Category: Discipleship

Over the years I have tried to pass on age appropriate wisdom to our children such as:

•  In elementary school:  Never tie your shoes in a revolving door
•  In high school:  It is not illegal to be stupid but it is expensive
•  In college:  Truth flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana
•  In marriage:  Words are stupid things, it’s meaning that counts

A friend of mine was explaining to his five year old son Charlie that in the summer the family was going to take a road trip to California, stopping along the way to see the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

“Do you know what a dam does?” he asked Charlie.

“Sure dad”, he replied, “it holds back water!”

“That’s right but did you know that a dam also makes electricity?”

Without hesitation Charlie responded, “Then praise God for beavers!”

Same word, different mental pictures.  We have the same confusion when it comes to the concept of discipleship.  The question we need to answer is, when Jesus used the word “disciple”, is the concept (picture) in His mind the same that is in ours?

For a moment I want to invite you to take the mental picture of discipleship that hangs in the gallery of your cognitive unconscious mind and bring it into the workshop of your conscious mind.  Now examine it in light of the following explanation.

Disciple is a word/concept that is uncommon in our current culture.  To understand it we usually go back to the Greek word (MATHTES) which means student, pupil, or learner.  The problem is that, although our New Testament was written in Greek, it came from a Hebrew or Aramaic speaking people.  Eventually it was translated into English.  The result is the word has not only passed through three different languages but a myriad of cultures as well.  If we are to understand the picture of discipleship that Jesus had in His mind, we need to go back to His culture and see how it was used.

“Disciple” is not an insignificant word in the New Testament.  It is used 264 times in the four Gospels and Acts. However, it is never used in the Epistles.  It is safe to assume that since it was a word/concept critical to Jesus ministry and commission, the concept would carry on even if the word drops from the biblical vocabulary.

 The Hebrew word for disciple is talmid (pronounced:  tal-meed).  In first century Palestine, the word disciple was used primarily for the relationship between a rabbi and his followers.  A rabbi was different from a teacher of the law (scribe).  A teacher of the law could interpret the books of the Law (first 5 books in our Old Testament), but a rabbi could interpret the entire Hebrew Scripture.

A disciple of a rabbi was not only committed to learn what the rabbi knew but to emulate his life in every way possible.  Rabbinical disciples followed their master 24/7 in order to learn how to live life as he lived it.  That is why Jesus said in Luke 6:40, “A pupil (disciple) is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”  From this statement we see that in the culture of Jesus’ day, a disciple was trained (not simply taught) and that it was a holistic approach, affecting every area of life.

The term apprentice creates a word picture that can help us capture the meaning of Jesus’s discipleship.    Even though it is not as commonly used as it was in past European days, it still carries the idea of learning skills or a trade.

In the Middle Ages commerce was done primarily through the family business.  As population and travel increased, a shoemaker and his family, for example, often found they could not meet the demand for shoes.  This led to hiring an apprentice to join him and learn the family business.  The apprentice learned not only about leather, dyes, and feet, but he was actually trained and equipped to make the shoes and run the family business.

There are several elements of historical apprenticeship that fit the New Testament concept of disciple:

• It required information and skills
• It required a skilled practitioner (model, coach, teacher)
• It involved a demonstration of acquired skills
• The training was over an extended period of time
• The training or equipping was done by on the job training

Our culturally academic view of discipleship is based more on the Greek model rather than the Hebrew one.  Jesus’ “family business” was doing the will of His Father.  He recruited disciples/apprentices to take on not only His character but His kingdom mission.  This is what He meant by “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

In view of the historical context of first century discipleship, consider the following definition.

 A Disciple is an intentional apprentice of Jesus and His kingdom (Luke 6:40; Matt 6:33).

Shifting from a cultural picture of discipleship to a New Testament one requires we move from discipleship as:

• A destination to a direction
• Programs to a lifelong process
• Passive to active (pursuit)
• Informational to transformational
• “What’s in it for me?” to “How do I live for His kingdom?”

