Which Came First: The Disciple or the Christian?
With the recent election finished and the day of Obama’s reign as president begun, a very interesting point was brought up to me. Obama is everywhere! You would not believe how much we hear about him over here. His face is plastered on calendars, magazines, newspapers, and even dress fabric. In the history of American presidents, have we ever seen anything like this? Now I’m not one to discuss politics, I am not really qualified, but it got me thinking about another “icon”. Jesus Christ!
Can you imagine living in the time of Christ. We like to say that it would be so incredible to see this man come to Earth and do all these amazing things, but lets think about this a bit. Christ coming to Earth today would blow our minds. Especially the minds of the American church. We have become accustomed to the pew. We have become, as Craig Gross and J.R. Mahon authors of “Starving Jesus” say “Born Again Lazy.” Now I can sit here and point a finger, but 3 more would be pointing right back at me, because I have been there.
Church is a safe place. It has become so comfortable, in fact, that we face a bit of a deliema. If Christ were to come today, would we find him in the church, or would we see him out in the world. Now this is not a call to everyone to find some world mission organization and get out there, perhaps for some of you it is, but what this is truely about is discipleship.
Discipleship as defined in the TNIV Bible is “Following the lifestlyle outline by Jesus.” So then I decided to look up the definition of Christian. In another study bible, I found that the term Christian means follower of Christ, which is the definition of discipleship. But in the TNIV there is no definition, but only a statement: “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.”
So the lifestyle they were living, living and breathing the gospel, preaching it to the world, sacrificing their livelihood for Christ, people saw that and called it Christianity. So my question for you is this, are you living a life of discipleship? The disciples were ordinary guys who didn’t know much but did one very important thing. They dropped everything at a moments notice and followed Christ. Let this be a challenge to you! Get out and do what Christ commanded. And it doesn’t mean you have to go to Africa. Perhaps your crop that needs to be harvested is right next door. Open your eyes to the world, see them through Gods eyes, and do as he would have you do! Take that first step of faith and be a true disciple…God will reward you with blessings!
Thank you for sharing today. I think the key word is a follower of Christ. If we are a follower of Christ that makes him the leader. So even if we are at the cutting edge and going where no one has gone, we do not notice because we are still following Christ. Only when we get out of the slip stream or put ourselves first do we begin to puff ourselves up and think we are doing something important. Keep following Christ.
Richard Williams
I’m not exactly sure Kassandra… what did come first? All I can say is that I can totally tell that you are both… more specifiacally you are a disciple. It’s been great growing up in Christ with you. Keep it up home slice!