Quotes About Discipleship

Bonhoeffer's interest was not only in teaching them as a university lecturer. He wished to "disciple" them in the true life of the Christian. This ran the gamut, from understanding current events through a biblical lens to reading the Bible not just as a theology student but as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

While Hildebrandt, Niemöller, and Jacobi were thinking about how to defeat Müller, Bonhoeffer was thinking about God's highest call, about the call of discipleship and its cost.

The wisdom of God's Word is quite clear on believers being unequally yoked. And marrying someone who is not a Christian - who is not a daily disciple of Christ - is being unequally yoked, regardless of what their beliefs might be.

When people are not empowered to discover their identity and pursue their destiny in Christ, then they are not being discipled but used. They are not sons being fathered, but servants being given a job to do.

This is what every follower of Jesus should be engaged in on a regular basis: sharing our faith, leading others to Christ, discipling them, and helping them to get grounded in the church—and then going out and doing it all again.

The full concept of discipleship includes sharing our faith, leading people to Christ, and helping them to mature in their faith. But somewhere along the line, the church has separated evangelism from discipleship.

God doesn't depend primarily on the words of his disciples, nor on their clever apologetic arguments, nor on their ability to concoct ingenious marketing techniques. God relies on his disciples participating in the love that he is and thus replicating it toward each other within the body and toward all others outside the body.

When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly. We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord.

Many think that the price of discipleship is too costly and too burdensome. For some, it involves giving up too much. But the cross is not as heavy as it appears to be. Through obedience, we acquire much greater strength to carry it.

The World Race is an eleven-month program that initiates young adults into a lifestyle of following Jesus by living as the early disciples did for a year.

In their pursuit of "making disciples of every nation" and baptizing all those within the empire, they stumbled into baptizing the empire itself, thus turning sacrament into sacrilege[...]

I had become a "believer," but I had no idea what it means to be a follower. People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.

Interestingly, Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples. You can worship Jesus without doing the things he says. We can believe in him and still not follow him.

I remain convinced to this day that if we continue to lose young people in the church, it won't be because we made the gospel too hard but because we made it to easy. We

I remain convinced to this day that if we continue to lose young people in the church, it won't be because we made the gospel too hard but because we made it to easy.

In our culture of "seeker sensitivity" and radical inclusivity, the great temptation is to compromise the cost of discipleship in order to draw a larger crowd. With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws on the Lion a little, we clean up a bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow.

The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.

The evangelical wing of the Church spends a lot of energy on being born again but little time on growing up again. There is a failing to encourage newborn believers out of the maternity ward and into a big world where they will spend the rest of their spiritual lives trying to find what they are looking for.

Love is the measure of our faith, the inspiration for our obedience, and the true altitude of our discipleship.

The unsound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ.

Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.

My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about Him or my neighbors.

My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors.