The 5 Minute Discipleship Podcast

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#406: The Importance of Praising God Sep 21, 2021

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Episode 406 - Show Notes

Psalm 150:6 says “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” Doctors tell us that on average you take 20.000 breaths each day. Your lungs are working all day and all night. By the time you are 50 years old, you will have taken around 400 million breaths. When was the light time you thanked God for your lungs and the breath he has given you. Our lives depend on our ability to breath.
What will you do with the breath God has given you? Did you know it”s the will of God that you praise him? That may sound self-serving and egotistical to some, but we must recognize that there is no one like God. There never has been anyone like him and there never will be. He is praised because he alone is worthy.
Praise is directed to God, but it also does something for us. Praise and worship of God keeps our focus on the Lord, and off of ourselves. Praising God fills our hearts with joy and gratitude for all God has done for us. Praise and worship will lift you out of discouragement and despair.
The enemy of our soul will always attempt to keep us from praising God. He hates God and does all he can do to steal away God’s glory. So, he’ll attempt to keep you from joining with other believer for corporate worship. He’ll try to make you so busy that you don’t have time for personal worship.
But, Jesus is worthy of our praise. He alone is deserving of our worship. We cannot keep silent. We cannot stifle our praise. We must lift our voices in individual worship. We must raise our voices in worship with other believers. We must praise the one whose name is above every other name.

Luke 19:37-40 - When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

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#405: A Decision to Follow Jesus Sep 20, 2021

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Episode 405 - Show Notes

I believe that being a disciple of Jesus comes down to a personal decision. Have you made this decision? Have you decided to follow Jesus. Have you drawn a line in the sand and said, “no turning back?”
What I love about Jesus is that everyone is invited to follow. “Whoever wants to be my disciple… Jesus doesn’t begin with a list of pre-qualifications. This is great news because so many people think they couldn’t possibly be accepted. They wouldn’t make the cut. If Jesus knew me…he wouldn’t want me.
Faith is a choice. Following Jesus is a choice. Being a disciple is a choice. It’s not about being raised in church or being from a Christian family. It doesn’t matter if your parents and grandparents were Christ followers. You and I must come to the place where we make our own decision. What will we do with Jesus? Will we follow him or will we reject him. It is a personal decision.
So many today are still wavering about this decision. The pull of the world is strong. The lure of other gods is tempting.
By God’s grace, I have had the opportunity to lead many people to the place of decision to follow Christ. I have never had anyone come back to me with regret about their decision to follow Jesus.
Let’s make a firm decision to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.

Joshua 24:15 - But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

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#404: No other gods Sep 19, 2021

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Episode 404 - Show Notes

I believe the old saying is true: “No man can live without worshipping something.” Whether you are religious or non-religious, you still worship. You will worship as a Christian, an agnostic, or even as an atheist. Everyone worships something.
Even a casual glance around reveals what people worship. Some worship success, achievement, money, or reputation. Others worship sports, beauty, recreation, food, or material things. Still others worship independence, freedom, isolation, and opportunity.
God will not tolerate us having any other gods before him. In the second commandment He tells us not to worship idols.
God calls us to allegiance and a full devotion of our lives to him because our hearts are prone to wonder. It’s easy to get our eyes off of God and onto other things. The Bible says our hearts are deceptive. We can easily be led into idol worship, we can make other things gods, without even realizing it.
It’s critical that we do two things. First we must make our worship of God a priority. Let me ask you, “When do you worship God?” You might say, “Well, I worship on Sunday mornings.” I really hope you do, but God is worthy of our worship on seven days, not just one day each week. Worship centers our hearts on God. It keeps us focused and less likely to worship idols.
Second, we must pay close attention to our affections. What do we love? What do we pursue? What do we long for? Where are we giving our time and resources? These are indicators of our affections.
So we guard our hearts, meaning we guard our affections and what we love, because our whole life flows from it. We determine to seek God with all of our heart. This is how we treasure Him above all things.

