You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Disciple’ tag.
Ready to Die…
By: ellis j. still
As I return back to social networking from the Easter break, I am much more refreshed. There is a newness… a revival and new awareness of the realities of who I am in Christ Jesus… of what it is to be a disciple.
We are all called to be a disciple. Recently, my pastor preached and teached that we as Christians tend to stop at salvation, and as a result we do not grow, which opens us up to not only not living out the potential in our life, but to the potential of sin and backsliding back into the world. The next level in our growth is discipleship. A disciple is one who lives out the word of God in him… one whose life projects an image that they know Jesus… who dies from the lifestyle things of the world and is reborn again into new life and lives out that life.
Over the past week, I have had the opportunity to mourn the home going of a good friend. We met a number of years ago at the job where I managed and he and his now wife worked. A big part of the job had to do with customer service, and a lot of the skill sets that had to be learned on the job by most of us, came natural to him. Anyone that knows where we worked knows that we had a special breed of demanding and sometimes obnoxious customers, yet I have never seen him in an angry or agitated state. Even when he had to stand his ground and make his point, he always did it in a humble fashion. His wife was/is the same way, as if they were both cut from the same cloth. I didn’t realize it at the time, but during the years that we worked together and have known each other, they helped to create the framework (both as individuals and as a married couple) from which I developed a relationship with Christ just buy how they live out their lives. He is an example of a disciple in that he didn’t just do “church” on Sundays, but was a living example of who Christ is. Love. Humble. Kind. Never puffed up. Truth. Not compromising values.
So now, I, along with many others, mourn the loss of a king, a friend, and a great man of God. A role model at such a young age to so many people, who touched lives just by being who he is in Christ. My prayer is that his wife never change who she is, and that she keeps fighting for those who do not have any fight left in them. Likewise, I thank his parents for bringing him into this world, because there is a good chance that he saved my life. Obviously I wasn’t there when it happened, but I would imagine that upon his passing, Jesus stood up, squared his shoulders towards him, looked him in the eye and said “well done, my true and faithful servant… well done!!!”.
Questions: We often take our lives for granted. We make plans for this and that. We go to school and get degrees so that we can get the house and the car, and there is nothing wrong with planning. But what happens when God says something contrary to what you want? What if he has a different purpose for you than what you have for yourself? Would you be obedient, or would curse God, and do what you want to do anyway? Let’s say that you found out that you had less than one year to live. What would you do? Would you be concerned that your walk isn’t where it should have been? Would you feel like your purpose was realized? Would you have regrets?
© 2010, Ellis J. Still. All rights reserved
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255
__________________________________________________
ellis j. still 