Year 6, Day 109: Hebrews 5

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information, Imitation, Innovation 

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.
• Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process.  First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor.  Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.
• Innovation: When we have studied God and learned to imitate Him, then we can begin to apply what we have learned and practiced into our life in new and innovative ways.  In this way we truly become the person of God that He sees us to be.

The end of Hebrews 5 is a very challenging section.  The author of Hebrews really doesn’t pull any punches with what he says.  He looks at the witness of the people and tells them that aren’t pulling their own weight.  They’ve become dull.  If you want to know why they’ve become dull, the reason is simple.  Keep reading.  They are dull because while they should have developed into teachers they’ve continued to stay students.  They should be feasting on spiritual meat but they only want the spiritual milk.

This is a problem with human beings.  We like to be comfortable.  We also like for people to care for our needs.  We like to be the student, the mentee.  Being the teacher is far more difficult work.  Being the mentor is far more taxing.  But it is when we start to apply our faith, practice what we preach, and pour our faith into the lives of the others that we suddenly find ourselves growing and feeding off of spiritual meat.

What the author of Hebrews is talking about is this idea of information and imitation – and even eventually innovation into ministry.  Everyone needs to learn the basics.  But we all need to grow beyond the basics.  We need to practice what we’re taught.  Then we need to teach what we’ve learned to others.  We grow stale if we always stay the student.

I love the way that this passage ends.  Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  Solid food is for the people who are putting their faith into practice.  It is for those on the front lines of the spiritual battle for souls and relationship with God.  It is not for those being sheltered by others for all of their life.

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Year 5, Day 357: Isaiah 7

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Isaiah 7 gives us an interesting perspective through which we can view the concept of information.  I didn’t used to like Isaiah 7.  It has always felt overused and abused to me.  After all, we always read this passage at Christmas – but only at Christmas.  I always felt on some level that modern Christians were not getting the fullness of scripture in pushing this passage into the niche into which it goes.

Then I went to seminary.  I learned deeply about the history of God’s people and the especially the kingdom period.  I remember being taught about this passage of scripture specifically by a teacher who shared my views.  You can read my theological commentary from three years ago if you want to hear about the true depth within this passage.  But what I found was a new level to this passage of God’s Word that wasn’t present in my life before that professor.  (Thanks, Dr. Brooks Schramm!)

What I learned about this passage is that these verses gave King Ahaz information.  The persecution Ahaz was facing from the nearby kings would end in a three year time period.  God had not forgotten about His people.  Furthermore, God told Ahaz through Isaiah that in only a short period of time that many of his opponents would fall instead of his own kingdom!  That’s the history of the passage that we never hear about because we as Christians instead focus on the application of this passage only to Christ – which I’ll readily admit is a very good truth as well.

However, when we go into the history of the passage we can also see how Ahaz makes a mistake.  Ahaz gets the information but doesn’t believe.  He doubts.  He doesn’t assimilate it and live out in faith as a follower of God.  He doubts instead.  Because he doubts, God tells him that Egypt and Assyria will be constant thorns against him.  Historically speaking, they were! 

When we look into the historical context of this passage we get an opportunity to see how God blesses us with information all the time.  We can take that information and apply it to our life and draw closer to God and imitate Him.  Or we can doubt His promise and not trust His Word.  When we do that, we invite disaster into our life as we see happen with Ahaz and the curse that is brought down upon him in this passage.

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Year 5, Day 304: Proverbs 13

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Discipleship always begins with teaching.  We cannot possibly hope to put anything into meaningful practice before we have heard about it.  Thus, when we are looking to grow and mature, we must have a mindset of being willing to learn and open to those who can teach us the easy and hard lessons of life.

We get this lesson right off the bat in the first verse.  A wise son listen’s to his father’s instruction.  A scoffer does not listen to rebuke.

