Christian Discipleship Quotes & Sayings

Zero preparation gives zero results. 0x0= 0 — Jonah Books

The Christian life doesn't work because we are such great followers. It works because Christ is such a great Leader. — David McGee

I became a Christian at the age of seventeen. I made a very conscious act of commitment and my only desire was to be kept in purity and holiness throughout the whole time of my earthly pilgrimage. I didn't choose Christ's narrow path for the riches, fame, or comfortable life it would bring, for I had experienced several times in my family before I became a Christian that true discipleship would mean a life of persecution. — Mikhail Khorev

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

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering . — 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

The Christian message has a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has to be accepted. So God is not a fit object for man's detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say "How interesting!" God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ ... We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek ... Christ's promise is plain: "Seek and you will find. — John R.W. Stott

[Mary] says her memories
Will help those of us
Newly come to our Lord's mercy,
To live in His light. — Jessica Coupe

The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience. — Mark Galli

Discipleship is a daily discipline; we follow Jesus a step at a time, a day at a time — Warren W. Wiersbe

You cannot impart what you do not possess. — Howard G. Hendricks

Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead. — John Stott

Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles — N.D. Wilson

Discipleship is based solely on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on following after a particular belief or doctrine. — Oswald Chambers

The author offers Paul Tripp's analogy that most of the strategies for growth in the Christian life amounts to stapling live roses on a dead bush. — J.D. Greear

There is still a need for those of us nestled deep within the Christian bubble to look beyond the status quo and critically assess the degree to which we are really living biblically. — Francis Chan

Christian discipleship is a decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that the way integrates all our interests, passions, and gifts, our human needs and eternal aspirations. It is the way of life we were created for. — 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

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

We can actually live out the trials and temptations of the day before they come. We can in prayer deal with all our unrighteous aspirations, selfishness, perverse inclinations, impatience, anger, procrastination. This is a form of spiritual creation. — Stephen Covey

A Christian's duty, Lewis believed, is not simply to tolerate "X" but to make life with "X" an occasion to work on one's own character flaws. — Philip Zaleski

Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise — John Mark Reynolds

Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience. — Eugene H. Peterson

If you are going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed ... In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal. — George Whitefield

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world. — Scot McKnight

God's Word is the living seed that brings new birth. It is the milk that nurtures the new life of a young Christian and the meat that builds the muscle of a mature believer. — Colin S. Smith

Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sing these songs, and they will renew you from head to toe, from heart to mind. Pray these poems, and they will sustain you on the long, hard but exhilarating road of Christian discipleship. — N. T. Wright

The "show business," which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from Our Lord's conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes. — Oswald Chambers

It is possible to feel angered by the compromises all around us, while remaining apathetic to the compromises inside us. — Stephen Davey

This combination of the abandonment of evangelism, the divorce between evangelism, apologetics and discipleship, and the failure to appreciate true human diversity is deeply serious. It is probably behind the fact that many Christians, realizing the ineffectiveness of many current approaches and sensing the unpopularity and implausibility of much Christian witness, have simply fallen silent and given up evangelism altogether, sometimes relieved to mask their evasion under a newfound passion for social justice that can forget the gaucheness of evangelism. At best, many of us who take the good news of Jesus seriously are eager and ready to share the good news when we meet people who are open, interested or in need of what we have to share. But we are less effective when we encounter people who are not open, not interested or not needy - in other words, people who are closed, indifferent, hostile, skeptical or apathetic, and therefore require persuasion. — Os Guinness

Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence. — N. T. Wright

We have taken the holistic message preached in the Old Testament and New Testaments and reduced our message to the entry point into the Kingdom. — Landa Cope

If we are cut loose from the anchor of God's Word, we will not be free. We will be slaves of personal passions and popular trends. — John Piper

A Christian understanding of the world sees a child's character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline. — Russell D. Moore

Are you following Christ's ambitions for your life or expecting Him to help you reach yours? — Stephen Davey

The new and needed apologetics will differ from previous apologetic models geared at convincing people solely or even mainly from a rationalistic perspective or that begin with biblical authority. People want to see spiritual power demonstrated by transformed lives expressed in community. This is the hope people harbor. They will respond to a spiritual belief system that delivers at this point. Jesus said that the proof f discipleship to the world would be his followers' love for one another
(John 13:35). Early observers were drawn to the Christian movement exactly for this reason (Acts 2: 44-47). Love expressed through community still transforms people and creates an attractive and compelling invitation for others to join up. — Reggie McNeal

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

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

I long for people to fall in love with God and each other, and so I'm a big fan of being radically inclusive, whether that means not turning off transsexuals or folks who drive SUVs. But I also became aware of how delicate that venture can prove to be. The temptation we face is to compromise the cost of discipleship, and in the process, the Christian identity can get lost. We don't want folks to walk away. We're driven by a sincere longing for others to know God's love and grace and to experience Christian community. And yet we can end up merely cheapening the very thing we want folks to experience. This is the "cheap grace"4 that spiritual writer and fellow revolutionary Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "the most deadly enemy of the church." And he knew all too well the cost of discipleship; after all, it led to his execution in 1945 for his participation in the Protestant resistance against Hitler. — Shane Claiborne

