When I was in high school, I did quite well in school, and although I was not one of the popular kids, I was voted "most likely to succeed." So I went away to college and I majored in biology. I went to graduate school, too, studying ornithology, and sure enough, I was a success. Even at the age of 22, I was one of the top 20 ornithologists in the state of Illinois. And the lesson there, is that if you pick an obscure enough specialty, it’s not hard to be one of the best.

But I had a big problem. I was a success, but it wasn’t doing me any good. It all seemed so pointless. I was having fun, and I was going full speed ahead, but I didn’t know where I was going. I may have been a success at ornithology, but I was a failure at life. Success is just not all it’s cracked up to be. Life was pointless. I needed direction, I needed purpose — I needed Rick Warren’s book.

How many of you have begun reading Rick Warren’s book?

That’s good. I read it in December, and although I didn’t agree with everything in the book, I found it very helpful. The five purposes of life that he outlines give me a helpful grid that I can use to look at my life.

These five purposes even give me a prayer outline. You might try that, if you need some fresh ideas to pray about. Pray about your growth in these five areas – worship, discipleship, fellowship, ministry and mission. Pray about how you are doing, and pray about how NewLife is doing, and pray about how the Worldwide Church of God is doing. There’s a lot to pray about.

Now, the book talks about fellowship before it talks about discipleship, but for no important reason, we in NewLife decided to talk about discipleship first. Our purpose in life is to be a disciple – a disciple of Jesus Christ. Our life is about learning, about learning to be like Jesus. That’s what we were created for, and that’s what we are called for.

Now, Johnny Logroño gave a good introduction to this topic two weeks ago, when he played a segment of "Everybody loves Raymond." In that little segment, a girl asked her father, "If God wants everybody to go to heaven, why does he put us here on earth?" And the dad had no idea, and everybody laughed, presumably because people in the audience didn’t know the answer, either. But that’s precisely what we want to talk about today: Why are we here on earth, rather than being in heaven?

And the answer is, at least a large part of the answer is, that we are here because we have stuff to learn before we are given spiritual bodies and immortal life. We have stuff to learn, and we learn it best in these bodies, and on this earth. And that is the subject of discipleship. We were created to learn, to be disciples, in preparation for our eternity.

And it has to do with our purpose in life, the meaning of life. We were made for a purpose, created for a purpose. This clarifies what life is for — and whether or not we are successful in the world’s eyes, life is not pointless – there is a purpose and a meaning to what we experience. I’ve found this to be personally helpful, and I’m getting a better understanding of what discipleship is. God has been showing me areas in which I need to be a better disciple, ways in which I can be a better disciple.

Now, if you are like me, you will find some parts of discipleship easy, and other parts are more difficult. And what is easy for you may be hard for me, and vice versa. Each of us has a different personality, and we find some aspects of Christianity easy, and others are harder, and we by nature tend to resist the harder parts. And because we resist them, we haven’t grown in them very much.

There are some aspects of discipleship that we tend to resist – at least there is for me – and as I talk about this subject, you will probably find that you like some parts of what I say more than others. Parts of my message challenge me, too. And I suggest to you, that the parts you don’t like may well be the parts that you need the most growth in. At least that’s the way it is for me. So when it seems that I’m asking you to do something that’s difficult for you, consider the possibility that it is precisely this that you need to pay the most attention to.

God is shaping us and calling us toward his purpose, and we will find that life makes more sense and is more satisfying if we are in harmony with God’s purpose for our lives. Life works better when we are living the way that God designed us to live. God did not design us to be miserable – he made us in such a way that we will be happiest if we are doing what he designed us to do. Life will make more sense when we know the purpose of life.

So what is that purpose? God tells us why he created us in Genesis 1:27: "God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

God created us to be in his image. That means that we are in some way to be like God. Now, the Old Testament doesn’t tell us what that means – it just mentions the phrase and lets it lie dormant for a thousand some years, until we get to the New Testament. The Old Testament doesn’t explain it – it’s just that we are designed in some way to be like God, to be in his image.

Of course, we can see that humanity is not completely like God. In fact, sometimes humanity is downright ungodly. Something has gone wrong in the design, we might say, and we can read about it in Genesis 3. To make a short story even shorter, we can say that humanity sinned and fell short of what God wanted us to be.

