personal time with Jesus and he will reveal himself to you on a deeper level. — Sandra M. Michelle

Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged. — San Juan De La Cruz

When the range and depth of the suffering of others and what we do to one another are no longer bothers us, nor moves us to remedy the situation and stop the pain, then we have lost a part of our own humanity, our own soul. — Megan McKenna

If colleges are going to justify themselves, they are going to have to thrive at those things that require physical proximity. That includes moral and spiritual development. Very few of us cultivate our souls as hermits. We do it through small groups and relationships and in social contexts. — David Brooks

The real key to accepting and enduring a particular trial or persecution, or to persevering victoriously through a certain period of suffering, is discipleship. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The overemphasis on standardized tests forces teachers to teach the same restricted, unintuitive curriculum. Longtime educator Brent Evans has said that today's schools are organized as assembly lines, "(running at a set speed) and with each worker (teacher) at designated places (way levels) on the assembly line performing predetermined actions on products (students) considered to be somewhat generic (one-size-fits-all) and passive (waiting to be filled or formed to the desired shape). — Brent Evans

Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about is our time. How much time do you spend complaining about your problems to people who can't help you solve them? How much time do you talk when you should be doing? When it comes to others, be gracious. But when it comes to you and your time, be ruthless. — Phil Cooke

The main focus of this group is to help bridge the gifts and abilities of the pastor (and other staff) and laity in the church. Building the bridges that will link the faithfulness of the past with the possibilities of the future is crucial. — General Board Of Discipleship

A husband's work as provider will be so difficult that it can only be fulfilled in the power of the Spirit and a transformed life. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

It is in my internal and external struggles, when it feels like someone is river-dancing on my last nerve, that the fruit of the Spirit is developed. — Matt Chandler

Resilience is rooted in habits we can cultivate and change. — Andrew Zolli

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price. — Stanley Hauerwas

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective. — Eugene H. Peterson

The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us. — Andrew Murray

As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted. — Eugene H. Peterson

We are not trying to manipulate God and tell Him what to do. Rather, we are asking Him to tell us what to do. — Richard J. Foster

He (the Bible study leader) is blessed with a light touch and a firm hand. — John Kasich

What you present as the gospel will determine what you present as discipleship. If you present as the gospel what is essentially a theory of the atonement, and you say, 'If you accept this theory of the atonement, your sins are forgiven, and when you die you will be received into heaven,' there is no basis for discipleship. — Dallas Willard

Almightiness and wisdom combined will make no failures. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Your love for Jesus Christ and your discipleship in His cause must be the consuming preoccupation and passion of your mortality. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Grace interpreted as a principle, pecca fortiter as a principle, grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom. Grace as a living word, pecca fortiter as our comfort in tribulation and as a summons to discipleship, costly grace is the only pure grace, which really forgives sins and gives freedom to the sinner. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Describing the relationship between the biblical witnesses and the theologians who come after, the author challenges that the theologian is not to correct the notebooks of the biblical writers like some high school teacher. Instead, our theology is always subject to what THEY say, as we willingly submit our notebooks for their approval. — Karl Barth

Do your best, and your best will be growing better. — Emma Willard

When in situations of stress, we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capabilities perfectly, placed us here to succeed. No one was foreordained to fail or to be wicked. When we have been weighed and found wanting, let us remember that we were measured before and were found equal to our tasks; and therefore, let us continue but with a more determined discipleship. (Ensign, Feb. 1979, 73.) — Neal Maxwell

To obey the commands of Scripture can finally become a delight when we see that the reasons almost always center around God's love and provision for us in Christ. — Matt Chandler

How do you teach a classroom of Sybils who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you? — David Brooks

While he was conscious of improving at every stroke, he did not feel that the other was asserting any superiority over him; and so, though more humble than at the most disastrous period of his downward voyage, he was getting into a better temper every minute. — Thomas Hughes

At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned Him to be crucified to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that He had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that He was alive. — Josephus

Realtechnik is skeptical about linear progress. It encourages humility, a state of mind in which we are most open to facing problems and reconsidering decisions. It helps us acknowledge costs and recognize the things we hold inviolate. — Sherry Turkle

Some people will not make the decision to give Jesus love back no matter how great his love is. These folks are who I call "grace users". They just take advantage of the Lord's love and kindness. True disciples will love the Lord back. When someone truly opens their heart and falls in love with Jesus, wanting to be his disciple will come naturally to them. Christ's love is compelling. — Sandra M. Michelle

Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord's people. — J.C. Ryle

Jesus, Willard says, does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him. — Dallas Willard

The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see. — John Piper

If your goal is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and most of your focus has been on finding the church that will best meet your needs, figuring out which translation of the Bible is the best, or reading the best books on discipleship that you can find, but your life is the same as it was before - I would argue that you aren't becoming a disciple. Nothing other than following Jesus Christ can make you his disciple. — Kevin Watson

you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for "personal intercourse," substituted the safer "personal influence," and gave his junior hints on the setting of kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects them.
Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered this among life's duties. But here is a subject in which we must
inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like kindly traps, were not in Rickie's line, so he abandoned these
subjects altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. — E. M. Forster

