{"id":2441,"date":"2016-02-25T21:09:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T21:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeyonleadership.brentwoodbaptistonline.com\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2016-02-25T21:09:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T21:09:09","slug":"modeling-christ-likeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadership.brentwoodbaptist.com\/adult-discipleship\/modeling-christ-likeness\/","title":{"rendered":"Modeling Christ-likeness"},"content":{"rendered":"<address>By Paul Wilkinson<\/address>\n<p>Our goal as LIFE Group and Focus Study leaders is to be disciplers such that we guide, direct, and influence our people toward Christ-likeness. <strong>One way to understand Christ-likeness is that the words and deeds of Jesus flow naturally out of us.<\/strong> Jesus and Paul give us a strong principle of what it means to live in such a way before our people.<br \/>\nI am trained as a philosopher. In modern times, philosophy can get a bad rap as some completely abstract, impractical enterprise. In some ways, philosophy can become that. But originally, or at least for Western philosophy since Socrates (470-399 BC), philosophy was about seeking the good life. What are virtues? What is the Good? How do we live well? In order to do this, groups of people would follow around these sages to ask questions and, essentially, copy their lives. The same can be said of the Jewish Rabbis. Individuals learned from them by living their lives with them.<br \/>\nJesus and Paul epitomize this approach. In John 5:19, Jesus says, \u201cI assure you: The Son is not able to do anything on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing.\u201d And Paul makes a parallel argument to the Church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 4:15-6, \u201cFor you can have 10,000 instructors in Christ, but you can\u2019t have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me,\u201d and 1 Corinthians 11:1, \u201cImitate me, as I also imitate Christ.\u201d The general principle seems to be that the leader emulates his\/her authority. Jesus, though equal in nature to the Father, freely subordinated His will to Father\u2019s will. <strong>Paul imitated Jesus and encouraged the Church at Corinth to do the same.<\/strong><br \/>\nI would suggest that the same principle applies for us as leaders today.<strong> We feed our souls with the Scripture, prayer, fasting, etc., so that we do only those things we see Jesus, Paul, and others faithful in the Scriptures doing.<\/strong> We do those things through the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling us, convicting us, and guiding us. And we must now adopt the mentality that those that God has called us to shepherd should do those things they see us doing. For that reason, feeding your soul and remaining obedient to Jesus\u2019 commands become even more paramount. In that way, the words and deeds of Christ will naturally flow out of you, and as your people see that life modeled, they too will begin to live like Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Paul Wilkinson Our goal as LIFE Group and Focus Study leaders is to be disciplers such that we guide, direct, and influence our people toward Christ-likeness. One way to understand Christ-likeness is that the words and deeds of Jesus flow naturally out of us. Jesus and Paul give us a strong principle of what&#8230;","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,192,284],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Modeling Christ-likeness - Adults<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadership.brentwoodbaptist.com\/adult-discipleship\/modeling-christ-likeness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Modeling Christ-likeness - Adults\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Paul Wilkinson Our goal as LIFE Group and Focus Study leaders is to be disciplers such that we guide, direct, and influence our people toward Christ-likeness. 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