Someone becoming a Christian is a wonderful miracle! God, by His Spirit, has brought someone who was dead in their sins and trespasses to be alive in Christ that is great news! But what next? I’ve often heard people say that when they became Christians they were given a Bible and just told to follow Jesus. That’s good advice, but it’s lacking in substance, because a new Christian has no idea what that actually means! We need to focus on following Jesus’ command, to go and make disciples not just converts. We need to disciple people, walk with them in their faith, be examples to them of what it means to follow Jesus and help them grow in their love for the Lord, His Word, His people and the lost. But how?
Well there are plenty of great tools and resources out there to help, but I’d like to highlight a new discipleship course by Tim Chester that may help.
Chester has written 12 chapters that are split up into four parts;
- A New Life
- A Change Perspective
- A Real Connection
- A Compelling Lifestyle
Each section is written with the goal of helping the reader see what it looks like to follow Jesus and how He enables us to keep going in life. One of the things that I like about this book is that Chester is honest and open about the struggles of following Jesus. Too often people want to hide the cost of following Christ, but Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24).
Each chapter follows the same format…
- A Story
- A Bible passage
- Questions
- Some devotional comments
- Think it through sections
- Action Points
- Notes
This would be a helpful course for a new believer and could be used in a group setting, in a 1-1 or on your own. I would recommend that you use it 1-1 with someone, that way the new Christian can ask all the questions that they want and not feel intimidated by a group. Here’s a challenge for you, buy 2 copies, read it yourself, pray and then invite someone to work through the course with you. Get busy with the Lord’s work of making disciples and let me know how you found working through it with a new believer.
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