Churches have historically tracked attendance and giving as measures of church strength. These metrics are not useless, and our church tracks them, but they do not quantify some of the essential attributes of growing believers and healthy churches. Dallas Willard proposes, “Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them.”[1] In our new sermon series, Living as Disciples, I aim for us to appreciate what it means to live as disciples of Jesus personally and identify biblical criteria for evaluating our practice of making disciples congregationally. Each Sunday, we are developing a "scorecard" for weighing how we are living as disciples who are making disciples.

This past Sunday, we learned that disciples treasure Jesus above all (Matt 13:44). Practically, this shows up in our lives in four ways:

1. Satisfying our faith in Jesus (Mark 1:15; Matt 11:28-30)

2. Abiding with Jesus (John 15:4-8)

3. Conforming our lifestyle to Jesus (John 13:34-35)

4. Joyfully enduring loss for Jesus’ sake (Mark 13:34-35)

Weight yourself. Does your life reflect such treasuring of Jesus above all? Are you helping others to live as disciples with these priorities? May the Spirit strengthen within us a white-hot passion for the Lord above all!

Disciples Follow

This coming Sunday, in the second message of this series, we will find that Jesus’ disciples follow his commands faithfully. In the pages of the gospels, we will discover ten essential commands that Jesus-treasuring disciples follow in Spirit-driven faith. Do you know someone who would benefit from these sermons on living as disciples? Invite them to come with you this Sunday!

For His Glory,

Pastor Thomas

[1] Robby Gallaty, Marcs of a Disciple, xvii.