Cadyville Wesleyan Church
The church of Jesus is a masterpiece. When it operates as it was designed, it is unstoppable. But too often there is a disconnect between our dream of what the church should be and what the church is. Our upcoming teaching series, Mosaic, strives to demonstrate how the church is invited to take up the mantle that Jesus began so many years ago. It's only when fragments come together that the masterpiece takes shape. Each week, we will be challenged to embrace our place in the artwork of the church and how we can come together to create something beautiful.
Discipleship, it isn’t a word that we often think about in our modern context a whole lot.
The fact is what a disciple looks like is sitting right here in this room that’s right, we’re all disciples, right now. Every, single, one of us. You see the definition of Disciple is this: “a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosopher”.
Thinking about how broadly I’ve laid this out stop and think about all the things and people you’re a disciple of. Go ahead... I’ll wait. Here this might help, here are some synonyms of the word disciple “follower, adherent, believer, admirer, devotee, acolyte, votary; pupil, student, protégé, learner; upholder, supporter, advocate, proponent, apologist”. You have to fit one of these right? I know I do.
John 8:31-32 NLT
Ok so being a disciple means being a free truth knower
1 Peter 2:9 NLT
So we’re royal priests and a Holy Nation and we can show the goodness of God and we’re called out of the darkness into wonderful light.
Luke 9:23 NLT
There are obviously downsides to being a disciple. When we are truly a disciple we are no longer doing our own thing and will taking up Christs cross daily
Matthew 16:24-25 NLT
When we are following Christ we must be dying to ourselves daily and taking up the Cross of Christ.
Luke 14:26 NLT
Being a disciple of Christ means giving up EVERYTHING you dreams, your family, your friends... Everything
Some of you have been participating in the fast that Pastor Jordon announced last week. Sarah and have been participating also. But why do we fast? Why am I even mentioning fasting now? Well, the reason we fast is to teach ourselves what self-sacrifice looks like so that when God demands those bigger sacrifices in our life, and He will demand it, we will already know what it feels like. You see sacrifice is a core component of being a disciple of God.
Every single one of the original 12 disciples was called away from their family, friends, and field of work. And every single one of them died in order to spread the good news of Jesus many in similar or worse ways than Jesus himself.
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Just so you know Dietrich is a really good example of this, although having the means to live outside of Germany and even Europe during world war II, he stayed and was outspoken against what Hitler was doing to the country. Two days after Hitler was installed as the Chancellor, Bonhoeffer went on public radio denouncing Hitler and the Nazi’s. If you don’t know Hitler even had leaders placed from his regime into what was basically the state church of Germany at the time. Bonhoeffer worked against this too. Even to the point of starting a new underground-ish church called the confessing church. After many exploits and going back and forth between England,and the US he returned to Germany to continue this fight against the Nazi’s and the “Christian” cult they had created within Germany. He was finally arrested, and on April 9th, 1945 he was hanged at dawn.
So… are you willing to sacrifice everything to fit into God’s Mosaic that he’s building here in Cadyville? Or Here in Clinton County? Or North America? Or the World? It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done I guarantee it. But it is so worth it, because despite all the craziness of the sacrifice God called me to, He has blessed me in ways that I could have never imagined before.
If you’re struggling with being a true 100% all in disciple of Christ and allowing God to take full control of your life think about what that struggle is, maybe it’s right there and you know exactly what it is and exactly what you have to do to get past it. I urge you to work every day to break through that roadblock because not only is it detrimental to your walk with God but it will be there as a reminder of what God has for you vs. what you have for yourself today. If you want help tackling that roadblock, well, I’m here for you, in fact, it’s literally my job, same with Pastor Jordon, if you need help in this we will walk beside you for as long as we can. So feel free to reach out to us, Please reach out to us. So that you can be THE part of this masterpiece mosaic God calls the church that He’s called YOU to be.