Discipleship: Following Jesus

The following study is based in large part on "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Pastor Bonhoeffer's work is insightful into the kind of instruction we would expect Christ to have given the original twelve disciples to prepare them for the work God gave them. Bonhoeffer became a martyr for Christ during the Holocaust of World War 2, a time when pure evil seemed unstoppable. We are living again in a precarious time of societal unrest, class division, and, probably most threatening, an organized, political, attack on the institution of the church. The Bible singles out Christianity-as the name implies-as a Christ-centric way of life which now comes into conflict with a growing global opposition to both the moral principles Jesus endorsed as well as the freedom believers in Christ exercise in serving Him. From the public displays of religious devotion to God to their outspoken promotion of teachings and traditions that conflict with a society becoming more and more secular, believers are being marginalized as social outcasts and even, in some cases, criminals. We know there is a cost to being a disciple of Christ. Daniel is walking close to the lion's den because of his love for God. To quote Peter, "we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard" [Acts 4:20].