While Jesus made a way for you to be right with God, you still must respond to what He has done. How should you respond? Jesus made it very clear in His first recorded sermon. (Mark 1.15 NIV) says, “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” In this short statement, Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God and the promised Messiah had come. Now people are called to respond in two ways.
What is repentance?
First, Jesus said “repent.” Repentance means to simply change your mind and change your direction. A repenting person is aware of his or her sin and is broken over it. (Psalm 38.18 NLT) says, “But I confess my sins; I am deeply sorry for what I have done.”
Instead of blaming others, minimizing, or excusing, a repentant person is broken over the sin and willingly turns from it. Repentance also means that you see the direction you are going on that wayward road, and you make a conscious decision to turn off of it and leave your old lifestyle behind to follow the leadership of Jesus and obey Him.
You can’t follow Jesus and keep going your way. Jesus calls us to be His disciples, walk as He walked and join Him in His mission. (1 John 2.6 NIV) says, “Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did.” Repentance means turning the corner and acknowledging Jesus as the forgiver and leader of your life.
What does it mean to believe in Jesus?
Jesus also said we respond to all He has done by believing in Him. The Apostle Paul told a Philippian jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,” (Acts 16.31 NIV). To “believe in the Lord Jesus” means to believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be and that He has done what He claimed to do. It means acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, who died in your place, was buried and rose again in power.
Believing also means that you act on what you believe to be true. To believe in Jesus involves a decision to place your trust and hope in Him alone for your forgiveness and your eternity. No longer are you trusting in your own efforts, good works or religious practice to save you. You are trusting in Jesus alone and His work on the cross. (Romans 10.9 NLT) states, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This blog features an excerpt from one of our books, Walk With God.
Because of the importance of intentionality in disciple making, we at Discipleship.org are going to emphasize this skill set and mindset over the next four months. Please join with us and seek to share understanding, insight, and practical tools so that you can become skilled at intentionality in relational disciple making and you can help those on your team or in your leadership group to do the same. There are four ways in which we are emphasizing intentionality to help you in the next four months.
- Discipleship.org City Tour Forums – our four City Tour Forums are designed to help you and your team both understand and develop an intentionality posture. The tour is comprised of one day, high impact forums where there will be teaching and round table discussions. Every attendee also gets a copy of Brandon Guindon’s new book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making.
Click the image below for more information.
Take the FREE Individual Disciple Maker Assessment – we designed this assessment with a team of national and international disciple making leaders to help each individual be able to evaluate their disciple making mindset and skill. Just by taking this assessment, you will gain an appreciation for the value of intentionality, along with a sense of how you can increase your own level of intentionality. Click the image below to take the assessment.
- Read the short FREE book, Becoming a Disciple Maker: The Pursuit of Level Five Disciple Making – Bobby wrote this short eBook with statistician Greg Wiens to help you understand the mathematical and practical impact of one person’s disciple making efforts and skills.
Click the image below to download this free eBook.
- Read Brandon Guindon’s book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making – Brandon wrote this Discipleship.org book and Zondervan is publishing, because the understanding and practice of disciple making is so crucial. Every attendee at each of our City Tour events (Nashville, Houston, Dallas and Raleigh), as mentioned above, will receive a FREE copy of Brandon Guindon’s book.
Click the image below to order Brandon Guindon’s book from Amazon.com.
Please join with us in this quest to better understand and practice intentionality. It will help us all to become more and more like Jesus, the world greatest disciple maker.