Discipleship: What Does God Want For Me? – Part 2

All right, so it’s been a weird few weeks.

This is part two of a three-part series that’s meant to answer, literally, the most important question of all time—the question that every single one of us has to answer and then live out as human beings created by God and living in God’s world.

And that is the question: What does God want?

Have you ever asked yourself that question before—like seriously asked yourself that question—what does God want?

What does he want from me?

What does he want from you?

What does he want from us as a church?

What does he want from us as humans, as families, as people living in a nation, as people who go to work every day, as people raising children, as people trying to get through the day-to-day struggle of life in this fallen and broken world?

The absolute most important question that you can ever ask as a human being living in God’s world is not, “What do I want?”—it’s “What does God want for me?” and “What does God want from me?”

And we are spending this three-week series asking that question, maybe more deeply than we ever have before.

God Wants to Save You

Last week, what we found is that God wants to save you.

God’s Word says that God is like the good shepherd who leaves behind the ninety-nine sheep and goes and finds that one that wandered off, saves it from the wolves, throws it over his shoulders, carries it back to safety, and then celebrates.

It says there is celebration in heaven every time a lost person is found, a sinner repents, a rebel submits.

And so the Scripture said that God himself came down from heaven and went to the cross and died in our place to wipe away our sin, to redeem us and restore us, to knock down the wall between us and God and to make us righteous again.

And that if we place our faith in Jesus, we will be fully and freely and forever forgiven.

That is the ground floor that absolutely everything else is built upon—and it leads directly into what we want to talk about this morning.

God Wants to Disciple You

Because now that God has gone to the cross and saved you, step two of his plan and purpose and will for your life is this: God wants to disciple you.

What am I talking about? Here’s what I’m talking about.

Last week, when we talked about how God wants to save you through the cross, by grace, through faith, we used that word “grace” in a very specific way.

I’m going to throw a lot of us through a loop right now, but when the Bible uses the word “grace,” it doesn’t always mean the same thing.

Did you know that sometimes when the Bible talks about God’s grace, it’s talking about something that happened in the past—on the cross. That’s God’s REDEEMING grace.

That’s God’s JUSTIFYING grace.

But sometimes when the Bible talks about God’s grace, it’s talking about something that is happening in the present—through the Holy Spirit who is at work in you.

It’s talking about God’s grace that is changing you from the inside out, day by day and moment by moment, through the Holy Spirit inside you. That’s Gpd’s TRANSFORMING grace.

That’s God’s SANCTIFYING grace.

Today, we’re gonna talk about THAT.

We’re going to talk about the way that the Holy Spirit has descended on us, now dwells within us, and now sanctifies us.

God’s transforming grace is at work in us to make us grow spiritually every single day of our lives.

God’s transforming grace is at work in us to teach us to obey, to make us want to obey, to give us a deep desire to obey rather than rebel.

God’s transforming grace is at work in us right now, to mature us, to turn us from spiritual infants into spiritual adults.

God’s transforming grace is at work in us right now to form us and shape us and grow us into people who glorify God in every part of our lives—in the way that we think and act and live and worship.

Isn’t that beautiful?

I should be hearing an amen right now.

But the question that we need to answer together here and now, as we dive deep into God’s sanctifying, transforming grace, is: How does he do that?

Ever asked yourself that question before?

How does God grow us?

How does God transform us?

How does God change us from the inside out?

The answer is unbelievably simple.

God transforms us through discipling us.

The Spirit is changing you from the inside out through the discipleship Jesus is pouring out On you.

I’m about to say the most important thing that I will say this entire service, so listen super carefully.

Are you listening?

Okay, here we go.

Jesus is discipling you today, just like he discipled the twelve apostles yesterday.

Are you following me?

Jesus is discipling you today in exactly the same way that he discipled Peter, James, John, Andrew, Matthew, Nathaniel, Philip, Bartholomew, and so on and so forth during his earthly ministry.

You are a disciple of Jesus.

And so I want to be totally clear.

Listen very carefully to what I’m saying here.

There is no difference between you and Peter.

There is no difference between you and Matthew.

There is no difference between you and John.

There is no difference between you and Philip, you and Thomas, you and Bartholomew, you and James.

They were the disciples of Jesus in 33 AD.

You are the disciples of Jesus in 2025 AD.

Jesus radically transforms everything about you from the inside out by discipling you.

How Does Jesus Disciple You Today?

Which leads us to another very obvious question: How does Jesus disciple you today?

What is the literal step-by-step process that Jesus uses to disciple you into growing in holiness, maturity, obedience, understanding, and godliness as a disciple today?

The answer is super simple, but it requires a little bit of breaking down in order to understand it.

Let’s dive right in.

Sound good?

Are you ready?

Here we go.

1. Jesus Disciples You Through the Scriptures

I love the way Psalm 1 puts it:

“Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stand on the path of sinners,
nor sit in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in Yahweh’s law.
On his law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water,
that produces its fruit in its season,
whose leaf also does not wither.
Whatever he does shall prosper.”

—Psalm 1:1–3, WEB

Joshua 1:8 says:

“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.”

—Joshua 1:8, WEB

1 Peter 2:2 says:

“As newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk, that with it you may grow.”

—1 Peter 2:2, WEB

When you open up God’s Word each day to read it, or listen to it and learn from it and study it and chew on it and turn it over in your head and try to understand what it means, and meditate on it and think about how you can apply it to your life and so on and so forth—you are not just reading a book.

You are doing exactly the same thing that the disciples of Jesus in 33 AD were doing when they would sit at his feet to listen and be taught by him.

When you open up the Scriptures, Jesus is teaching you through the Scriptures.

He is growing you through the Scriptures.

Maturing you through the Scriptures.

When you delight in God’s words—his instruction, his teaching, his voice speaking through the Scriptures—it’s like you’re a tree and his Word is a stream of water that your roots are drinking from, being nourished from, sustained by.

God is growing fruit in you through the act of meditating on his Word.

To memorize it.

To commit it to our memories.

To brand it into our hearts.

Says then you will prosper instead of withering.

It’s not saying that if we read our Bibles enough, God will favor us and he’ll make us rich and powerful.

It’s saying that the Lord is growing and strengthening and sustaining and empowering and maturing us through his Word in a way that enables us to live in a way that brings joy instead of sorrow, flourishing instead of withering, victory instead of disaster.

This is kind of an R-rated example, but he’s saying, essentially, we are breastfeeding from God’s Word the same way that a newborn is nourished and sustained and fed by nursing from its mother.

That is the relationship you have with your God.

As a Christian, he is transforming you from the inside out, to grow you spiritually and give you the desire and the power to obey, to mature you and complete you through the divinely inspired Word that he has given us.

That’s number one: Jesus disciples you through the Scriptures.

2. Jesus Disciples You Through Prayer

Luke 5:16 says:

“But he withdrew himself into the desert and prayed.”

—Luke 5:16, WEB

Daniel 6:10 says:

“When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house—now his windows were open in his room toward Jerusalem—and he knelt on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did before.”

—Daniel 6:10, WEB

In Psalm 55:17, David says:

“Evening, morning, and at noon, I will cry out in distress.
He will hear my voice.”

—Psalm 55:17, WEB

Now, this is a weird one.

This is not the way we tend to think about prayer, is it?

But over and over, Jesus often went to be alone with his Father in a quiet place.

He would spend half the day in a quiet place before he had to go minister in a demanding way.

He would disappear for days at a time just to go be with his Father for seventy-two straight hours because he needed it.

I love the way that the book of Daniel puts it.

Daniel would spend an hour in prayer three times a day.

He needed an hour in the morning just to get him through the morning.

He needed an hour at midday just to get him through the afternoon.

He needed an hour in the evening just to get him to bedtime, because he could not do what he needed to do as a faithful follower of the God of Israel in this fallen and broken world without being in prayer.

Now that does not mean that you need to spend three collective hours in prayer.

What it does mean is this: The Lord is actually working in your heart through the time you spend in his presence.

And literally, we tend to overthink prayer, but this is all prayer is at the core.

Prayer is literally just spending time consciously in the presence of God.