My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world. — George Eliot

The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said. — Dallas Willard

God wants to help us to eventually turn all of our weaknesses into strengths,1 but He knows that this is a long-term goal. He wants us to become perfect,2 and if we stay on the path of discipleship, one day we will. It's OK that you're not quite there yet. Keep working on it, but stop punishing yourself. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A student is engaging, attentive, notes details, and shows effort in learning. — Sandra M. Michelle

What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus. — Brennan Manning

Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision. — David Kinnaman

each year, she finds her friendships less volatile and easier, because she increasingly succeeds at looking past their flaws and disappointments and homing in on their pleasures and on what set them in motion to begin with. And she wonders why she didn't do that sooner, why she gave in to so much fury and sorrow when she could have just let those emotions go. — Frank Bruno

We have a tendency to boil the Reformation down to two points: the authority of Scripture and justification through faith apart from works. However, the Reformers emphasized three essential components of their message, not two. The third was the doctrine of "vocation" or calling. Discipleship must transform all of life because God has a calling for you in every area of your life. The Reformation's championing of calling took the idea of cultural transformation to a new level. — Greg Forster

There's something about patience that God deems necessary for our life in the age to come and so, whether through agriculture or discipleship or bodily development or eschatology or procreation, God makes us wait — Russell D. Moore

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus. — Eugene H. Peterson

After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language. — Ron Jacobs

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrusts in turn brings forth war. — Megan McKenna

It is possible to know all about doctrine and yet not know Jesus. The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine outsteps intimate touch with Jesus ... Have I a personal history with Jesus Christ? The one sign of discipleship is intimate connection with Him, a knowledge of Jesus Christ nothing can shake. — Oswald Chambers

If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church's culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry. — James MacDonald

We need both reverence and obedience. If we worship but do not walk in obedience and discipline, we are emotional, lacking self-control and godly character. If we obey God's commandments but are not true worshipers, we become religious and judgmental. As the Pharisees in Jesus' day, we may miss the real meaning and purpose, even God Himself. — Amy Layne Litzelman

It's easy to give God a list of excuses for not feeling worthy or as capable as someone else, in our service to him. The problem is that God doesn't call those who are unprepared or incapable. He calls those who have the talent and ability to serve. He has it all planned out for us. Our challenge is to accept his calling and move out in faith believing in his promises of help and support. — Diane Goold

Charity fits the economy of scarcity, because it supports the blasphemous myth that the rich are rich because they deserve to be, and their riches are theirs to deal with as they please. With such charity, we are not worthy to tell the story of manna in the wilderness, to pretend to eat together at the Lord's Supper, or claim the Year of Jubilee as our own. — Michael Rhodes

It is only the joy of hearing the gospel and being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. It is only gratitude and love to God that comes from knowing that He no longer counts our sins against us (Romans 4:8) that provides the proper motive for responding to the claims of discipleship. — Jerry Bridges

Your current situation and workplace are your personal mission field. Why? Because you can reach people a church can't. You're on the front lines! — Jarrid Wilson

God in His sovereign goodness often uses the painful and at times debilitating injury of a spear thrower to make us readier for His service ... One thing you discover about spear throwers is that though it's not necessary for them to be good, it's essential for them to appear good. — Erwin W. Lutzer

It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good. — Elisabeth Elliot

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self. — David Brooks

I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind! — Charles Dickens

Let our liberty be practically exhibited by serving the Lord with gratitude and delight. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The home group is a wonderful school of love and discipleship. — Sunday Adelaja

Liberation from ego is what we shramanas are seeking, O Exalted One. If I were your disciple, O Venerable One, I'm afraid it might befall me that my ego would be pacified and liberated only seemingly, only illusorily, that in reality it would survive and grow great, for then I would make the teaching, my discipleship, my love for you, and the community of the monks into my ego! — Hermann Hesse

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him. — Erik Larson

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious. — Alexis De Tocqueville

You should train disciples and followers to work and perform better than you did — Sunday Adelaja

If we spend our days trying to avoid the landmines of stepping out of God's will, then will be afraid to take any risks for his kingdom. But when you know there is a net of grace, when you know that God will catch you and set you back on his path when you fall, then you'll feel the freedom to pursue the adventure that kingdom living is all about. — Will Davis Jr.

Don't get me wrong, I like NASCAR and shopping at Nordstrom's, but discipleship is intrinsic as a lifestyle."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to "clear the numberless ascensions"* in about two minutes. — Oswald Chambers

When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. Sad to say, that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. But when I began to allow myself to feel a wider range of emotions, including sadness, depression, fear, and anger, a revolution in my spirituality was unleashed. I soon realized that a failure to appreciate the biblical place of feelings within our larger Christian lives has done extensive damage, keeping free people in Christ in slavery. — Peter Scazzero

The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.

