How to Study the Bible - Week 8

Everybody doing well tonight? You all studied for the final, right? Okay, good! You're all ready here, apparently in spirit. Well, I am blessed that you all are here, and you have made it to our final class. We're going to wrap things up tonight with a bit of a practicum, if you will.

Normally, when I teach this at the Bible College, depending on the size of the class, either the last class or the last two classes are given completely to each of the people in the class. They have to get up and give a five to seven minute exposition on a passage of Scripture. They have been working on that passage through pretty much the whole semester, so they are generally ready, and they all do a very good job. However, we're not going to do that tonight, so you don't have to be too worried.

We could do as Charles Spurgeon used to do at his pastor's college. They would train their students to be ready to preach extemporaneously on any passage of Scripture. The typical way they would do it was by calling out the name of one of the individuals in the pastor's class. That person would walk up to Pastor Spurgeon, who would give them a little piece of paper with a verse reference written on it. They had the time from when he handed them the paper to the time they got up in the pulpit to prepare their message and speak. They had to be ready to speak in season and out of season, quite literally, from what Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter four.

I'm sure all of you would be ready to do that, but I don't even know if I would, so that would be challenging.

All right, well, we are going to get started here, so why don't we begin with prayer? Father God, thank you again for the opportunity to gather together in this place to learn this topic that we've been going through for the last couple of months. I pray that the things we have discussed, the various methods we've looked at, and all the different things we've talked about would find their way into our hearts and minds. More than anything, Lord, I pray that you would develop within us a desire and a passion to know you and to know you through your Word.

Lord, we thank You that You have given us the Scriptures. God, You inspired them, and throughout the last two thousand years, You have made it such that we have them today in our own language, in multiple versions. Lord, we have the ability to study to show ourselves approved as those who are rightly dividing Your word of Truth.

It wasn't all that long ago, really, when you look at the scheme of history, that it was illegal for people to duplicate the Scriptures in the English language. That's still the case in some other countries, and there are still people who don't have Your word in their language. But Lord, we are privileged, and with that privilege comes the responsibility of taking the time to go through the Scriptures.

So, would You develop in each of us, as we wrap things up tonight, a deeper desire for Your word? Lord, give us understanding. Open our eyes that we would behold wonders from Your word and understand it—not just in our minds, but that it would find its way into our hearts. It should become a part of our lives, that we would live these things out and learn what it means to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So teach us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'm going to start where I start every single week, and this should be redundant by this point in time: Why this class? This class is that we might learn to access the Scriptures in order that we would make them accessible to others. Hopefully, over the last couple of months, you have found that you have a better understanding or a better grasp on understanding the Scriptures when you begin to read them and open the Scriptures yourself devotionally.

We've talked about a number of different methods for that. The one that we started out with is very simple, but I have found it to be very effective in developing a devotional life. It involves tips for Bible study, looking for the truths to believe and to do—so the commands, the indicatives, and the imperatives. We might take those things and then examine ourselves in light of them: Do I believe these things? Do I do these things?

When we discover that we are out of alignment with the plumb bob that I have used several times, then we plan to obey and pray that the Spirit would help us. We apply those things with the Spirit's help, and then we engage in purposeful Bible study, going through the Scriptures and looking at them through a specific lens.

You're going to ask of a text to try to discover what the Scriptures are teaching. What does the passage say about salvation? What does it reveal about humanity? What does it reveal about God? What am I learning about Christ in this passage? These are all kinds of different things to consider in purposeful Bible study.

Then we looked at the importance of using tools like Blue Letter Bible or other research tools that are freely available. With these tools, you can do a word study or search the whole Scriptures. All those things, including word studies and inductive Bible study, allow you to break the text apart into all its component parts. This helps you really see what's going on in the text and understand all the things that are there.

We also talked about Bible arcing. Last week, I shared with you the commissions we started with in class one, where we have been called and commissioned by God to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. This is a universal commission to all of the body of Christ, every single disciple. It is not only for the pastors and leaders, the clergy, or the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers; it is for every Christian. This commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature is emphasized in the Great Commission found in Matthew chapter 28.

Jesus came and spoke to His disciples, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

I also talked last week about the website Nine Marks, which discusses the nine marks of a healthy church. The one I want to focus on tonight is number eight: discipleship. Throughout my time serving in vocational full-time pastoral ministry since early 1999—almost 23 years—this has been my focus: discipleship. The reason this is so much of my focus is due to a number of different things. One is the commission we just saw in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, which we'll look at a little bit more in just a moment.

Additionally, when my family started attending this church when I was 11 years old, we had previously gone to an Episcopal church. I was an altar boy and participated in the whole deal of the Episcopal Church, including my first communion.

I don't really know that I understood much of what was happening at the Episcopal Church when all the things that were going on were happening. I knew when to stand up, sit down, kneel down, and say, "And also with you." Maybe some of you remember that exact same sort of thing from your Catholic background, your Episcopal background, or whatever it may be. I knew all the right times to do all the right things and say all the right things, but I didn't know what the Bible meant.

I remember distinctly when we started attending this church, which was called Calvary Chapel of Escondido, when I was 11 years old. We called it the "donut church" because it was in the very same location that my kids' school is. My kids go to Heritage School here in Escondido, over on East Valley Parkway, right behind the Winchell's. I remember going to that building on Sunday mornings and going up to the fifth-grade classroom. I really liked my fifth-grade teachers because they brought donuts from Winchell's. So, we’re still the donut church.

