As believers in Christ, we are disciples of Christ, those who follow the Lord and learn from Christ according to the reality is in Jesus; this is to experience Christ in His experiences so that we may become His organic reproduction as we are discipled to live by the divine life and deny our natural life.
Lord Jesus, we love You and we believe into You! Amen, Lord, we want to follow You and be discipled by You. May we see who we are and what we are according to Your word. Shine on us. Unveil us. Grant us to have the spirit of a learner and be open to Your speaking. Lord, we want to experience Christ in His experiences so that we might become His organic reproduction and duplication! Amen, Lord, gain a corporate expression of Yourself for Your glory in the church and in the New Jerusalem! Amen!
This week we start a new morning revival on the general topic, The Believers (1), and in particular this first week we want to focus on, Disciples, Believers, Saints, and Christians.
We want to open to the Lord for Him to speak to us something fresh from His word.
Only when He speaks to us can we go on with Him, and only when He speaks something fresh to us can we advance with Him and be what He wants us to be.
When He teaches us, we have precious things to also impart to others.
We want to be those who are hungry and thirsty for the Lord so that we may mine the precious things in the Word of God and be full of the riches of Christ. We want to make ore discoveries in God’s word and be filled with Christ.
May we be those who do not think that we know this, we know what a believer is, we have heard what a disciple is, and we know that we are saints and Christians.
May we freshly open to the Lord, stop our busyness in our human life and even in our serving of the Lord, so that we may sit at His feet and listen to His word.
We may be like Martha, being drawn with much work and service for the Lord, but we may not be like Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet, listened to His word, and was infused with His desire.
May we choose the better part, even the best part, by spending time with the Lord in His word to be infused with what He is and be one with Him. We should sit at the Lord’s feet, not at the feet of anyone else.
We should listen to the Lord and absorb His words, not paying more attention to the words of anyone else. May we have an inward attitude that we’re sitting at the Lord’s feet, calm in our being, waiting to hear from the Lord what He wants to speak to us.
We Believers are Disciples of Christ who Follow Christ and who Learn from Christ, even Learn Christ as the Reality is in Jesus
What are we? What is a Christian? The New Testament gives us many words or descriptive phrases to tell us what we are. The first such word is disciples. The believers are designated as disciples.
In both the Gospels and in Acts we see this word used very much. We believers in Christ are disciples of Christ who follow Christ and who learn from Christ.
In Matthew 5:1 we see that, as the crowds who followed the Lord were around Him, it was His disciples who came to Him on the mountain, and they were the audience for the Lord Jesus to issue the decrees of the kingdom of the heavens.
The crowds who gathered around the Lord were the outer circle and the disciples were the inner circle; they were the disciples of Christ, the true followers of Christ.
We are disciples of Christ, those who are following and learning Christ according to the reality that is in Jesus, which is the actual condition of the God-man living of Jesus recorded in the four Gospels (Matt. 5:1; 28:19; Eph. 4:20-24; 3:21; Isa. 43:7; Rev. 21:11).
A disciple is a learner, a follower, someone who learns by following.
As believers in Christ, we follow the Lord and we learn from Him. We want to listen to His word so that we may hear what is in His heart.
We ask Him to speak to us, for it is by His speaking that we know what He wants to do and carry out. We simply are the best audience for the Lord to release what is on His heart.
In Haggai 2:23, the Lord says that He will take Zerubbabel and make him as a signet, for God has chosen him. God wants to make us His signet, His ring, something intimate to Him and joined to Him, yet something that represents Him.
He wants us to be in His hands all the time, and when others are around us, we express Him.
This is what we also see in Matthew 28:19, where the Lord commissioned us to go and disciple all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
God wants that all the nations be converted into disciples of Christ, the believers in Christ who follow Christ and learn from Him. Both Jewish and Gentile believers are disciples.
When we are saved, we become a disciple of Christ, and now we are being discipled by the Lord. Disciples are those who follow Christ.
First, we repent and draw near to the Lord, having the inclination to go with Him and follow Him, and then we become His disciple (Matt. 4:19; 9:9; 19:21; Luke 9:59).
The Lord Jesus went around Galilee and preached the gospel of the kingdom, asking people to repent for the kingdom of God, and He called some people to just come and follow Him.
He met Peter and John his brother, and He told them to come after Him; they became disciples of Christ.
Then He found John and James mending their nets with their father, and He called them to come and follow Him; they left their nets and followed the Lord.
The Lord has met us, each one of us, in our own situation, doing our own things, and He called us to come and follow Him; we left everything and came after Him to follow Him.
Now we are disciples of Christ, those who follow Christ and who learn from Christ. We are now learning from Christ; as He said in Matthew 11:29, we take His yoke upon us and learn from Him.
This means that we are not loose in our Christian life; we are disciplined, for we want to follow Christ and learn from Him.
We learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus, for reality is in Jesus, and we love Jesus, believe into Jesus, and follow Jesus.
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming where we are to call us to follow You. Amen, Lord, we repent, we believe into You, and we follow You. We are Your followers, Your disciples. Hallelujah, we believers in Christ are the disciples of Christ, the followers of Christ, those who are learning from Christ! Amen, Lord, may we be those who follow Christ and learn Christ according to the reality that is in Jesus! We put ourselves aside and we want to learn from You, for You are meek and lowly in heart, and we will find rest for our souls. Oh Lord, may we experience You in Your experiences so that we may become Your organic reproduction on earth today, Your corporate expression. We come to You as we are and we want to learn from You. We want to follow You and no one else, and we want to learn of Christ! Oh Lord, we take Your yoke upon us and we learn from You. We are willing to be discipled. We are willing to be disciplined so that we may be discipled by You. Make us those who express and represent You as Your disciples today!
