{"id":14882,"date":"2016-10-21T09:43:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T13:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=14882"},"modified":"2016-10-21T09:50:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T13:50:46","slug":"impulsiveness-or-discipleship-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=14882","title":{"rendered":"Impulsiveness or Discipleship?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith\u2026 \u2014Jude 20<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hnjeMwxFuBA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThere was nothing of the nature of impulsive or thoughtless action about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines of God\u2019s nature. Impulsiveness is a trait of the natural life, and our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God gives a sense of restraint to impulsiveness, suddenly bringing us a feeling of self-conscious foolishness, which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulsiveness is all right in a child, but is disastrous in a man or woman\u2014 an impulsive adult is always a spoiled person. Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline.<\/p>\n<p>Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he \u201cfollowed Him at a distance\u201d on dry land (Mark 14:54). We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises\u2014 human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God\u2014 but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people\u2014 and this is not learned in five minutes.<\/p>\n<p>There was nothing of the nature of impulsive or thoughtless action about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines of God\u2019s nature. Impulsiveness is a trait of the natural life, and our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God gives a sense of restraint to impulsiveness, suddenly bringing us a feeling of self-conscious foolishness, which makes us instantly want to vindicate ourselves. Impulsiveness is all right in a child, but is disastrous in a man or woman\u2014 an impulsive adult is always a spoiled person. Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline.<\/p>\n<p>Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he \u201cfollowed Him at a distance\u201d on dry land (Mark 14:54). We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises\u2014 human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God\u2014 but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people\u2014 and this is not learned in five minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith\u2026 \u2014Jude 20 There was nothing of the nature of impulsive or thoughtless action about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14882"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14886,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14882\/revisions\/14886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}