One of the things I discovered is that I understood what they were teaching because they actually taught the Scriptures. That was true throughout junior high and high school. Our church has been committed to discipleship the entire time that I've been a part of it. We had a school of ministry when I was in high school, and we had a youth internship program, which we still do here at the church. I was a part of that, and the pastors and other leaders taught us the Scriptures and discipled us.

Discipleship is the reason that I'm in the ministry. It is a unique and wonderful aspect of our church that I am pastoring the church after having grown up here. My dad was not the pastor of this church, so I grew up as just a regular kid in the children's ministry and the youth group. In the long run, I ended up taking over the church after having been trained in the ministry through on-the-job training and discipleship.

Discipleship is important to me because that's how I ended up in the ministry. That's how Pastor Mark, Pastor Jason, and Pastor Nick ended up in the ministry. I remember being a junior high pastor here and Nick being a part of the junior high ministry. Seeing God raise people up into the ministry has been an awesome blessing, and it has everything to do with that number eight up there: discipleship, discipleship unto leadership. What we've been doing here in this class is a part of that whole focus of discipleship, and my focus has been on this because of this commission.

that we have here and that command to make disciples. In fact, if you look at this passage and do a word study on it, there are two commands: one is to make disciples, and the other is that little word "lo" over there, which means "behold." It's a command to behold, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age." The only two imperatives in this passage are "make disciples" and "behold, I am with you always."

I think that those two things are very key because this whole commission and command to go and make disciples requires that God be with us. He is enabling us to do these things, and this is an important aspect of what we do here at this church. Discipleship is important to me because this is the commission that the Lord has given to us, and this is the way that I ended up in the ministry. It also has very much to do with my own personal call to ministry.

Whenever you're talking with pastors, you generally want to know at some point how they were called into the ministry. I remember very clearly in the beginning of 1999, in January, my youth pastor, Pastor Tony Bonici, who still attends here on Sunday mornings and sits right over there, stopped me out here in the parking lot. I had come on as an intern at the church, and my basic job was to handle all the tech things: to make sure that the phones worked, the networks worked, and the website worked. I did that for a very long time and am still trying to work out website problems. I was talking with Steve just today about that.

So that was my focus, and then I was here for about three weeks when Pastor Tony said, "I'd like you to teach the junior high ministry." My first thought was no; that was the first thing that went through my mind. But, of course, you can't tell your youth pastor no when he asks you to do something spiritual like teach a Bible study. So I said what Christians say when they want to say no but can't: I said, "I'll pray about it."

I actually did. I went home that night and prayed about it. At that time, I was reading through the Scriptures, and I was in a passage in the Old Testament and a passage in the New Testament. The passage I was in in the Old Testament was First Samuel chapter 12, and the passage in the New Testament was Ephesians chapter 4. In First Samuel chapter 12, this is when the children of Israel ask to have a king like the other nations around them, and Samuel is really bothered by this request. One of the things he says to...

The people, as they were wanting a king, are addressed in 1 Samuel chapter 12. It says, "Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord and cease to teach you, but I will show you the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth." So, far be it from me that I should cease to pray for you and to teach you the good and the right way.

I read that passage after I had prayed, "God, do you want me to teach the junior high ministry?" It was as if the Lord said, "Yes, far be it from you that you should cease from doing that." Then I was in Ephesians chapter 4, where it says in verse 11, "And He," speaking of Jesus, "gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ."

From those two passages, I had what you would call in pastoral circles a sense of a call—a call to teach the Scriptures and to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. This focus on discipleship became not just a general purpose commission for the body of Christ but a personal calling for me. That calling to equip the saints for the work of the ministry has taken place in all kinds of different places and ways over the last 23 years.

I started out teaching junior hires in the youth ministry just 50 feet that way. From there, I went on to teach young adults and adults here on Sunday or Saturday nights for a while. I also taught at the Bible College in Germany and at various Bible colleges in Ireland and the Philippines. I taught at the Bible College in Marietta for a very long time. Wherever I've gone, it has been to fulfill this call to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, whether on a Sunday morning here or at conferences when I travel.

All of it goes back to this calling to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. This is important for me, but it is also a general commission that God has given to every single one of us—to make disciples and to be involved in that. My desire is to make disciples who are disciple-making disciples. I shared that passage with you last week in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 2, where Paul tells Timothy to commit these things to faithful witnesses who will be able to teach others also. That is exactly what our hope is: that God would raise up from within.

Our church body here is made up of disciples who would be disciple-making disciples to fulfill this commission, this command to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We are to teach them to observe everything that the Lord has commanded us. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

These things are important; making disciples is essential. But how do we do this thing called making disciples? If I am teaching the Scriptures, as I do here on a Sunday morning or on a Tuesday night, or at a conference somewhere, or at the Bible college, that is the way that God has called me as a pastor-teacher to equip the saints and to make disciples. However, if this is a general call to each and every one of us, then how are you to be involved in making disciples?

I want it to be simple. When I took over the church in April of 2008, this church was a lot like other Calvary Chapel churches or other churches of that same genre. We had a lot of complexity, with many different things going on pretty much all the time, every single day of the week. It was constant. When I took over the church, that was just the way things had been for a long time, and it was normal to me.

However, very shortly after that, my wife and I were newly married, in the process of buying a home, and starting a family. Now, I was pastoring the church and teaching on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings with multiple services, and Monday nights with the School of Discipleship. On Tuesday nights, there were women's Bible studies going on here at the church. Wednesday nights featured a midweek Bible study and youth ministry, while Thursday nights were dedicated to men's ministries. It was just constant.

