Five Marks Of A Real Disciple Series

When I was first out of seminary in the late 70’s I used to drive through a little town called Locapoka (near Notasulga). I’ve never forgotten the sad sight there. There was the concrete block shell of a church someone had started building years earlier. The project had been halted. There was no roof on the building and trees and shrubs had grown inside the shell. One of the pine trees growing inside the uncompleted church was at least 15 feet tall. I may never know the full story about what happened in that little church. But to everyone who passes by, for years that uncompleted building preaches a sermon: Someone started this, but they didn’t count the cost, and they weren’t able to finish. There is a great value in finishing what you start!

The older I get, the more I realize there can never be any “coasting” in the Christian life. There is no such thing as spiritual retirement. The pages of the Bible are littered with great men and women who didn’t finish well. Noah and his family were saved from the flood, but poor Noah ended as a drunken man who got naked and cursed his son. Solomon was the wisest man in all of history, but he didn’t finish well–his many wives turned his heart from God.

Are you going to finish well? I’ve been here long enough to know some folks who used to be faithful servants–real disciples–but they have dropped out. Oh, they still attend sometimes, and I suppose they’ll go to heaven when they die, but unless something changes they aren’t going to finish strong. They are like that church building in Locapoka.

The good news is none of you are finished yet. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, you still can finish well. The finish line is still ahead. Are you sitting down on the track? Are you going to barely drag yourself across the finish line, or are you going to summon God’s strength so you can sprint across the finish line?

Billy Sunday was the Billy Graham of his generation. He was a former professional baseball player. He once said: “Stopping at third adds no more to the score than striking out. It doesn’t matter how well you start if you fail to finish.” A real disciple finishes strong.

4. A WAR: SURRENDER TO THE STRONGER KING

In this image, Jesus describes two kings. One is outnumbered, so he wisely approaches the stronger king and makes peace before the battle ever begins. You and I are one of the kings and God is the other. Guess which one we are? Because we can never win against God, we must surrender to Him. In Jesus’ time a surrendering king could be made into a slave of the opposing king, so it required great humility to bow down and ask for terms of peace. It takes humility today to surrender to Jesus.

You cannot be a disciple unless you are willing to give up control of your life to Jesus. And that’s hard to do. None of us wants to give up.

I once read about a lifeguard on a beach who saw a drowning man. He walked into the surf but didn’t go out to rescue him. People gathered on the beach and yelled and screamed at the lifeguard to go out and rescue the drowning man. The lifeguard waded a little deeper, and kept his eye on the drowning man, but the yells and screams of the onlookers didn’t motivate him to swim out. Just when it seemed the man was going down for the last time, the lifeguard swam out with strong strokes and grabbed the man and brought him back to shore. After some spitting and coughing, the man was conscious. But rather than hailing him as a hero, the onlookers were angry at the lifeguard and said, “You coward! You saw he was drowning, why didn’t you go out sooner?”