Over the last several months everything I knew, or thought I knew, about discipleship has been stripped away. This journey, that will last a lifetime, has been both troublesome and exhilarating.

It is troublesome because I realize how much I don’t know, but more troubling and important, how much I don’t do. Discipleship is not only about knowing God or things about God or how God has called us to live. It is about doing something with that knowledge. In James 3, we learn that faith without works is dead. He’s not saying that our works save us but rather that true faith bleeds out in how we live our lives. What does it matter if I hide His Word in my heart if it never leads me to not sin against Him? And not doing what He has commanded me is just as much sin as doing something He has told me not to do. There are things left to be learned…knowledge about being a disciple that I don’t have but am longing to learn. However, I am realizing now that I can know everything there is to know about being a disciple but if I am not actually being a disciple, then I am not truly living as Jesus has called me to live.

It is exhilarating because I am drawing closer to God. I am approaching the Scriptures in a different way. Lately, I have been more open to what God would have me learn from His Word than I have been in a very long time, and oh, the joy I have found the past few days as passages leap from the page and speak to my heart. I want to have His Word on my heart, to meditate on it throughout the day.

My heart is craving Him in a new way. I am no longer satisfied with knowing about how to be a disciple.

I want to be one.