On Thursday afternoons, I would teach at the Bible college for three hours. I realized very quickly that this complex situation we had going on was not sustainable for me, and I didn't think it was very sustainable for the ministry of the church either. I had a strong sense that we needed to simplify.

At the beginning of January 2009, after only about seven or eight months of pastoring the church, I shared with the congregation that our focus for 2009 would be two very simple things: simplify and focus. To drive this point home, we got a big 40-foot dumpster out here in the parking lot.

We said to the church body, some of you may have been here at that time: if you have stuff to spring clean, if you will, that you need to throw away, go through all your garage and get all that stuff. You can bring it here and just dump it in the dumpster. We're just going to put that out there, and you can dump stuff in the dumpster. We emptied that dumpster seven or eight times, just dumping stuff from it. It was a visible way of saying, "Hey, we need to simplify and focus on what we're doing as a church and as a ministry."

In that process, it actually took a very long time to work through how to simplify so that we could focus on some very key things as a church. That is what I have been endeavoring to do for quite a while to get to where we are at this point as a very simple church. We have a very simple focus: we focus on life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. We teach the Scriptures verse by verse as much as we possibly can through the whole Bible.

We have groups that gather together—prayer groups, connect groups. Sometimes they're mountain bike groups, or maybe it's a running group or a walking group. Whatever it may be, we have groups of people who get together for fellowship and to disciple one another. You may not realize that that's what you're doing when you're gathering together, but you are discipling one another in the faith as you walk together, as you pray together, as you play golf together. Whatever it may be, that's where discipleship takes place.

Now, I do think that classes like this have a place in discipleship, and they've always been core to my own upbringing in the ministry. We had a school of ministry, and like I said, when I was in high school, we had classes on how to study the Bible, how to teach the Bible, classes on the call of God, missions, New Testament survey, Old Testament survey, and theology. I ran a school of discipleship for several years, and we had classes on all those things. I think classes are helpful and important, and we'll have other things in the future that we'll do.

However, discipleship is not just the impartation of information. It's not just a transfer of information from some talking head in the front to a whole bunch of people who are listening in the seats or wherever you may be. It's not just filling up a notebook with a whole bunch of notes as someone talks. Discipleship takes place as you are interacting with one another, iron sharpening iron. As Jesus was walking on the way with His disciples, He called the Twelve that they might be with Him, and He would send them out to preach the gospel. It was that time spent with Him that discipleship was taking place.

I remember when I was in tenth grade, my youth pastor, Tony, asked me if I...

I would go through a little blue book called the One-to-One Discipleship Book. Some of you have been around Calvary Chapels for a long time, and you probably remember that little book. It was an eight-week course that took us three years to finish, and we never completed it. We would get together every Wednesday evening before the Wednesday night service here at the church when I was in 10th and 11th grade. We would spend some time in prayer, open the Bible, and open this book, but we almost never got through it.

I spent a lot of time just talking with him, asking him questions, and him answering those questions. Sometimes he would say, "Hey, I gotta run over to Costco. Will you come with me?" I would agree to go with him to Costco, and that’s where discipleship really took place—in those interactions with him. Not that the book was a bad thing; it was kind of a launching point, if you will. It created the opportunity for us to get together and to go through the book that we never completed.

Discipleship is the focus, and I have wanted to see for a long time how we can simplify this so that it makes sense. We need to have disciple-making disciples, and it shouldn't require a class every single time. It should become very practical.

So, what is essential for discipleship? The exact same word that is used by Paul in Matthew chapter 28, where Jesus says, "Go and make disciples," is also used a little bit later by Luke in the Book of Acts. In Acts chapter 14, we have the story of Paul and Barnabas's first missionary journey, which is detailed in Acts chapters 13 and 14. They traveled to a region of the world at that time called Galatia, where they planted churches in several cities: Lystra, Iconium, and Derbe.

They experienced some successes, but they also faced problems. Paul almost lost his life there; a group of people made it their aim to kill him. They wanted to stone him to death, and they were from a Jewish synagogue in that area. They didn't like that he was preaching that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, so they sought to kill him. He moved on to another city, but those individuals followed him, and ultimately, they did stone him—almost to death. He didn't die, though, and right after that, he jumped back up and went right back to work.

In Acts 14, as they were on this missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel to the city.

Made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith. They said, "We must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God." It must have been a very tangible lesson when Paul, probably still with the marks of being stoned almost to death, emphasized that we must endure difficulties and challenges. Paul understood this from a very early time in his ministry.

Notice that they went and preached the Gospel. In Matthew 16:15, it says, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." They made many disciples, and these disciples were learners, pupils, and obedient followers of Jesus. That was their goal: to make obedient followers of Jesus. They preached the Gospel and made disciples who were committed to following Christ. They strengthened them, encouraging and exhorting them to continue in the faith.

They went about preaching the Gospel and teaching the Scriptures, just like the early church did in Acts 2:42. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, the teaching of the apostles, the breaking of bread, fellowship, and prayers. This is how discipleship was happening. This is how the early church functioned, and this is how a simplified church ought to function—simply doing the things that the early church did and that the church has done for thousands of years.

