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Summary: Part 4 in series The Purpose-Driven Life, this message looks at Discipleship, the third of God’s five principal purposes for our lives.

The question I want to address today is how does this happen? How do we become like Jesus? The whole idea of discipleship is that life becomes a school for learning to be like Jesus, but I don’t just want to leave it at that. I don’t just want to say, “We become like Jesus through EVERYTHING – now go out and be like Jesus.” I want to break this down for you into three easy-to-get components. I’m going to give you all three of them right now. We become like Jesus as we experience trouble, temptations, and trespasses. Did ya get that? We become like Jesus as we experience trouble, temptations, and trespasses.

Let’s deal with these one at a time. First, God uses our troubles to teach us to trust him. See, you have to learn to trust God. Jesus trusted God completely, in everything he did and everything he said. And if you’re going to become like Jesus, you’re going to have to learn to trust God the way Jesus did. Jesus trusted God in spite of his circumstances. He trusted God when delivering the Sermon on the Mount to a huge gathering of listeners. He trusted God when confronting spiritual bigots in the temple. He trusted God when his life was in jeopardy. He trusted God for the power to heal. He trusted God to make his disciples into people who could carry on the message when he was gone. He even trusted God when he was arrested and tortured and nailed to the cross. In the final analysis, Jesus trusted God all the way, even when things didn’t look so good. Even when he faced suffering and death. If you are going to be like him, you will have to learn to trust God that way.

Hebrews 5:8 (MSG)

(8) Though he was God’s Son, he learned trusting-obedience by what he suffered, just as we do.

Jesus ran into trouble in his life and it was through that trouble that he learned to trust and obey God. And right here the Bible says that this is exactly how you will learn to trust and obey God too. Jesus said:

John 13:16 (NIV)

(16) I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

What’s Jesus telling us here? Jesus is saying if I suffered, you’re gonna have to suffer. If I went through trouble, you’ll go through it too. You don’t get to slip off this hook and have things better in life than I did. The servant can expect the same treatment the master got.

As long as you live God will use trouble in your life to teach you to trust him. Some people, the more trouble comes into their life, the more bitter and resentful they get toward God. They’re under the mistaken impression that God exists to keep them from getting in trouble. The fact is, they can EXPECT trouble, and what really matters is how they respond to it. You have an opportunity to learn to respond to trouble like Jesus did. It’s easy to be sweet and virtuous when all is well, when you are well-rested and comfortable and have enough food and money and there are no pesky people in your life bringing you down. There’s nothing special at all about being kind and loving and virtuous during those times. But when trouble comes into your life it’s hard to trust God, and you won’t learn to trust unless it’s hard sometimes. What would happen if you decided to start lifting weights today and didn’t want to strain yourself, so you began by going outside and finding a feather on your front lawn and lifting that several times? It wouldn’t help much, would it? Your muscles will only grow and tone as you provide what? RESISTANCE! Trouble provides resistance for our faith and the only way our faith will ever grow significantly is by encountering trouble and learning to respond like Jesus would. So that’s the first way we become like Jesus. God uses trouble to teach us to trust him.

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