I suspect that as we gain a clearer picture of the discipleship Jesus had in mind, we will find it looks surprisingly more like Hoover Dam than a beaver dam.

*In the next blog I will explore a description of discipleship on the resurrection side of the cross that can help us both be and make His disciples.

**See Blogs 1-4 for additional discussion on the term “disciple”.

Questions for reflection

• How do you respond to the statement: “NT discipleship is more like a verb than a noun”
• What skills are needed to apprentice the King and carry out our Father’s business?

A first cousin to the grace/effort tension is the grace/conditions tension.  This tension is exposed by the question, “Are God’s promises unconditional?”  You could substitute any number of spiritual concepts for the underlined word “promises” and create the same tension.

Grace is usually understood as the unmerited favor of God expressed to us out of his loving nature.  Vines NT dictionary defines grace (charis) as:  that which bestows or occasions pleasure, delight, or causes favorable regard…  In the Old Testament the concept is expressed by the word “lovingkindness”.

To this basic understanding of the word grace we often add the concept “unconditional”, but when we read the promises in Scripture, most often they do contain a condition…an “if-then” connection.  This creates a tension because in our minds, fulfilling conditions is the same as trying to earn or merit God’s favor.  A merit based life contradicts a grace based life.  We handle such tension by polarizing what we cannot harmonize and the result is we often claim the promises but disregard the uncomfortable (even unwanted) conditions.

For example:

(6) Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  (7) And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:6-7).

The promise is for the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds.  It is clearly a gracious offer by God for our benefit.  Who wouldn’t want to trade anxiety for peace?  But the gracious offer is prefaced by unmistakable conditions:  prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving!

So when we try to live by grace and the “conditions” create angst in our spirit, I suggest we not ignore the conditions but rather decouple conditions from the concept of merit.  It is an unnecessary and detrimental alliance.

Recently some friends of ours called to offer us tickets to the Kansas City Symphony at the Kaufman Center.  They said they were a gift if we wanted them.  When we replied in the affirmative, they said we could pick them up at the “will call” window before the performance.

Arriving a little early to the concert, I stood in line at the will call window to receive the tickets.  Once in hand we eagerly (and gratefully) took our seats in the auditorium.

Nowhere along that process did I think that by standing in line and asking for my tickets I had somehow merited them.  However, had I failed to do just that, the tickets would still be on the shelf and we would not have heard the concert.  The tickets offered without merit required an action on my part for the gift to be experienced.  The action was actually quite trivial compared to the gift itself.  The gift was free but experiencing the gift was not automatic.  It required action, a response on my part.

In the same way the gracious gift of reconciliation with God is freely offered without merit (other than Christ’s,) but it is not unconditional.  Although we need to comply with the conditions, we should not think that by fulfilling them we are somehow meriting the gift.  To do so would be arrogant, foolish, or just naïve.

But conversely we should not expect the gracious gifts of God without respect for the conditions he connects to them.  The conditions are never arbitrary but wisely given as a further expression of his grace.

When our youngest son was about six years old he come to me one day and asked if he could have his own “boys” bike.  I asked him what was wrong with the bike his sister learned on.

He said, “It is pink and has Smurfs on it”.

So, I asked, “What kind would you like?”

“I want a black one with knobby tires!”

That day I made him a promise.  If he learned to ride his sister’s bike without the training wheels, I would get him his own “boys” bike – black with knobby tires.

The condition was not a merit system in which he would earn enough money to buy the bike.  They were given to encourage the development of a helpful life-skill (bike riding) that I knew would help him in life beyond the current desire for a shiny new bike.

A few months later he came to me to claim what I promised.  After riding the pink Smurf bike down the driveway without training wheels, we went to the store and picked out the coolest, black bike with knobby tires.

In a much more significant way, God graciously offers us promises to live by along our journey of discipleship.  We must not ignore the conditions for those promises nor think of them as a form of merit.  Rather they are God’s gracious provision for our walk of faith.

Question for reflection:

What promises/conditions do you find in the following:  John 3:16, Hebrews 4:16, Joshua 1:8?

