Discipleship Resources
The Lord was gracious to me when I first became a Christian. He gave me faithful pastors and elders to shepherd and disciple me. These men were lavish in the time they spent with me. They prayed with me. They prayed for me. They preached doctrinal and applicable biblical sermons. They taught me. They admonished me. They rebuked me. They corrected me. They trained me to seek a life of imitating Christ.
These disciplers also put critical resources in my hands at important times. The Lord used these men and these resources to shape me.
I'd like to pass on some of those valuable resources to you now.
Think of this article as a small library of links and resources that helped me and may be helpful to you as you seek to follow Jesus.
I am not endorsing every jot and title in these resources or the men themselves. What I am saying is the Lord used them in a profound way to teach and transform me into a disciple of Jesus Christ.
What resources has God used to disciple you? If there are resources God used in your discipleship and you want to share with others please comment below!
Preaching
Though I was in the military and then college and moving regularly the Lord blessed me with solid elders to learn from and pastors to listen to. Critical to discipleship is utilizing the ordinary means of grace: word, sacrament, and prayer. These were the pastors who ministered the word to me every Lord's Day:
Pete Hurst: https://web.sermonaudio.com/speakers/11537
Byron Snapp: https://web.sermonaudio.com/speakers/12040
Robbert Herrmann: https://web.sermonaudio.com/speakers/15904
Micah Ramsey: https://web.sermonaudio.com/speakers/10949
Bible
The men who discipled me knew that I needed to be saturated in the Scriptures. I was suggested a 1 Year Bible reading plan for morning and evenings.
I was also blessed by my parents having given me a NIV study bible to work through I had questions and wrestled with things I was learning.
Audio Resources
When I drove to and from college each morning I listened to this podcast:
I was also directed to listen to the sermons by this ministry:
Books
My pastors did something remarkable. They book books in my hands that challenged how I thought about EVERYTHING. Specifically they challenged me in my view of God Himself. Theology proper became the lifeblood of my reading and kept me grounded in an awe of who the God that had redeemed me and put His Holy Spirit in me.
The Truths we Confess brought me to tears with the holiness of God and the depths of historical Covenant Theology.
Another book by RC Sproul that changed how I viewed Jesus was The Holiness of God.
Again the men who discipled me knew I needed to know the God of the Bible and not the god I wanted to imagine. They gave me books like Knowing God, The Existence and Attributes of God, and The Attributes of God to read. These forever changed me.
Practical Theology
The elders wisely used a men's breakfast as a time for group discipleship. I sat around tables with other wiser men discussing Disciplines of a Godly Man. Pastor Snapp gave me his personal copy. I read and reread this book. I'm even going through it with a man chapter by chapter in a podcast now.
Another book I was directed to read and wrestle with was Respectable Sins. This book made me deal with the sinfulness of sin. Bridges made me wrestle with the reality that there is no small sin. All sin is egregious to a holy God even those our culture tends to overlook.
Theology of Worship
Two "books" challenged me on what it meant to worship God. These two works confronted me with ideas I frankly did not like. The idea of the regulative principle of worship was strange and at times offensive to me. However, reading through Horton Davies book The Worship of the English Puritans and the RPCNA's Constitution and Directory of Public Worship changed me. I became one who wanted to give God the worship He was due rather than the one who was consuming worship.
Biography
A God Entranced Vision of All Things was the very first biography I ever read. It sparked a fire in my heart to study church history. It gave me a desire to learn from previous generations of Christians to strengthen and even challenge my faith.
Assurance of Salvation
Two books the men who discipled me put into my hands helped in an area that seemed like an existential threat, assurance of salvation. I was struggling with sanctification. I was grieved by sin. I fighting to mortify sin but yet it seemed there was no end to the warfare. I doubted my salvation. I knew God was good by how could I know I was truly a Christian if repentance and reformation was this hard?! The Lord assured me of His grace and mercy through the words of Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotions as well as Assured by Grace.
The Grab Bag
The last resource that was critical in my early years of faith was the website Monergism.com. This website provided links, articles, books, PDF, and audio files on almost any topic I wanted. This was a gold mine and treasure trove of free resources. It remains a blessing to anyone who uses it.