As we progress through the psalm, we hear even more of this advice.  Whoever despises the word brings destruction.  Whoever reveres a command will be rewarded.  The teaching of the wise is the fountain of life.  Good sense wins favor.  In everything the prudent acts with knowledge, but the fool flaunts his folly.  Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Clearly this chapter is concerned with the idea of passing along communal wisdom to one another.  We get a clear sense in this chapter that the foundation of wisdom and meaningful life starts with putting ourselves in a position to learn from those who can teach us.  Of course, we have to be willing to imitate what we learn and then innovate it truly into our life.

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Year 5, Day 293: Proverbs 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

The overflowing message of Proverbs 2 is pretty straightforward.  Seek wisdom.  But make sure that we hear that message to its full depth.  It isn’t just about wisdom.  Yes, wisdom is great.  But it isn’t just about wisdom.  We can’t just want wisdom and pray for it and get it.

We need to seek after wisdom.  We need to pursue it.  We need to chase after it.  This psalm is about us being proactive.  Gaining wisdom doesn’t just happen.  Gaining wisdom is a choice that we make.

We incline our ear to wisdom.  We raise our voice and call out so that those who have it can teach it to us.  The Lord stores up wisdom; we look to Him to release that store.  So many people think that they will get wise just by getting old.  No.  We get wisdom because we intentionally look for it in others and then learn from them what it is.

As we would expect, information leads to imitation and imitation leads to innovation.  What this looks like with wisdom is pretty straightforward.  We learn what wisdom is from other people who have it.  As we learn it, we can imitate it and put it into practice in our life.  As we practice it, we get better – wiser.  As we get wiser, we can be better at innovating it into our life for others to see.

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Year 5, Day 289: 1 Thessalonians 5

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

As we open 1 Thessalonians 5 we get a taste of Paul’s reassurance.  He knows that when persecution comes that it is easy to get discouraged or confused.  He also knows that it is easy to doubt the future when we are under pressure.  So Paul tells them not to worry.  He tells them that he doesn’t even need to write to them about the future because they already know.  They don’t need to be concerned about it because they already know.  Paul is encouraging to live out of what they already know and to do it confidently.

This tells us a really good lesson.  We live out of what we know.  But to live confidently, we need to know, first!  We need to learn something before we can even try and imitate it.  But once we do know something, we should absolutely try and imitate it with confidence.  We have to know Jesus before we can live righteously.  But once we know Jesus, we should imitate His righteousness.

That’s Paul’s point about the future.  In times of persecution, live like you are confident of who will win in the end.  I know, that is easily said and much less easily done.  But that should be our frame of mind.  We know who wins in the end.  We need to live like it.

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Year 5, Day 178: Psalm 32-33

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness, Information

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

This is twice since studying the psalms that I have grouped the ideas of forgiveness and information together.  I think that this is as important pattern to see.  It is essentially the theme of Psalm 32 and is highly supported by Psalm 33.  We are taught by God.  But in order to be taught by God, we must humble ourselves before Him and put ourselves in a position of being ready and willing to learn.  That takes submission and forgiveness.

Look at where Psalm 32 begins.  The psalmist notes that at one point in his life he was silent.  When he was silent, he was essentially rotting away in his life.  But then a change came.  Then he confessed his sins.  Then he was forgiven.  Then God came into his life and added meaning to it through His instruction in His ways.  That’s largely the process of spiritual growth right there.

Psalm 33 takes this pattern and goes on with it further.  The Lord’s instruction is great.  It leads to faithfulness and an upright heart.  The counsel of the Lord stands forever while it frustrates the wisdom of the nations.  But the crux of this psalm is getting the listener to the natural outcome of the greatness of the Lord and His instruction.  Because of the Lord and His ways, we should praise Him and give glory to His name.

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Year 5, Day 174: Psalm 25-26

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness, Information

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Psalm 25 gives us an interesting combination of two discipleship foci: information and forgiveness.  As you read the psalm, you can hear the psalmist bouncing between these two concepts.  We have a set of verses talking to us about God’s instruction into our lives.  Then we hear a set of verses about how the Lord forgives us when we fall short.

