Casey Continues Discussion on Discipleship | Healing House

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to hunger [Music] to seek to thirst [Music] you did first [Laughter] me come with me for my sleep through the caverns [Music] [Music] my soul with all [Music] [Music] through the caverns [Music] film is is [Music] [Music] here good morning it's great to see you i i love that people are connecting and having conversations so i want to welcome you to healing house this morning um we get ready to worship i just want to read a little bit from psalm 40 here it says i i proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly i do not seal my lips lord as you know just this place of proclamation of his goodness we've all experienced just places of god's undeserved sometimes his extravagant sometimes just him coming through for us i did not steal my lips lord as you know i did not hide your righteousness in my heart i speak of your faithfulness and your saving help i do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly and i was just impacted by that this morning this is a place where we're together we're together as corporately we're together individually as those that have encountered and experienced him so let's just stand and just as those that have experienced him those that have history with god well we just say those that we have have history with you we're not concealing our hearts we're not concealing your great faithfulness lord but we're just opening our hearts to say yes to you opening our hearts opening our spirits lord to to thank you well we start with gratitude this morning how thankful we are lord undeserved extravagant powerful lord as we've watched and we've waited on you you are the faithful one you have been the faithful one [Music] you are the faithful so we just thank you this morning thank you for your living presence give your living presence in this place lord we want to meet with you [Music] [Music] you at all [Music] [Music] just to give us still love jesus [Music] [Music] [Applause] hallelujah [Music] oh [Music] yes [Music] [Music] praise [Music] highest [Music] glory [Music] [Music] universe [Music] r rain above it all we thank you for who you are god thank you this morning for who you are ever faithful faithful you've been and faithful you'll be lord no matter what comes no matter what we see lord we thank you we're to be a people that don't judge with our eyes god but see with your eyes father don't judge with earthly wisdom but lord reach up father be partakers of heavenly wisdom that you have lord made us and designed us to walk in so we thank you for heaven's wisdom [Music] lord as we see you today as we see you rightly we thank you for heaven's wisdom lord and we thank you lord that the momentary god gets swallowed up in eternity today god that the momentary god gets swallowed up in eternity today as we see you as we see as we see as we see oh my soul sing to the god of creation sing to the lord of the ages [Music] like an army of ages [Music] sing to the lord our creation seek his praise again [Music] [Music] [Music] we sing our praise again [Music] [Music] [Music] i've [Music] the praise of your glory be [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] over the [Music] jesus [Music] sing to the god of the ages sing to the lord our creation sing [Music] [Music] there's only one who's overcome [Music] there's only one name above every other name there's only one lord with no lord there's only one god without a god his name is jesus [Music] we're inviting [Music] 24 6 [Music] 24 7. [Music] know my soul sing to the god of creation sing to the lord as the ages o sing his praise again [Music] sing his praise i'll sing his prayers sing his prayers [Music] is [Music] sing his praise again sing his praise again [Music] faithful [Music] [Music] we pray you deserve it all you deserve it all we give you [Music] deserve it all you deserve it all we give you [Music] [Music] you deserve it all you deserved [Music] [Music] we give you [Music] you deserve it all you deserve it all we give you all you deserve it all we [Music] you deserve it all you deserve [Music] [Music] we praise you you have changed [Music] god [Music] that's in my lungs my heart will cry to you belongs the glory [Music] glory [Music] oh [Music] you deserve it all you deserve it all we give you yeah [Music] you deserve it all you deserve it all we give you [Music] we give you you deserve it all look like [Music] every heart give him praise now every heart give him thanks now [Music] we will not hold back [Music] no one else loved us first no one loves us like you do no one else loves us first no one is [Music] how we love you [Music] oh we love you [Music] oh we love you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] into the room with your wrist you just bring it with you jesus because it's who you are [Music] [Music] that's why they call you the prince of peace that's why you said you'd give us peace that the world cannot give us it's supposed to be a supernatural piece supernatural rings now supernatural peace [Music] something that's not man-made something that's not manufactured you bring your peace with you you always surround us loving when you walk into the room with your peace there it is love when you walk to the room with your peace come now come just breathe that in just let it soak you just experience this peace [Music] we love who you are jesus we love you peace we love who you are it's a multi-faceted peace [Music] it's that shalom of god brings order rest to our bodies brings rest to our mind bring rest our emotions brings even some some sickness is just being healed in the middle of his peace if you have sickness in your body just allow that peace just to remove that that this ease and disease thank you god [Music] thank you jesus [Music] we have everything when we have you we have everything when we have you we honor your presence jesus my [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i love your praises [Music] i love you jesus i love i love your praises [Music] i love your prayers and i love i love your presence [Music] i love you jesus i i love your presence i love your presents [Music] your presence god [Music] i love your presents i [Music] i love you jesus [Music] we love your peace we love your goodness [Music] [Music] no one like [Music] and i love your presents [Music] tell you i love your presents [Music] oh i love you jesus [Music] every moment of my life no matter what comes in the middle of the storm i get to live in your presence where i am oh this is where i live oh this is where i live [Music] in the glory [Music] of your presence and i finally [Music] know your love i find peace makes me [Music] [Music] and i love [Music] and i love you i love high love and i love your presence one thing if i desired of the lord and that will i seek after that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the lord and to inquire in his temple [Music] well welcome good morning welcome to healing house if this is your first time we especially want to welcome you we want to allow you to continue our service to the lord through giving if you would like to give we have several ways to do that um you can give through the app we also have the streams website we also have envelopes out in the hallway and also right in the back of our room here you're welcome to give we do have a couple of announcements we have as a continuation of the streams academy module that were in september and october james gaul is going to be coming the weekend of october 9th and he's going to be with us for streams academy and also saturday night he'll be with us for streams gathering so that's going to be a special weekend for us here and the topic of streams academy for this module is dream interpretation interpreting dreams and visions and i want to let you know too that we've got some meetings that happen a couple of times a month here locally on zoom