That’s it.

There’s plenty of other stuff you can do while you are in prayer, but this is the heart of prayer.

You don’t have to ask God for anything.

You don’t even have to talk.

You don’t even have to say anything.

You definitely don’t have to pray in King James.

Know what I’m talking about?

You don’t have to bust out a bunch of these and thous and try to use the fanciest phrases you can and be all flowery and stuff like that.

Like I don’t know why we do that.

I don’t know if we’re trying to impress God or what.

But when you pray, it can be as long as you need it to be, or as short as you want it to be.

It can be as big as you feel, or as small as you feel.

It can be as uplifting as you’re feeling, or as anxious and despairing as you are feeling.

The heart of prayer is communing with your Father in heaven as a beloved son who is welcome there and wanted there.

God is eagerly listening to every word that comes from your mouth.

Literally, God is hanging on your every word, despite the fact that you don’t actually have particularly valuable words to pour out, right?

But in that process, God is actually changing us.

He is pouring into us as we are pouring out our words and our anxiousness and our worries and our fears and our needs and our thanks and our praises and our confessions and our laments to him.

He is literally working inside us, changing us from the inside out through our process of communing with him when we pray.

And so I know I say this a lot, but honestly, my prayer times each day really play out a lot more like a divine therapy session than a grocery list of wants and needs and desires and so forth.

I ask the Lord for things, 100%.

But I don’t stress about trying to make sure I list everything.

He knows.

He’s aware.

He’s omniscient.

Prayer is for you so much more than it’s for him.

He doesn’t need your prayers.

You need your prayers.

And he blesses and sustains and encourages and strengthens and raises you up through the time you spend with him in prayer.

When you are praying, you have God’s ear—and he has your heart.

That’s number two: Jesus disciples you through prayer.

3. Jesus Disciples You Through Your Local Church

What am I talking about?

Here’s what I’m talking about.

Rewind all the way back to the time of Jesus.

Jesus went from one town to another, preaching and teaching about God’s kingdom.

And as he did that, more and more people started to—what?—follow him.

People would follow him from one town to another.

And eventually we got to the point where there were thousands of people at any given time who were following Jesus from town to town just to hear what he was going to teach next.

They became the congregation of Jesus.

The first-ever church was a megachurch.

It was thousands of people following Jesus around to hear him, teach, and worship with him.

And as they followed him from one town to another, they were learning the basics of God’s kingdom.

They were learning the essential truths of God’s kingdom.

They were learning the foundations of who God is and what God is like and what he wants for us and from us.

They were learning the ground floor of God’s will and God’s ways from the mouth of God himself.

And listen—we are doing the exact same thing today when we gather together with the rest of the congregation at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings.

Right now, you are being discipled by Jesus through his church in exactly the same way that the congregation of Jesus was being discipled as they followed him from town to town to worship with him and hear him teach. He is discipling you through his congregation.

And that means something very simple for you: If you want to grow—seriously grow—you cannot just do it at home.

Know what I’m talking about?

I’m about to upset a bunch of people, but look: Jesus has shown us exactly how to grow deeply and richly and fully and vibrantly in the faith.

But most of us have an unbelievably hard time wrapping our heads around the pathway Jesus gave us to grow—because it requires us to do something that we desperately want to avoid, that we will do practically anything to get out of doing.

We have to talk to people.

You know what I’m talking about?

If we want to experience the transformation that God wants for us, we have to be willing to talk to people.

To listen to people.

To get to know people.

To open our lives up to people.

Because God has sovereignly, providentially, divinely wired us in a way that we cannot grow to the fullest extent apart from the rest of his church.

God has wired us to need the rest of the church.

He’s wired us to need the rest of his family, the rest of his kingdom people, the rest of his disciples.

And that means that If you are avoiding God’s people, you are not going to grow—not really.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: God doesn’t stop loving you if you avoid his church.

You don’t stop being redeemed if you avoid his church.

God does not take away his redeeming grace from you if you avoid his church.

But listen—he is not pouring out his transforming grace on you if you are avoiding his church, because he has wired you to need his church in order to truly grow and mature and be made whole and complete.