At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature. — Ian Breward

Moses challenged parents both to teach the faith diligently and to maximize normal encounters or ongoing discussion. — Matt Chandler

The dues of discipleship are high indeed, and how much we can take so often determines how much we can then give. — Neal A. Maxwell

Jesus-shaped spirituality hears Jesus say "believe and repent," but the call that resonates most closely in the heart of a disciple is "follow me." The command to follow requires that we take a daily journey in the company of other students. It demands that we be lifelong learners and that we commit to constant growth in spiritual maturity. Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of "we. — Michael Spencer

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. — Brennan Manning

When we concentrate on preaching what people WANT to hear we will only succeed in exciting their flash and depressing their spirit. — Olabisi Obideyi

But there is a more catholic understanding of the term apostolic: it means missional. The apostles were those called together to learn (as disciples) so they could be sent out on a mission (which is what both the Greek root for apostle and the Latin root for mission mean). From this vantage point, disciples are apostles-in-training; Christian discipleship (or spiritual formation ) is training for apostleship, training for mission. From this understanding we place less emphasis on whose lineage, rites, doctrines, structures, and terminology are right and more emphasis on whose actions, service, outreach, kindness, and effectiveness are good. — Brian D. McLaren

The Inklings were comrades who have been touched by war, who view life through the lens of war, yet who look for hope and found it, in fellowship, where so many other modern writers and intellectuals saw only broken narratives, disfigurement, and despair. — Philip Zaleski

Where are the people today who will respond to the call of Christ? Have we become so accustomed to "cheap grace" that we instinctively shy away from more demanding calls to obedience? "Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross."4 Why has the giving of money, for example, been unquestionably recognized as an element in Christian devotion and fasting so disputed? Certainly we have as much, if not more, evidence from the Bible for fasting as we have for giving. Perhaps in our affluent society fasting involves a far larger sacrifice than the giving of money. — Richard J. Foster

[God says] Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Evangelism cant be our focus! We must not stop sharing the good news, but here's the deal, here's the wonderful thing, it gets done along the way as you do discipleship. Great commission is just about going to disciple the nations and you know what happens ... as you disciple them evangelism takes place, because it's done in the context of discipleship.
Here's the issue: We have to reframe evangelism within the context of discipleship — Alan Hirsch

Discipleship is rooted in a deep belief in the universal reign of God through Christ. To be a disciple is to acknowledge that reign and to embrace the lifelong journey of submitting more and more of every aspect of your life to His good, just, and peaceable reign, as well as alerting others to God's kingship by both word and deed. — Michael Frost

Alex had cooked, and coaxed, and helped Mark form borders around the shapeless days. Alex had given meaning to the word "servant". — Davis Bunn

Apprenticeship assumes that knowing a trade not only comes by numbers and outlines but also by watching and inhabiting. Knowing is found in these forms, because teaching is. We teach not only by our words and assignments but also by the manner of our words and the ways we ourselves already embody the assignments we give. — Zack Eswine

Discipleship is the art and science of helping people find, follow and fully become like Jesus. Discipleship happens as God's people show love, share truth and live life with one another, making new disciples along the way. — Brandon Cox

How my emotions starred as I played! During one of this tug-of-war contest between knowing right and doing wrong, I wrote the words to a song on my own for the first time. — Jeremy Camp

Mine is to chew on the appropriate texts and make them delectable. — Gregory Of Nyssa

God's word tells us that righteousness is a gift; it cannot be earned. But godliness is not a gift. We must pay a price to touch godliness through a daily decision to die to self and embrace the cross. God calls us to learn godliness in the classroom of life among people as we sit on airplanes and buses, walk among our neighbors and labor at our factories or desks. — K.P. Yohannan

Peter's denial was not just a personal weakness. He was in a leadership position, honored as the one who spoke for the group, and was second in command (when Jesus wasn't around). But his choice to publicly deny his place in the community at the side of Jesus had massive repercussions for the other disciples. They ran and hid, and from this point on in the Way of the Cross there is no mention of the disciples again in the Passion narrative. The sheep are scattered, routed, and demoralized. Peter's sin tore open the seems that held them together. — Megan McKenna

When I look back upon my own religious experience," says Andrew Murray, "or round upon the Church of Christ in the world, I stand amazed at the thought of how little humility is sought after as the distinguishing feature of the discipleship of Jesus. In preaching and living, in the daily intercourse of the home and social life, in the more special fellowship with Christians, in the direction and performance of work for Christ - alas! how much proof there is that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue, the only root from which the graces can grow, the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus. — D.L. Moody

God does not discipline us to subdue us but to condition us for a life of usefulness and blessedness. In His wisdom, He knows that an uncontrolled life is an unhappy life, so He puts reins on our wayward souls that they may be directed into the paths of righteousness. — Billy Graham