where we have dream interpretation mentoring so if you've gone through this module have completed this module or if you've taken the understanding dreams and visions course we have dream interpretation mentoring that takes place on zoom you can contact me if you need more information about that our next meeting actually is tomorrow night um and then on tuesday nights we have an outreach book club we have a book club that's kind of centered around outreach and now we're going to through sean bolt's book god secrets which is to help us develop the gift of words of knowledge especially to have a lifestyle of using the gifts of the spirit and words of knowledge in particular to reach out to people and touch them with the heart of god and friday night we were able to put that into practice because we did have an outreach friday night we went into downtown dallas and we were on main street the standout encounter friday night was on main street in front of deep no it's not deep it's front of a dead brain dead brewing that's the name of the place brain dead brewing on main street in dallas and we encountered two young ladies uh one of them was a widow who whose husband had been kidnapped and killed in mexico which sadly is not an uncommon event now in mexico and um after there were a couple of times during those 20 minutes when i thought okay it's winding down it's about time to say have a good evening it's great to meet you and they kept pulling us back in and so we'd interpret a few more dreams and give a few more words and finally around after about 20 minutes this young lady both of them were ministered to but this young lady said you just don't know she said i can't tell you what this has meant to me and um you know people may wonder why i get so excited about outreach and um that's it's moments like that and life-changing moments that just happen on the street you know if more people came to me in church and said uh you know alan what you just said you i just can't tell you i'll never be the same and i would be as excited about uh some of the church services as i am about outreach but i'm really you know when you see it happen out on the street to me that's when it comes alive and and the whole thing that we learn here on sunday morning really really takes life so um with that uh i want to invite casey to come up and share we're honored to have casey this morning to come up and share with us thank you casey am i homeland can you hear me okay i wanted to invite you ladies to if you wanted to come join us wednesday six o'clock we're going to be praying in the prayer room we do that just once a month um the wednesday prior to academy so do it just for a couple hours just as the lord leads but also to be praying for academy so just wanted to invite you ladies if you want to join we'd love to have you and casey is right there we are so excited casey sharon today he's he's he's been ready so we're excited sorry about that i've got my you know technology savvy stuff going on here that has decided to play havoc on me i'm like i wrote this and i'm like i didn't use that font i'm gonna need readers for that but i'll come back to that in a minute well i want to start with prayer real quick before we get started into all of this so if y'all just uh bear with me when i pray papa father god thank you so much for this opportunity we pray for willing hearts and open hearts and open minds use this vessel to preach your word to teach these people about you to show them some sort of nugget and tangible truth about you that they may or may not know or maybe even one they've known but give them a new light or a new perspective on it i pray that and i pray your presence here today in jesus name amen so i'm gonna i'm gonna dive into discipleship and i know some of you may have been here a couple of weeks ago and those online uh john taught on discipleship just a couple of weeks ago i'm not going to stomp on what he taught on i'm actually going to just basically give new light a new perspective on the same type of teaching and going into the biblical model of discipleship because just that word when i say discipleship everybody goes i know exactly what that means but discipleship is not in the bible disciple is but discipleship it's not mentioned but you could substitute discipleship for christian life or the the walk of christ or how we all believe we are doing our christian belief that's discipleship i mean you could substitute it you could do that but before i get too far into what i'm teaching on let me introduce myself and tell you a little bit about who i am i was saved i think i was seven years old when i uh accepted christ uh i think it was very shortly thereafter i got baptized and i my i know i went to church before then but the church that i remember the most was a spirit-filled church here locally to the metroplex in carrollton called ward of faith i don't used to be a very very much an evangelistic you know healing type uh pastor and i remember going there i remember getting uh lessons from him as a matter of fact i've got a photo of me going to his private school and of course my mom's here today and i'm going to say mom why in the world did you let them give me that haircut it's the other tab over there going yeah that's me now i went there for three years into this christian academy and that's my fourth grade picture i had a third grade and a fifth grade picture they weren't any better they were the exact same haircut i'm like really thanks mom i mean it was fun it was i i enjoyed going to this school this was actually a a different time but you can see that i was raised i'd been in church my whole life literally my whole life the church doors were open we were there sunday wednesday special bible studies i was there and again robert tilton's church was a spirit-filled healing church i got to watch this church that started out it was tiny it was you know less than 300 members my dad was an usher and used to help direct traffic in the parking lot it was a small church it grew into this huge mega auditorium state you know size church with i watched him pray for people and he would set up this line on the stage of people would come up in wheelchairs and back braces canes i'd watch people's legs get straightened right in front of me as like a seven eight year old i'm watching people get healed it got so big and so much healing was happening in his church that he started putting trophies all the canes and stuff all around the top of the church now i'm not promoting robert children's church i'm just saying that's what i was raised into so i was around spirit-filled people i was around healing i was around the idea of the holy spirit at work in modern church because most people have that argument about modern church it's you know the holy spirit stuff that does that's old that doesn't happen anymore yeah i saw it real life i saw people getting healed which then goes to more of my story because i didn't always follow after the training that my parents raised me in i didn't follow after that biblical principle because i got and it's that old cliche or the argument that most people have they prayed for somebody or they prayed for themselves and god didn't answer it everybody struggles with that but but i prayed for this guy and they didn't get healed i prayed for things and god didn't answer my prayer in the time in which i wanted him to answer it wait a minute let's let's think about that for a second me i asked god to answer my prayer at my timeline who do i think i am i mean i'm sorry this is the creator of the universe and i'm saying god you didn't answer my prayer in my timeline so therefore i'm going to rebel against you okay how well does that work out for most people who do that well for me it didn't work out very well at all i didn't ever stop praying to god i just instead i got angry with god god still loved me i still prayed with him on a consistent basis i still went to him