Although we don’t often pair these two topics in lessons, these topics really do go hand in hand.  After all, isn’t this often the rhythm of discipleship?  We learn something new.  We go out and practice it.  Occasionally we are successful, but more often than not we make mistakes as we try to apply faith.  When we make mistakes, we need forgiveness.  Then we need to be re-taught so that we can fix the places we messed up before.  We try again, probably making a few more mistakes.  The truth is that we often cycle between learning, applying faith, needing forgiveness, and learning again.  It is the rhythm of discipleship.

This is why the psalmist starts in Psalm 25:4-5 and speaks about being taught in the Lord’s ways.  But as the psalmist learns and grows, he reminds God to forgive his prior sins and transgressions as we see in Psalm 25:6-7.  In psalm 25:8-10 we have another set of verses speaking about the greatness of God because He instructs sinners in His ways and draws them closer to Him.  But then in Psalm 25:11-18 and have another passage about forgiveness. 

The cyclical nature of this psalm is an ever-present dynamic in life with the Lord.  we should always be growing in the Lord.  But the more we grow the more aware we become of our mistakes and the ways that we don’t quite live out a godly life.  So we learn to appreciate God’s forgiveness more.  This causes us to grow once more and the pattern continues.  It is the path of faith.

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Year 5, Day 169: Psalm 15-16

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information, Imitation

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.
• Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process.  First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor.  Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.

Today I’m going to go in reverse order.  If we look at psalm 16 first, what we hear sounds at first like a typical message from the psalmist.  We hear a person who needs God’s protection.  We hear about a person who needs to be lifted up in God’s presence.  At first blush it sounds like a typical psalm that we’ve been reading over the past few days.

However, in this psalm we get a deeper insight into how it happens.  It begins by the Lord’s instruction.  He makes known the path of life.  He gives me counsel.  He instructs me.  Walking with the Lord begins by learning from the Lord what it is like to do so.  It begins with information from Him.  It begins with His Word, His instruction, His ways.  It starts with us as human beings humbling ourselves to His information about true life.

Then we get to Psalm 15.  Psalm 15 takes this information and moves it to the next step.  This psalm takes it to the level of imitation.  Once we know about the Lord’s ways, we need to imitate God.  Who will inhabit God’s holy hill? 

• Those who imitate God. 
• Those who walk blamelessly with their Lord. 
• Those who do what is right. 
• Those who speak truth. 
• Those who do not slander. 
• Those who do not harbor evil against their neighbor. 
• Those who despise evil. 
• Those who do not reproach a friend. 
• Those who do not fall into the corruption of the love of money. 

That sounds like people who imitate God to me.

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Year 5, Day 155: Mark 8

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Today I’m going to look at the disciples and their discipleship process.  Our chapter starts with the feeding of the 4,000.  This has a similar theme as to the feeding of the 5,000 except that there are some significant differences.  To see a list of those differences and why they are important, see the theological commentary to which I link above or see the first thought in this post: Matthew 15:35-39

After the feeding of the 4,000 the Pharisees argue with Jesus.  Jesus then gets in the boat and tries to give His own disciples a warning to not become like the Pharisees.  But the disciples completely miss the point.  When Jesus warns them about the Pharisees, they think that Jesus is talking about bread and how they forgot to bring bread.  The disciple miss what Jesus is saying.

I think that this point leads me back to the concept of information.  Information is the first step in being able to imitate Jesus and go out into the world and do as God is asking of you.  But we need to stop and remember how important it is to actually get the information right!

This might seem like a simple lesson.  But remember where this story lies in the grand scheme of things.  This story lies right before the transfiguration.  The transfiguration marks the beginning of the end.  After the transfiguration, Jesus heads to Jerusalem and gets crucified.  This means that the feeding of the 4,000 happens somewhere in the middle of Jesus’ ministry and probably closer to the end than the beginning.  Which means that the disciples have had more than a year – if not more than two years – of training under Jesus at this point.  They still miss what Jesus is saying.

It is so easy for us to think that after we’ve been walking with God for several years then we must know everything.  The sad reality is that we don’t.  We don’t know what God has in store for us.  We don’t know our future context.  We don’t know what God is calling us into after we get done with where God has placed us now.  The truth is that we don’t know a lot more than we actually do know!

