A New Beginning

Greg Laurie: Brand new Christians can learn a lot from those who've known the Lord for a while, but coming up today, Pastor Greg Laurie points out that the help goes both ways. New believers need old believers. Old believers need new believers. Having a new believer in your life can have a reviving effect on you as they discover truths for the first time, you can rediscover them. You stabilize them, they energize you.

Dave: There's a good chance you've seen a two-man saw. With handles on both sides, it's an excellent example of teamwork. One man pushes, the other man pulls, and then vice-versa. Some of those saws were 12 feet long. The Christian life has many examples of teamwork. And today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us focus on discipleship. It addresses the push and pull of daily life as a believer, where a new believer and a veteran believer each have something to offer the other.

Greg Laurie: Discipleship. The next step in following Jesus. So let me tell you some things now that new believers need. And I'm addressing these remarks to two groups of people. Number one, to new believers. But I'm also addressing my remarks to older believers because this is what you need to do for younger believers.

The new believer needs acceptance. Because you know what? New Christians have a lot of rough edges. They haven't learned the new Christian vocabulary yet. In fact, they might have a few words left over from their old vocabulary that will pop up now and then. Be patient with them. Be loving toward them. I think of how little I understood when I came to Christ, and thankfully there were people that were accepting.

Number two, a new believer needs assurance. They need assurance. They need to know that they're saved. So we need to assure them. First John 5 says, "these things we write to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." They can know, and we need to assure them, and if you're a new believer, we want to assure you as well.

Number three, the new believer needs protection. New believers are vulnerable to their own emotions. They don't understand it when they had a sense of euphoria when they accepted Christ and two days later it's gone. Maybe they thought it would always be this way, but it won't. You'll have days where you don't feel anything, right? So we need to say that's okay, that's normal, nothing bad has happened. You need to learn how to walk by faith, not by feeling, because the Bible says the just shall live by faith.

New believers are also vulnerable to false teachings. We have to ground them in scripture. Old friends are going to show up that will try to drag them down. Old girlfriends and old boyfriends will suddenly materialize, and temptations they never had will suddenly appear.

The new believer, number four, needs fellowship. That's why we want to involve them in our lives. That's why small groups are so good. Because some things are learned in rows and other things are learned in circles where you're together and you can talk about it and you can ask questions. And so we need to bring a new believer into the church.

New believers need old believers. Old believers need new believers. Having a new believer in your life can have a reviving effect on you as they discover truths for the first time, you can rediscover them. You stabilize them, they energize you. This is illustrated with spending time with children. Someone asked me in an interview recently, "What do you like to do with your free time?" And I said, "I like to spend time with my grandkids."

I call them up or text them, "Hey, what are you doing? You want to go somewhere?" "Yeah, we want to go do this, Papa. We want to get ice cream." Then we're going to get ice cream. "We want to walk around on the mall." Let's do it. "We want to do this other thing." Let's do that. My job is not to parent them. My job is to grandparent them. Fill them up with sugar and send them on home, right?

No, but seriously, it's to enter into their life, do what they want to do. You say, well, that's a nice thing for you to do. Actually, I enjoy it. It's good for me too. And I think when you have a new believer in your life, it energizes you as well. Some grandparents have collected a lot of things over the years that they have in their home. And they say to the grandkids when they come over, "Don't touch anything. That's fragile. Don't break that."

Get rid of all that junk, okay? Put it in a box. No one likes it anyway. Funky old stuff. Put it away. Go admire it sometime on your own. When your grandkids come in, make your home a welcoming place. And the same is true spiritually. Have a life, have a lifestyle, have a home that's welcoming to new believers. It's good for them and it's good for you because a new believer might ask questions that you don't have the answers to. Therefore, you've got to get back in the Bible again and they'll remind you of things that maybe you have forgotten.

I read an article about a number of billionaires who are trying to find a cure for aging. And some of them are getting blood transfusions from healthy young people from the ages of 16 and 25, believing it will reverse the aging process. What they didn't plan for was the fact that after getting these blood transfusions, they moved back into their parents' house and played video games non-stop. Listen, you want a blood transfusion? Get a new believer that you can help grow spiritually.

New believers are the lifeblood of the church. You show me a church that doesn't have a constant flow of new believers in it, and I will show you a church that's beginning to stagnate. As I've said before, we have a choice: evangelize or fossilize. We don't want to live in the past. We rejoice in what God has done, but that's then and this is now. And we want to keep reaching new people and help them come into a relationship with Christ. And that brings us now to what we call the Great Commission here in Matthew 28, verse 16.

Jesus said to His disciples, "I've been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all my commands I have given you, and be sure of this," says our Lord, "I am with you even to the end of the age."

