Day 2: Don’t wait until you have perfected Christianity.

1. The disciples were not chosen from the premier students of the temple, but the shores of the sea and tables of tax collecting.
2. The disciples didn’t have the luxury of the New Testament to draw from.
3. The disciples were constantly making mistakes.

Final Thoughts

If you have perfected Christianity the way Jesus wants it two things would occur: first is you probably would’ve already made disciples out of tens of families, and you would not be reading this because you were raptured. If you have perfected a cultural Christianity, you also would not be reading this because that likely would not include a disciple making component since it’s so disruptive to your regular programming. This point is almost synonymous with yesterday’s devotion on waiting until you have more life experience or biblical knowledge. We will never perfect this until we are redeemed and presented in our glorified bodies, then and only then will God have perfected us. Until then, intentional build a relationship with that neighbor or co-worker and begin to share your testimony.

Biblical Devotion

James 3:2  For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.

Job 9:20  Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.

Ecclesiastes 7:20-22  Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.  (21) Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you.  (22) Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.

Philippians 3:12-17  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  (13) Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,  (14) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (15) Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  (16) Only let us hold true to what we have attained. (17) Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

Revelation 3:1-3  “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. (2)  Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. (3) Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  (2) And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  (3) If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (4) Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant  (5) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (6) it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (7) Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (8) Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. (9) For we know in part and we prophesy in part, (10) but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  (11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (12) For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  (13) So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.