The "5 D's" of Followership (steps to following Jesus) - Part 2

In the last post, I discussed three out of the 5 D's of followership (steps to following Jesus). I will be talking about the last two in this post. God bless you as you go along with me. Before we go futher, let's do a recap of the five steps.

Steps to Following Jesus

1. Desire
2. Decision
3. Determination
4. Discipline
5. Death

_{Image source: Pixabay, Creative Commons}

4. Discipline: Everyone of us have to work on this. A lot of us are guilty of this. The word disciple is gotten from the root word "discipline". Though, I'm still working on this myself, but let me tell us, the strongest hold of the devil on believers is when he finds undisciplined Christians. If discipline is not in place, we will never be able to follow Jesus till the end. Self-discipline most especially. Bringing the body under control. Subjecting the body to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Show me a man that has been consistent in his work with God and I will show a man full of discipline. Disciplined in carrying out spiritual exercises, discipline on obeying God, discipline in not yielding to the flesh. Look at what Apostle Paul said in 1Cor. 9:27 “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway”. That's discipline. Discipline is Denial. We must learn to deny our body and our flesh of some pleasure. I believe that maintaining our relationship with GOD is based on how disciplined we are. Indiscipline will make us keep offending God.

5. Death: Anyone that will follow Jesus till the end must be ready to die. Not physical death but death to the body. Until a man dies to the flesh, he can't be alive in the Spirit. Many of the offences we pick today and some activities of Satan in our lives is because we have refused to die. Anger, envy, malice, gossips, etc. are all in existence in our lives because we are still alive to the flesh. Once your die, they die too... Can a dead man be angry, can he keep malice. Of course no. So, we must be ready to die, though living physically but we are dead to the works and operations of the flesh. Rom 8:13 “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”. The word "mortify" means to "kill". The greatest percentage of the temptations we face today as Christians is not from the devil per se but from our flesh. And the greatest battle any child of God will face is with his/her flesh. There are some things we can't stop like that, for instance you can't stop Anger just like that or envy, jealousy, gossip, hatred, malice etc. All you need do is just die to the flesh and all the works of the flesh will die too.

In 1Cor. 15:31b Paul said "I die daily" Because we are still in this body and in the world. So our death cannot be instantly therefore we need to die daily. Every day, we must die and any day we refuse to die, the flesh will show forth. When God was to work on Adam, He caused him to die. Adam died for some minutes to allow God build and make something great out of him. So also, if God must bring out masterpiece from us, we must die and not struggle with Him. A man that is yet to die still struggles with GOD, he will always question the training process. The question now is Are we dead? How dead are we? Are we ready to die? And die daily? I conclude with this, following Jesus is an eternal journey. If you are in it, then let's keep following and never to look back. But if you are yet to be in it, why not make up your mind now and you will be glad you did. I don't know about you, but if you have made up your mind to follow Jesus, why not say with me: “I have made up my mind to follow Jesus till the end, so help me God”

Remain Blessed

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_{Let's know your view about this in the comment section below. Thanks for reading and upsharing.}

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_{Also published on my whaleshares blog}

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