every time i needed him but i rebelled against him like i'm gonna show you god i'm gonna start smoking i'm gonna start drinking i'm gonna do everything that i knew from my christian upbringing was wrong because i'm gonna show god yeah i don't think that works that way you know i'm pretty sure god just says okay i'm gonna love you through this but eventually because i'm thinking oh yeah god's gonna come around to my way of thinking that's the other way around we're going to come around to his way of thinking and go oh you know what god please forgive me for that that was my bad i thought i could do it i thought i could do it without you i thought i knew better because i'd been you know saved and of course i prayed why am i any different than the guys who are i was seeing up on stage heal people am i not special enough and i'm not loved enough of course i am it was just not that time for that person it had not nothing to do with me or maybe it was all to do with me and god said nah i got a special time for you it's not yet because if we think we have the power to predict or guess what our life and future is we're wrong god has something so much i heard a billionaire and i'll get back on my notes and i heard a billionaire say this he said that you know today is hard tomorrow's even harder but the day after is going to be phenomenal most people die the day after tomorrow right before they get the blessing it's the same thing in the christian life we we all give up and give up hope and faith in what we believe in because it didn't happen in our timeline it didn't happen immediately god's like it's okay it didn't happen right now i've got something better for you i've got something better than you ever possibly imagined and we can drink big trust me i can dream big lamborghini my own personal plane i could drink big but those are material things god may have something that has nothing to do with material he may have hey i'm going to bless you beyond your wildest imagination i'm going to give you the opportunity to show me to other people all right now i'll get back to my notes so you know you heard if you if you were here and heard some of john's teaching what he talked about in uh discipleship was he he gave the the the understanding and the belief of discipleship is being in relationship with people and that's really where we are in discipleship that's what discipleship is being in relationship i'm going to go back in a little bit of history for where we were and where i learned about discipleship separating it from just the christian life we had gone to different churches i'd been of course i grew up in church and then of course got married i rededicated my life watching my wife get baptized eight months pregnant with my oldest son and i was like i can't keep doing this god i can't keep living this life thinking i'm in charge of everything that i do i have to put you back in charge and the minute i made that decision to put him back in charge things started changing in my life that i never thought would be changed that i thought would always be the same now there's certain things certain patterns in people's lives that they and i heard a pastor want to teach once this a rut that we groove a groove that we carve out and we have to now carve a new groove so that we live differently and it says in scripture that we die the old man has died and risen again we are new creatures we carve a new path we create a new life because god granted us a new life he gave it to us now i'll go back to my notes now i know it was enough about me and enough about salvation and getting back on track what do you all know about discipleship what have you heard i know john's teaching anything new and exciting that you all caught on to discipleship said oh i know something exciting about it i know the people online are like well i can't really answer you it's okay i'll read the comments later but anybody here know anything about discipleship what have you heard what does it mean does anybody know what is discipleship is it like what i described is it the christian life is it the christian walk it is so i heard a pastor get up on church and say the biggest gap in the modern day church is when people accept christ they get saved baptized what then show up every sunday show up every wednesday and do it likewise just show up every time the doors are open but is that discipleship i mean it's don't get me wrong that's a great way to start your life with god there's nothing wrong with that but there may be something more or what could possibly be more than that so in scriptures we we hear different verses in it and it begs the question of what is this that they're describing as this life what is this new life that they're describing and i i'm going to apologize i will rabbit tray a little bit but i'll always come back to my notes but the scriptures and i'm going to read different dialects of scripture i'm going to read like the esv the niv and the message bible because they tell the same story but they hit differently they just something about the way that that's a little piece a little nugget of discipleship because everybody's road or everybody's story is different somebody else might have different history or or different um background so that's the same way as these different texts i'm going to read the same scripture and of course you all probably know this scripture and then i'll come back to the story on how i got to this place in matthew 28 18-20 it says then jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything that i have commanded of you and surely i am with you all the ways all in every and to every age okay this is the niv version i mean it's good i like that version i like that depiction of it i'm gonna read the esv version and there's some nuance difference but it's the same scripture all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit teaching them and observing all of that i have commanded of you and behold i am with you always to the end of the age now that that sounds a little different but it's the same thing he's saying first off he's got all of the authority he's got all of the authority and all the power and now he's commanding you i'm saying go and do everything that you've been taught at first i got this and i was like wait a minute how many times has he said commanded in scripture and i'm thinking i don't remember him saying command it at all i don't how about 126 times he commanded them but now i don't want to get ahead of my own teaching here 126 times that means he's commanding him a lot but then i was like wait no no most of those were old testament commands that's old scripture like deuteronomy and judges and that's where the the commands came through because that was in you know outside of exodus and god's creating what how he wants his people to live what did the disciples the 12 the ones following after christ what did they know about commands when did he command them well i know there was commands specifically the command of love loving one another and i'll get back to that in a minute the the um message version of that same exact scripture and this one i told you they hit differently so this one jesus undeterred went right ahead and gave his charge god's authoritized and commanded me to commission you go out and train everyone you meet far and near in the ways of life marking them by the baptism of the three uh of the threefold name father son and the holy spirit then entrust them in the practice of all that i have commanded of you all and i will be with you to this day and the day after the day after right up until the end of the ages oh did you hear what alan said he goes out and and gets in people's faces and basically blesses them i mean that's really what he does he's like i'm gonna bless you you may not be expecting this blessing that's exactly what he's commanding us to do but slightly different because that's the beginning that's step one what's