Christian Living
Discipleship – Gorilla Snot
Ron Fast
[email protected] Copyright 2002 by Ron Fast
Intro
Gorilla Snot
Imagine that you were headed to church early one Sunday morning. You had set out your "church clothes" the night before so that you would wear the right clothes. You picked out a white pair of pants and cool looking shirt. You wanted to look your best at church. There was this one girl that you wanted to impress. So you spent 2 hours in the morning to spiff yourself up.
You put your clothes on and brushed your teeth. You weren't even going to eat breakfast because you wanted to take the extra time fixing yourself up. You were almost done. All you had to do was gel your hair. You had this really cool hair gel that gelled your hair so good that you could go through an "F5" ("Finger of God") tornado and it would hold. Your gel had an odd name, Gorilla Snot, but it smelled good and looked good. So you wet your hair, squirted some Gorilla Snot on your palm, rubbed your palms together and then transferred the smooshed Gorilla Snot onto your hair. Your "Snot", as you called it, took about 5 minutes to set up. Once it set up, you could pretty much do anything you wanted and it would stay the way you had combed it.
You had some Snot left on your hands so you smeared it on your nice white pants. You didn't care. It was colorless and no one would be able to tell you had smooshed gel on your pants.
You were finally done spiffing yourself up and headed out the door for church.
Oh man!! You couldn't wait till you got there. "I hope she is there today", you thought to yourself.
As you walked to church, you figured if you took a shortcut you'd get there well before she did and could position yourself in the right spot to meet her.
You found your favorite shortcut and headed through it. It was a pasture that wasn't used anymore so you figured that no one would care. The ground was dry and firm through most of the pasture . . . except . . . except for one corner of the pasture. Unfortunately, that was the corner you had to use because at the other corner was this nasty hornet’s nest. The hornets were unusually busy doing the "swarming and scaring peeples out of their wits" thing.
So you were going to avoid that corner at all costs, besides you had figured out a way across the swampy area without actually stepping in the swamp. (I wonder why we say we are "swamped" when we get really busy. Does that mean that we are stuck in a swamp or that our brains are mushy or that our bedroom looks like a swamp? Anyway, I've wondered about that. It makes more sense to say we are really busy than swamped.) Where was I? Hummmm. . . oh yeah. . . The pasture was covered with a thick layer of grass. You could tell that the pasture wasn't being used because the grass had grown really tall since the last time you took the shortcut. Since it was early in the morning, the dew was still on the grass. As you walked through the tall grass, the dew would rub off on your nice white pants. "That's okay. It's just water. It'll dry by the time I get to church", you said to yourself.
But as you were walking and getting wet from the dew, you noticed that these little nats, (I dropped the "g" off of "gnat" because you don't even say it, so why put the "g" on the front of a word when you don't even use it.) you know those little, teencie-weencie, itty-bitty bugs that fly around your face and irritate the heck out of you, were sticking to your pants. "Now why would they be sticking to your pants," you thought to yourself, "Uh. . . Oh NO!!! I wiped Gorilla Snot on my pants. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I'm such a dork. Oh well, I'll just wipe them off". But you forgot that little bugs have little bug guts inside of them and that nasty black or green ooze that squishes out of them when you smoosh the bugs (I think it's what they make soy sauce out of, bug goo). As you wipe them off your pants, the bug goo comes out and smears all over your nice white pants. "OH GROSS!!", you shout as if to call attention to the magical "white pants fairy who cleans them spotless if you are desperate." Deep down inside, though, you knew this fairy didn't exist so you had no hope of keeping your pants clean.
You weren't even halfway across the pasture and your white pants looked like someone ate some chocolate cake and then sneezed before they swallowed.
Maybe if you get to the church early enough you could quickly clean them. You picked up the pace, not bothering to wipe the bugs off your pants that were accumulating in mass quantities.
As you were walking, you suddenly stepped into something that smelled terrible. It squished up the sides of your nice white Sketchers. It was a freshly laid cow pie. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! This can’t be happening to me." You look around for the dirty, rotten scum that laid this thing right in your path. You spotted a great big bull about 50 feet away. As you gazed into his eyes. . . Er. . . I mean scowled at him, you could have sworn that the bull sneered at you for just a moment.
You didn't stick around long because that bull didn't look like he wanted to sit down and chat with you. In fact, as you turned around to run, you saw him start to snort and paw, or should I say, "hoof" the ground. You knew that wasn't a good sign.
You only had about 20 yards to go and then you would be out of the pasture at last. All you had to do was to make it across the swampy area. When you got to the swampy area, you couldn't believe what you saw, or actually what you didn't see. Someone or something had removed the stepping stones that you used to cross the swamp. "Boy, that figures," you thought as you ran as fast as you could over the swamp. There was no way you were going to hang out any longer with that bull on your tail.
You finally made it out of the swamp and headed to church. You were a mess. Your nice white pants were now a nice shade of "yuck", with patches of "gross". Your nice white Sketchers didn't fare any better. They now had cow stuff all over them which left a not so sweet smelling odor . . . er. . . I mean fragrance.
You wished you hadn't taken the short cut. You would give anything to go back and do it over again, this time, skipping the shortcut.
This story kinda represents what happens to us as we live in a fallen world. The gnats and the cow stuff and the swamp represent the nasty, ugly world we live in. The white pants represent our lives when we have gone before God and confessed our sins.
As we walk through this life, we get dirty from rubbing up against a sinful, fallen world. No matter how much we try we can’t “rub” the sin off. As we try to “rub” it off, it only gets worse. Maybe “rubbing” the sin off is trying to justify our sin or maybe just ignoring it or maybe we just call the sin a mistake, “it was only a mistake not a sin”. At the end of the day our nice clean, white, pure hearts and minds are pretty dirty and the only way to clean ourselves up is to take a spiritual shower. In order to get clean again we need to get on our knees and ask God to forgive us and to purify us. He is the only one who has the “bleach” that can remove the dirt and grime from our lives.
This week we are going to look at what Jesus requires of us when we accept Him as our personal Savior.
You see, when we accept Jesus into our hearts there is a certain way that He expects us to act.
Let’s dig into this week’s study and see what God expects of us
Monday
Let's see what you think about how you are doing in what Jesus expects you to do now that you have accepted Him into your heart.
When you become a "follower of Jesus", what kinds of things, do you think, that He expects you to do?
What do you think the word "discipleship" means?
How does "discipleship" apply to you?
What does it mean to "walk the talk"?
Do you think that you have ever done something wrong
that set a bad example for someone who might have been watching you?
How did it make you feel once you found out that you had set a bad example?
Tuesday
Two Parts to Discipleship
Let's first establish what or who a disciple is. Go get a dictionary and write down in your own words the definition of a disciple.
Definition -
Based on the above definition, are you a disciple?
Now that we have figured out what a disciple is, let's see what Jesus expects of His disciples. There are two parts to being a disciple of Jesus.
1. Holiness - Read Mark 9:43-48 - Yikes!! These are very harsh, scary words. There are actually people who took these verses literally and cut off body parts. Does God really expect us to cut off body parts for Him? What do you think?
Now, these verses shouldn't be taken literally. They do tell us how we are to live holy lives, though. Let's see if we can figure out what these verses are talking about. We all know that God wants us to live holy lives. What does the word "Holy" mean to you?
Do you consider yourself holy? Why or why not?