We are being Discipled to being a God-man living the Divine Life by Denying our natural Life
As believers in Christ, we are the Lord’s disciples who are discipled from being a natural man to being a God-man, even as the Lord Jesus was!
We not only follow the Lord by reading the Bible to see how He lived, nor do we only learn from Him by trying to copy His human living as we read the Gospels.
We are being discipled to being a God-man living by the divine life by denying our natural life.
As we read the Gospels, we are impressed with the model of the Lord Jesus, the life that He lived.
He was God who became man, yet He did not live by His human life, even though it was perfect and sinless. He denied His natural life; He denied Himself, and He lived out the Father.
He was one with God the Father in all things. He told us that, whatever He spoke was not His word but the word of the Father who sent Him (John 14:24).
He said that He did not do anything out of Himself but what He saw the Father doing (5:19, 30).
Christ did everything out of and by the sending Father. He was not the source, He was not the Sender, and He was not the One who initiated anything.
Christ simply was the sent One, and He did not live Himself but lived the Sender, the Father (John 6:57). This is the model of the first God-man, and we as His disciples are discipled to live the same kind of life.
What a life and living the Lord Jesus had! There was no one like Him in all of human history!
After God’s incarnation, there was this God-man who lived a God-man life by denying Himself with His perfect human life and living out the divine life for the Father to be glorified and expressed.
He not only preached the gospel, taught the truth, and performed miracles; even more, He asked some to follow Him so that they may be His disciples who live with Him, are with Him, and learn from Him.
The Lord’s early disciples learned from the Lord by seeing the way that He lived.
They were discipled by seeing the God-man living the Lord Jesus had. Day and night, morning and evening, they saw how a God-man lived, and they were discipled by Christ. They learned from Him.
Today, as believers in Christ, we are being discipled from being a natural man to being a God-man.
We are discipled to living the divine life by denying our natural life according to the model of Christ as the first God-man. He is our model. He already lived such a life.
Now we learn from Him. We exercise our spirit as we read the Word of God to learn from Christ and repeat His living today. We no longer want to live by our natural life.
We no longer want to live in ourselves, for ourselves, by ourselves, and to ourselves. We are believers Christ who are being disicpled by Christ to live the same kind of life that He lived.
We are discipled to live the life of a God-man and have a God-man living to express Christ, not ourselves. Day by day in our daily living the Lord is discipling us.
Reality is only in Jesus; His living, the way He lived and spoke and behaved, is reality. He is not with us physically, but He is in our spirit, and He is also in the Word of God.
How do we follow the Lord? We learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus. The actual condition of the God-man living of Jesus recorded in the four Gospels is the life of Jesus, and this is reality.
We learn from Him not by imitating Him but by eating Him, enjoying Him, partaking of Him in His word, and living because of Him.
We realise that we have another life and nature in our being – the divine life and nature – and we learn to live the divine life by denying our natural life.
We are put in Christ as the mold and we are learning Christ. Christ is in us, living in us, and we are one with Him.
We realise that God doesn’t care whether we are a good man or a bad man; He is not after gaining good Christians who do good and reject the evil, but He wants to gain God-men.
He wants to gain the duplication of Christ, those who live Christ today to express Christ in their daily living. May we be open to the Lord to disciple us every day.
May we allow Him to speak to us in His word and then speak to us in our spirit as we turn to Him in our daily living. May we be discipled by the cross day by day so that we may live out Christ, not live out ourselves.
May we realise that we have another life and nature in us, both divine, according to which we must live.
May our daily life and living be Christ being expressed through us as we are being discipled to live the divine life by denying our natural life.
Lord Jesus, disciple us from being a natural man to being a God-man! Amen, Lord, we want to live on earth the same way that You lived so that we may be Your continuation, Your reproduction, Your duplication. Live in us today. May we live the divine life by denying our natural life according to Your model as the first God-man. We open to You today. We exercise our spirit to contact You and come to Your word. Amen, Lord, infuse us with Yourself and impress Your pattern on our being as we read and pray Your word. Help us to be discipled day by day in many aspects so that we may live the divine life by denying our natural life! May the model of Christ be replicated in us so that we may live even as He lived! Oh Lord, You did not speak Your own word, You did not do Your own work, and You did not seek Your own glory! Amen, Lord, live in us today the same kind of life! May we be discipled by the cross so that we may no longer live in our natural man but live the divine life! Praise the Lord, we are the Lord’s disciples who are learning Christ as the reality is in Jesus! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ricky Acosta on this topic, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” chs. 2-4, 6, 10-11, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Believers (1) (2026 July Semi-Annual Training), week 1, “Disciples, Believers, Saints, and Christians” – day 1.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Lord, speak to me, that I may speak / In living echoes of Thy tone; / As Thou hast sought, so let me seek / Thy erring children lost and lone. / O lead me, Lord, that I may lead / The wandering and the wavering feet; / O feed me, Lord, that I may feed / Thy hungering ones with manna sweet. (Hymns #903 stanzas 1-2)
– I know Thy life surpassing far / The knowledge Thy disciples had, / Although they walked and lived with Thee, / When Thou on earth in flesh wast clad. / Because Thy Spirit dwells within, / How real, O Lord, Thou art to me; / Not touched, yet more reliable, / Not seen, yet loved more fervently. (Hymns #491 stanzas 4-5)
– Not I, but Christ be honored, loved, exalted, / Not I, but Christ be seen, be known and heard; / Not I, but Christ in every look and action, / Not I, but Christ in every thought and word. / Oh, to be saved from myself, dear Lord, / Oh, to be lost in Thee, / Oh, that it may be no more I, / But Christ that lives in me. (Hymns #591 stanza 1 and chorus)
