It is all about Jesus!

Acts 9: 5
And he (Paul) said, "Who are you, Lord?"
And He (Jesus) said, "I am Jesus, Whom you are persecuting."

And....the rest is History!

The man we call the Apostle Paul was changed forever by an encounter with the Resurrected Jesus Christ....who he came to call Lord (God!)

In Disciple Making movements worldwide, we look directly to Jesus and his commands in the New Testament as our guide. But we look also to the Apostle Paul as a key example in how this obedience is done in order to fulfill the Great Commission. In an upcoming book (that I am eagerly anticipating) Neil Cole is going to share the leadership example of Paul in terms of church multiplication movements. It is called "Journeys to Significance" and you can find out about it at his website: www.cmaresources.org

The point I want to make here is that everything Paul did, the leaders he raised, the disciples he made, the churches he planted, came from what I might call his lifelong Jesus intoxicated life. And it all started in a direct encounter on the road to Damascus.

On his way to persecute Christians, and filled with fanatical zeal (the equivalent of a first century Osama Bin Ladin), he met Jesus Christ face to face. He thought that Jesus was a crucified and safely dead religious heretic who's followers were a curse to his people and God's will. He found out that Jesus was....

Alive
Glorified
Sovereign
Lord
God


And it wrecked his life forever, and a glorious wreck it was.


I have discovered that the only thing that can keep me going in God's work is Jesus. It is not my passion for souls....not my obsession with Great Commission Closure....not any kind of religious zeal. In the final analysis our motivation for CPM, disciple making, Honduras, Central America, Unreached Peoples in Indonesia or whatever is A Jesus Christ Wrecked life! It is now, always has been and always will be about Him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7 Stages of a Disciple Making Movement

In this blog post, I want to introduce the reader to the 7 stages of a developing disciple making movement. Then in my next teaching post on this blog, I want to specifically focus on 1 of the stages that seems to be challenging to many practitioners of the dmm/cpm strategy.   These 7 stages are broad categories that encapsulate several of the Critical Elements of disciple making movements. If you check out several of my older posts from several years ago (especially from the first year of the blog 2008) you will find several blogposts that describe what we call Critical Elements.  (This series of blogposts from 2008 are entitled  "The Critical Elements","Critical Elements of a Church Planting Movement", "Passionate Extraordinary Prayer", "Authority of Scripture and Obedience", "Rain and the Holy Spirit", "Miracles", "The 1:8 Factor", "The Strategic Critical Elements", and finally "The Discipleship E
Read more

The Holy Spirit and Disciple Making Movements

Recently at the Disciple Making Movement leadership meeting in California, one of the main topics that we focused on was the Role of the Holy Spirit.  A key leader from West Africa led the discussion of this topic.  I remember being especially challenged by this study and by interactions with this leader.  He is a special friend who I have known since 2006, and his influence has touched me greatly.  In the last few weeks since the meeting, I have reflected, prayed, and begun to seek the influence of the Holy Spirit more than I had been doing in recent years.  Now I want to share some reflections on the role of the Holy Spirit in Disciple Making Movements (which may or may not reflect the discussions we had in California).  Regardless of where one stands theologically, it cannot be denied that those who focus attention on the Holy Spirit's activity have seen the launching of some of the largest "Movements" in the history of the Church.  Think of the Pentecostal/Charism
Read more

Non-Cessationist Sola Scriptura: The Theology of CPM

I believe in a theological position that I call Non-Cessationist Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura refers to the Reformation doctrine that means "Scripture Alone" and that asserts that the Bible alone, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, are the only inspired Word of God and that they are the sole authority for God's people, flawlessly communicating God's will to mankind. The "Sola" or "Only" part asserts that nothing else does this or has this authority....Not Tradition, Magisterium, Hierarchy, Leaders, or Experiences from whatever source....ONLY SCRIPTURE! Non-Cessationist refers to the concept that God still is active in the world and in the lives of people today in overtly supernatural ways. It says that no activity of God, described in the Bible, has ceased just because that the Bible is now complete. It asserts that all of the gifts, operations, and manifestations of the Holy Spirit described in the Bible may continue to happen to the en
Read more