So, what are the essentials for discipleship? One essential is that they had the Scriptures, and they taught the Scriptures. They shared through the Scriptures. What we have been doing in this class for the last eight weeks is helping you to go through the Scriptures in a rather simplified form for the most part, and then building up from there. Everything that I showed you is just the basics for how you study the Bible. The very same things that I use week after week may include a few more tools and a little more experience in going through the Scriptures, but ultimately, I go back to the very same things that I've been teaching you to use over the last eight weeks.

You have the Scriptures, and there is something else that is essentially important in this. Remember, Jesus said, "Go and make disciples, and behold, I am with you always." This brings us to an important truth. In John 16, just before He is crucified, Jesus says, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of Truth, has come..."

He will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, and he will take what is mine and declare it to you. So, Jesus promises his disciples that the Spirit of Truth is going to come and guide them into all truth.

Just a couple of chapters before, in chapter 14, Jesus says, "These things I have spoken to you while being present with you," but he is preparing them for his departure. He continues, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said to you."

We have the Scriptures, which are essential, and we have the Spirit of God that Jesus gave to his church. This is how the church was started, or launched; it was birthed as a work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon the gathered disciples in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, right after Jesus had ascended into heaven, a few days or ten days later. He tells them to wait here in Jerusalem, as recorded in Acts chapter 1, until they receive the promise of the Father. The Holy Spirit is going to come upon them, and they shall be witnesses of Him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts.

Ten days later, they are gathered together in Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit is poured out upon them on the day of Pentecost. They begin to preach the gospel, and the church is started. What did the church do? They continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, in the breaking of bread, in fellowship, and in prayers. God worked in the church to continue to move it out from there.

It took a while for them to begin to move from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts. But here we are, fast forward 2,000 years, and now the church is some 2.3 billion strong around the world. You may have heard that today, according to statisticians and demographers, we crossed 8 billion people on the planet. There are eight billion people on this planet, and 2.3 billion of them identify themselves as Christians. The church has simply gone out from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts, carrying the gospel.

So, God, by His Spirit, is working in the body of Christ to go through the Scriptures.

I began pastoring this church in 2008 and started to increasingly recognize, over the course of about the first three years, that we needed to simplify. Growing up, I went through one-on-one discipleship classes and attended a school of ministry. I also teach at a Bible college and have run a school of discipleship here. I've taught various classes both at this church and elsewhere, constantly trying to figure out how to simplify discipleship so that we can become disciple-making disciples. This class is all part of that effort.

What does simple discipleship look like? That’s a question I have been pondering for quite a while. I didn’t have a very good answer until January of this year. As some of you know, over the last four years leading up to this year, I was pursuing a seminary degree at Gateway Seminary in Ontario to complete a Master of Divinity course. At the end of last year, I sent an email to the registrar, outlining the classes I had planned for the next semester. I wanted to ensure I wasn’t missing anything, as I didn’t want to find out just weeks before graduation that I had missed a class.

They informed me that I had missed a missions class. I thought, "Oh great." However, they mentioned that there just so happened to be a three-day missions class intensive. Normally, it’s a 15-week class, but I could take it in three days. I thought, "Yes, sign me up! I’ll do a three-day class, no problem."

The class was 12 hours a day for three days, followed by a huge paper that had to be written afterward. It was taught by a professor named Alan Carr, who is a professor of missions at Gateway Seminary and is based in Colorado. The class was conducted entirely on Zoom. I really liked the way he structured the class. To conduct a missions class in three days, he divided the hours of the day into segments. He would give a 20 to 40-minute lecture, and then a missionary from another part of the world, whom he was connected with, would join via Zoom to share about their experiences in the mission field, how they ended up there, and their perspective on missions.

It turned out to be a really interesting kind of conference, allowing us to hear from missionaries from all over the world, from Indonesia to Africa and even some throughout China.

One interesting aspect of Azerbaijan is the variety of experiences it offers. In the course of this, Dr. Carr shared one of his lectures about the topic of discipleship. He recounted a story from about twelve years ago when he was doing missionary work. He traveled with a group to Indonesia, specifically to Borneo, where they ministered among a group of people known as the Ebon people.

The Ebon people live in the hills of Borneo in large communal longhouses. These longhouses are expansive structures with individual apartments branching off from a central common area. Dr. Carr was invited to meet the chief of one Ebon village located in the hills. An Indonesian pastor, whom Dr. Carr had trained and raised up through his mission courses, had developed a relationship with this chief.

To reach the longhouse and meet the chief, they had to drive several hours into the hills. The Indonesian pastor had been sharing the gospel with the chief and informed him that Dr. Carr was coming. The chief expressed his desire to meet Dr. Carr. They arrived around five o'clock in the evening, and through the pastor's translation, Dr. Carr interacted with the chief, who had many questions for him.

After questioning Dr. Carr for hours, around ten o'clock at night, the chief said, "We just wanted to make sure that you had all the same answers that this guy here has been answering." Once they confirmed this, the chief stated that they were ready to put their trust in Jesus. They shared the gospel with him and prayed for him to receive Christ.

As they spoke, the chief accepted Christ, and remarkably, the other eighteen leaders present in the longhouse also accepted Christ. The chief then mentioned that he had heard that when some people become Christians, they need to get wet and be baptized. Dr. Carr explained the significance of baptism to him. The chief responded, "Okay, well, we want to be baptized. Can we go right now?" Dr. Carr replied, "It's ten o'clock at night. Where's the river?" The chief indicated that it was about an hour's walk away.

We do that tomorrow. Okay, let's do that tomorrow.

