christianity

In the Bible, we see discipleship as a relational, intentional process. Jesus didn’t hold weekly seminars with His disciples. He lived life with them—teaching through stories, asking questions, serving others, and walking alongside them with purpose.

And here’s the key: He didn’t expect them to be perfect. He expected them to follow.

But it’s also worth pondering how both can drift askew in the hands of an unsteady driver. Gospel-Centered can veer into passivity. “Believing the gospel more-and-more” becomes thinking about the gospel without doing anything else - Willard’s “sin management.” Meanwhile, Spiritual Formation leads some to reckon that it’s all up to our consistency,

If you try to bend metal without the softening effect of heat, it may simply break. Many people, after years of being crushed under moralistic behaviorism, abandon their faith altogether, complaining that they are exhausted and “can’t keep it up.” But the gospel of God’s grace doesn’t try to bend a heart into a new pattern; it melts it and reforms

It is largely caused and sustained by the basic message that we constantly hear from Christian pulpits. We are flooded with what I have called “gospels of sin management,” in one form or another, while Jesus’ invitation to eternal life now – right in the midst of work, business, and profession – remains for the most part ignored and unspoken.

Too often, I act like only pastors with degrees can make disciples. But the early church exploded because ordinary people shared what they had seen and heard.

As more Christian pastors, authors, and 'celebrities' fall, let me remind you that grace does not mean sin does not matter. It means sin does not win.

The same grace that forgives us of sin is the same grace that trains us to resist it. Do not confuse pardon with permission to keep robbing the bank.