Discipleship as ‘Followship’
Following Christ in Fellowship with Him and Others
I have a friend who was a pastor from Tishomingo, Mississippi. He was once talking to his congregation about ‘being off’ by a degree spiritually. A man in the congregation was an engineer and decided to put the ‘degree off’ to the physical test. He had a software program that allowed him to shoot lines in varying degrees on a map. He shot two lines from the town of Tishomingo, one directly North and one a degree off to the west, to see where someone would end up after a trip around the globe. Now the line due North obviously landed him back in Tishomingo, Mississippi. The second line (one degree West of true North) landed him 60 miles away from a town called Tishomingo ……..but a completely different Tishomingo, in Oklahoma!! Although bearing the same name, Tishomingo, Oklahoma sits almost 500 miles from Tishomingo, Mississippi!!! We have an enemy that wants us to think we aren’t that far off - just 60 miles - not that big of a deal. We live in a world that keeps us so busy to really evaluate where we are.
It is in times like these, when most of what we do is shut down, that God in His grace and mercy gives us time to evaluate our life with Him. Are we really with Him, or have we drifted? What or who are we allowing to give our life direction? Will we take the time to discover if we are ‘off’? and then the time it takes to know how far ‘off’ we really are? No matter where you might be in the pendulum between Tishomingo, OK or Tishomingo, MS, there is no condemnation in Christ. In other words, Jesus reveals our ‘offness’ to get us back on track with Him. Jesus came not to condemn us but to save us and sanctify us (John 3:17). His life among us did condemn us, but His purpose was to save us from our condemnation. Let us take this time as a gift from God to allow Him to sanctify us.
In Genesis 1-2, we see the God of the universe creating His universe. This universe was founded by God, engineered by God, sustained by God and served by man. This was God’s Kingdom on earth. Man had a simple way to serve, and it was not in consulting God in how to build His Kingdom on earth. Neither was man’s service found in building other Kingdoms. Man’s service was really found as he listened with God and acted with God and this dependent listening and action would be his way of life – a dependent lifestyle of living with God. All the weight of the Kingdom was on the King’s shoulders, man simply was made to enjoy the King – to be a disciple. When man did serve the King, it would result in the glory of God and the good of man.
In Genesis 3, we see a sad story of falling away from life with God. It began with a question from the serpent – “Did God really say…?” Now that question begins with a thought, but it is not a thought with God. It is a thought about God, even about what God said, but not a thought with God. Eve even goes on to quote God (adding to His warning by saying they should not even touch the tree), but she is not with God – she was not being a disciple/servant. This thinking apart from God eventually led to acting apart from God - disobedience. And her thinking and acting apart from God led Adam to think and act apart from God. And what was the result? They saw their nakedness and were ashamed. They also now had a knowledge of good and evil they were not supposed to have. And what is the first thing they did with this knowledge – they did something ‘good’ apart from God? They did a moral thing by clothing their nakedness and covering their shame.
They founded the idea of fig leaves as clothes, they engineered it, they imagined it would sustain, and all of this served themselves. But their product of fig leaves was not to the glory of God, for God was not in it. Nor was it good for them, because what God is not in, will not sustain.
Now when God came to be with them they hid from Him. What men conceive and contrive apart from God may impress men, but in God’s presence we know it is an abomination. But God in His grace and mercy accomplishes the gospel in the garden. Ultimately it was a change of clothes – a laying down completely of their way to take His way. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them (Genesis 3:21).” An animal had to die – the innocent for the guilty – for Adam and Eve to have the appropriate clothes. The wrath of God came down upon the animal(s) and not upon Adam and Eve. The consequences of their sin stuck, but the immediate wrath of God fell upon the animal(s). Without this animal’s sacrifice God’s wrath would have had to come down on Adam and Eve. What they founded and engineered covered their nakedness, but it would not have saved them from the wrath of God. They could have been proud in the moment for their “success” but without the grace of God their “success” would have killed them. God in His grace and mercy founded and engineered a plan to save Adam and Eve from His wrath so that He might live with them. And He made a way through the second Adam for us to live in Him.
This is love! Love led God to make a way to have fellowship with His creatures again. In love God restored fellowship. And in love, God does not allow us to hold on to one stich of what we or the world has engineered. In love He exposes our filthy rags and we cast them away like menstrual cloths in light of Kingdom (Isaiah 30:18-22).
God made us for life with Him; He redeemed us for life in Him. We were made for unbroken communion with our Lord. Discipleship is ‘followship’ – following God in fellowship with Him. And this is living in our salvation. It is NOT the tired and weary life of man-made religion and life-style (rearranging our fig leaves). This is merely the deception of having an experience with Him without loss of life, or claiming Christ as Lord without being clothed in Him. Rather, Discipleship is living the abundant life of listening and acting with God. This will always move us tangibly from the man-made to the God-made. Disciple-making is simply inviting others into this followship.
