Being a disciple and being a "believer" are two very different things. A person can profess to believe in God, to believe in Jesus Christ all he or she wants, but this does not make that person a disciple.
The word disciple refers to someone studying the teaching and manner of life of a master, guru, or teacher, and taking the time and pains to imitate that master, guru, or teacher and implement their teaching until they are just like them. A similar concept is that of an apprentice.
An apprentice to a blacksmith doesn't just take notes, and listen to what the master blacksmith has to say. They start at the simplest concepts and, under the master's watchful eye, imitate what that master blacksmith does in forging and smithing metal into the shapes and qualities that are required. They do this over, and over again until they've mastered the very basics, making mistake after mistake and seeing what happens with the results of that mistake: bent tools from not enough hardening, broken blades from too much hardening, what happens when you don't take precautions, and so on.
You are not a disciple just because you read your Bible and sit in church every Sunday. You are not a disciple just because you read about and argue about Christian theology. You are not a disciple until you actually start putting into practice what Jesus taught, making mistakes and learning from them, and meeting the conditions of discipleship.
Jesus laid out the conditions of discipleship several times. In short, they can be reduced to a simple, single concept: remove everything from your life which would obstruct you from following Jesus Christ. Not believing in Him mind you, but following Him. This is true whether or not it is wealth or property (a big stumbling block actually; selling everything you have and giving the proceeds to either the poor [or the church for common distribution in the book of Acts] was clearly expected by Jesus of His disciples in the Gospels and the Apostles continued it in Acts), family relationships (if you love mother, father, son, daughter, brother, or sister more than Jesus Christ you cannot be His disciple), or even your own soul (lit. in Greek "psyche," the sum total of what makes you, you). Paul reiterates this practice in Philippians three where he says he suffered the loss of everything, and counted it as garbage in comparison with knowing Him, and the power of His resurrection, being conformed to His death. Over and over again in the Gospels and the Epistles, His disciples are reminded and admonished to lay everything aside which could trip them up from fully submitting to and surrendering to the Spirit of Christ, disengaging from their malfunctioning flesh, like Greek runners in the Olympics of the period who ran naked so as not to be slowed down by their clothing.
Anything you have an attachment to which could trigger a disengagement from the Spirit of Christ and re-engagement of the responses and behaviors of the malfunctioning flesh must be cut away and left behind internally at the very least if not externally in order to continue to be a disciple. Why? Because if we are attached to something, any threat to that something will trigger either our fear or aggression response. Likewise, if we believe we need something we don't currently possess (whether we actually need it or not), such as food, sex, resources, etc., then this becomes a perceived threat as well, and triggers the fear or aggression response, as well as potentially the feeding or sexual responses. These survival responses then take control and produce the anger, theft, greed, violence, murder, envy, adultery, whoring, and so on which are described as works of the flesh. These survival responses are what is malfunctioning in the human brain. This system in the human brain is where the error lies. Therefore, anything the loss or possession of which can trigger it must be let go of in order to be His disciple, because it is when this is triggered that we are tempted to disengage from the Spirit of Christ and take back control of the parts of our body from Him.
Jesus said that those who only hear His words, but don't do them are like a man who build his house on the sand at the bottom of a wadi, a dry ravine in the desert that is subject to flash flooding without warning when it rains. Those who hear His words and do them are like a man who builds his house on the bedrock at the top of the wadi, the rock cliff overlooking the ravine where the rains and floods can't touch him.
Jesus also told His disciples that as they went into the world, they were to disciple the nations of people they encountered. The instruction was not to make believers, but disciples. The instruction is not to just make people who hear His words and listen to them gladly, but to turn those people into apprentices and imitators of Jesus Christ; to make disciples.
We are called, not to just sit in a pew and listen to a sermon on Sundays, but to disown ourselves, pick up the cross on which we died with Him, and follow Him, imitate Him, do what He did and live as He taught.
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