Online Christian Discipleship School
LifeCycle Series C4
Instructions: You can use the course online or print each lesson and fill in the blanks. If you're taking these courses with the goal of receiving a diploma or becoming a member of Web-Church, you must answer and file a copy of each lesson to submit to Web-Church once you've completed all lessons. If you wish to make a file copy, you can highlight the text and paste it into a text file. Pay close attention to any affirmations, commitments or Bible memory verses at the end of lessons. These are included to help cement the lesson content into your life.
Introduction: Here we are in the final session of the Blooming series. We've learned about the Spiritual Fruit, Gifts and Ministry Gifts that make it possible for us to mature, interact and prepare to reproduce as followers of Jesus. Now we need to know more than what these gifts are, we need to know why we have them…what they're for, and how to keep them active in us and increase our ability to use them. Finally, we'll discuss how to keep "getting fed" so we can continue to bloom as a follower of Jesus.
There are 2 verses that continually remind me how far I have left to go in discipleship:
II Pe 1:4 "…you may participate in the ______ nature…" What does it mean to you, to participate in the divine nature? Give an example from your walk with God.
I Jn 4:17 "…in this world we are like ___…" How do you feel we are to be like Him?
I believe these two verses hold the key to why He's given us gifts…and also why He doesn't just "beam us up" to heaven once we receive Him in our hearts.
His work involves us interacting with other people. In the following list of the 24 gifts/fruit we've been studying, underline the ones that are only for the individual with the gift:
Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control, Message of wisdom, Message of knowledge, Faith, Healing, Miraculous powers, Prophecy, Distinguishing between spirits, Speaking tongues, Interpreting tongues, Serving, Teaching, Encouraging, Contributing, Leadership, Showing mercy.
If you underlined any, are you sure? I found a few I couldn't give to others but I realized if I didn't have them, I would not be as good to others as I should…so, all of them are for our work with people, but what people? We are to participate in His nature and be like Him with people who know Him…and people who don't.
a. People who know Him: We have been given gifts to love, serve, support and build up other followers of Jesus. Some of you probably think I forgot the "ascension" gifts in Ephesians 4 "apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors & teachers." I didn't! It's just that so many claims have been made to these "titles" that I didn't want to confuse matters. The people with these gifts (maybe you?) will have Holy Spirit power and have no need for a title or worldly position. The only reason I bring this up is to show what Ep 4 says is our responsibility to each other…the work we are to do among the other followers of Jesus. Eph 4:12-13, "…works of _______, so that the body of Christ may be _____ __, until we all reach _____ in the _____ and in the _________ of the Son of God and become ______, attaining to the whole measure of the ________ of ______."
This is why we've each been given fruit and gifts, so we may do our part to be like God and participate in His divine nature to build each other up. He has given us a great privilege to literally be a part of His work in each other…and a grave responsibility, because we, as part of His body, belong, "to all the others." Our work is not done until we all attain to the fullness of Christ.
b. People who don't know Him yet: This is the greatest responsibility we have in the use of our gifts. It's one thing to "encourage each other" in holiness and good works, to "rebuke" a follower who is misbehaving, or to avoid a "divisive brother" but these actions are offensive to those who don't know the Lord. What is our responsibility to them? To be Christ's ambassadors! II Cor 5:18-20 "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave __ the ________ of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, ___ counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ___________, as though God were making his appeal _______ us. "
Conclusion at The Ten Talents Parable-2
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