step two and three because i already talked about this early on i was like okay we get saved we get baptized we we start coming to church every but then do we do this we go with allen and go out evangelizing sure but there's a there's a piece there's a bigger piece to this puzzle and so i'm going to pause and just ask you what stands out in those three things that are read the go stands out what else stands out in this in this great commission anybody train authority authority this is huge the god of the universe the guy who created everything and spoke breath into your lungs is blessing you with authority to go out and do the same that's a heavy weight now okay so let's pause for a second he's telling this to 12 dudes where'd these 12 guys come from and how long have you spent time with them does anybody know how long the disciples to 12 three years that's according to text our best calculations they spent three years because of based on scripture that's what it says estimate now there's give or take some time where he sent them ahead to go prepare or sent them to you know get on a boat while he goes and recharges his batteries there's so there's a little bit of time but okay so three years these people dropped their entire life they stopped everything they were doing and they follow after this complete stranger but this complete stranger is the god of the universe and so the first person or one of again the other 12 are there the first person they see every morning they wake up is who jesus who's the last person they talk to before they go to bed oh my goodness can i have that life right well we have that in we've got more of that we've got the text right here and we've got him living in us back then he was in flesh it was before he came to us and lived within us so we all get excited going man these 12 guys were spoiled they had god walking with them so do you did you not hear he gave you authority he's with you living in you that same power that same guy who told get up out of that grave and walk lazarus that same guy hung out with them he's giving you authority to do that oh i'm getting goosebumps now because that goes back to my struggle and my own thing why didn't you heal him when i prayed it wasn't your time or his it will be i've got something better for both of you that doesn't mean that person's not going to get raised from the dead or that person's not going to walk or that person's not going to heal it just may not be right then you have to be okay with what time that god has not you have so okay so now we got our heads wrapped around the fact that these 12 guys spent every waking minute with the god of the universe and they learned from him they learned what from him how did they what what do you call that anybody i think those guys were called disciples so you would probably call that discipleship so does that mean we have to go drop everything we're doing and go live with one another and follow each other for the next three years not necessarily it can fit within your life but what does that look like how do we how do we do that in a practical real world lifestyle that we have i could give you examples of real world life examples of how people do it nowadays i can even give you real world business models that follow it it's not even in my notes and i'll come back to my notes this is going to be a funny one and i'm going to step on toes i'm going to apologize in advance but business model like a direct sales model or a network marketing model where do you think they got their model from they did because think about this there was 12 disciples there were three that were really close to god 12 were close but there were three they were really close most of these direct sales models or you know that direct sales type of business they have three people that you've got to go talk to and those three people get three people what's the total number 12. that sounds like discipleship well where do they do most of their business models inside people's living rooms that's huge but that's just like law like the law of gravity everybody knows that one that's going to drop i can't break that law sure i can i can go up in outer space and come back down real fast and temporarily i'm pausing the law of gravity it's the same law discipleship is a law if you follow the business model just like they do in business that law is success but then people go no that's a ponzi scheme it's a pyramid no no no no no they're discipling people and those people have bought in and believe it if i'm disciplining people the same way i'm so curious about making my business sale but i'm doing it based on god's word i'm going to be so successful at getting them to follow after what god teaches forget the business model of it because that's all about you know stuff that goes away money and possessions this is eternal life i'll go back to my notes sorry and i didn't mean to step on toes because i did a direct sales business everybody probably in every church around america has at least one friend in church that does a direct sales company and i'm not knocking them they're a great way to make money so enough of that the other real world practical discipleship or something that looks very similar to the military and you're like military that doesn't seem right oh picture this a whole bunch of strangers are shoved in close quarters and they have to live together for a period of time so much so that they have to get to know each other in such an intimate way they have to trust their life on the guy next to them vice versa that guy's gonna trust them for their life that's part of discipleship it's the part of discipleship that people skim through when they go through the bible okay wait i understand i've gotta ask you know god to forgive me for my sins i know i have to ask him to live in my life i know i have to get baptized i know i need to believe and i know i need to read the bible that is true all of that is 100 true but the other part of it is you've got to find people who are further along in the journey and learn from them grab onto their coattails and ride as far as you can how do you do that you live life with them i mean i would love to live life with all of you but i have to be you know useful with my time i can't do it with everybody so i have to live life with certain people and the same with you you have to live life with certain people well that's part of discipleship is picking those people and it's some of them are going to be uh not as far along as you some are going to be further along than you that's discipleship is doing life with people now these disciples only were following after one guy who was the main leader who showed them how to model this and then replicate it and continue on the scripture goes into how do we do this life but let me pause there and tell you how i got to this teaching and how i understand this discipleship model so get going to churches and going to different churches at one point in our lives my family and i we lived in memphis for a period of time while we were there the pastor got up on on stage one day and said has the biggest gap in church is that we don't we're not creating discipleship of god we're we're creating people that come to church and fat babies that was the terminology he used we're creating fat babies because all these people have been bibled up they know how to save people they know how to witness to people but they don't know how to walk through discipleship and live life with people and so he asked us at one point to go take a discipleship course there was a guy a young man named kennen vaughan he had gone to texas university and learned about this discipleship program he customized it took that teaching brought it back to memphis and created a business model called downline ministries so if you're interested in it's a wonderful biblical model of discipleship and he teaches it takes a year-long course and he teaches the whole thing