He said that they were having a meal together late at night. As all these people were gathered together talking, he noticed that the chief and the other men from the village started chuckling and laughing. Finally, the translator said, "Well, Dr. Carr, they have a question for you. They want to know if you want to see the heads."

This was a headhunting, cannibalistic tribe, and they wanted to know if he wanted to see the heads. He asked his buddy who was with him, "Do you want to see the heads?" His friend replied, "Let's see the heads." They took him outside and lowered a box down that looked kind of like a coffin. Inside, there were 200 skulls of people that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had killed years ago.

Dr. Carr, as he tells the story, said they asked him where these skulls were from. He explained, "Well, these ones here are from a different village over here, and this is from another village. These ones here are from people from Japan who came here many years ago during the Second World War. Our grandfathers killed them and took their heads." They were very proud of these heads and wanted to show them off.

After that whole experience, Dr. Carr said that the chief asked him late at night, "Okay, now we've become followers of Christ, but we don't know anything. Who's going to teach us? Who's going to disciple us?" It was a good question. Dr. Carr replied, "I don't really have a good answer for you, but I'm going to pray that God would give me an answer, and I'll let you know."

He went to bed, and the next day they were going to baptize them. Early in the morning, there was a knock on the door where they were staying. He opened the door, and a man was asking where his translator was. Dr. Carr said, "He's not here," but he made a symbol like he was using a phone. The man understood and said, "Okay, well, he's not here right now."

Later, he talked with the translator and asked, "Do they have a phone here?" The translator replied, "Yes, they have a cell phone." Dr. Carr then said, "So they can communicate with you over cell phone?" The translator confirmed, "Yes, they can."

Dr. Carr then knew what he was going to tell them to do. They had a Bible translated into the Ebon language. He told the chief, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to leave this Bible with you. You go ahead and read through a passage of Scripture, and then you're going to call Pastor so-and-so. You're going to do this every day for just a short time. You're going to pray with one another and read through the passage of Scripture."

Scripture is essential, and if you have any questions, you can ask Him those questions. However, after you get off the phone, you need to go with some of these other guys and share with them what you get from the Scriptures. Pray with them, and then they need to go and share it with everybody else. From that, he developed something he called prayer discipleship. It is very simple.

He came back to the States and wrote up a paper because he was going to be speaking at the Evangelical Missiological Society, a significant gathering for missionaries and academics who come together to share their research. He was going to present on the topic of prayer discipleship at the Evangelical Missiological Society. In his paper, he detailed exactly what they had done and what they were observing among the Ebon people in Indonesia.

Before he got up to speak, another missionary, who had been on the field for decades, shared his paper with the Evangelical Missiological Society. He discussed how challenging it had been to disciple people in the field. It was difficult because they needed to create discipleship materials in the local language and develop a curriculum. They also needed to raise up local leaders and send them for theological training before they could return to disciple their own people. This missionary expressed his discouragement after decades on the mission field due to the challenges of discipling people.

Then Dr. Carr got up and shared this very simple method: all you need to do is read through the Scriptures and pray with one another—prayer discipleship. He summarized prayer discipleship as a commitment of two or more people to pray in community every day, whether in person, by phone, or even by email. He emphasized that prayer opens a portal to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, which is essential for our union with Christ and our growth in who we are in Christ. It’s pretty simple—that’s prayer discipleship.

Dr. Carr tells a story that I want to share with you. Remember, this is Dr. Carr sharing at another missions conference on video during COVID, so he had to present everything virtually. About three weeks later, Pastor Lugon called me. He said they had been praying, they were growing in the Lord, and they had a question. I said, "Okay." He continued, "The question is, Pastor Lugon, what do we do with the..."

I said to Pastor Allen, "What is the answer?" He responded, "The heads, you mean the ones that we saw in the box? What do we do with the heads?" I asked him to explain what they were asking. He said that the Holy Spirit had been showing them that what their ancestors—grandfathers and fathers—had done was not right. People had died, and the Holy Spirit told them they should not keep these heads.

I said, "So they're wanting to know what to do with those heads?" He confirmed, "Yeah." I replied, "I don't know the answer, but the Holy Spirit knows the answer. So pray and ask the Holy Spirit. Tell them to pray and ask the Holy Spirit what they should do with the heads. They don't need to ask Luke or Pastor Allen; they just need to ask the Holy Spirit because He has an answer to that."

They did pray, and I told them to call me and let me know what happened with this story. I was so interested. A few weeks later, he called me back and said, "I have a story to tell you." They prayed and decided that they didn't want to keep the heads any longer. They realized that the heads were like trophies and, in some ways, had a sort of spiritual power, almost like an idol. They thought that by cutting off the heads, they were taking power from another people and holding on to it, believing it gave them power somehow.

They came to understand that the power they had from Jesus and the Holy Spirit was more than enough and far more powerful than any power that came from the heads. They decided they wanted to give the heads back to the people or the ancestors of the people from whom they had taken the heads.

They looked in the box and found some heads from Japan. They didn't know exactly where Japan was, but they knew it was a long way away. They looked on the map and thought it would take a long time to get there by boat. They realized they couldn't even do that by canoe; it would probably require an airplane ride and still be a long trip.

So, they decided to dig a hole and put the heads of the Japanese in the hole, covering it up. They asked God for forgiveness—not in their words, but in mine—for the generational sin that had taken place because of what had happened in the past. They prayed, "God, please forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness in our history, in our lives, and in our spirits, to overcome this evil thing that our ancestors had done."