There are aspects of the Christian life that are paradoxical, causing tension when we can’t resolve them.  As a rule we tend to polarize what we cannot harmonize, emphasizing one over the other, or promoting one and minimizing the other.  Whole denominations have been built around this type of tension.  Although some tension is unavoidable, we can also create tension by unnecessary polarization.

Remember the old question, “Did you walk to school or carry your lunch?”  It’s humorous because it proposes a choice that is unnecessary.  You may need to choose between walking to school and riding your bike, but you don’t need to choose between how you travel to school and what you have for lunch.  You can easily do both.  The tension is unnecessary.

An example of this kind of created tension in discipleship is the polarization of the concepts of grace and effort.  Somewhere along our Christian journey we heard the question, “Are you going to live by grace or effort?”  Rather than considering it a humorous, irrelevant question, we think the two concepts are incompatible and mutually exclusive.  We take it seriously and think we have to choose between them.  When we polarize two different concepts (e.g. belief and action), the tension is unnecessary and ultimately detrimental since both are biblical and essential to our journey of discipleship.

Grace vs. effort is a polarization of attitudes (motives) vs. action (behavior).  In our relationship with Christ, we need to understand that these two are not mutually exclusive.  We certainly must choose whether we are going to base our acceptance with God on his grace or our merit.  We cannot do both simultaneously.   However, effort is an action not an attitude.  If our effort (behavior) comes from an attitude of earning God’s acceptance, then we need to change our attitude not necessarily our actions.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.  He told me that it was a wake-up call as to how and why he ate. Before the diagnosis he lived to eat.  Now he eats to live.  The solution for diabetes was not to stop eating but to change his motivation behind eating.  In our culture we eat primarily as entertainment and comfort – not real healthy motivations.  The solution to a healthy body is not to quit eating but to reprogram our minds as to why and what we eat.

Effort is a major theme in discipleship on the resurrection side of the cross.  We are told to work, train, do, put off, put on, etc.  These actions are not competing with grace but are complementary to it.  When we polarize them, we create unnecessary tension and destroy the dynamic partnership captured in Phil 2:12-13.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation [effort]with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you [grace], both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

If we don’t start with grace as the foundation for our acceptance with God, our effort (or work) can become a source of merit.  We need to understand at a heart level that we are accepted by God on the merits of Christ and not our own.  This is a counter-cultural reality that constantly needs to be affirmed if we are to follow Christ on the resurrection side of the cross.  But having accepted the grace foundation, we need to work hard because our effort now serves a whole new purpose.

If we are doing what Scripture commands, but from an attitude of earning, then we need to change our attitude not the actions.  Grace is in tension with earning, but not with effort.  Discipleship, based on grace, is described as a walk, run, race, even warfare, requiring diligence, discipline, and perseverance all of which are sustained by the Holy Spirit.

Along your discipleship journey, you may slip back into the default thinking of doing what is right in order to gain God’s acceptance.  It is a pattern that is not easy to break.  At times you may think, for example, that by serving or memorizing Scripture, or obeying a command that God now owes you some answers to prayer or maybe a little credit next time you slip up.  When this happens, review your grace foundation.  Remind yourself of who you are in Christ and why.  Then reengage in working out your salvation from a different motivation. (I will discuss maturity and motivations in later blogs).

For reflection:

Are there spiritual truths you find difficult to harmonize?  To what extent do you polarize them?  Is the polarization necessary?

 

 

The timeout is a critical tool for winning ball games.  In basketball each team is allowed a limited amount.  A coach calls a timeout for a variety of reasons:

• Thwart the momentum of the opposing team
• Refocus his players
• Set up a special offense or defense
• Give his players a rest
• Overcome the crowd noise to send in instructions

Regardless of the reason, when a coach calls a timeout, the players huddle around him with their undivided attention.  No one is on their cell phone, visiting with the cheerleaders, or talking with their friends.  A coach has 60 seconds to get his idea across.  Often he explains his plan visually on a little whiteboard so the players can see as well as hear what is said.