it's a great course i would highly recommend it for anybody who wants good biblical discipleship training he sent us there of course the church sits there for a different reason they sent us there not only to get discipleship training but they also wanted us to learn from them so that we could bring it back to the church and then create our own curriculum inside the church to help those brand new believers that's a great idea it's a phenomenal way any church would be blessed to be able to have a program that says hey i've got this new believer he's first to the church now let's walk him through this program of how to do discipleship because that's just the next evolution if you want to use that word of the christian life and i'm like i'm in let's do it well at the same time this is going on that same leadership of church ask us to step in as leaders of a small group so they're going hand in hand we're learning discipleship and we get told to take over a small group you have to understand i'm going to frame a picture for you for how they ask us to do this we had only been attending the small group for three weeks and now they're asking us to taterco for leadership of this small group did they see something in us that we didn't see absolutely did they think we were qualified to do this absolutely but did we feel like we were no we were like we've been in this group for three weeks why do you want us to take over now i'll pause there on that part of it because we found great success because we started implementing what we were learning in discipleship in this class and as we were implementing this and we were taking this whole thing on and going we're going to do this we found god showed up in huge fashion and success we had 10 people some of them rededicating some of them first time believers but 10 of them getting baptized for the first time now understand these people were coming to church every day but they'd never been baptized how did they fall through the crack everybody knows that you teach that every sunday morning but if they're not being shown by an example of someone who cares about them who loves on them doing life with them they probably would never know that there's a baptism they found out we got success we're like yes dude god is awesome he gave us all the success now the flip side of we had failure it's a very humbling experience to have failure especially right on the heels of success of 10 people getting baptized and then we had three couples get divorced one couple the husband killed his wife murder i'm like you talked about tearing your heart out you loved these people you were dedicated these people they got baptized and now one of them just commits murder now i'm not going to go too far into that story but it's a humbling experience to be blessed on one end and then now this this this part but that's discipleship it's not always clean it's not always pretty it's not always a better roses as some people say it the terminology of i'm going to do discipleship and now i'm going to be blessed and everything's going to be amazing yeah it's not always that way but again i'll go back to the teaching so the teaching that we got was phenomenal teaching and it opened up so much for us and it even gave us confidence to be able to do this discipleship with other people not only in our small group and we had of course success and failure there but it opened the opportunity for us to continue doing this with other people and some jumped on it like fire they're like i'm in i'm going to follow this model even those guys were going through divorce were like i know i'm going to divorce i'm still going to follow this model i'm still in and i'm like let's do this and one of those guys um a man i was walking through discipleship he he called me up one day and we were well into the program of the discipleship program that we were doing at the time and he called me at monday and he goes casey i really need some help um a really good friend of mine he's a wildlife photographer he like would shoot photos for national geographic and other things like that and he got some i mean cool photos y'all never really think about the photographer who shoots those photos of a grizzly bear or the photos of a mountain lion or the photos of a poisonous snake this guy was taking a picture of a poisonous snake and he got a little too close and it bit him and it was a young snake so the difference between young snakes and old snakes they don't know how much venom to inject he got really badly sick well so of course we're praying for healing for him but the most important thing that this guy called me on the phone to do was an example of discipleship he wanted to go mow the guy's yard i'm like no the guy's yard i'm like that's amazing i never even thought about it but it's practical world life just like reading the different dialects of scripture reading the different nsv the message versions discipleship has different facets of how we fit in other people's life in that particular case the wife needed to stay at the hospital with the husband and nobody's there to take care of their house nobody's there to simple task of mowing the yard do you know how much blessing that blessed that man when he came back and realized his yard had been mowed simple task but that was just showing an example of love and discipleship he didn't ask for anything in return that's the other piece that people forget in discipleship do this willingly sacrifice from yourself your time your money whatever you have for the love of other people expecting absolutely nothing in return who who do you think in the bible that example is i mean spot on jesus that's exactly what he did that's again goes back to the command what did he command them to do do what i did do everything you saw me do do and so they did this guy of course i've got another i'm going to do another story that i'll get back to my notes another story of discipleship there was an amazing one this is my wife's story of discipleship so we moved back from memphis we're living here we've got small children at home and this young lady says i want to know the god the way you do i want to live the life that you've got we're like we're not special what do we have what is it that's attracting you to us but okay we'll do this but you have to understand this is my wife telling her you understand i've got little kids at home i don't have a whole lot of time so if you want to follow after me and you want to get disciple from me then here's how we're going to do it grab a paintbrush and she's like grab a paintbrush we're painting the house i'm painting this bedroom in this bedroom i'm also going to put some texture on the walls so literally i would come home this young lady my wife would be in the kitchen they're putting this construction paper in polyurethane and sticking it up on the wall for a texture pattern and it was the half wall in the kitchen i'm like that's cool and i've looked they've painted a living room they painted the the guest bathroom and i'm like this is amazing and while they're doing it she's teaching her she's talking to her about god she's talking to her about forgiveness she's talking to her about breaking through strongholds wow you mean she didn't have to go to sunday school service or didn't go to wednesday church or that bible study that ends up turning into just talking about football not like that ever happened to me or more than once i should say i mean men's groups have all of the intention of being great biblical studies and sometimes they get be distracted and derailed by becoming something more about what he all did over the weekend and that's fun to talk about because that is life and that is part of the discipleship program is doing life together i mean we opened up our doors in memphis so much that we had literally we had young couples in our house every weekend but that also meant they saw us with dirty laundry literally on the floor