The disciple’s call

The Disciple’s call Jesus said is the highest anyone can receive this side of heaven.

Jesus declared this call is directly given to us through God the Father.

The greatest qualifying quality is the Father’s call and second to it is the presence of the love of the truth in our hearts.

“Love of the truth”

This portion of the qualification for discipleship is the part we need to act upon by our free and perfect will.

In the 21^st chapter of John’s gospel Jesus asked three different times if Peter loved Him, and each by respond from Peter Jesus the Christ gave Him a new level of service in the form of discipleship.

Finally Jesus asked the third time by saying “Peter do you agape Me”

Meaning do you love Me

(Meaning the Truth that I Am) with God’s unconditional love?  This time Jesus said

“If you do, then feed my sheep.”

As you very well know discipleship requires a heavy cost, meaning to deny one’s own life and dreams for God’s. Jesus often said if you do not hate mother, father, wife, children husband, even your own life you are not worthy of Me. What are these hard words? Many left Him when He began to ask them to seek God’s Kingdom and His righteousness first. When Jesus asked if they would eat His body and drink His blood many forsook him altogether. The only ones remaining were the 11 who acknowledged through Peter’s words that He possessed the words of life.

Jesus always spoke of the cost of discipleship and how unless God the Father call us for service no one would be able to remain a disciple long.

Many in the body of Christ are blinded to the truth of His word. They are fighting as though riding on a lion, yet they do not know where their swords are headed. Apostle Paul says these are enemies of the cross of Christ. Their God is their belly. These men and women are in the race yet they do night fight according to the rules. The eyes of their hearts are blinded to the love of God’s truth. They have a form of godliness, but have denied its power.

The power of godliness is the love and the obedience of the revealed truth about God and His will. Many after being born again still have a very difficult time excepting His truth. They do not love the truth, although now they know the truth, yet they reject it for a lie.

Having an unseen enemy they fight with blind folders on.  Their false humility and blindness of the heart has turned them into pretentious people fighting in the dark aimlessly.

Having a blind faith they create their own truth and worship it instead of Christ’s truth which is the only eternal truth. Apostle Paul had a difficult and challenging time with these people. In the letter to the church of Galatians in chapter 4 verse 15 Paul is saying… “What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”

This group of believers when they first met Paul loved him to death. To a point they were willing to do everything and anything for him as their Apostle, but now that he began to speak to them the truth about them, they began to shun away from Him.

Very much like the followers of Christ, as long as Christ performed miracles for them gave them food and did well they followed Him, but then they all left Him.

Many in the body of Christ are blinded to the truth of His word. They are fighting as though riding on a lion, yet they do not know where their swords are headed. Apostle Paul says these are enemies of the cross of Christ. Their God is their belly. These men and women are in the race yet they do night fight according to the rules. The eyes of their hearts are blinded to the love of God’s truth. They have a form of godliness, but have denied its power.

The power of godliness is the love and the obedience of the revealed truth about God and His will. Many after being born again still have a very difficult time excepting His truth. They do not love the truth, although now they know the truth, yet they reject it for a lie.

Having an unseen enemy they fight with blind folders on.  Their false humility and blindness of the heart has turned them into pretentious people fighting in the dark aimlessly.

In Mark chapter 4:24 our Lord Jesus says it in this way.

“Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use (Listen and Obey) it will be measured to you; and to you who hear

(To Them who love the truth) more will be given.”

What is Jesus saying here? The steps of faith comes by the measure of our love for the truth revealed to us in His word, Who is Jesus Himself. The more we love Him or His truth the more we would obey His commands and the more we obey the more we would grow in Him. By this we know who the true children of God are.

Apostle Paul was often in the agony of spiritual labor pains for the same people, because they preferred the wide road leading to destruction than the narrow road that leads to eternal life.

Paul was pleading with his own spiritual children to heed his words about the truth.

Today there are many who unfortunately do the same. As long as they hear the ear itching messages of some instructors in Christ they are happy, but when it comes to live a pure life following the truth, they close their eyes and ears and follow their own stubborn ways of their old nature called the flesh.

They want to live in pleasure and lust, yet they want to receive the abundant life in Christ here on earth. Then they even expect to inherit God’s incorruptible and undefiled kingdom in heaven by their own standards.  But Apostle Paul in 2^ndCorinthians the 11^th chapter verse 1 and on says it in this way… “For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”.  “But I fear, lest somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

For if he who comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you did not receive, or a different gospel which you have not accepted- you may well put up with it..

Here Paul defends His apostleship and makes a point that you Corinthians are very easily forsaking the love of the truth for a lie. Therefore he had to go through travail in prayers for them so that their eyes maybe enlightened to the love of the truth originally embraced by them through his parental care and love.

Apostle Paul knew that people had lost their zeal for the truth, so they had begun to follow a false gospel of ease and selfishness. Their embrace of the truth had diminished and false teachers had come with wrong motives and were posing as the ministers of the Lord. Spreading gangrene among God’s elect.

For the Lord Jesus Himself had taught them about the parable of the tares and wheat. Also Paul had written to the Thessalonian Church in his 2^nd letter in chapter 2 that the “ Coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they may be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie. That they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but hadpleasure in unrighteousness.

Here I believe Apostle Paul speaks of not only the unbelievers as some might think, but the so called believers who do not love the truth, although they know the truth, just like the Pharisees who knew the word.

These are the ones who reject the truth even by not confessing their sins before God.

As in the book of Romans chapter one Paul says.. These knowing the truth they suppress the truth for a lie. The unbelieving do not even know the truth to love it or not.

Just as in the 1^st Corinthians chapter 11 when Paul says in taking communion we need to confess our sins so we would not be condemned with world. What does these words mean? It simply means when we know we have sinned according to the truth of the word, we must love the truth so much that we should not conceal its truth by hiding our sins under our own reasoning’s. But that in loving the truth we need to confess our sins and make God to be the only truth, so that we would not be given over to the penalties of our own sins.

As King David did in psalm 51 by confessing the wickedness of his own sin by which God’s rightousness did come forth through  the acknowledgement of his sins.

Therefore let us do as David did. Amen?