Chapter 8b --
Go forth to every ethnic group and help them to become my students. Matt.28:19
One realization of a disciple¹s life is living out their work, their jobs, with energy, intelligence, and dedication as unto the Lord and not unto other people. Done in the character of God¹s life, it will be quite helpful and even refreshing to others. We will naturally react differently to the bumps along the way. Those differences will betray the source of our life.
Recall:
It is principally the how of life, rather than the what. God is much more interested in the character or spirit of our actions than their mechanics and particulars.
How to become a disciple
Recognize the life of God in Jesus to be the most charming and precious thing you¹ve ever seen and then go after it like the rare pearl. We need to count the cost and then see it as an incredible bargain.
How can we come to this being our honest assessment? How can we come to admire Jesus that much?
a. Remember the rule of the kingdom: ask
b. Dwell in his words‹become familiar with the Gospels and let them sink in
c. Decide, with deliberate intention to become a disciple of Jesus
Helping others find their way into discipleship
Those who have found their way into God¹s kingdom will inevitably want to share the new reality they have found with those around them. How do we do it?
Be Disciples
Although God might occasionally use another route, his predominant pattern is to use disciples to make disciples. We need to be standing in the position of Jesus¹ students and co-workers, so that our efforts in making disciples will be appropriately guided and strengthened by him. They are, after all, his disciples, not ours.
Recognize that today many Christian groups simply have no idea what discipleship is. With the common loss of the view of Jesus as teacher, many churches aim at making converts, or church members, and making disciples is pushed to the very margins.
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Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church.
The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality.
The division of professing Christians into those for whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.
It is now understood to be a part of the ³good news² that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. Isn¹t this a long way from the kingdom of God that is seen as an incredible treasure?
· Cheap grace
· Costly faithlessness
· What is life for if not an opportunity to learn to live real life, God¹s life?
· What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death?
Intending to make disciples
It must be our conscious objective, consciously implemented, to bring others to the point where they are daily learning from Jesus how to live their actual lives as he would life them if her were they.
Suppose we devoted our time to inspiring and enabling Christians and others to be people who are not offendable and not angry and who are forgiving as a matter of course. To intentionally make disciples is to open the doorway for people to become like that. That is why it is such a great gift to humankind.
But the weight of current Christian culture is actually against this. It is not ³how things are.² To explicitly intend to make apprentices to Jesus could be quite upsetting to congregational life.
What message would we preach that would naturally lead to a decision to become an apprentice to Jesus in The Kingdom Among Us? Would we not live and explain exactly the same message that we have heard from Jesus in his ³Sermon on the Mount²?
We would intend to make disciples and let converts ³happen² rather than intending to make converts and letting disciples ³happen.² This will be a difficult task. This is why it is absolutely necessary that those who exercise leadership must be close and faithful students of Jesus himself. He must be the one who shows the way. Jesus does not make decisions for us; we are responsible for what we intend. We must know and believe that this is something which can be taught and learned. (Matt 28:19-20)
Many people who hear us and observe us from a distance will respond with gratitude and joy that they have been given a realistic opportunity to learn how to live in the kingdom.
Changing people¹s real beliefs
Don¹t¹ nag them with ³pearls.²
You lead people to become disciples of Jesus by ravishing them with a vision of life in the kingdom of the heavens in the fellowship of Jesus.
· Proclaiming, manifesting, teaching in the manner of Jesus
o This will change the belief system that governs their lives.
· To make disciples to Jesus today, one has to make him and his God real to them, right in the face of all that stands at the center of our world as ³official² knowledge and reality.
· To enable people to become disciples we must change whatever it is in their actual belief system that bars confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe.
o There is then no escaping actually getting to know people where they are.
§ Like crawling inside their box, getting to know it and then showing them the way out.
· One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe. It doesn¹t succeed very well, and that is the open secret of church life.
· What they do will certainly follow what they believe, as Jesus well understood and taught. We always live up to our beliefs‹or down to them, as the case may be. Nothing else is possible.
Study what the people we speak to actually believe
What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God.
Understand honestly the beliefs of others and address their actual beliefs and their doubts.
There must not be the least effort to be unfair in this examination or to pooh-pooh genuine problems, for that will weaken and infect everything we try to develop thereafter.
Uncovered and well understood, we must confront opposing beliefs, doing so joined with prayer, service, and reliance on the spirit.