or doing dirty laundry not only are dirty laundry of us telling them of the things that we failed to do they sing us angry they see us happy they see us successful they see us not successful but it's how you do that life and show them how to still stay within the biblical model of christ in those times of trials as you want to call them or i just call it life you have death you have loss you have blessing you have none of it and it's still life it's still your following after it and again i'm going to get ahead of myself too much here i want to stay on my my notes and and stay within my um biblical model so in discipleship in this young girl coming over this wasn't her trying to fix this young girl because we're not supposed to fix people we're supposed to love people and that's where sometimes people get it twisted they think oh you're coming here because you need me to fix you because i'm further along than you i didn't give you the authority to fix anybody he's the fixer he gave you the authority to point them to him with the example of how you live your life you're going to fail i'm going to tell you right now you're going to fail but you're also going to succeed you're going to do both and it might be with the same people you're going to fail the same person then you succeed with the same person but it's still going to be what god intended for them to hear you live out life because you're following exactly what he commanded you to do now let's talk about qualifications because during this training that we got we got phenomenal biblical training that was re-teachable i could show you even some of the things that he taught me was like he called it his five-minute um old testament testimony that you could literally take a pen and a piece of paper and in five minutes show them the path from basically from noah all the way through jesus crucifixion and it was written out on a doily nap that he did and i was like dude i want to teach you on that but i'm like no no next time i'll do that i'll put a grease board up here and i'll show you that teaching because it's it's really phenomenal because it takes you through the path based on scripture of where the exodus happened where the israelites were kicked out of egypt takes you even further back on what we believe where the time frame was where all these people were scattered after noah's ark and where they then set up cities and as those cities grew and became bigger and more populated they became known cities and basically it was the map walking you through this whole thing and where the journey was and of course you know everybody goes the journey in the desert is they're all over the place and you're like this is an amazing teaching because people can have tangible something they can fold put in their pocket and take with them and go teach to someone else he taught us things like that it was great teaching there was still a piece i felt like that needed to be tailored i'm not knocking that teaching i'm still advocating for that teaching but i still think that that teaching need to be tailored and it's not because that teaching was wrong is because go do that teaching but then continue to look for other tools of their teachings that you can combine and then make that teaching customizable to each individual person because everybody's different someone tries to sell you that one size fits all it's not really true just means it's elastic pants you're probably eating too much pie i'm i'm being silly there but okay the the realistic thing though is just like scripture and the ones that i've been reading here that are different it's customizing the experience these people have because again even those 12 disciples there were three that were super close to god there were 12 that were close three that were even closer and it's because he tailored their discipleship according to what they could handle according to what they grew up with according to what they knew and grew up with that's a that's a key word there so let's dismantle the word discipleship what's the key word that stands out in that most people say disciple what's the word inside disciple discipline people have different understanding of discipline now as a child discipline's different because i tell you right now as a child discipline for a child is either let's have a conversation about why you're not supposed to do that or i'm going to take my belt off and we'll show you why you're not supposed to do that there's discipline that's different but it's only tailored based on the situation because you don't want to spank a child for doing something foolish you spank a child for doing something that he knows he should not be doing that's that type of discipline but there's other type of disciplines you have a conversation say you know you weren't supposed to do that i don't want to have to spank you for it that's a conversation but now as adults how do we do that same discipline you go to an adult and say i don't want to have to spank you that's going to go real well they're going to really listen to you from that moment forwards like um but there is a way to correct or you're going to use the word discipline people in a loving way just like god did god disciplined the disciples in a loving manner he loved them well and loved them through their differences he had to love that guy judas real well but that's because he knew what he was going to do do you think he treated him any differently even though he knew he was going to be the one to betray him no he treated him exactly the same as everyone else he loved them gosh can you imagine you know someone is about to betray you worse than any betrayal you're still willing to pour out and dedicate three years of your life and time into them knowing they're going to betray you that's love that's way beyond the comprehension of my love and understanding of it but i'd go to text to be able to understand how is this how is this who were these first off who were these disciples what was their qualification to be following after this god of the universe do y'all know what your qualifications are just believe that's really it that's what they did they saw a total stranger an older older than at the norm you have to look at periodical time older than the norm of the time frame of of leaders and then jesus was a little bit older than what most sages or teachers or whatever i'm called them at the time were he was slightly older and the disciples were older than what normally were picked at that time frame to follow and become disciples but they did it without hesitation the only ones that had hesitation were ones that needed to be shown something like these fishermen that they need to be shown if they throw their net on the other side fished from that's when they were immediately like hold on we've been fishing in this lake for a long time we've never had that happen before this guy's got something let's follow him but one of your qualifications is just believe just believe and you're now qualified to go disciple people everybody's like hold on a second i need a little more training before i go disciple somebody i'm not just gonna go i believe in god i'm gonna go disciple i'm gonna go teach everybody now so okay so i'm i'm gonna read this this is from the ephesians chapter 4 17-29 now that's a big chunk of scripture and i'm gonna i'm gonna unpacked it here but it's living out this is literally heading that the esb gives it says instructions for christian living so if you have the esv you you can follow along if you're if you're a different version of text than it it might sound differently so i tell you this and insist on it in the lord that you must no longer live as gentiles do in the futility of their thinking that they are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of god because they have ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts having lost all sensitivity they have given themselves over to sensuality