Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Why Disciple? | Part 3: When?
As I anticipated in the previous post, I think a couple “journalism questions” remain for our survey of discipleship:
- What happened when you were converted?
- Where do you go from here?
And because I’ve written on these questions here before, I think a couple of links and a comment or two might be sufficient for this post.
We begin discipling a new convert by explaining to him where he is, or what happened to him when he came to Christ in repentance and faith (or, in today’s common expression, “got saved”). God was doing things in his heart before that happened, and a whole raft of things, many of which he didn’t notice, happened to him at the moment of conversion. And God’s work will continue in him in the days ahead, and for the rest of his life.
He needs to know these things in order to understand his place in God’s plan now.
I’ve written about those things in this series, using the analogy of opening presents at Christmas. It’s a long series (22 posts!), because it needs to be.
We conclude by answering the question “Where do we go from here?” To some degree the last few posts of the series linked above will help to answer this question—there’s progressive sanctification and filling and glorification—but our new brother will need some help with getting there—with fulfilling his responsibilities in the shared (“synergistic”) work of progressive sanctification.
For these helps, I suggest another earlier series, in which I use the analogy of working out, or building muscle. That’s just 6 posts, covering what we call the three (or maybe five) “means of grace.” It’s a subject that I think is taught less clearly than it ought to be these days.
May we all comprehend, and apprehend, our inheritance and our responsibilities in this remarkable spiritual journey.
Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash
Leave a reply. Keep it clean.