For God to accomplish the work that he has begun in us, we need to rely on Him. Nevertheless, as we follow Christ, we should recognize that we are not worthy of any of the good he bestows upon us, but because of his goodness.

ECYC 2015: Christ In Me

<p>For God to accomplish the work that he has begun in us, we need to rely on Him. Nevertheless, as we follow Christ, we should recognize that we are not worthy of any of the good he bestows upon us, but because of his goodness.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Eastern Canada Youth Conference

Plenary

Sebastien Braxton

What Is Righteousness by Faith?

Why Do I Love Evil?

When Temptations Return

After the Commercial, We will be Right Back!

Father, we pray that you would guide us to an experience of rightly dividing the Word of Truth.

And Jesus says that the Holy Spirit, when he would come, he would guide us into all truth.

And all we pray, Lord, is the words of that song that says, God be in my head and in my thinking.

Oh God be in my heart and in my understanding.

This is our prayer Lord and we offer this prayer from our hearts in Jesus's name, Amen.

I want you to turn with me to the book of Matthew chapter 4.

The first thing I want to talk about is righteousness by faith in the context of discipleship.

That there is no such thing as discipleship without righteousness by faith.

And unfortunately for many of us, or maybe fortunately I should say, that the actual Great Commission is a commission to go and make disciples.

So to understand righteousness by faith is a critical element of understanding how to engage in discipleship and how discipleship works is what we teach in discipleship.

I'm just going to pray that you are awake.

The Bible says, And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw 2 brothers.

Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

Then he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And they immediately left their nets and followed him.

Going from there he saw 2 other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother in the boat with Zebedee their father mending their nets.

He called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Now right here in the midst of this passage there's something that is actually teaching us about Christ's method.

Ministry of Healing page 146, Christ's method alone right?

And do you remember all the steps in that?

Right it says Christ's method alone will basically give us true success and he A.

He Sympathized with them Thirdly he ministered to their needs Fourthly he won there and then he bathed them.

That is telling you what he did with Peter before he called them here.

The result of Christ's method is not baptism.

The result of Christ's method is discipleship.

So he says, you mingled among men desiring their good.

You win their confidence and then you bid them to do what?

When he calls Peter, he doesn't say, follow me, he says, follow me and.

The call to discipleship is not just about following Jesus.

So I want you to understand something right here in the middle of discipleship is the principle of righteousness by faith.

He looks at Peter, he looks at James and John and he says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

In other words, he's saying, who is the subject of the verb follow?

So if you and I are receiving a call from Jesus to be disciples, our primary call is to what?

We are to study the steps and the words of Jesus.

You see, back in those days when a rabbi would call someone, he had different tests of discipleship.

Typically you would walk up to a rabbi and you would say, you know, I want to be 1 of your students and the rabbi would say, okay, quote for me Jeremiah chapter 35.

If you can't quote it word for word, because he knows the whole Old Testament probably from memory.

And so he qualifies his students by how much knowledge you have.

And then if you got it right, let's say you quoted all of Jeremiah 35 from memory and you did not mess up 1 time, then he would say these 2 words to you.

But you see, when he made that call to them.

He literally meant follow me and In some traditions they suggest that some rabbis literally expected you to walk in their literal physical footprints You ever been in the snow right and When the snow is really high and you want to walk to your car to the road, what do you do?

And you step in the footprints now if you're like really short like Chantal and she's trying to follow my footsteps, right?

I have a long stride So she's gonna be you know doing these things You can imagine people walking around Jerusalem trying to follow the rabbi.

So here they are like walking where he walks, stop where he stops and literally they would say when it's time for me to sleep you sleep.

Because the whole point was if I'm gonna be your disciple I need you to transmit your life over to me in order to transmit your life over to me I have to literally walk in your actual steps live your actual life with you and realize the discipline the asceticism the commitment the fasting the prayer everything that he does so that I can also have the same results in power and knowledge that he possesses.

So can you imagine that the God of the universe incarnate in Jesus says follow me.

Now you have to step back a moment and recognize that what he's asking me to do the power is not in me to do it.

I tell people all the time this story when I was a kid, right, and you're thinking about the fact that playing basketball and learning anything.

I said, listen, if someone, you know, this kid on the playground, he's like a college basketball player and he's like, hey Sebastian, I want to teach you, I want you to follow what I do, right, put some cones on the court, takes the basketball, dribbles around the cone this way, this way, right?

He's like, no, I want you to follow what I do.

I'm not able to follow what you're doing.

So you're asking me to do something for me that's out of my league.

He says, listen, all I'm asking you to do is to continue to try.

And this principle that Sister White gives us in Ministry of Healing, she says, that which at first is difficult, when done repeatedly, becomes easy.

So therefore, the issue is to stick with it no matter what.

This would get us out of a lot of devotional ruts.

Too many times we give up on our devotion because I'm not getting anything out of it.

Even if I'm looking at ink on paper, I'm still open the Bible and look at the Bible.

If I'm going to be bored, if I'm going to be anything out of my mind, if I'm going to be sick, tired, I'd rather be sick, tired, bored in the presence of Jesus.

But I just need to stick with it, no matter what.

But as he looks at Peter and James and John, he realizes that, listen, when you follow me There's something that needs to happen in your life.

The call to discipleship is not just to walk with me and live as I live, do as I do.

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Series

Plenary

When Temptations Return

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

GYC SE 2011 Plenary Meetings

Back From the Dead

55m

Renewing the Mind

58m

Lovely Lord of the Lord's Day

9 - Our Impartial Christ

28m

Marriage Heart to Heart

Solution to Every Problem

50m

The Least of These

39m

Plenary

Something Greater than the name of Jesus

1h

Characteristics of a Wise Man

52m

Family First

57m

Faith and Work

22m

Lovely Lord of the Lord's Day

2 - Our Generous Lord

22m

Light and Love for Laodiceans Part 1

56m

The Blessing of Uncertainty

51m

Sound Doctrine