as to indulge in every kind of impurity and they are full of greed that's harsh but that's them not giving up their old man when they believe that however it is not the way of life for that you've learned of course they were being taught when you heard about christ and you were taught in him accordance with the truth that in in jesus you were taught to regard your former way of life you were taught to regard your formal way of life as to end it as old the old self and once you begin to um they they started to corrupt their own life these guys literally they they just went back to their old ways remember i was telling you about a groove that you carve a groove these guys literally carved a groove and they didn't know how to hop out of that groove but he's telling him in text i've told you that old man's dead you have to put up those always now i'm going to jump down i'm going to stop reading the esv version i'm going to go into the message version because again i told you the different scriptures hit differently so in so i insist that god block god backs me up on this that there be no going along with the crowd the empty headed the mindless crowd it goes back to that place you were witnessing your people that was what was the name of it the brain dead brewery and i'm like i'm gonna read this again to be going along with the crowd the empty-headed the mindless crowd they've refused for so long to deal with god that they were lost touch and not only with god but with the reality itself they cannot think straight anymore feeling no pain they let themselves go to sexual ambition addiction to every sort of perversion wow that's heavy but that's no life for you you've learned christ my assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him been well instructed in the truth and the practice and precise as precisely as we have in jesus since there and do not and oh my gosh tongue tied here we do not have an excuse or ignorance in everything that we do and mean everything connected to an old that old way of life has gone and it has to go so he's just telling there you've already been given the instruction how to cast off that old life how to live a new life i mean again i go back to the heading of this the old ways and the heading in the esv is instructions on how to live a christian life now that told that talk to that guy ken and vaughn he did his teaching he memorized the entire book of ephesians and in class he stopped the middle class and he quoted it he rattled off all of ephesians took him about three minutes to say it all he went pretty fast in saying it i don't know that i could read it in three minutes because i'd have to pause and reread it again and i'm like that's amazing and he said i was challenged to do this by the guy who was discipling me he said put scripture in you so scripture comes out of you this is the teaching here he's like throw away those old ways because i've taught you a better way to live that old man's dead in this teaching in this um discipleship this is god giving you the instruction how to live now i don't want to bore you guys and go and read all of the ephesians because i won't do that he he did it quite well because he was fluent with it because he was he was challenged to memorize it matter of fact he was challenged to memorize it by going through this discipleship program the guy said hey by the super bowl i want you to quote it back to me and this was like early on in the football season again every bible said he ends up talking about football don't ask me why but anyway that's what the challenge was to him he goes man that's a that's a short time frame from the time the beginning of the season until now that's a very short time frame to be able to go in this and memorize this but he did it and he oh man he championed through it he was like dude i did it and he would he would of course read it in our class i'm not going to do that just telling you that i have memorized some pieces and parts of it but i haven't done that yet i need to because just like what god actually told us is to get the scripture in us so it comes out of us so that we know because just so y'all know this is the living word of god this has power and when it's in you it has power to help others when you know it when you live it when you have it coming out of you this was breathed out and then written down so that you could put it back in so you could breathe it back out now i've already talked about your qualifications and getting teaching from it find someone who's further along i'm pretty sure that everybody in here you probably know at least one scriptures right at least one maybe two some of you may have memorized the entire bible you're qualified now to disciple somebody who doesn't know that much and i'm i can guarantee you there's a lot of people who i can go back to my discipleship story i had 10 people that got baptized they had no idea they needed to so if you know at least one scripture verse you're further along than somebody else but somebody else who knows more scripture verse than you then they're further along than you find those people and do life with them that's discipleship right that's a good model of discipleship i don't know how much time i have i hope i'm doing good on time nobody's been yelling at me saying hey casey stop talking and i'm like all right good so i'm going to read this one to you this one i like this one because this this kind of sets up something a little bit better and again it comes from the message bible and it is ephesians watch what god does and then you do it i can stop there just read that part watch what god does then you do it like children who learn proper behavior from their parents mostly what god does is love you keep company with him and learn a life of love observe how christ loved us he lo his love was not cautious but it was extravagant have you ever had someone give you something that's been extravagant that didn't fit in today's world someone gave you a gift that you were like that's extravagant i have a story i'm going to tell you the next story of an extravagant gift oh yeah another story i know it's another story this story's a fun one because this is an extravagant gift because this is an example of someone living out god's life as an example of giving i was shopping for a car with my wife i had an old minivan i had dumped at least two thousand dollars and sold minivan it was done i needed to be done with that ban and so i was gonna go buy another vehicle and i needed two vehicles i needed more than just one because my wife worked here and i worked somewhere else and i needed i needed two vehicles so i was gonna go to carmax and walk through the parking lot and i did weird test drove so multiple cars and i won't make this too long of a story but i'll make it a pretty good story about this but so as i'm shopping for cars i find one i like and i'm like okay that's the one i like and now let's go test drive one for her and so she chest right once she likes it and as we're doing this my son finds out my youngest son finds out we're test driving cars and he's like oh my gosh i'm over here with my grandparents i'm missing out i want to be in these cars too because i'm about to get my driver's license i see where his motivation is on this he wants to be able to drive the cars we're buying and so my grandparents drive him over and drop them off the car a lot as we're looking at cars and as we're deciding on one for her my in-laws showed they said well what about the suv you didn't drive the suv and so my wife's like oh yeah let me let me drive this other suv so while she's driving it i just tell the dealer i'm like i want to buy that one and he's like yeah that one's gone i said no it's right there he goes no you understand it's gone it's already being shipped to another dealership we sold i said but i want to buy it i'm here and he goes let's already sorry spoken form i'm like okay that's just not right my