When you first came to know Christ and followed him, what did you imagine he would ask of you? What sort of sacrifices or adventures? How did you react to those ideas?
In this portion of Mark, we’ll begin to understand what it looks like to actually walk with Jesus. Scripture never promises an easy time following Jesus, but it does make it clear that exchanging obedience to the Savior for worldly comfort is a cheap trade.
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Take a minute or two and think about how Francis presented the two groups of people: the called-out disciples and the crowds. What sets the disciples apart from the crowds following Jesus? If you were to look at your life honestly, which group would you belong to?
Discipleship is no “add-on” program. It’s not something we can have in addition to the rest of our pursuits. Francis summarized Jesus’s message in chapter 4 by saying, “You want to follow Jesus? You have to give everything up.”
Jesus calls us into discipleship in order to grow the kingdom of God. What does the call of discipleship look like for you in your context?
Think about the four soils. If you’re a believer—or even just starting out learning about Jesus—chances are you’re not the first soil where the call to discipleship never takes root. But even if we don’t fit the first category, that doesn’t mean we automatically fit the last one.
For each of the three kinds of soils after the first, reflect on your spiritual journey. During what times in your life did your faithful following of Jesus struggle to take root?
Has there been a particular struggle or temptation that has threatened to entangle your discipleship?
We live in an era—particularly in the United States—where we’ve come to expect our lives to make a big impact on the world. Our professions, our talents, our churches—we want it all to make a difference. But in the last three parables in our text for this week, Jesus paints a slightly different picture of success.
Read Mark 4:21–34. As you do, consider what Jesus is saying about the way the kingdom grows. The kingdom definitely grows into a world-changing enterprise. But notice what Jesus likens each of his disciples to: not the whole city, not the whole harvest, and not the whole tree. Instead, the kingdom grows with the small contributions of many parts: a single lamp, a single grain, or a single mustard seed.
Would you describe your life as world-changing? Why or why not?
What’s one thing this week you can begin to surrender to Jesus in order to better embrace the call of discipleship?