Exodus 20:3 - “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

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#403: No More Tears Sep 18, 2021

Show notes

Episode 403 - Show Notes

God has created us with emotions. You have emotions of joy which include happiness, contentment, peace, love, relief, and satisfaction. You also experience emotions of sadness, which may include feelings of disappointment, grief, heartbreak, loneliness, and misery. It’s perfectly normal to feel and share our emotions.
Throughout scripture we see people expressing the emotion of sadness through their tears. There are biblical examples of tears of grief, tears of repentance, tears of joy, tears of sympathy, tears disappointment and neglect, and tears of yearning and desire.
John chapter 11 tells us that even Jesus wept when he saw the tomb of his friend Lazarus, who had recently died.
Hebrews 4:15 tells us that God “sympathizes with our weaknesses.” Some translations say he is “touched with the feelings of our infirmities.”
The ancient Greeks believed that one of the primary attributes of God was his inability to feel anything at all. Jesus isn’t like that. He knows and He feels what we go through. The ancient Greek word translated sympathize literally means “to suffer along with.”
What makes the difference is that Jesus added humanity to His deity, and lived among us. When you have been there, it makes all the difference.
While we all have emotions and we all have tears of sorrow in this life, there is coming a day, as Revelation 21 says, when “God wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
We will be in God’s presence forever. And because we will be with God, no harm or evil can ever touch us again. We will enter into a joy we have never experienced and cannot begin to imagine. There will be no tears. No sorrow. No pain. No regret. No remorse. Bitterness is gone forever, failure left far behind, suffering is redeemed and rewarded.
On that incredible day, God will wipe away our sadness, our sorrow, our grief, our mourning, and our heartache. He will replace it with gladness, celebration, delight, joy, and eternal contentment.

Revelation 21:1-4 - "Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

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#402: Your Thoughts Control Your Life Sep 17, 2021

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Episode 402 - Show Notes

God has given you a beautiful mind. It’s an incredible thing. You can reason. You gain knowledge, you have a powerful memory. You have imagination. Experts say you and I have between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts per day. That is a lot of thinking.
As Christ followers, even our private thoughts matter. Paul says we should intentionally think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.
We pay close attention to our thoughts because our thoughts affect how we feel, what we believe, and even what we do.
I believe spiritual battles are won or lost in the mind. Your thoughts will lead you into victory or into failure. Many of our problems are the result of improper thinking. It is poor management of our minds. The battle against unforgiveness or pride or lust or anger isn’t won in the behavior realm. It’s won in the mind.
It’s true that our thoughts control our lives. So, let’s begin to fill our minds with the Word of God. Let’s begin to meditate on truth. Let’s be careful to honor the Lord with our thought by keeping them on things that are true, pure, and righteous.
In the Great Commandment, Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, and with all of our mind. We can love God with our minds by keeping our thoughts on things that please and honor him.

Colossians 3:2 - "“Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.”
Philippians 4:8 - “ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

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#401: God's Love Never Fails Sep 16, 2021

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Episode 401 - Show Notes

God's love for us is not dependent on our actions and there is nothing we can do to make him stop loving us. This of course, doesn’t mean that our actions always please the Lord or that he won’t discipline us, but his love for us is firm and unfailing.
But God’s love comes without human cause. He loves because that is the kind of God He is. Nothing in us causes him to love us. Not our beauty, not our wealth, not our wisdom, not our good deeds, and not our promise to love him back.
While we were sinners, when we were at our worst, and while we were the enemies of God, He demonstrated his great love for us by sending Jesus to die on the cross in our place.
We can’t really understand this kind of love. We live in a world that says, “If you love me, I’ll love you back.” We don’t typically love those who treat us poorly. We don’t demonstrate great love to those who are our enemies. But this is exactly the kind of love God has for us.
While he loves us as we are, he never leaves us as we are. His love brings us grace and mercy, but it also calls for confession and repentance. His love leads us to live a righteous life that honors the Lord. After all, what else could we give God in response to his love for us? Our only option is to give him our lives.
Through every season of life, in all of your ups and downs, on your good days and on your bad days, you are still loved by God. When you succeed and when you fail, God’s love continues.
How can we respond to the unfailing love of God? We love him in return. We demonstrate our love through worship and by surrounding our lives to serve him.

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#400: In Need of God's Comfort Sep 15, 2021

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Episode 400 - Show Notes

Where do you go when you face trouble? Where do you go when life is hard. It’s true that without hope in Christ, you’ll turn to the things this world offers. Have you ever heard someone in a moment of stress or anxiety say, “I need a drink.” Or, “I need a cigarette?” They are turning to these things for comfort.
But I know of another comfort. In fact, it’s a superior comfort, provided by God himself.
The Bible says God is close to those who have a broken heart. It says he will provide strength for the weary. It says God will provide rest for our souls
God sees us in our burdens and in our difficulties. He sees us in our hard times takes our load and carries it himself. God walks with us in our pain and suffering. He walks with us in our grief and loss. David wrote, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.” (Psalm 23:4)
The reason God comforts us is not just so we will be comforted. He wants us to take the strength and courage that He’s given us and use it to encourage others.
Your greatest ministry may come out of your deepest hurt. Because you can relate. You can say, “I have been there…and I’ve seen what God can do.”
God is interested in every detail of my life. God is not some impersonal force who is uncaring and uninterested, or unable to know you. He knows you personally and intimately. You can turn to him in your times of trouble and he will be there to comfort you.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 - “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