And so, look: I’m not just saying this to get you to attend more. I’m saying this because you will languish if you miss it: The way to start growing and keep growing is for you to come back here at 10 a.m. next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, so that Jesus can transform you from the inside out, just like he did the congregation of people who followed him from one town to the next.

That’s number 3: Jesus disciples you through your local church.

4. Jesus Disciples You Through Your Community Group

Now, these are the ones that you’re used to hearing about. But the ones that come after this tend to hit most people like a train.

Why?

You’re about to see exactly why.

It’s because number four is this: Jesus disciples you through your Community Group.

Because within those several thousand people who followed Jesus from town to town—his congregation—there were also smaller groups of people he spent even more time with, invested even more deeply in, gave even more of his energy and attention and time to—you could call this the community of Jesus.

Ninety percent of the ministry of Jesus was spent NOT on the large crowds that made up the congregation, but on about 120 men and women who made up the community groups He poured more deeply into than the rest.

There were about 120 or so men and women within that congregation of Jesus who would then follow him into secluded places so that he could go deeper with them, so that he could talk with them about how to apply those things that he taught in the congregation.

And pray with him.

Be counseled by him.

And through an even deeper and richer fellowship with each other.

The most famous of these groups was the Twelve.

The twelve disciples were not the only small group of disciples that he had—they were just the main group.

But we know from the rest of scripture that there were also people like Matthias, Silas, Barnabas, Mary Magdalene, and so many others.

There were about 120 in all.

They were there to learn even more and grow even more deeply through their fellowship.

And listen—at about 11 o’clock, you are going to break from this large gathering, the congregational worship, and you are going to head into what?

A smaller gathering—the community group.

And in your community groups, you are doing exactly the same thing the twelve apostles were doing.

Community groups are not some add-on that we invented to tack on at the end of the service.

Community groups are the NEXT God-given, Jesus-instituted step in the discipleship pathway that he has given you.

Listen, I’m about to make a very different group of you angry now—we’re all gonna et a turn!—when I say that “Jesus disciples you through his church,” I am not saying that Jesus disciples you by having you show up at 9:59, sitting down in a pew, listening to a sermon, and leaving at 11:05 so you can hurry up and make lunch.

We need to be super clear about this: listening to the sermon is not engaging with church.

Standing side by side with people during a worship service is not engaging with God’s church.

There’s this old saying—it says church doesn’t really begin until you turn the chairs toward each other.

I’m gonna say that again:

Church doesn’t really begin until you turn the chairs toward each other.

I’m gonna say that one more time, but this time I want you to say it with me:

Church doesn’t really begin until you turn the chairs toward each other.

And what that means for you is this: If you want to experience the transforming growth that God has for you, then your next steps are super simple: When this GATHERED part of the service finishes up in a few minutes, stick around.

Find the community group that corresponds to your age group, and go to it, so that Jesus can disciple you through it, just like he did the twelve apostles during his earthly ministry.

That’s number four: Jesus disciples you through your Community Group.

5. Jesus Disciples You Through Your Mentors in the Faith

And that leads us directly to number 5: Jesus disciples you through your mentors in the faith.

Among the Twelve there were three disciples that Jesus invested in more deeply than anyone else: Peter, James, and John.

You could call them the core group of Jesus.

Again and again, we see Peter, James, and John have an even deeper access to Jesus than the rest of the Twelve.

When Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane and prays, he doesn’t take all twelve—he takes his core: Peter, James, and John.

When he goes up onto the mountaintop to be transfigured, he doesn’t take all twelve—he takes Peter, James, and John.

Why?

It’s because Jesus gave more of himself to Peter, James, and John than anyone else.

He was discipling them one-on-one.

He was discipling them on the deepest level imaginable.

He was personally mentoring them.

He was preparing them to lead the others.

He was modeling what you could call one-on-one discipleship.

Another way to describe it is he was modeling personal discipleship.

He was modeling mentor discipleship.

One of the most popular terms to describe this is that he was modeling spiritual fatherhood—or if you are a woman, spiritual motherhood.

We see this same thing throughout the rest of God’s word.