Next point: before I can make a disciple, I have to first be a disciple. Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? And are you discipling someone else? Listen, we should be either discipling someone or we should be being discipled by someone. In other words, we should either have a new believer in our life that we're helping out, or we should have an older believer in our life that's helping us out. And guess what? Sometimes you can do both at the same time.

You can have someone that's mentoring you and you can be mentoring somebody else. This is really important and it's part of what we're called to do. What is the Great Commission? Number one, He says be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And what else are we to do? We're to teach people to obey His commands. And by the way, the Great Commission is a command.

In other words, Jesus isn't saying, "Hey, if you can work it into your busy schedule, would you mind as a personal favor to go into all the world?" No, He says, "I'm your Lord. I'm your commander. And I command you to go into all the world and preach the gospel." I like to be commanded by Jesus, don't you? That's a great thing to do.

I remember years ago I had the privilege of being asked to be on the board of directors of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association by Billy himself. And so I was brought onto the board. And one day, Billy said, "I need a hat." Because Billy was always losing his hats. Somehow he thought that a ball cap would disguise him. But people always managed to recognize Billy because he had a profile you could put on Mount Rushmore, very distinctive profile. People always recognized him, but he wanted a hat.

Greggy, he said, I want you to get me a hat. I felt like I was on a mission from God. We were in some city where he was doing a crusade, and I went down to the local mall and I found a hat store. I think it was called Lids, maybe. And I've never seen so many hats in my life. And I didn't know what his size was. And I'm looking and praying, "God, give me wisdom. What's the right hat for Billy Graham?"

Then I finally found a hat, and I went to him. "Billy, I got you a hat." It was a ball cap. He says, "Thank you." He put it on. Next day, there was a picture of him wearing my hat. I said, "That's my hat! I got him that hat!" And then he lost it. But I loved the fact that Billy Graham said, "Do this for me." It was my honor. It was my privilege to do anything to help a man of God like that.

Now think, the Lord Jesus Christ is saying, "Do this for me. Look at all that I've done for you. Now I want you to do the following: go into all the world and make disciples of all nations." It's a command. It's not given to only the original disciples, nor is it given to the so-called professionals alone, like pastors or evangelists or missionaries. These words are addressed to every follower of Jesus. They're addressed to you. So here's my question: are you making disciples? When's the last time you've shared the gospel? When's the last time you've taken a new believer under your wing and helped them to grow spiritually?

Dave: Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. Whenever you send us an email, letter, or post a comment on social media, we read every word. "Hi Pastor Greg. I'm a retired United States Marine who thanks God for your preaching. I love listening to your podcast. I'm still trusting God that He will save my wife and two daughters. I wish I would have shown Jesus to them earlier, but am praying now for their salvation every day. May God bless you and your family, Greg." Has Pastor Greg heard from you? Why not drop him an email and let him know. Send it to greg@harvest.org. Again, that's greg@harvest.org.

Well, we're getting some important perspective on the discipleship process today as Pastor Greg shows us how it helps equip new believers and long-time believers as well.

Greg Laurie: The calling of God is the enabling of God. He will give you all of the power that you need. Look at verse 18. Jesus says, "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore and make disciples." Now, whenever you see the word "therefore", find out what it's there for. It's always drawing on what was previously said.

So contextually, Jesus says, "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore." Wait, you have the power? Right, I don't have any. No, I'm giving it to you, says Jesus. "Go therefore into all the world and make disciples." What does it mean to go and make disciples? It means to lead others to Christ, establish them spiritually, and do it again. It's sort of like wash, rinse, repeat.

You've seen that on some direction for cleaning something. Wash, rinse, repeat. Or evangelize, stabilize, immobilize. This is our job. You do it, you do it again, you do it again, and you do it a few more times, and then you keep doing it. It never stops. It's a lifetime commitment. Somewhere along the line, we've separated evangelism from discipleship, but they're really one and the same.

The Great Commission is not just gospel proclamation, it's follow-up and it's discipleship. And it would be like a doctor delivering a baby and then giving the baby a box of Pampers and saying, "Son, you've got to get out there. It's a rough world, but you'll do okay." A baby needs to be cared for. Speaking of babies, a study was conducted in a large hospital and they discovered something interesting.

They found that the people working in the nursery noticed that the babies who were in their cribs near the door did better than the babies in the cribs in the other parts of the room. They wondered why. After careful study, they discovered the nurses were more prone to give attention to the babies near the door as they went about their duties. This is what a new believer needs. They need care. They need attention. You need to take time for them. This is what we're all called to do.

And listen to what Christ says in closing. He says, "Go into all the world, make disciples of all nations." And then He says, "And lo, I am with you even to the end of the age." This promise is not simply saying that Jesus is with us, but He is if you're a Christian because Jesus said, "I'll never leave you or forsake you." But this is a promise in its context that is specifically saying to those who are fulfilling the Great Commission.