We are messed up — but the potential for being like God is still there. That’s still our purpose. We were made in the image of God, but the image is messed up and needs to be fixed. People are not living up to the potential of being like God, but the potential is still there, and that is still the reason that God made us, and it is the reason that he calls us to Christ, and the reason that he calls us into the church. He wants us to be made in the image of God.

Now, what is that? If we turn to the New Testament, we will see the mystery solved. The picture is made more clear, and we can see our purpose and meaning. Let’s look at Colossians 1:15 to see what the New Testament says about the image of God. Paul isn’t directly answering the question, but he is describing Jesus Christ, and he says that Jesus is "the image of the invisible God." If we want to know what the image of God is, we need to look to Jesus. He shows us the way that we are supposed to be like God. He shows us what God is like.

It’s like he told Philip in John 14, If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. He’s not talking about color of skin or style of hair – he is talking about the innermost character, the part that really counts in the spiritual world. He’s talking about love, about goodness, about serving other people, about humility. Those are spiritual characteristics, and those are the ways in which Jesus shows us what God is like.

Jesus is the perfect human, showing us what humanity was designed to be – not in color of skin or style of hair, but in the way that he lives and the choices that he makes in life. Jesus tells us what the image of God is by being the image of God, showing us the way that we ought to be. So, God made us for the purpose of being like himself, and Jesus shows us what that means in the flesh. If we want to be like the image of God, we need to be like Jesus, and that is exactly what we see in Romans 8:29:

"God predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son."

Yes, from the very beginning of time, God has planned for us to be like Jesus. We all start some distance from the goal, and our purpose in this mortal life is to change to become more like Christ. 2 Cor. 3:18 says that we are being transformed into his likeness. Other scriptures say that we are being conformed to the measure of the fullness of Christ, or that he is being formed in us, or that we are being renewed in his image. There are several ways of saying it, but the point is that we are supposed to become more and more like Jesus Christ in character and spirit.

OUR PURPOSE IN LIFE IS…

TO _______________________

The meaning of life is that we become like him. You see, the first major point of discipleship is that God is not just giving us information – he is interested in our transformation. He wants us to change, to become different, so that we are more like Christ and therefore more like God. We are being re-created in the image of God, as seen in Jesus Christ. We are children in his family, so he wants us to be like his Child, his Son, Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to have a family resemblance, to be like each other.

Well, that’s a broad and general principle. What does it look like in specifics? Just how are we supposed to be like Christ? Do we have to wear robes and tassels and go to synagogues on the Sabbath? Well, no, of course not.

Well then, in what way are we to be like Christ? How do we achieve our purpose in life? How do we find the meaning of our lives?

Rick Warren provides a good outline in five parts: worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and mission. In all five of these areas, we need to be like Christ, and in all five areas, we can ask, what was Jesus like in this respect?

Let’s start with worship – worship is one of the basic purposes of life.

1 Peter tells us that we were made for the purpose of giving God praise. We were made for worship, so how did Jesus worship the Father? What words come to mind?

-- prayer – Scripture – obedience – praise – love --

We can see a variety of ways that Jesus dealt with his Father, and all of those are aspects of worship, but today I would just like to focus on his attitude, because attitude is the wellspring of everything else. If all the actions are right but the attitude is wrong, then we really haven’t worshipped God in spirit and in truth. We need to get the attitude right, and we need to see the attitude that Jesus had toward God the Father.

Several words come to mind, and several words are right, but I would like to focus on the word dependence, partly because that is what I need most right now.

1. BEING LIKE CHRIST IN WORSHIP

• What was the attitude of Jesus
  toward God the Father? It was __________________.

Jesus had an attitude of dependence on the Father. A couple of scriptures that illustrate this are found in the Gospel of John:

"The Son can do nothing by himself." John 5:19
"The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." John 14:10

Jesus depended on God for strength and for direction. He depended on God to provide his mission in life, and he was submissive to that mission. He let God define his life, and power his life. He did what the Father wanted, and he let the Father do the work. He prayed because he needed help. He was not self-reliant, but he relied on God.

Now, if Jesus needed the Father, I certainly need to rely on him, too. I need to be dependent on him for direction and strength. Because human success can be totally pointless. The significance of life does not come in seeing how well I can achieve my goals – there is significance in life only if those goals have an eternal significance, only if they have a divine significance. So I need God’s direction, and I need him to work through me. I need to pray like I really need his help, because I really do. I need an attitude of dependence on God.

