Last week I shared how I had built a successful business while running from my calling. When the Lord finally confronted me and asked me to put my business on the altar, it quickly collapsed. This was also an answer to my prayer, though I was not expecting it to work out like that. Because of the business, I had many entanglements and obligations I asked the Lord to deliver me from so I could return to my calling. I just did not expect the answer to come that fast, but it was right. The judgments...

   As I promised, this week I will interject personal experiences I think could be helpful. However, because the title of this study is “The Greatest Christian Life,” I am not by any means implying my life is that. Some of the important things I am going to share are my mistakes with the hope they will help others avoid making the same ones.

   Looking back over my life, I think I did fairly well as a disciple, but not as good as a bondservant. I have struggled greatly with this aspect of my relationship with Christ. It took...

  In John 15:8 the Lord said, “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (NKJV). We begin to bear fruit as disciples, but when we go to the next level of relationship with the Lord—being His bondservant—bearing fruit by doing His work becomes our primary focus. Discipleship is mostly about us, us learning, and us growing. But becoming a bondservant requires us to apply all we have learned for His purposes, not our benefit. This is where we start doing the real work of the Lord, walking in a...

       As The Great Commission specifies that disciples are taught “all that He has commanded,” we must understand there are New Testament commandments. They are simple and basic, but they are commandments nonetheless. The most basic commandment the Lord gave us is recorded in John 13:34-35:

       “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

       “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (NKJV).

       ...

        One of the best biblical models of the kind of disciple we are called to be is Joshua. We see this in one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament, Exodus 33:7-11:

       Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp.

        So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the...