True life, real life, full life, abundant life, is to know God.  Therefore, the key to maximizing life is to get to know Him better.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Talking to Him.  Listening to Him.  Loving Him.

The Kingdom of God is the unifying concept of Life.  God is the King.  All of Life is from Him, for Him, and to Him.  His will is supreme.  His glory is paramount.  His ways are ultimate.  Life is to be shaped by this reality.  His character is the standard.  His nature is most clearly expressed in Jesus Christ, who has all authority.  His revelation is most clearly expressed through His inerrant and authoritative message in the Bible, making it a guide for life and faith.  He speaks to us who have Life through His indwelling Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth.

Creation itself, the church, and individual followers of Christ all have the glory of God as their primary purpose.  This is the motivation for missions, that He might receive the glory due Him from every people, tribe, tongue, and nation.

We have a responsibility to steward our lives, relationships, and possessions for God’s glory both locally and globally.  We are representatives of the Lord where we are.  Every redeemed person also has a calling to see that disciples are made among all peoples.

This was the first commandment and demonstrates God’s way of working.  “Be fruitful and multiply” is a watchword for Kingdom citizens.  We are to multiply God’s glory.  This happens most directly when we multiply disciples.  Multiplying disciples form multiplying spiritual communities (churches), thus multiplying the Bride of Christ.  Through nature God demonstrates how he addresses needs and blesses all creation through multiplication (in seeds, etc.)

The Church is the Bride of Christ.  It is the Body of Christ.  It is the Family of God.  No one can be a follower of Christ without being related to His family.  Being church is a 24/7 matter.  It is not a place you go or a meeting you attend.  It is a relationship and an identity.  Your church is meant to be people with whom you “do Life.”  Churches grow and multiply as disciples multiply because as people enter the Kingdom, they bring their relationships with them.  Churches are meant to relate to one another locally.  Churches are meant to bless one another globally.

When a mother duck leads her ducklings, they go single file, with each duckling following the one in front of them.  To lead a duckling you don’t have to be a mature duck, just one step ahead.  Only Jesus is a mother duck.  The rest of us are merely ducklings.  This is why Paul says, “Follow me as I follow Christ Jesus.”  From the moment we begin to follow Jesus we are also to be “leading” others.  From that moment we are at least “ahead” of non-Christians spiritually so there is always someone we can lead.  This effectively reduces the duration of a spiritual generation to almost nothing.  We can begin to reproduce spiritually from the moment of our rebirth.

Discipleship means following Christ.  Every disciple should be in the process of maturing, but the focus is the journey, not the destination.  The destination is to be fully conformed to the image of Christ.  This will not fully occur until we meet Him in face-to-face in glory.  The journey involves us daily growing in our expression of immediate, radical, costly obedience.  The journey involves us becoming increasingly faithful and effective in passing on to others what we are learning along the way, not just in head-knowledge, but in life application.  The journey involves becoming more practiced at learning more of the character and nature and will of God through learning to interpret and apply Scripture, in prayer, in relating with the Body of Christ, and through persecution and suffering.  The journey implies following Christ and influencing and blessing others day-by-day wherever we are along the way.

God’s love is by nature sacrificial.  We are to love as He loved.  We are not saved so we will have a comfortable existence in this world.  We are saved to serve.  We are blessed to be a blessing.   We are to love God supremely and love others as we love ourselves.  This means we are to live a life of sacrifice for God and for others.

We work and minister in ways that are scalable in order that multiplication can occur and God can receive the maximum amount of glory.  We make disciples in such a way that they will make disciples.  We teach in ways that can be replicated.  We bless others in a way that can be passed on.  We focus on maximizing the stewardship of people, opportunities, knowledge and resources.

We aim to see lives transformed so they will transform communities and in turn, transform the world.  This can only be done through the power of God and will accomplish His purposes only if it is done in His way.  The metamorphosis of a butterfly from a caterpillar is a fitting metaphor for this process.

“Be transformed (metamorphosed) by the renewing of your minds so you may demonstrate the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.”  Romans 12:2b