That’s an aspect of discipleship, of becoming more like Christ. Notice there that this is not a matter of information – it is a matter of transformation. On the Day of Judgment, we are not going to get a multiple-choice test to see how many facts we know. Rather, we are going to have one question: Did you trust in Jesus Christ, or did you trust in yourself? Are you dependent, or are you independent? Are you willing to be directed by God, or do you insist on doing your own thing?

We were made to be dependent on God, and until we learn to do that, we will have a constant struggle. But when we submit to God, we will have peace. We will enjoy life more when we are living the way that God designed us to live.

Now let’s look at discipleship in the aspect of fellowship, in terms of how we get along with other people. And again, we can look at Jesus as our example. We’ll have a whole sermon about fellowship next week, so today we’ll be very brief. We could look at what Jesus did, or what he said, but here I would again like to focus on what his attitude was.

1. BEING LIKE CHRIST IN FELLOWSHIP

• The attitude of Jesus toward other people was _____________.

A scripture that illustrates this point:

"Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35

Jesus’ basic attitude toward other people was one of love, and we are supposed to copy that. Again, this is a matter of transformation, not information. Discipleship, or learning to be like Jesus, is often thought to be Bible study, or learning doctrines, or learning stuff. But study is only a step in the right direction. The doctrines are no good to us unless they affect our lives, unless they affect our behavior and our attitudes. Learning facts about Jesus can be helpful, but what we really want to learn is to learn to be like Jesus. We not only need to learn about love, we need to actually love other people. I suppose we’ll hear more about that next week.

Next, let’s look specifically at discipleship, and since this sermon is about discipleship, we will look at it in the most detail. For convenience, we might categorize a life of discipleship into three areas:

1. BEING LIKE CHRIST IN DISCIPLESHIP

• For us to become like Christ, we
  must change in actions, words, and _____________.

Here again, I would like to highlight the importance of attitudes, because our attitudes are the real source of our words and our behaviors. If the attitude is right, other things will come into line.

A scripture that illustrates this point is Romans 12:2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

We are to be transformed in the mind, in the way we think, in the decisions we make and the reasons that we have for those decisions. We are supposed to change so that we value what God values, we hate what God hates, and we think the way God thinks. When the Bible says that we need a change of heart, it is not talking about our blood-pumping organ – it is talking about our attitudes and emotions, and the way we make decisions. We need not just new information for our minds, but a new way of acting on that information. We need not just new data for our computer, but new software that leads to different results in our lives.

This is what our purpose in life is, and this is what our earthly lives are all about, and this is what discipleship is all about – transforming our minds to be more like Jesus Christ. Can you do that? Well, no, you can’t. That’s why I said that we need an attitude of dependence on God. We can’t do this on our own – we have to seek it from God, and he creates the new person that we are supposed to be. We have to submit to his program, rather than invent one of our own.

We can’t create a seminar about becoming like Jesus in 12 easy steps. The old covenant showed that giving laws and rules just doesn’t work. If we look to Jesus, we see that something much more radical is needed. Indeed, we need to learn in the same way that Jesus himself learned…

• We learn in the same way that
  Jesus learned, and he learned by ________________.

The scripture that supports this is Hebrews 5:8:

"Although Jesus was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8)

Now, how many people want to sign up for the school of suffering?

No, this is certainly not the way that we would have planned it, but this is the only way that works. Now, I have news for you. Whether you signed up for this school or not, you are in it. All of humanity is in the school of hard knocks, the school of experience and pain and suffering. Now, some people are suffering and not learning a thing from it; others are suffering and learning.

If we make a lot of mistakes in life, we will experience a lot of suffering – but even if we never make any mistakes at all, we are going to suffer, because we suffer from the mistakes that other people make.

Life has nasty surprises in it. And the question we have to face is, are we going to learn from these experiences, or not? Is the pain going to make us more like Jesus, or is it just going to be pointless suffering?

If Jesus himself had to learn through suffering, we also have to suffer as part of our education, as part of our transformation to be more like Jesus. And unfortunately, we learn more when we suffer than when everything is going well for us. The really significant times in our personality development are not the trips to Disneyland, but the trips to the hospital. We learn far more in pain than we do in pleasure.