Jesus modeled and taught how to live in relationship with the Father.  The Gospels tell us that Jesus frequently responded to the Father’s “timeout”.  One example is when Jesus took a timeout with his Father in the midst of a very successful healing ministry.  The result was an entirely new “play/plan” (Mark 1:32-39).

I consider my daily appointment with God (AWG) to be like a coach’s timeout.  It is a few minutes each day when I give my Coach my undivided attention.  I have found that the first thing in the morning before there is too much crowd noise, is the best time for me to hear his voice and understand what he is writing on the whiteboard.

I will know his directions when I allow Christ to speak his Word into my life on a consistent basis.  Some days I feel like I’m playing offense and other days I am on the defense.  But each day I need his play.

My AWG is not a time for training or long explanations but for words of encouragement and clarity.  There are other times when I need to practice and train.  The AWG is not a time for extended Bible study; that’s a different discipline.  But each day I need a fresh word from my Coach.

A simple plan to see what’s on the whiteboard looks like this:

• Refocus

Honestly admit the current state of your heart and mind.  “This morning I feel like I could climb a mountain; I’m so pumped!”  OR “Right now my anxiety indicator is off the charts.  I know I should not be anxious, but that is where I am.”

Next refocus by reviewing some of the portraits of Christ that hang in the gallery of your mind.  Finish the statement, “Lord, today I acknowledge that you are my ………..”  (Shepherd, Friend, Shelter, Healer, etc.)

• Read

As you go through a book of the Bible, read a short passage such as a paragraph, several verses, or maybe a chapter.  But keep it short.  Read it over several times.

• Reflect

Think about the meaning of what you just read.  Asking questions such as what, why, how, and when, can help in this process.  And most important, ask how this is relevant to your life.

• Record

Write down your main thought in a journal…keep a log of what you hear God saying.  This is your whiteboard.  Journaling clarifies and focuses your mind as you ask the Lord, “What is the one idea that you want me to reflect on today?  What’s the play of the day?”

• Respond

Pray back what you hear Christ’s Spirit saying to your heart.  Prayer makes it a dialogue.  Take what you have heard for yourself and pray it for others as God brings them to mind.  Pray the “play” into reality.

You will need to initially give some structure to your AWG if it is to become a spiritual habit.  Pick a time and place where you can be alone, undistracted and consistent.  Let your family know what you are doing so they can support your efforts.

You will probably need more than 60 seconds for a profitable AWG…but you don’t need an hour.  Start with 15 minutes until it becomes a pattern.  Then increase as you have opportunity.  Initially it may seem like you are performing a duty rather than personally meeting with the Lord.  But once you master the mechanics, your focus will become your relationship with Christ rather than filling in an outline.  At that point your AWG changes from being a duty to an absolute delight.

As you develop your ear to hear from God, you will find it easier to share your whiteboard experience with others as well.

Reflection:

1. What is a next step for you to become consistent in a daily AWG
2. What obstacles will you face?  How will you overcome them?

In 1804 Lewis and Clark with about four dozen men set out from St. Louis for the west coast of the expanding America.  Commissioned by President Jefferson they were tasked with the mission to explore and discover an economical means of travel through the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase.  Secondary purposes included mapping the territory, extending American influence, and making scientific discoveries.

Accomplishing their mission, the party returned to St Louis in 1806.  Along the way they made friends (and enemies), “took pictures”, collected samples, and explored the amazing beauty of deserts, mountains, and rivers.  But upon returning the men took up life basically where they had left off….other than having some great memories and a bigger scrapbook, life was the same.

Several decades later another group of men and women also left St. Louis for the west coast.  Commonly called pioneers, these people had a different mission.  They sold all they had, left the comforts of 1840s modernity, and headed west for a new life.  With the transcontinental railroad still a couple of decades away, they had no plans for returning to their old life.  It was a one-way ticket through the unknown to realize a dream.  A dream created by both fact and fiction motivated people to risk all they had and to invest in this epic adventure.  Those that made the arduous journey were never the same.