They prayed and did that, creating a sort of grave for the heads from Japan. The next thing they did was take a walk to a village about an hour or two away.

From where they lived, they took the heads from that village, which they knew came from a long time ago when they had an argument or a war. They carried those heads through the jungle prayerfully and brought them to the other jungle.

Now imagine a whole tribe of people walking through the jungle with heads in their hands. The other village did not know why they were coming, so they sent out the word that people were approaching. They were afraid, fearing that the group was coming to hurt them. In their fear, they all went and hid in the jungle.

The group of Christians with the heads sat down next to the village on the outskirts and called out to them, asking them to please come out. They waved their arms, saying, "Everybody, please come out! We won't hurt you." Eventually, some brave individuals emerged, and the Christians explained what they had done.

They said, "We met Jesus, and we learned when Jesus, then the Holy Spirit, talked to us and told us that what we did before was wrong. We are so sorry, and please forgive us. Here are the heads of your grandfathers, and here are the heads of your fathers. We want to give them back and ask you not to be angry with us anymore."

Not that day, but Lugon told me later—by the way, Lugon has now passed away; he died of cancer about a year ago—that the people from that village became the next church that was planted. The Holy Spirit had discipled them through prayer, and in discipling them, they had been convicted about what they needed to do. The Holy Spirit spoke to them, showing them through Scripture and their prayers what needed to happen in their lives and how they needed to adjust to be more holy before the Lord.

They also learned how they were going to reach the next group of people for the Lord. Prayer discipleship is a commitment of two or more people to pray in community every day, whether in person, by phone, or even by email. It is essential to understand that the power of prayer opens a portal to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, which is crucial for our union with Christ and growth in who we are in Him.

He goes on to say that this prayer discipleship is not dependent upon outside curriculum but uses the Holy Spirit's power in community, in conjunction with Scripture, to transform and grow followers of Jesus. It is contextual, cross-cultural, reproducible, and inexpensive. However, its greatest asset to missions is that it provides portal access to the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, simply put, that is what prayer discipleship is. As he was sharing this with the class back then, it was clear how impactful this approach could be.

In January, it occurred to me, as he was sharing this very simple thing, that this is exactly what I saw before I took over the church in 2007. I shared with you guys about a couple who came here for counseling on a Wednesday night. There had been infidelity, and their marriage was about to fall apart. I sat down with them in one of the offices over here and shared the Gospel with them. Both of them prayed to receive Christ.

I said, "Listen, I'm going to meet with you next Wednesday, but between now and then, I want you to read through this book, the book of Ephesians. I just want you to read through it and pray. You can talk with each other about it. There are six chapters, so you can read a chapter a day, and we'll get together and talk next week."

The following week, we got together, sat down, and talked. As we started to pray, I asked them what they learned as they went through Ephesians. One of the things they said to me was, "Well, you know, we got to this passage here in Ephesians 4 that says, 'Do not be drunk with wine.' We've been drinking and kind of getting drunk a lot, and we feel like maybe we shouldn't do this. Is that right?" I said, "Yeah, that's right. You probably shouldn't do that anymore."

It was just simply praying and going through the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit was speaking to them. That's exactly what I saw many years ago. I think there is a place for classes like this, classes on missions, and classes on prayer, and all these different things, but it's a little bit more simple sometimes. In fact, throughout church history, it's been very, very simple. This is just a very simplified discipleship.

So why this class? Ultimately, it is so that you would access the Scriptures yourself, so that you might make them accessible to others. Whether it's one-on-one with a small group of just you and one other person, or it's a small group of three or four other people that you're sharing the Scriptures with, or whatever it may be—maybe up to hundreds or thousands—whatever the Lord may call you to do.

Ultimately, He has called and commissioned every single one of us as a whole to be disciples who are making disciples. We are to read the Scriptures on our own, asking God by His Holy Spirit to open our eyes that we would behold wonders from His Word, and then take the time to share that with someone else.

So here is the practicum, the practical side to everything that we have been doing here. I am asking you to do this.

There is a whole group of people in here that you can start out with, and it's very simple. You can identify a friend that you've made in the course of this class or someone that you've gotten to know here at the church. If you're a guy, then find another guy; if you're a gal, find another gal. I strongly encourage that to be the case.

Of course, if you're married, you can also do this with your spouse, but I would encourage you to identify another person—guys with another guy in this room or at this church, and gals with another gal in this church or in this room. Make it a point to get together three to five days a week, whether on the phone, through email, FaceTime, Zoom, or in person. Commit to just taking 10 to 15 minutes, whatever it may be, three to five times a week, and simply go through the Scriptures.

You may ask, "What passage of Scripture?" I have a website that I built called thelisteningplan.com. I just started Second Peter today, and I believe it will go through Revelation between now and the end of the year. Then it will start right back up with Matthew chapter one. It goes through the New Testament every single year. Every weekday, you can go on to thelisteningplan.com or subscribe to the podcast, which will give you the audio every single day, or the email that will send you an email every single day, as long as our website is still working.

Just go through the Scriptures. I'm assuming that since you are here, you signed up for this class, and you've stuck it out for eight weeks, you want to grow in your faith. This will help you grow in your faith through simple discipleship and prayer.

What happens if you come to something that you don't understand? Well, what do we do with these heads? Ask the Holy Spirit, "God, what do you want to speak to me in this passage? What does this mean?" You can ask me, ask Pastor Mark, ask Pastor Jason, or ask Pastor Garrett. You can also ask another friend who's been a Christian a little bit longer than you. If you come to something that you don't quite understand, consult a commentary, like David Guzik's commentary.