Jesus discipled Barnabas, then Barnabas discipled Paul, then Paul discipled Priscilla & Aquilia, then Priscilla & Aquila discipled Apollos.

Jesus discipled Peter, then Peter discipled Mark (who wrote the gospel of Mark!), then Mark discipled countless people in Egypt and launched the churches in Egypt.

Jesus discipled James, and James discipled Symeon.

We could list off names all day, but the point is clear: Mentorship is not some extra-credit thing that SUPER-CHRISTIANS do to become SUPER-SPIRITUAL.

Mentorship is something that every Christian NEEDS in order to fully and truly grow in the faith.

Jesus disciples you above all else not just through his congregation (where you gather together with the rest of the church to worship together and learn), not just through his community groups *(where you fellowship together and dig deeper into what we’re learning), but through having a spiritual father or a spiritual mother who personally mentors you.

You need a wiser Christian to take you under their wing and teach you how to follow Jesus faithfully.

You need a more mature Christian to adopt you and teach you how to be a mature follower of Jesus.

You need a spiritual adult to help you grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood.

You need someone who is maybe older, definitely wiser, definitely more mature than you, who can meet with you regularly, listen to you, give you guidance, share their wisdom, help you cut through the fog and confusion of your own immaturity, and grow you.

When you go and find a wiser and more mature follower of Jesus that you respect, and you say, “Listen, I want you to mentor me,” you are doing the same thing that Peter, James, and John did—being trained and invested in by Jesus.

You are just like Paul when he was mentored by Barnabas.

You are just like Timothy when he was mentored by Paul.

You are just like Apollos when he was mentored by Priscilla and Aquila—and so on.

And what that means for you is this: If you want to experience the transforming growth that God has for you, then your next steps are super simple: Find someone in this church that you respect and ask them to mentor you as a spiritual father or a spiritual mother.

That’s number five: Jesus disciples you through your mentors in the faith.

Begin Walking the Discipleship Pathway

And so, I want to be as clear as I possibly can: If you are a believer, then God has already SAVED you, and now He wants to TRANSFORM you.

And the way that He transforms you is by DISCIPLING you.

But He can only DISCIPLE you if you let Him.

If you submit to His discipleship.

If you open yourself up to His discipling work.

And if you are feeling the Spirit pull on your heart to BEGIN allowing the Lord to do His DISCIPLING work in you this morning, then I want to lay out a really clear and really simple pathway for you to do that beginning literally RIGHT NOW.

I don’t want you to try to dive into a bunch of Olympic Level spiritual disciplines to try to go from level 1 to level 529 overnight.

I just want you to focus on getting to level 2.

When you go home, find a place you can be alone, set a 5 minute timer, and read God’s word for 5 minutes.

Don’t worry about understanding all of it. Just build the habit by doing it. Sit down with your Bible. Open it up. Start reading. And when the time goes off, stop.

Then—either right afterwards or at some other time when you can clear some time—I want you to once again find a place you can be alone, set a 5 minute timer (everybody has 5 minutes), and just start talking to God about ANYTHING.

Don’t worry about praying for everything on your list, or even having a list, or sounding good, or praying for the right things, or saying the right words. None of that stuff matters. Just talk to Him about whatever is on your mind.

And when the timer goes off, stop.

And then go to your calendar—whether it’s on your fridge or on your wall or on your phone, and write down “CHURCH—10 AM” on Sunday. Make this the anchor that the other things competing for your time and energy on the weekends have to adjust themselves around—and then follow through on coming back again next week.

And on Sunday, when the gathered service ends, don’t leave. Go to a community group. If your comfortable sharing something, then share. If you’re not, then just listen to the others as they pray and share.

And then once you’ve had a chance to get to know the others in your Group or the church a little bit, go up to someone you’ve seen signs of wisdom, maturity, and Godliness in, and ask them to start meeting with up with you—maybe once a week, maybe once a month, whatever you can make happen—to start mentoring you.

I dare you to start walking down this discipleship pathway God has given us TODAY—and then watch the way God uses it to transform your life—and then this church—and our whole surrounding community.
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