tests are another set of car so i'm like okay this this one here i'll i'll take this one while she's test driving he goes now that one's gone too i'm standing here looking at it it's not gone he's like no it's been spoken for already what about the one next to it it as well like this is going to be a joke someone you know is there a hidden camera someone punking me here like literally all these cars are gone and so then my wife just says you know maybe maybe we should just look online and buy a different car not get a car for you today but we'll get the suv for me i'm like yeah i see how this is working out you get the suv but i don't get anything but no that wasn't it it was it was really because that car made sense it was practical for what i was going to be looking for now this goes back to the the extravagant love of god so i find one at a dealership i set up time to go make an appointment on a monday to go look at it but on a sunday before that monday all dealerships are closed and i don't want to be harassed by the dealer because everybody knows the minute you show up at a car dealership they're going to flock you and go hey you're here to buy a car i saw your credit rating when you pulled up wait how did you is it on my head anyway so i pull up the dealership and it's you know closed i see the car that i i saw online got a great paint job on it had brand new tires i'm like this is a solid car i'm totally going to make my appointment the following day and come and look at this car so i make my appointment i go up there and i'm there a little earlier than i'm supposed to be there and the car's not there like i kid you not i was there the day before the car's gone i'm like really god this is i mean i just had this happen to me at a car dealership where every single one of the cars i test drove nope not nope not that one nope that one's gone no now the car is literally gone and i parked in front this time with the dealership open did any of the sales guys talk to me not at one i'm like how is that even possible how do car dealers stay in business if they're ignoring the people who come up and park in the front they clearly want to buy a car was completely ignored i walk inside and i'm completely ignored i'm finally so frustrated with this i'm like i call up my wife i said you know what i'm i'm done i'm heading over to you because this isn't happening today i drive all the way she calls me back says hey the dealer's saying that he's got the car all prepped and ready i'm like it wasn't there did i go to the wrong dealership he's like no you're at the right dealership i said well then where was the car i don't know why didn't anybody talk to me i don't know i get back over and i talk to her and somebody else comes to me and says maybe god's trying to tell you you shouldn't be buying a car she said obviously i shouldn't be buying a car because i'm invisible at car dealerships and all the cars i want to buy are gone so then some friends of ours and of course uh john and donna invite us over to go dinner and then play games at their house and this other couple with them too they invite us over to play games and uh while we're at dinner they're convincing my younger son hey come with us because my kids are going to be there to come play games too and we're like all right cool so we go over their house and we're we're finished at dinner and we're getting ready to play card games and he says hey i want to bless you guys i want to pray over you guys and so he put some chairs in the living room and prays this phenomenal kingdom prayer over us and i'm like man that's impactful like crowned us like literally kingdom amazing could have been done right there and he goes oh by the way i want to give you a car like i immediately i'm thinking one of your teenagers leftover car you want to give me a car i'm like sweet he goes but stay right here because i want to bring it around and i want to film your reaction i'm like oh i'm excited about it i'm getting stoked now i'm like all right i'm really excited about it he pulls around in a 2020 brand new jeep gladiator park right out there and i'm like what you're joking right you're giving me that that's what you're tell me you're joking that that's that is extravagant but that pales in comparison to what god has done for you the extravagant love god has shown every single one of you there isn't a sin that you've committed that he hasn't taken there isn't anything you've done that he hasn't already forgiven you for that's extravagant the part of the story that i missed out was this couple that gave me this car she called him up and said hey did you see them on facebook she got a brand new car do we are we still supposed to give them this vehicle and he said absolutely should go good because i heard they're going to a dealership i'm praying they're invisible okay god's listening to your prayers it worked so that and then of course you know i know without a shadow of a doubt that car was meant to be mine because then he comes back to me later and says hey by the way you know that car was actually my father's he didn't want it he wanted a different car he went and bought another car a few months later he didn't like it and he got rid of it and bought another jeep gladiator wait a minute he gave me the same car or you gave me the same car he went and bought the same one so i know that one was supposed to be mine bought it specifically for me because that was supposed to be mine are god's more extravagant than that our god is so extravagant he will not he will not stop pursuing you he will always pursue you even if you're not pursuing him he says he'll always be standing there knocking that's an annoying knock god stop knocking he goes but i'm waiting i'm waiting on you to turn around because i'm right here to give you so much extravagant love that it overflows from you and it pours out into everything you do in every part of your life discipleship is ugly discipleship is great but discipleship is following after the model in which god taught us to do with one another and that is pour out extravagant love on people you may not be financially blessed to be able to give someone an extravagant car but you may be blessed to be able to go help someone paint their house you may be blessed enough to go help someone mow you may be blessed enough to just sit there and listen to them cry because they miss their husband who died that's discipleship that's living out what god called us to do the com the great commission as people call it yes it is to get people baptized it is to get people to introduced to god but it's also to show them how to live that out and then reproduce it because once they've spent time with you and they got it all they figured it out they're like hey we're supposed to love everybody they don't ever fall away from your life you're still friends with them they're still going to come around but you've equipped them to now go do it to others and it keeps going and it keeps going and it lights fire to the entire world that's what god intended us to do how much time do i have do i have enough time i'm a little over then i'm a little over and he's talking about dallas cowboys who is that guy oh i know him he's related to me i get it well then i'm going to close us in prayer and get us out of here dear god thank you papa father thank you for the wonderful presence of peace that you've given i hope this message impact those and gave tangible real-world examples of how we can live out your life i pray and thank you for all these people that witnessed today that heard your message i pray blessings on them i pray your extravagant love shows up in every one of them in some way shape or form this week in jesus name amen thank you guys thanks for coming [Applause] you

Channel: Streams Ministries

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Id: lY9ttBQUdlM

Length: 98min 4sec (5884 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021