Shepherd of Faith

Inspiration for your journey to God!

Tag: discipleship

Coming to Jesus fully armed and without distraction

December 14, 2019 / / 0 Comments
coming to Jesus
Nature’s beauty pulls us toward God!

Come to Jesus fully armed and without distraction! Today I’m splitting the Gospel into parts and sharing thoughts after each part.

luke 14:25-33

Great crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and addressed them. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

what do you mean?

Do I think Jesus really wants us to hate our family and our life? Absolutely not! What I think he’s getting at is a renunciation of what we identify with. Sometimes we can over-identify with our family, our nationality, our religion, our intelligence and even our career. When we over-identify with any of those things, we view everything outside our group as other. This leaves very little room for Jesus who calls us to oneness.

finish strong

“Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for it’s completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and way, ‘this one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’“

Jesus sure does have a way with words! I took these words as a warning for us not to take discipleship lightly. Jesus wants us to really think about what it takes to be a disciple. He wants us to work at having the necessary tools to follow Him obediently and whole-heartedly. We make a mockery of discipleship when we don’t practice what we preach.

When it comes to starting new things, we start strong. Conversion and choosing to follow Christ is no different. But familiarity breeds contempt and soon enough our fire fades. Jesus is telling us here that we need to start strong and finish strong!

If someone were watching you at this moment in your life in the hopes of deciding whether or not to become a disciple, would they take the leap? Do you think they would say to themselves, “I want what that person has?”

fully armed

“Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.“

Do we have what it takes to overcome temptation? That’s what I think this verse is about. We must be fully armed. Ephesians 6:10-18 reads, in part:

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,  and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

I read something once that said, “be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says ‘Oh crap, she’s up.’ THAT’S what this verse is all about!

last but not least

In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.

This is not about giving up all you have. I believe this is about detaching from those things in your life that take your attention away from the one who loves you. Do you find yourself watching hours of television and not having enough time to ponder Scripture? Does your fascination with social media keep you from sitting in silence? Is focusing on your body image more important than focusing on your soul image? I think you get where I’m going.

Being a disciple requires us to be counter-cultural. THAT is the cross Jesus talks about in this Gospel.

So today I ponder what I need to detach from and what I over-identify with. Do I really have what it takes to be an obedient, whole-hearted disciple? Do I exhibit the characteristics necessary to be a true witness? Am I well equipped for spiritual warfare? Do I have what it takes to finish strong? You?

God bless you!

Privileges of discipleship – truly!

December 3, 2019 / / 0 Comments
privileges of discipleship
The Peaceable Kingdom(c.1834), based on Isaiah 11:6-9 and painted by Edward Hicks an American Quaker painter on display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Privileges of Discipleship? Pondering……………..

luke 10:21-24

At that very moment he rejoiced in the holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the child-like. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.

Turning to the disciples in private he said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.

PRIVILEGES OF DISCIPLESHIP

Upon reading today’s Gospel, I was struck by the subtitle given to verses 23-24 – The Privileges of Discipleship. While I am fully aware that faith is a total gift from God, I never thought of my discipleship as a privilege. But now I see clearly that it is!

With that in mind, it’s obvious that our faith and willingness to be a disciple of God is pure grace. It is gift, it is privilege, it is not and should not be a drudgery. It’s our response to God’s pursuit. Our YES, parallel to Mary’s YES!

WISE AND LEARNED

Jesus rejoices in the holy Spirit because of God’s gracious will! He refers to the wise and the learned and the child-like. “The wise and the learned” makes me think of those who overthink and are rigid to a fault. Why are things hidden from the “wise and the learned?” My guess would be because faith requires an open mind.

The mystery of God cannot be contained, it cannot be understood. Overthinking and rigidity, in a sense, blinds us. We lose out on seeing and hearing what God has chosen to reveal to us. He has chosen to reveal Himself to us but are we experiencing it?

THE CHILD-LIKE

For me, “child-like” equals complete trust. The way a child trusts that its parents will care for and protect it. It also makes me think of authenticity. What I think Jesus was getting at in this verse is what I was blessed to read this morning from World Community for Christian Contemplation:

(EEG studies of the brain of children (under two) show that they PERMANENTLY function in alpha mode – the state of altered consciousness in an adult – rather than the beta mode of ordinary mature consciousness.” Lynne Taggart ‘The Field’) By meditating we can therefore consciously return to a way of perception that was at first instinctive and unconscious. Read the whole reflection here.

TAKE IT AWAY

Hmmmm? Learned and wise vs. child-like. What does that mean for us? I know what it means for me and I completely agree! Meditation is key and it’s for EVERYONE!

The take away today: The more we trust, the more we see and experience God’s presence. The more we experience God, the deeper our faith becomes. Our faith shouldn’t be blind. It should be the result of what we see and hear through our experience of God. Those experiences come when we openly trust!

God bless you!

Sidebar: Today’s mass readings include Isaiah 11:1-10. I didn’t write a reflection on it, but I wanted to share the art (the image used for this post) that depicts verses 6-9. It’s one of my favorites.

Isaiah 11:6-9 reads: Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. the cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea. Imagine that?!

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