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#399: Going the Extra Mile Sep 14, 2021

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Episode 399 - Show Notes

Even if others treat you unfairly, how you behave is more important. We represent Christ when we treat others with generosity.
As we grow in the character of Christ, it’s his love that compels us to do more than expected. Anyone can do the minimum. Anyone can meet the lowest standard of expectation. Jesus is challenging us to serve others with love. He’s calling us to give of ourselves and to live with greater generosity.
It’s not natural for us to want to go the second mile. It requires the strength of the Holy Spirit. It is not our natural tendency. We need God’s strength. Second mile Christians are witnesses to the inward work of Jesus Christ. We let the world know about Jesus by the life we live.
Even your work ethic can be a testimony of your faith in Christ. Many employees tend to do as little as possible, but Jesus changes our character, which impacts the effort with which we approach our employment. It now becomes an integrity issue. When we go the second mile, people will notice and it gives testimony to Christ. Even if they don’t notice, God notices, and he keeps a record.
Listen today for the voice of the Holy Spirit. He may lead you to go the second mile. As you do, go with a sweet spirit and let your life be a testimony of God’s grace.

Matthew 5:41 - “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

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#398: Why the Church Must Be United Sep 13, 2021

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When we come together in unity, we have the ability to share the beautiful message of Jesus with a hurting world. But when we are out of tune, the result is chaos and confusion.

In John 17, Jesus prays what appears to be his final prayer before his betrayal, arrests, and crucifixion. Imagine knowing what was ahead, what would be his final prayer request. Would it be for safety or protections? Would it be for deliverance from evil? No, his final prayer was for his followers. Here’s what he prayed… he said, “Father, let them be one.”

His prayer was dominated by a single thought – that his followers would be united in heart and purpose, so that the world would know why Jesus came.
As Jesus prays he knows he is about to leave His followers behind in a very tough world. He knows the persecution that is coming. He knows the temptations they will face. He knew how Satan would work to divide his disciples, so he prays for them. “Father, let them be one…”

When we come together with all of conflict, broken relationships, political division, dysfunctional families, and fractured communities…when we come together in unity it is a sign to the world that God is a work here.

Disunity brings confusion to our fellowship. It clouds our witness to the community. It brings a reproach upon the witness of Jesus. It brings discouragement and despair to a congregation. Satan knows that if he can divide us, it will keep us from being healthy and it will keep us from reaching people for Christ.

So, Jesus prays that his 12 disciples would be one, that they would come together in unity. But he doesn’t just pray for the 12, he prays for you and me too.

John 17:20 - “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.”
Let’s hear the call of our savior to come together as one body, one church, serving one savior. While we have different opinions and preferences, we surrender them to unite around our mission of sharing Jesus with the world.

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#397: Your God-Given Purpose Sep 12, 2021

Show notes

Episode 397 - Show Notes

Over the last generation, pastors, preachers, and speakers have been telling audiences that God has a great purpose for their lives. The audience inevitably will clap and cheer. It’s inspiring to believe and know that we are here for purpose. Our lives are planned by God. He has a great plan for our lives, we’ve been told.
But how? How do we know what that purpose is? Why is it so hard to figure out? How terrible to be told that our lives have purpose, but to be left to discern that purpose all on our own.
There is no doubt about it. God has purpose for our lives and he has prepared us for this moment. Your purpose is not just about your future. It’s about your life right now.
As Christ followers, a significant part of our God-given purpose centers around what we call The Great Commission.
We are called by Jesus to make disciples, not just be disciples. So much of what we do as Christians falls into the category of being and learning to be a disciple of Jesus.
But Jesus instructs us not just to be, but to make disciples. This is your purpose. Receive it. Memorize it. Obey it. Practice it. Your purpose is to make disciples. This is not the purpose of just pastors, preachers, and missionaries. It’s the divine purpose for everyone who believes in Jesus.
As you receive your purpose, your next step is to determine how you will participate, and that comes down to your gifts and talents. God has placed gifts within you to be used for his purpose.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Matthew 28:19-20 - “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

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