Journey Church :: Raleigh, Nc

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they did work on it daily. The same is true for disciples of Jesus. Once we discover who we are in Christ, then our job is to invest daily in the person we are becoming. This week, we will learn how to build habits and practices into our lives that support our desired future.

What does a disciple look like? What are the distinctive traits or characteristics? What goal are we striving towards? Join us for the next seven weekends as we explore and unpack the key markers of a disciple of Jesus. Of first importance is the mark of finding one’s identity in Christ. Disciples don’t determine who they are, but instead, discover who they are through relational intimacy and pursuit of Jesus. All other identities, real or imagined, must be redeemed, redefined, or relinquished to embrace Him.

What matters most? More to the point, what matters most to you? Jesus had an opinion on this question. He said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” If the things that were most important to Jesus really matter to us, then we ought to have a way to know if we are moving in the right direction. In the final message of this series, we will unpack some very practical ways to make your life count, and help you make the fifth and final key decision: Measure what matters most.

Life, for most of us, is nothing short of busy and chaotic. Our pace tends to create a mode of existence where we know people, but no one is ever truly known. The problem, of course, is that we will never discover or become the best version of ourselves in isolation. Deep relationship, where we are loved, known, and challenged to grow won’t happen by accident. That’s why the fourth decision you need to make in 2019 is to invite accountability.

What do you get when individuals, having entrusted their lives to Jesus and embraced the countercultural and counterintuitive lifestyle of a disciple, decide to come together? You get a movement, or as Jesus called it, “The Church.” The success of the movement Jesus started 2000 years ago will always be directly correlated to the level of commitment exercised by His followers. If you want to be part of something bigger than yourself in 2019, then make the decision to commit to more.

Difficulty. Adversity. Pain. Suffering. In a perfect world none of us would choose these, but as followers of Jesus, we do have an important choice to make: embrace the discomfort. Jesus promised that this life would be full of trials. Plus, if we would only trust Jesus, then He can use it all to work on us, in us, and through us for our good and His glory.

Everybody wants to live a life of meaning and significance, but how to make those desires a reality is a question many of us struggle to answer. At the outset of a new year, we are exploring five decisions that have the power to fundamentally and functionally change the trajectory of your life. The first decision is based on a question from the Apostle Peter over 2000 years ago when he asked, “To whom shall we go?” We choose to follow whatever we have chosen to trust. If it’s not Jesus, then who or what has the power to fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart?

Pause is the space between what just happened and what is about to happen. In the rearview mirror is 2018 and in front of us, staring us down, is what is about to happen, the blank page of 2019. What is it that God would have for you to do this year?

We're told that this is the most wonderful time of the year...until it's not. Anybody can find joy and happiness when life is good. But the true test of your "joy source" is how it holds up under the weight of brokenness, pain, loss, and disappointment. Whatever season you are in, you can choose joy because of Jesus.

God has strategically placed us in the city of Raleigh. We have an opportunity to meet the needs of our city, and make a difference by being the hands and feet of Jesus wherever we live, work, study, play, or shop.

As a local body of believers, we are in a unique position to have a national impact for the Kingdom of God. We have been entrusted with the opportunity to influence countless other churches all around the country through a movement of eternal significance.

At the start of Journey, we decided that we wanted to partner with fewer organizations and people around the world and establish a true partnership with them so that we could genuinely invest in and see them as extensions of who we are. Here is a look at just some of the things your generosity has helped support over the last 13 years.

Living with a sense of gratitude from the grace we have received from Jesus will allow us to live responsive lives that give glory back to Him.

For a next level disciple, getting God’s Word in your head, aligning your heart with God’s heart through prayer and worship will lead to living out your faith to be the hands of Jesus.

If we want to go to the “next level” of being well-round disciples, we must align our hearts with God’s heart. Getting to the “next level” with your heart involves the practices of prayer and worship in our everyday lives.

We started this series last week by saying that to be “next level” disciples of Jesus, it had to involve our heads, our hearts, and our hands. This week we’ll focus specifically on the head. Getting to the “next level” with your head won’t happen without the spiritual discipline of reading the Bible.

As disciples of Jesus, we must train, by way of spiritual disciplines, to be well-rounded disciples of Jesus. It involves the head, the heart, and the hands. If we can master each of these, we'll be well on the way to becoming “next level” disciples.

As we study and discover the real Jesus of the Bible, we have to deal with this question, “Is Jesus Lord of our lives?” We must understand that He demands nothing less than all of our lives and that we must surrender daily to Him.

If we remove Jesus from Christianity, all that remains is empty religion. As seen in Scripture, Jesus and religion don't mix. He wants us to place Him at the center of our lives and our church so that we can correctly follow Him and make disciples. Therefore, we must always ask the question, “is Jesus at the center?"

If we are indeed going to be disciples of Jesus, we must be willing to rediscover the real Jesus as He is described from the first-hand accounts from the writers of the Gospels. A rediscovery of the Biblical Jesus could radically reshape our view of God, the church and the world.