If you want to grow in your faith, the fastest path to doing so is by exercising your faith. You will not grow if you do not exercise your faith. This will be a stretch for some of you, but for others who talk a lot, it won't be a problem. It would be better to talk about the Bible than to talk about Fox News.

You are already discipling yourself with all the other content that you're putting into your brain and interacting with people about. You are discipling yourself in the ways of this world. It would be much more fruitful for your life now and into eternity to disciple yourself in the ways of God.

Relating to the scriptures, spending time in prayer with someone can be incredibly beneficial. If you already do this, I encourage you to look around and find someone who may be a bit newer in their faith or someone you haven't really gotten to know here at the church. You could say, "Hey, would you be willing to get together with me once, twice, or maybe three times a week?" You could even connect by phone during your break or lunch time.

During these meetings, consider reading through Second Peter, following a chapter a day in the listening plan. Pray, "God, would you open our eyes to behold wonders from your word?" Then, apply these truths. When you come across a truth that you may not be living out or a command that you're not following, pray for one another and keep each other accountable regarding how you are doing with those things.

For instance, when it says to bear with one another and forgive one another, even as Christ forgave you, you can share, "Listen, I have a really hard time forgiving people, and sometimes I'm impatient with them. Will you pray for me about this?" I guarantee that as you have that accountability with someone else in prayer while going through the scriptures, God will transform you.

This is the practical side to this. This is my pitch: you need to become a disciple-making disciple because Christ commissioned you to do that, and He will hold us accountable for how we have used what He has given us in the way of gifts, talents, abilities, and so forth. You need to use those things; God has called you to do this.

Now, here are some additional opportunities to put this into practice. Jason is going to like this—we need children's ministry teachers, right, Jason? Yes, he’s giving a thumbs up. We need you! You may think, "Gosh, I can't do that." Yes, you can! You might say, "Well, let me pray about it." Well, you better pray about it; that's not your cop-out to say no because God has called you.

You may feel totally like a fish out of water and think, "I can't do that." You're right; in and of yourself, you probably can't. But Paul said, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as being of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who has made us able ministers of the New Covenant." He is the one who enables us to minister the good news. We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as being of ourselves.

In fact, Second Corinthians 3:5-6 is a verse for you to memorize: "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as being of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who has made us able ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

He enables us. He will enable you. You'll feel like a fish out of water. Boy, did I feel like I was totally out of my place when I got up to speak and teach Galatians chapter one with a group of junior hires on February 14, 1999. I can guarantee you that at the end of that service, I never thought I'd be standing up in front of this room every single week teaching the Bible. If anything, I went home that day thinking, "I'm never doing that again." Then I had to get up the next week and do it again.

We could sure use your help in the children's ministry. We could also use your help in our nursing home ministry, which Lorraine has just taken over, called Care Connection. She is teaching Bible studies in some of the nursing homes in our area. There is a huge opportunity here to go into a nursing home on a weekly basis and simply share a very simple Bible study. Let me tell you, the people in those homes would be overjoyed if you would commit to doing that.

So, Care Connection, the nursing home ministry, the kids' ministry, and the prayer team—if you're getting together and doing prayer discipleship with other people, it's a very small step to move from there to gather together with the prayer team that meets weekly to pray for the needs of the church. All the little prayer requests that get sent in are prayed for by a group of people every single week on Wednesday. There could be other opportunities; maybe Wednesday doesn't work for you. Perhaps we could start another prayer team at a different time where you can help be a part of that.

We need you to be a part of the work that God is doing here at Cross Connection Church. If you want to grow in your faith, you have to begin exercising your faith, and God will grow you in a huge way. It always starts small. It always starts in Jerusalem, then moves to Judea and Samaria, and to the outermost parts of our lives. Maybe it starts with just you interacting, praying, and reading through the Scriptures with your spouse. But then it moves out from there to another person within the church, and from there, God says, "Now I want you to teach in the children's ministry or go and do a nursing home ministry," or something like that. God begins to extend your borders, if you will.

God wants to use you as you get to know the Scripture. As He leads you and teaches you by His Holy Spirit, He wants to use you to share those things with someone else. They may seem like very simple things, but that's perfectly fine. We oftentimes need to hear the same thing 5,000 times before we get it. So, it might be the very simple truth that we just keep going back over and over.

Over again, simplified prayer discipleship is the whole point of why I wanted to do this class. When Dr. Carr shared that, I thought, "Wait a minute, that sounds like what I did many years ago, more than 15 years ago." I've been trying to figure out for a long time how to simplify the whole concept of discipleship and teach you how to study through the Scriptures so that you can apply it in a very simple way.

Any questions?

What gospel is referred to in Acts 14 when it says that they declared to them the gospel? What exactly was that? In First Corinthians 15, Paul says, "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you." So, what was the message that Paul preached when he would go and plant a church in Lystra, Iconium, Derby, Corinth, Athens, or wherever he went?

Paul continues, "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received and in which you stand, by which also you were saved if you hold fast to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain."

Here it is: "For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." This refers to the Old Testament Scriptures. "And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." He was seen by Cephas and then by the twelve. Cephas is Peter. Then he was seen by over 500 brethren at one time, of whom the greater part remain even to this time, but some have fallen asleep, or some have died. After that, he was seen by James and then by all the apostles. Last of all, he was seen by me as one born out of due time.