If we have good times, we need to be thankful for them, but we need to know that most of our growth comes in times of suffering – if we let it – if we respond to suffering with submission rather than bitterness, for example. Suffering doesn’t help everyone in the same way, and it will help us most if we experience it in the context of God. We can pray, let this cup pass from me – but we also have to add, nevertheless not my will but yours be done.

No, I don’t like this. I would really rather study doctrines – but the fact is that suffering is going to teach me things that studying can never teach me – suffering is going to change me in ways that studying cannot. After all, one of the doctrines or teachings of Jesus is this: If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and follow me. If you want to be my disciple, sign up for the school of suffering, and give control of your life to me.

The Bible says that suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope. When life is good and we have everything we want, we tend to rely on what we have. But when everything we have is taken away, when everything else is shown to be unreliable, then all we have left is hope in God. Our circumstances can force us toward God. When life itself is ebbing away, people tend to turn to God, because they have no other hope. These trials teach us things that books can never teach us.

You see, God’s goal for our life is not comfort and safety. No, he has a more important purpose – he wants us to trust him, and by doing that, to be transformed to be more like him. We might not understand it all, but God says that he will use it for our good. We may not know how, but we have to trust him, knowing that he did not even spare his own Son from troubles that helped him learn.

If God allowed his own Son to suffer trials, then we can be sure that our trials are necessary, even if we don’t know why. God allows them because he is using them for his purpose, to transform us into the image that we were designed to have. No matter what the trial, God is using it to somehow help us. That doesn’t mean that we deserve trials, any more than Jesus deserved his, but God can use them for good in a way that only he can.

Basically, we are going to suffer whether we follow Jesus or not. The question is, are we going to let Jesus use our suffering to change us to be more like he is? Are you willing to sign up for the school of suffering?

Ah… I should have put that into the handout. Something like this:

I understand I am going to suffer whether or not I sign up for it. But I sign here to indicate that in my suffering, I am willing to learn to be more like Jesus. Father, I am willing for you to use my suffering to make me a better person. … And then you could sign it.

Would you be willing to sign it? Are you willing to trust God, to be dependent on God?

Now, there’s a lot of suffering I don’t understand. I don’t see how anybody can learn anything from some of the atrocities that people do, or some of the catastrophes that happen around the world. I don’t claim to know the purpose of all suffering, or even to know if it all has a purpose. That’s up to God. But what I know is that God often teaches us and transforms us through suffering. Jesus had to go through it, and we have to go through it.

And I also know that life is going to make more sense, and is going to be less frustrating to us, and more fulfilling, if we submit to our Creator’s plan for our lives. Life won’t be pointless – it will have a purpose. We will have some central meaning to cling on to when the trials beset us on every side. We’ll have a focus that can help us see a light at the end of the valley of the shadow of death. We’ll know: God has a purpose for me. I can trust him even when everything else falls apart. That’s when we are learning to be like Jesus.

Now, I am not advising anyone to sign up for extra suffering. We have to submit to God’s plan, not make our own. It’s a matter of submission.

We don’t seek suffering, but there are aspects of discipleship in which we should take a more active role. There are plans and programs that we can sign up for. And the Bible says we should eagerly desire to grow more like Christ. We want to be more like him.

What active steps can we take in discipleship to learn to be more like Jesus? One way to see how we learn is simply to see how Jesus taught.

How did Jesus teach?

I used to think primarily in terms of words – Jesus taught in words. He taught in parables, he taught in sermons, he taught in dialogues.

• We learn the way that the original disciples learned—the way that Jesus taught them. Jesus taught in three ways:
  

1. Words – we learn by ________.
   

"Crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them." Mark 10:1

And of course, he taught then in words.

So, the point is that we need to learn words. We need to study the Bible. We need to memorize verses, like Jesus did. We need to learn words, because they will help us make sense out of our experiences. The words of the Bible can help us turn senseless suffering into meaningful lessons for our lives. It is through words that we can understand what Jesus did for us, for our salvation. It is words that help motivate us to change, words that help transform our lives. Jesus taught in words, and we learn by hearing or reading those words.

Second, Jesus taught by example.

