Bedtime Routines, the Gospel, & Discipleship
Every night we have a certain bedtime routine where we read our kids a story from the Bible, pray with them, and tuck them into bed at night. However, the last three or four months or so, my youngest has started to ask us to tell her “the Jesus things” before we tuck her in. What she means by “the Jesus things” is the story of how Jesus rescued her (and all of us) from sin and its consequences. My daughter uses this as an opportunity to stay up late. I’m using it as an opportunity to soak her soul in the Gospel.
Last night on my 97th time telling my daughter “the Jesus things” I started to realize that I was only telling her part of the Gospel. See, I told her about sin, about how she was separated from God, about how Jesus came and lived, taught, healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, and taught people how to be close to God. I told her about Jesus’ death and the cruel way He was treated. I even told her about how Jesus was raised from the dead and because of that resurrection, when we receive Christ, we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God.
What did I miss?
Last night, I realized I missed anything that happens after saying “Yes” to Jesus. You see, I had focused on the theological, evangelistic portion of the Gospel…the “sign here” kind of Gospel that you come to expect from used-car-salesmen-style evangelists. what I hadn’t told her was what to expect after that and why it was still good news.
After I realized it, I changed the last few lines of my finely honed presentation to include a couple thoughts about what that would look like. It got me thinking about how often we present the Good News to people about Christ as a decision to make that will make their life better, but we present discipleship to people as a cross to bear. While I definitely believe that there is a cross to bear in discipleship, I do not believe that Jesus is the Good-News-yin to discipleship as a bad-news-yang.
So what’s the good news in discipleship? It’s simple and its what caused the first disciples to leave their businesses, family, and comfort and face persecution and death to spread the Gospel–we get to be like Jesus. Jesus put it this way: “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher,” (Luke 6:40).
That’s the good news in discipleship–that we can be like Jesus. This man who we begin to learn how to follow after coming to Him and surrendering everything, actually has a plan to make us like Him. We will grow up into all aspects of Him–His character, His power, His nature–everything Jesus was and is we get to grow into. This is the good news that keeps us saying yes to the discipleship process. It’s good news to our hearts when we’re tired and weary. Most importantly, it’s not the dreaded fine print to what had previously looked like a really good deal.
So, I told my daughter a little different Gospel. I told her when she says yes to “the Jesus things,” she gets to grow up and be like Jesus. I intend to tell those I’m discipling the same thing. My guess is they haven’t heard it from me nearly enough.
Maybe you should go back and check your Gospel, too?
One response to “Bedtime Routines, the Gospel, & Discipleship”
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Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 
Good word my brother. From the outside, following Jesus seems crazy, especially when someone sees a follower being persecuted. But Jesus told this parable that only believer can understand. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man was digging he found the treasure, went and sold everything he had and bought the field.
What?!?! How crazy is this man to sell EVERYTHING to buy a field? From the outside it looks ridiculous, but the man knew the worth of the treasure. He had counted up the cost and found that it was worth it. Sometimes “the Jesus things” will cost us. It might cost small things or it could cost everything. I’ve counted the cost and have found many times over, He is worth it.