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.

Morning and Evening Bible Reading Plan

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.

NIV Study Bible

Audio Resources

When I drove to and from college each morning I listened to this podcast:

Renewing Your Mind

I was also directed to listen to the sermons by this ministry:

Desiring God

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.

The Truths we Confess

Another book by RC Sproul that changed how I viewed Jesus was The Holiness of God.

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.

Knowing God
The Existence and Attributes of God
The Attributes of God

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.

Disciplines of a Godly Man

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.

Respectable Sins

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.

The Worship of the English Puritans
RPCNA Constitution & The Directory of Public 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.

A God Entrance Vision of All Things

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.

Morning and Evening
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.

Monergism.com