Like many men who experience fatherhood relatively late in life, Martin Luther was a devoted parent. Luther wrote his children letters of touching intensity, patiently converting the joys of the Christian life into a language of storytelling fit for the very young. A home with children brought out the best in Luther in a way that theological disputation patently did not. — Andrew Pettegree

The heart of a Christian, who believes and feels, cannot pass the hardships and deprivations of the poor without helping them. — Louis Guanella

It is the doom of the Christian church to be always distracted with controversy. John Quincy Adams — Paul C. Nagel

Sometimes the right thing to do will cost us our greatest sacrifices, but the rewards will always outweigh our losses — Robin M. Bertram

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

Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian faith. — Pope Benedict XVI

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

And so we have the result noted: the resources of God's kingdom remain detached from human life. There is no gospel for human life and Christian discipleship, just one for death or one for social action. The souls of human beings are left to shrivel and die on the plains of life because they are not introduced into the environment for which they were made, the living kingdom of eternal life. To counteract this we must develop a straightforward presentation, in word and life, of the reality of life now under God's rule, through reliance upon the word and person of Jesus. In this way we can naturally become his students or apprentices. We can learn from him how to live our lives as he would live them if he were we. We can enter his eternal kind of life now. — Dallas Willard

In our faith we follow in someone's steps. In our faith we leave footprints to guide others. It's the principle of discipleship — Max Lucado

Exercise and proper eating habits are very important, since the Bible says that the body is God's holy temple, but I don't think that superbodies equate with committed Christian discipleship. Some of the greatest saints I've known have been those with physical infirmities. — Billy Graham

Christian discipleship does not involve the abandonment of any innocent enjoyment. Any diversion or amusement which we can use so as to receive pleasure and enjoyment to ourselves, and do no harm to others, we are perfectly free to use ... — Washington Gladden

Your footsteps will have more to say about your spiritual life than knowledge attained. — Ricky Maye

Evolution works through this principle: the survival of the fittest. One of the essential elements of Christian discipleship demands that we work for this principle: the survival of the weakest and the gentlest. — Ronald Rolheiser

At every step of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend. — John Stott

Get evangelical Christian made them receptive to the possibility of redemption in the here and now. — George F. Will

The road that leads to heaven is risky, lonely, and costly in this world, and few are willing to pay the price. Following Jesus involves losing your life-and finding new life in him. Follow Me, pg. 11 — David Platt

Let us simplify our lives a little, let us make the changes necessary to focus on the simple, humble path of Christian
discipleship. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Jesus has to become real to us. We need to court him and get to know him better. Go on some dates with the Lord. — Sandra M. Michelle

The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love. — Billy Graham

Christianity is a journey not a destination — John Spencer

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. ( ... ) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us. — Tony Campolo

Followers of Jesus do well to spend more time engaging him than explaining him. — Ron Brackin

Finally, Lutheran and Reformed traditions distinguish (without separating) three uses of the law: the first (pedagogical), to expose our guilt and corruption, driving us to Christ; the second, a civil use to restrain public vice; and the third, to guide Christian obedience. Believers are not "under the law" in the first sense. They are justified. However, they are still obligated to the law, both as it is stipulated and enforced by the state (second use) and as it frames Christian discipleship (third use). We never ground our status before God in our obedience to imperatives, but in Christ's righteousness; yet we are also bound to Christ, who continues to lead and direct us by his holy will. — Michael S. Horton

Run your race. It's the only one that will count in eternity. — Robin M. Bertram

It is no accident that the words discipline and disciple resemble each other in the English language. The most common word in the Gospels for a Christian is disciple. — Billy Graham

Discipleship and spiritual formation are less about erecting an edifice of knowledge than they are a matter of developing a Christian know-how that intuitively understands the world in light of the Gospel. — James K.A. Smith

A healthy Christian life cannot be stitched together from a series of disjointed mountain-top experiences. We need a Christian spirituality that endures the shadowy, low-lying valleys and the rocky slopes in between all those glorious summits. — Andrew Byers

A Christian atmosphere is no protection against preening egos. — Philip Zaleski

We've taken the lifeblood out of Christianity and put Kool-Aid in its place so that it tastes better to the crowds, and the consequences are catastrophic. ~Follow Me, pg. 7 — David Platt

Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus. — John R.W. Stott

Discipleship for resident aliens, or exiles, is different from discipleship in a culture in which the Christian faith is assumed and the goal is to draw people back into something the culture already tells them they should do. — Timothy Keller

In the time of to Augustine, the conversation in the West mostly had been a Christian reaction to outside ideas. After Augustine, the Great Conversation would be about his ideas for centuries. — John Mark Reynolds

Your job is to abide in my pasture
Eating sweet grass and drinking pure water,
And sharing both with others -
That is a lamb's business. — Jessica Coupe