If I were to write a book...

... I wonder if anyone would read it.  I'll develop my thoughts on my blog and see if anyone is interested.  If any of the topics below interest you or if you'd be interested in my thoughts on them, comment or drop me a line and I'll elaborate in another post. (I'll likely elaborate anyway as I play with these thoughts, but it might be a while before I get to the one you're most interested in.) These are some of the topics I'd want to address:

• The primacy of making disciples and how it fits with God’s penultimate goal of glorifying Himself.
• What is a disciple?
• How making disciples (the basic building block of the church) is set aside for rapid church reproduction, a/k/a church multiplication, a/k/a most modern attempts at CPM. Might entertain the question of whether God ever intended for us to try to go fast in church planting.
• Would Jesus make disciples using a workbook?  If not, how would he do it?
• Do you have to know how to read to be a disciple?
• In order to make a disciples what must people know? i.e. when Jesus said, “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded” what did He mean?  Is it possible to obey all he commanded?  How do we teach people to obey? Is telling them to obey the same as teaching them to obey?  Is there something implied there regarding training?  How do you train people to obey?  Doesn’t that imply changing their heart?  How do we change people’s hearts? How can we make them mature spiritually?  How can we equip them for service?
• How do we measure spiritual maturity?  Isn’t by someone’s outward actions – their obedience to Christ?
• How this focus on obedience can become problematic (lead to works based theology or create Pharisees) and often causes people to become cultural christians or religious with no real spiritual life.
• In order to not create Pharisees- spiritually dead church members, we should focus on developing faith (which will necessarily result in obedience).
• We don’t teach people to have faith by focusing on faith, but by focusing on the object of faith, which inspires faith. (a/k/a faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God).
• What are the best methods to hear the word of God? What practices should be developed? What disciplines should be practiced?
• The importance of the gospel being shared to believers – it is the power of God to salvation.  Are we completely saved from sin and it’s destructive force the minute we put faith in Christ or do we need continual salvation?

Some of the ideas that will come out in some of these topics are the need for teaching the old testament as we really see God revealing himself in it and the law as it is a tutor to lead us to Christ. We also see the importance of faith throughout the old testament and the theme of remembering what God has done as something which inspires our trust in Him. We’ll also see that those who had faith acted.  There is no such thing as faith without action (although waiting or restraining oneself might be the actions of faith). Those who have greater faith are the more mature in Christ.  Can you have great faith without having great love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control?  Or can you have great faith and not walk in the spirit?  If you believe God’s way is best (that’s faith) then the action will be to follow his way.  What we believe matters – it affects our actions.

Bulging Disc Leads to Writing and Tweeting

MRI showing bulge pressing on my nerve.

 I've got a bulging disc in my spine which is pressing against the nerve root.  So my sciatic nerve causes severe pain to shoot down my leg when I get up or down from a sitting or laying position.  I'm going for daily treatment by a local physical therapist and praying that my back heals.  Right now, getting in and out of a car is difficult and I can't lift anything over 1 kilogram.  That makes my work tough.

So, after doing stretches and exercises, I put some ointment on my back and was laying around and thinking.  I talked to someone today who's planning to write a book on discipleship.  I thought I might have some things to say that others would be interested in on the topic. So I think I'll write some of my thoughts out on a blog and see if they develop enough that I could make a book out of it.  What I'd really like to do is see how much interest there would be in my thoughts.  So, I'm going to see what kind of feedback I get.

In order to get feedback, I want to let people know what I'm writing and when I've written some.  So I've set up a twitter account.  In fact I've set up a hootsuite account. (I figure if John Piper's using it that I can try it too.)  That way, I can post to facebook, twitter and linked in all at once.

So follow me on twitter.  My twitter account is @jeffinindia.  Click Follow @jeffinindia
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