I’ve been discipled in my past and have done some discipling as well. That certainly doesn’t make me a theologian, but it does give me a testimony to the way the Lord has used discipleship in my life. The Lord has rescued me out of a spiritual desert and used a discipleship relationship to revive my walk. My walk was dry and I was living in sin and God used a relationship with a person to pull me out of the desert.
That being said, let’s think about what keeps us from discipleship. I know of a few things that kept me from it for a long time.
1.) PRIDE Maybe we don’t want to ask another person to teach us, because it would mean that we are admitting weakness, or perhaps we aren’t sure that someone else can really add to what we already know.
- If that would describe you, think about this; a student wants to learn what a teacher knows, a disciple wants to live as the teacher lives. Maybe you have a lot figured out about the bible but you need someone to show you how to live what you already know. We don’t need more knowledge… we need a deeper surrender.
2.) COMPLACENCY It is likely that nearly every Christian in America is too content with our relationship with Jesus. Don’t brush that statement off until you ask the Lord if He could stand for you to seek Him harder. Complacency is a silent and sly killer, and almost always goes unnoticed.
3.) NEGLECT I believe that the biggest reason that people who love the Lord have little to do with discipleship is we have lost the vision Christ had for the church. Maybe if we can regain His vision for the church, our pride and our complacency will be crushed by our desire to do what Christ has told us to do… that is, “make disciples”. However, we will fail at making disciples unless we first become disciples. Jesus told 11 men to go make disciples, and He didn’t have to explain what He meant by that because they had been His disciples for over 3 years.
Christ’s Vision for the Church
Have you ever thought about what Jesus spent most of His ministry doing? I would bet that it wasn’t preaching, or private prayer, or even healing. Jesus spent three years with 12 men. He was living life with them. In essence Jesus spent the majority of His ministry hanging out! Don’t think I am secularizing Christ’s ministry. There was nothing worldly about the time Jesus spent with His twelve disciples. Isn’t it widely agreed upon that our God highly values relationships? Who were Jesus’ best friends? Think about this, the disciples spent 3 years with their teacher, Jesus. As we are taught, so we will teach.
Picture the disciples talking after the Spirit has fallen on the day of Pentecost and 3,000 were saved. They must have had a terrifying realization of the responsibility that was now theirs. The church was growing. I can just picture them saying, “What do we do now? We can’t possibly keep up with all 3000 people ourselves.” And it was never intended that they would have to. No pastor can preach the exact message that every person is needs to hear every week. He can’t possibly know the individual spiritual needs of every person. This is why discipleship is so incredibly crucial. Our Lord designed the church in such a way that we are to sharpen each other. “If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another…” (1 John 1:7) This is a simple equation, our relationships with our brothers and sisters will strengthen our relationship with the Lord, and as our relationship with the Lord increases we will grow in our relationships with others.
So going back to the day of Pentecost. Just what happened with the 3,000 believers added to the church? Acts 2:42 tells us,“They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to FELLOWSHIP, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Amazingly, fellowship is mentioned along with such important disciplines as study, prayer, and the Lord’s supper! Have we missed the importance of this? Have we missed Christ’s holy vision for the church? The apostles were simply teaching others as the Lord had taught them, through a relationship. “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day.” (Acts 2:47) The early church DEVOTED themselves to fellowship, and I fear that we have simply treated it as something that we can do as of last importance when our schedules allow it. They spent SO MUCH time together! Jesus says that the world will know that we are His disciples because of our love for one another. The early church fellowshipped “day by day” (Acts 2:46) and this is what I’m learning that discipleship is… hanging out. Let’s not allow the world’s view of hanging out, ruin our perspective on it. Instead let’s get a sanctified view of hanging out. When believers who are walking with the Lord hang out, Christ is present and fellowship happens. When believers intentionally fellowship with Christ at the center, discipleship happens. When discipleship happens the church grows in spiritual maturity and as a result God grows his church!
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