A disciple's primary task is to reflect Jesus — to glorify God by making Him look honored and known in everyday life. I drew this directly from Psalm 34:3, which calls us to glorify the Lord together. For years I treated discipleship as a checklist of practices, but I learned that spiritual disciplines are training for the main work of showing Jesus through our character and actions. We glorify God when we reflect His attributes in kindness, patience, and service, and when we invite others to join us in that work. I encourage you to move beyond merely checking boxes and intentionally live today in a way that reveals Jesus to the world.

Takeaways:

• I see that discipleship is not primarily a checklist but living to reflect Jesus in everyday life.
• I define glorifying God as making him look honored and reflecting his character through my daily actions.
• We practice spiritual disciplines like Bible reading and prayer as training for the main purpose of reflecting Jesus to others.
• I believe partnering with a like-hearted soul friend helps sustain obedience and enables us to reflect Christ together.
• I will intentionally choose kindness instead of grumbling, serving the vulnerable as a visible expression of Jesus.
• I was encouraged that reflecting Jesus includes ordinary acts of care, such as helping a panhandler or visiting the lonely.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.bible805.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Bible805
• The Navigators

Welcome to the Hobo Soul Podcast of Road Advice from the Bible and from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's a little further down the road of life.

I'll talk to you every Tuesday and Thursday for about 10 minutes.

And if you'd like more in depth information on walking with Jesus, you can find that at my www.bible805.com website.

For now, let's get started on our.

Topic for today, which is episode number 81, what a Disciple is Supposed to do.

Our verse for today is Psalm 34.

3, Where it says, glorify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

We all approach being a disciple of Jesus in different ways.

We know it's important that once we've accepted the gift of salvation from Jesus that He expects us to follow him in all our lives.

We often use the term discipleship to describe this process.

I recently learned something new on the topic of discipleship that I want to share.

It's got me really excited.

But before I do, let me tell you about my approach to discipleship in the past.

Perhaps some of you can identify with it.

I like clear standards and guidelines.

I grew up in the Christian faith being part of the Navigator ministry, and they had very clear guidelines.

Tell me what to do, when I need to do it, how I should do it, and I will.

So discipleship for me meant primarily a series of things I needed to do according to a pattern like this.

Go to church, Check.

Have a devotional time, check.

Read your Bible, check.

Pray lots.

Well, yes, of course I checked that off, but that one was maybe a little bit different because without really any encouragement at all, I pray a lot.

Not because I have to, but because I'm desperate for God's involvement, help and guidance moment by moment in my life.

I need it.

So I pray.

In addition to my personal checklist, our church is getting ready to do a series of classes on spiritual disciplines.

And of course, I immediately signed up for it.

Now, all of these actions are good.

They are essential to build a solid foundation in the life of any believer, especially if you didn't grow up in the Christian church.

There are basic habits and basic knowledge that you need to learn.

And yet I'm not quite sure that when Jesus said to the people he encountered, follow me, he primarily had a discipleship checklist in mind.

I was a bit unsatisfied as to the status of my growth as a disciple.

But then something that I read while doing The Lake Dio 365 devotion gave me an exciting insight to What I think is closer to what Jesus had in mind when he was growing his disciples.

Here's the verse that inspired and challenged me and gave me the insights that I'll share.

It is the one I opened with Psalm 34.

3, Where it says, glorify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

When I read the verse, I was also preparing this week's Bible 805 lesson.

And in that lesson I'm answering the question, why am I here?

Now, this is part of the series on answers to the big questions of life.

And I'd encourage you to go to www.bible805.com later on in the week and you'll be able to find that lesson.

But I came across as I was researching why Am I Here?

Many verses that talked about glorifying God.

Now, what does that mean, glorifying God?

How do you do that?

It's been something that I've had questions about for years.

It really doesn't make sense to me.

I don't understand what to glorify God means.

But the Bible does talk about it a lot.

And so I started researching it, and the results were exciting and practical in ways that I never really thought of before.

Now here's the condensed version of my research.

I looked at the Hebrew translation for the word glorify, and it defined the word.

Now this is again my condensed version in this way where it said, to glorify means to make something or someone great, to exalt, to honor, to promote, and make powerful.

This is we do this for someone else.

Now that made sense to me.

We glorify God when we make him look good, honored and great in our lives.

I found another source that clarified the meaning of glorify even more, kind of along the same lines.

But it says the word also means to reflect.

Now, combining them, here's my working definition for what it means to glorify God.

It's that it means for us to reflect him, to make him look good, honored, and great.

And we do that by showing the world his attributes, his character, his love, his purposes.

We reflect him to our world.

In short, through my life, to show the world Jesus.

That made so much more sense to me.

Now, a disciple is supposed to be like the one they follow.

You should be able to tell if someone is a disciple, for example, of a master craftsman, because the disciple will create in similar ways to the master they studied under.

If someone studies under a master chef, we'd expect their food to be similar.

If we are disciples of Jesus.

Our lives should be like His.

The checklist, the Bible reading, prayer time, going to church again, all of these are good things, but in many ways they're simply the preparation, the training for our main job, which is to reflect Jesus as we go about our daily lives.

We need to study the Bible to know what he's truly like.

We need to pray, to check in to make certain we're doing what he wants.

We glorify Jesus.

We reflect him when we help our world see and experience him, when we're kind to others, when we don't gripe or complain or pile on when someone is being talked about.

We glorify him when we care, with kindness for the panhandler on the street, the single mom at church, the older person with no family living close by.

I love the psalm that it also in addition to telling us what to do, it says we can represent our glorifying God in partnership with someone else because that really adds a whole additional layer of intentional obedience.

Think about it.

It can be easy to pray or read our Bibles, or think good and godly thoughts, even be nice to people.

All of that when we're by ourselves.

But throw in the person chewing gum when you're trying to focus on prayer, or who practices group leadership in a totally different way than you do it and they want to do things only their way and you want to do things your way.

Or when you're on a mission trip and someone on the trip constantly complains about the food, the water, the sleeping arrangements.

It's easy at those times to reflect our bad temper more than Jesus.

On the other hand, what a gift, what joy, what a miracle it can be when God gives us like hearted people to serve him with.

I love the term anam Kara, which means soul friend.

We are blessed when we have a soul friend.

In the next Hobo Soul podcast, I'll talk more about what that means, but for now, toss the checklist.

Live today in a way that has you intentionally reflect Jesus to your world and if possible, invite another to join you in that.

That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material, and much more to help you learn to trust, apply and teach the Bible.

Go to www.bible805.com.

For now, let me end with this benediction and prayer.

May you walk each day surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astoundingly real.

Presence of Jesus, who will walk with.

You until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever.

Amen.