Jesus tells His followers to make disciples, baptizing them—but what does baptism have to do with discipleship? It shows the world that we identify with Jesus, and it’s also a doorway to understanding our own identity as we follow Him.
The first step in making disciples is to pray that the Lord would show you a believer you could walk with, ask them to join you in following Jesus, then engage them in growing together.
We pause our study in Exodus, where the Hebrews are living in a foreign land, to focus on how we live the same way through our Be/Make/Reach initiative. To MAKE disciples is mandated by Jesus himself, and he modeled it in the Gospels as he taught the Twelve how to follow him. We too must strive to encourage and help one another as believers as disciples in our own day.
An alarmed Pharaoh tries a second tactic to curb the growth of the Hebrew nation by telling the midwives not to allow the babies to live when they are born—but the midwives fear God and will not violate His values. We must uphold the sanctity of life in the same way today.
Despite 400 years of suffering in Egypt, the faithful followed God and did not become like the people around them. In the same way our faith today grows through adversity as we live in a foreign land that is not our final home.
As Exodus opens, God’s people find themselves subjected to another nation. How did they get here? Will God allow them to stay in the place they’re in, both physically and spiritually?