So, here is the simple declaration of the gospel which Paul preached: Christ died for our sins according to the prophecies of the Old Testament and according to the law. The law and the prophets all pointed to a sacrifice without spot or blemish, a sin sacrifice. He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, just as the Scriptures predicted that he would rise again.

That was the simple gospel, and he was seen by witnesses. Those four things basically summarize it: Christ died for our sins, he was buried, he rose from the dead, and we know that he rose from the dead because he was seen by witnesses. That's the simple gospel.

I'm going to post a link to Dr. Carr's full video on my website, pastormiles.com. You can listen to his whole story, which I summarized quickly, but he provides much more information in it. It's a great story.

Prayer discipleship is very simple, yet there are many ways we can complicate things and make them less straightforward. I've been known to complexify things before—I just made that up, "complexified." I'm constantly trying to keep it as simple as possible. Keep it simple, stupid, right?

Here's what you're going to see: I will send you an email in the not-too-distant future. In that email, I will ask you to prayerfully identify someone with whom you will commit to pray and engage in prayer discipleship. Start with three times a week, and hopefully work up to five times a week. Maybe you will reach a point where it becomes a daily practice, and that person becomes your prayer partner. You can call them every single day, go through a passage of Scripture, and pray together.

In fact, as you'll find in Dr. Carr's video from Borneo, they had to pay for phone minutes, so they kept their calls to about five minutes. They couldn't go on for 30 or 40 minutes at a time because it was too expensive. However, these people grew and became disciples of Jesus, eventually becoming disciple-making disciples as they brought others back to the faith.

It's a pretty awesome thing—very simple. This is how God grows His church. Dr. Alan Carr wrote a one-to-one discipleship book, which I believe is still available. It was essentially a new believer's Bible study, and it was very straightforward.

There are a lot of great discipleship materials available, but all you really need is a Bible and the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures and the Spirit will lead you, and God will teach you. My challenge to you is to put this into practice. You are already practicing it, and hopefully, it's starting to become, at least in some small way, a part of your regular habit of reading the Bible devotionally by yourself, hopefully on a daily basis.

Now, take that a step further. If you're having a hard time being consistent in reading through the Bible, make yourself accountable by calling a friend every morning at 7:30. Suddenly, you have accountability. I found that when I started teaching junior highers, I never dug into the Bible more than when I began teaching it. My devotional life had to change because I realized I needed to be consistent with my study.

Are there any other questions before we wrap up? Yes, the authority. I mentioned last week that we need to trust in the authority of Scripture, the reliability of Scripture, and the sufficiency of Scripture. What does it mean that we rely on the authority of Scripture? It becomes the authority for our lives as it relates to what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is true. It serves as our guide.

The sufficiency of Scripture means that all we need for life and faith is found in the Scriptures. This doesn't mean that every possible truth in the universe is found in the Bible, but all the truths you need to know about God and how to live your life before Him are contained in the Scriptures. It is sufficient for faith and life.

The other aspect I mentioned is veracity, which refers to the truth of Scripture. It is true. So, we have veracity, authority, reliability, and sufficiency. The Bible is enough; you don't need another book like the Book of Mormon. You just need the Bible and the Spirit of God guiding you through the Scriptures. He will guide you into all truth and teach you all things, as the Scriptures say. Are there any other questions? I would encourage you to do this with a friend.

Christianity is a commitment of two or more people to pray in community every day, whether in person, by phone, or even by email. Understanding that prayer opens a portal of access to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit is essential for our union with Christ and growth in who we are in Him. So, that is prayer discipleship with another believer.

All right, I'm going to let you all out early tonight, so I will close in prayer. If you have any other questions, I will stick around. We did record all of this. Nick has been hard at work editing it, and we are going to put it up online as soon as all of our website stuff is sorted out. It will be a website just for you guys at the start. I don't necessarily want it to be publicly broadcast yet because I'm trying to build something else that will incorporate all of this. We will get those videos out to you guys relatively quickly, or at least the links to them, so that you can watch them.

With that, let me close in prayer, and then if you have any questions, I will stick around.

Father God, I thank You that You have made this really quite simple. You have given us Your Spirit to guide us in all truth and teach us all things. You have given us Your Word so that we might know You, understand Your nature, and discern Your will. I pray that as we get to know You through studying the Scriptures, and as the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth, You would challenge us and stir us to share those things with someone else. Help us to prayerfully engage with the Scriptures alongside another person so that we may grow and shine brightly.

Lord, You have called us to be the salt of the earth and a light, a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden. If ever there was a time that our community, our nation, and the world needed salt and light, it is this moment right now. We are living in critical times, Lord, and I pray that You would shine brightly through this church, this gathering right here. Use us as salt, a preserving agent and a flavoring agent. Use us as a light shining to those who are in darkness. We all know family members and friends who are in darkness, and they need Your grace. Stir us to share the good news with them.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you again for making this a priority. So many of you stuck around.

Through the whole class, I appreciate it greatly. It blew my mind. I ordered, as I told you at the very beginning, 25 to 30 books because I figured we'd have about 30 people for this class. You blew my mind even more, so praise God! It encourages me greatly.

Now, you're going to sign up for children's ministry. You're going to talk to Lorraine about the Care Connection Ministry in the nursing homes. Additionally, you're going to get together with one another and find a partner that you can pray with and go through the Scriptures with. I know that you are all obedient, God-fearing Christians. God bless you all!