This is why it is important to remember that information always precedes imitation of Christ.  Before we can imitate Christ better, we need to learn what it is that God wants us to imitate.  We have to submit to God so that we can learn what He is saying to us.

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Year 5, Day 72: 1 Corinthians 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information, Imitation, Innovation

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.
• Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process.  First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor.  Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.
• Innovation: When we have studied God and learned to imitate Him, then we can begin to apply what we have learned and practiced into our life in new and innovative ways.  In this way we truly become the person of God that He sees us to be.

Paul opens this chapter with an incredibly harsh critique.  He tells the Corinthians that they are still only capable of spiritual milk.  He couldn’t give them spiritual food because they simply weren’t mature enough!  They weren’t developing.  They weren’t growing.

Let’s remember something.  Paul was likely with the Corinthians longer than he was with any other church that he planted.  We know that he stayed 18 months after he got frustrated with the Jews in Corinth.  So that means that Paul was there at least a year and a half – and probably longer than that.  (See Acts 18:1-11)  Paul was there a long time, long enough to see the people transition from spiritual infants to spiritually maturing.

What is preventing their maturation?  They are divided.  Rather than focusing on God and God’s work in their midst, they are focused on themselves and their own desires.  They are focused on their own ways, their own perspectives, and their own status.  They are focused on being right so everyone else is wrong.

What are they missing?  They are missing humbleness.  They are missing the crucified Lord who allowed Himself to die so God could be at work in it.  They are missing submission.

In truth, they are missing discipleship.  They are refusing to be humble and submit.  They are refusing to move beyond the information stage.  They may be learning the how’s and why’s, but they are missing the transformation that comes through imitation and innovation.  They are missing the transformation that comes by abandoning their own desires and embracing God’s ways and allowing that transformation to happen.

What I find sad about this chapter is that truly Paul was with the Corinthians for a long time.  They more than any of his churches had time to not just learn the information but imitate his behavior and then allow their transformation to be innovated into their own life.  They had an incredible amount of time in the presence of Paul and they seem to have wasted much of it.  We clearly see Paul imitating Christ and innovating in his own life.  But the Corinthians just don’t seem to be willing to do that.  Because they are focused on their own agendas and their own status, they are unable to submit, imitate, and innovate.  So the information stays simply that.  It stays as information and not life-altering transformation.

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Year 5, Day 45: Ezra 7

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information, Imitation, Innovation

• Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.
• Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process.  First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor.  Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.
• Innovation: When we have studied God and learned to imitate Him, then we can begin to apply what we have learned and practiced into our life in new and innovative ways.  In this way we truly become the person of God that He sees us to be.

I love the description of Ezra in Ezra 7:10.  Ezra studied the Word of God.  Then he did it.  Then he taught others to do it.  To me, this is absolutely a demonstration of the information → imitation → innovation model.

Ezra studied the Word of God.  If we want to be God’s people, we must be rooted in His Word.  How can we ever hope to talk meaningfully about God if we do not know His Word?  Now don’t get me wrong.  Academic knowledge of the Word is not enough.  As Satan demonstrates when he tempts Christ in the wilderness, even Satan has an academic understanding of God’s Word.  Therefore, academic knowledge of God’s Word is not the end.  But it is absolutely the beginning.  We begin our relationship by learning about who God is and what God wants from us.

Then, we learn to imitate what we see.  We imitate Christ.  We imitate the followers of Christ that we hear about in God’s Word.  We imitate the people of Christ that we see in this world.  In other words, we put what we learn to practice.  Our lives change as we let God’s Word become alive within each of us.

Then we learn to innovate it into our lives and the lives of the people around us.  As we grow in faith and become more skilled in allowing God to shine through us, we find ourselves in positions to teach other people.  We find ourselves to be in a position to invite other people to learn and study God’s Word.  As we approach the innovation stage, through God’s hand we are capable of inviting people around us into the beginning of the information stage.  We see this lived out and celebrated in Ezra in this chapter.

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