by Bret Capranica | Feb 24, 2014 | Christian Living, Featured Articles
Last week I suggested a few bullet points of how you could practically serve another brother or sister (or group of people) in deepening your discipleship in Christ. One of the suggestions was to ask specific application questions of one another. Discipleship is more than a meeting. Accountability questions can be dodged and become legalistic. I’m certainly not suggesting they be used in such ways. Use them to simply stimulate each other’s thinking about how to apply the Bible more fervently, specifically, and intentionally to daily life. Recently, the way I have used these questions is to have someone choose a question for the group to think on through the week. When we get back together, we start off by talking about how we lived out (or perhaps did not) the application of the question. It has proved to be a helpful stimulus for me and others. Some of these questions were taken from a list one of our elders found online, and some of the questions were developed by a good friend who used questions he was asking himself after listening to various sermons at church. They are a random list given in no specific order. Here are some of those questions: In what ways am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? How am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits? How did the Bible live in me today? Am I enjoying prayer? Why/Why not? How so? Am I defeated in any part of my life? How, why, in what ways? How do I spend my spare...
by Bret Capranica | Feb 17, 2014 | Christian Living, Featured Articles
As I recently taught through Matthew 10, I urged my congregation and myself to consider how we could become more intentionally involved in each other’s lives to stimulate each other on to deeper relationships that produce biblical love and kingdom living. Discipleship is inclusive of engaging both non-Christians and Christians with the gospel. Here are a few bullet-point suggestions that would actually work with either. However, for the purposes of this post, let’s consider how you could invest more of yourself, more intentionally in the life of another Christian – or even two or three others regularly meeting together. Discipleship is not about checking off the following points. The following points are merely suggestions of how you could begin to think through ways to interact intentionally with other believers in a growing and ongoing way to develop more significant relationships for God’s glory. I don’t intend to annotate each suggestion. Use them as a beginning point to consider how it could flesh out specifically with you. In future posts I will give a few detailed suggestions for things such as applications questions, books to read, how to discuss a book together, etc. So here are a few suggestions on how to think about getting together with another Christian to encourage each other in more intentional ways. What to Do Converse Over Biblical Truth Read books of the Bible together Read excellent books Ask specific application questions of each other Memorize Scripture together Pray Together Pray about what you are reading Pray about what you are struggling with...