Allow me to paraphrase. Jesus is saying, "As you go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you, lo, I am with you." In other words, I'm going to be with you in a special way. I'm going to bless you in a unique way. I'm going to use you in a fantastic way as you go about doing this thing that I've called you to do.

So this is a great promise. It's a blessing to us as well as to the person we are helping. So here's my question for you: are you doing this? And if not, why not? Let's do it. This is a lifelong calling for all of us to be engaged in. But we can't do this in our own strength. We're going to fail. We're going to fall short. But there's a promise of power to every Christian to do what God has called them to do.

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says, "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you to be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. I'll give you the power you need." And it's interesting the word that Christ uses for power there comes from the Greek word *dunamis*. *Dunamis*, which we translate into the word dynamite.

You've probably heard of Alfred Nobel because there's something called the Nobel Peace Prize. Did you know that Alfred Nobel was an incredible inventor and he actually invented something that we now know as dynamite? During World War I, this was a game changer to have something with that explosive power. And Nobel went to a friend who knew Greek and he said, "What is the Greek word for explosion?" And the man said, "Well, it's *dunamis*."

And so Nobel named it dynamite. But the problem was so many lives were taken because of dynamite. Alfred Nobel decided he didn't want to be known for that. So he developed something called the Nobel Peace Prize, which had a cash prize attached to it that was given to people who worked for the cause of peace. And today we know him more for that. But here's the point: explosive dynamite power. Paul says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's the power"—same word—"of God unto salvation."

There's power. And you need power. We all need power. We plug our phones in every day. My phone is constantly draining. What about yours? And we plug in our cars now too. We plug in all kinds of things. God wants to infuse you with Holy Spirit power each and every day. The Bible says, "Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."

And that word that is used there for "be filled" means "be constantly filled" over and over and over again. You need refills. Would it seem strange to you if you had a car and drove it for maybe a week and then it wasn't running, you took it to the gas station and they ask you, "Have you refilled this car with gas?" "Oh, I didn't know about that. No one told me." Yeah, you need to refill your car.

Listen, God gives refills. He'll fill you again and again and you can ask Him for that power. So we're going to close our service today by asking God to give us this power we need to do this job He has called us to do. And this power is available. So we'll pray together and say, "Lord, fill us with the Holy Spirit." You want to do that? Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your promise. Thank you for your calling. Thank you for the privilege of serving you, and you have promised power. You've said you will give the Holy Spirit to those that ask you. So we ask now because scripture promises, "ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened." So we're asking for this power in our life.

Power to be a witness. Power to overcome our fears. Power to take risks for the kingdom of God. Power to share our faith. Power to disciple, to take other believers under our wing and be a friend to them, be an example to them, be someone who can mentor them and help them get mature and strong and then go and repeat this process again and again. We see the calling, Lord. We fall short. So we're praying now that you will fill us with your Holy Spirit. Why don't we just pray this together? Just pray this after me: Fill me with your Holy Spirit, Lord. Just pray that.

Fill me with your Holy Spirit, Lord. There it is. Fill us, Lord. Fill us with your Holy Spirit today, tonight, tomorrow. Open doors of opportunity for us. Let us be sensitive to your leading. Help us to not quench the Holy Spirit, but help us instead to yield to the Holy Spirit. And Lord, we know that you will guide us and empower us and do things through us that will amaze us if we'll just open up. Amen.

Dave: Pastor Greg Laurie praying that God would empower us to serve him properly. Important insights on the dynamic of discipleship today on A New Beginning. Glad you've tuned in. And now let us take a moment to thank you for praying for this ministry and for supporting it through your generous donation. It's an investment in kingdom business, isn't it, Pastor Greg?

Greg Laurie: Yeah, it's really true, Dave. And I believe it's so important because you know the gospel saves lives. It saves eternal lives. Because when a person believes in Jesus, according to scripture, they pass from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the power of God. And then, of course, that changes the course of their future. That impacts their children and their children's children.

The gospel changes everything. And thousands and thousands of people respond every single year. Thanks to the Lord, also thanks to you for your investment in this ministry, enabling us to reach people wherever they are. So if this is something you care about, I encourage you to make a financial investment in A New Beginning and Harvest Ministries.

Dave: Yeah, that's right. And we really do appreciate your support. Thanks for partnering with us today. It can make a real difference, not just for today or this week, but for eternity. So get in touch with your support today by calling 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24/7 phone number: 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or go online to harvest.org.

And while you're online with us, why not begin receiving Pastor Greg's daily devotions via email every day? They're free of charge. We'll send them to the email address you provide for us, and when they arrive, you can read them or, with one click, listen to the audio version. Sign up today, free of charge, at harvest.org. Well, next time, Pastor Greg presents important insight on the challenging times of trial and suffering we may face and the way God will use those times to help us grow. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Laurie.