The Lewis party made a trip (a vacation with excitement).  But for those early pioneers, it was more than a trip, it was a quest.   The 1678 classic Christian allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress written by John Bunyan (not related to Paul), tells of another adventure that was a quest rather than a trip.  The story follows Christian, the main character, along his journey to the Celestial City.  Along the way he encountered various adventures that change him forever and prepared him for his final destination.

The adventure of discipleship is a quest, a journey of no return.  Along the way we will face multiple challenges, gaze at amazing vistas, and encounter unexpected opportunities …and we’ll never be the same.  We are not coming back to where we started.  It is an adventure of unexpected discovery, primarily of the One who placed the vertical heavenly tug on our hearts (Ecc. 3:11).

Authentic discipleship is not a course we take or a scrapbook we make.  It is not something we complete and move on to the next challenge.  The great Rabbi, Yahshua, has invited us to leave the comforts of the familiar, sell all we have, buy a Conestoga wagon, band together with a group of fellow pioneers, and head west.  With our confidence in Christ as our guide, we need never look back.  Along the way we will likely realize that we have taken too much luggage.  Much that we initially thought essential will be abandoned.  Its stuff that no longer fits who we are and where we are going.  And we won’t miss it.

The invitation Jesus made to those initial fishermen along the Sea of Galilee still stands. “Follow Me” is an ongoing invitation to every generation to join the quest (Matt. 4:19)

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus….I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:12, 14).

Reflection:

1. In what other ways does thinking of discipleship as a quest change your mental picture?

2. What are the implications of seeing discipleship with a “trip” mentality?

What picture of discipleship hangs in the gallery of your mind?

“Words are stupid things, it’s meaning that counts”.  Words are simply containers into which each of us packs meaning and mental pictures.  Conversation uses shared words but communication involves shared meanings.  The degree that words carry common meanings determines the level of communication.  We have all had the experience of using words to explain our idea to another person only to find out later that what we thought we said was not what the other person heard or understood.

This challenge in communication exists even when we speak the same language, in the same culture, and in the same time period.  Consider the exponential complexity when using words translated from a different language, culture, and era.

This is the challenge we face in understanding what Jesus meant when he gave his followers the invitation to be his disciples and the command to make disciples.  The word disciple is a common term in the Gospels but not in our current culture so we must draw from biblical history and not our current culture if we are to understand what Jesus meant when he used the term.  Since discipleship forms the core of our life with Christ, it seems a pretty important concept to wrestle with.

In 2016 The Navigators asked the Barna organization to do a study on the state of discipleship in America.  In the published results the opening statement succinctly states the problem.  “A critical component of this study is to define “discipleship”.  The concept is familiar to many, but a widely accepted definition remains elusive.”

Our concept of discipleship, like many others concepts, hangs in the gallery of our minds.  This gallery is the “cognitive unconscious” part of our brains that acts as a filter whenever we get new information.  The picture is fairly ridged allowing us to accept, reject, or modify new information rapidly depending on how well it fits our current picture.  To alter the existing picture we must first bring it down from the unconscious gallery and consciously wrestle with it in the workroom of our mind.  Only then can we hang it back up with the possibility of real life change.  This is the “renewing of our minds” process that Paul refers to in Romans 12:2.

I would like to invite you to take down the picture of discipleship that is currently hanging in the gallery of your mind and reexamine it.  The purpose of this blog is to give you some fresh perspective with which to examine your picture of discipleship.  My desire is to be catalytic, at times affirming as well as challenging.

I have been on this journey of discipleship for over 50 years, wrestling with what it means to be a disciple and how to “make” disciples.  I have led discipleship ministries on university campuses, in the military, in churches, and in the marketplace and I am still learning what authentic discipleship looks like.  Discipleship is an adventure, one from which we will never recover.  I invite you to join me on this journey, together making our picture of discipleship more biblical and authentic.

Think about…

1. What is your current picture of discipleship that hangs in the gallery of your mind?

2. Did you paint the picture or was it borrowed?

3. How much of your picture comes from cultural Christianity and how much from Scripture?