Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Gospel

During the first week, we've spent most time doing these two things:
- Hearing the gospel (morning)
- Going out to heal the sick and preach the gospel (afternoon)

The gospel
In the morning we had lessons about repentance, baptism in water and baptism with the Holy Spirit. And also about discipleship; how to be a disciple of Jesus. The reason we got this fundamental teaching is that we are to going to help people break through tradition and wrong teaching, to live the new life we read in the Bible.

These are the steps to enter this new life:
Repentance to the Father: turning away from sin and receiving a new heart with the law of God written on it.
Baptism to Jesus: to get rid of the old man, the sinful nature and of sin and its consequences. To die and rise again in a new life.
Baptism with the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God comes to live in the new heart, starts speaking and starts leading instead of the flesh.

One of the questions was: what does it mean live this new life? The Bible says that being a believer is not just to believe that Jesus has lived, died and risen. It is faith that creates action. Faith is obedience. Faith is walking the way of the Spirit rather than the way of the flesh. Faith is to focus on God's truth rather than on what we see/feel/think in the natural.

Discipleship: To help people take the initial steps into the new life and to let them follow you as you live your life of faith that creates action. This model is used everywhere in the world; companies don't give new employees a textbook, they train them by people who have done it before. The goal is to become like the teacher. Somehow the church seems to have lost this approach, whereas Jesus did train His disciples in this way.

Heal the sick, preach the gospel
This is also the way we learn here. We've been out on the streets every day since the training started. (Because of practical work at the place where we stay we all went around 4 times last week).

Personally I've seen some people healed of back pain / knee pain / toe pain this week. Somehow there were not many who needed prayer for healing, but I have had some great opportunities to share the gospel and to become more confident in that.

Up next: the (radical) teaching of Jesus in Luke 9 & 10.

1 comment:

  1. Be blessed man! Looking forward to hear more of your adventures

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