2. Example – we learn by ___________.

"I have set you an example that you should do as I have done." John 13:15

Jesus was constantly setting an example for his disciples, an example they wrote down in the Bible so we can learn from what Jesus did as well as what he said. God demonstrates his love, the Bible says, by sending Jesus to die for us. Jesus shows us what love is, by dying for us. He set an example of dependence on God, he set an example of submission, and example of humility, and example of faith, an example of compassion, and example of life dedicated to God.

Jesus demonstrated as well as taught. He showed in his actions that he was the bread of life. He showed in his actions that he forgave people’s sins. He showed by what he did, that he is the resurrection and the life. His actions spoke as loudly as his words.

Our goal is to become more like Jesus, and so we need to study the example that he has given us, and we need to copy it. The Bible tells us to be forgiving, just as God in Jesus has forgiven us. The example of sacrifice that Jesus gave us, should help transform us to be more patient and gracious toward one another. He has given so much to us, that we should be more willing to give to others. We are learning from his example, learning by watching what he has done. This is part of the package God has given us, part of his purpose for us. We need to look to Jesus.

The third way that Jesus taught, and another way that we learn, is through on-the-job training. Here again, this is something we can sign up for, something that we are encouraged to sign up for.

3. Mission – we learn by __________.

"He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Luke 9:2

When the disciples first learned that they were going to be sent out, I am sure that they began to pay more attention to what Jesus was teaching. "What did you say? What am I supposed to say?" Being sent on mission is a wonderful stimulus to increased attention and learning. People learn a lot when they are learning in order to teach. I learned a lot about discipleship simply by having to prepare and organize this message. We learn when we know we have an immediate need for the material.

And we learn when we are actually performing the work, too. We learn when we teach children’s church, for example – and it may not be the subject of the lesson. Sometimes we get a lesson in faith, sometimes in humility, sometimes in love, sometimes in seeing what happens when we rely on ourselves instead of God. We learn a lot when we teach children’s church. Are you willing to sign up for that learning opportunity? Are you willing to staff the nursery? – do you think that Jesus would be willing to do it?

We learn to be more like Jesus when we do the assignments that he gives us. We learn to be like Jesus when we help set up chairs, when we take out the trash, when we help other people. Some people don’t want to learn lessons like that, but it’s part of being like Jesus. The less we like it, perhaps the more we need to learn it.

We can learn by participating in worship. We can learn to be more like Jesus when we give an offering. We can learn to be more like Jesus when we are helping set up the lunch. We can learn to be more like Jesus in every area of what the church is and what it does.

Now, this slides right into my next point:

1. BEING LIKE CHRIST IN MINISTRY

• We become mature through works of ___________.

Yes, we learn through doing. We learn through putting the words of Jesus into practice in our lives. A scripture that shows this is Ephesians 4:11-13

Christ put leaders in the church "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all…become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

Yes, God puts us into the church for a reason, and that reason is that we do something, and by doing something, we grow. We become more like Christ. We learn to love, by helping people who are hard to love. We learn to forgive, by forgiving people who sin against us. We learn to be more like Jesus, when we have to deal with Pharisees. We learn to be patient, when we have to work with people who don’t do things the way that we want them done. Those kinds of trials can help transform us, if we allow God to use them in that way.

We learn by doing, by being involved in the work of the church.

Last, we fulfill our purpose in life, and we become more like Jesus, when we do the mission that Jesus himself did, and the commission that he gave his church to do:

1. BEING LIKE CHRIST IN EVANGELISM

"Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:19-20

Yes, we will learn to be more like Christ if we are involved in the work of evangelism. We will become more like Christ if we do the work that Christ himself was involved in. Scripture tells us to be ready – and we need to be ready not only in words, but also in attitude. Instead of being afraid of evangelism, we need to be eager for the opportunity. We need to be hoping for an opportunity. We need to be praying for opportunities. That’s part of being ready.

We need to want to learn how to share, and we need to learn to spot opportunities that are there. We need to be alert for them, and in order to be alert for them, we need to be eager for them.

God designed us for the church, and he designed the church for us. The work of the church is designed to suit our deepest needs in life. This is the assignment Jesus gave his disciples, and it is an assignment that he gives us today, an assignment that is part of our training and part of the way that God is shaping us to be more like his Son, Jesus Christ. We as Christians have been called to be like Christ, and that means we have been called to share the gospel. If we want to be more like Jesus, we need to act more like Jesus.