The Manipulator #1

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Your disciple may be caught in the trap of a manipulator.  This manipulator could be his mother, father, brother, sister, mate, child, boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, pastor, teacher, or boss . . . a manipulator could be anyone. Teaching your disciple how to recognize and deal with a manipulator is an important part of the disciple making process.

What is a manipulator?

A manipulator uses unfair or subtle means to control circumstances or people to his own advantage.

The manipulator disguises his actions so shrewdly that few recognize his true intent.  He is so masterful at deflecting the blame off of himself and onto others that if questions do arise both the victim and the outside observer believes that the victim is the real problem.

Manipulation is the antithesis of love.  One of the tools I use to help my disciple discern manipulation is 1 Corinthians 13.  Here the apostle Paul gives us a clear and understandable picture of love, which we can use as measurement against the behavior of the manipulator.

Beginning the process:

  1. Discuss with your disciple each of his relationships, both past and present, with the eye for the manipulator.
  2. Manipulators strike fear in the heart of your disciple.  Expect reluctance, procrastination, and excuses when he begins to deal with the manipulator(s) in his life.
  3. The process is long.  De-tangling any manipulative relationship is complicated and will take time, but dealing with a family member who is a manipulator is even more knotty and can take even more time.

The Role of Friendships In Disciple Making #2

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The challenge before a discipler is how to get to know the heart of his disciple.  I propose one reliable way to understand your disciple is by observing his friendships.

Getting to know your disciple may prove difficult because he may not know himself.  An indicator of this lack of self-knowledge is the contradiction between his sincerity in trying to answer all your questions honestly, but somehow his answers do not correlate with his actions.

Throughout childhood a person creates an inward maze of defenses so complex that he can lose himself.  He has also constructed an outward façade so that the person with whom you are talking is much like interacting with an actor on the stage. He has played so many roles for so long that he no longer understands who he is or why he does what he does.

Man is a spiritual being.  Not only do we communicate with one another in words and body language, but our inner spirit also communicates subliminal messages to others.  An example of this is how the rebels at a youth camp can find one another within the first hours.  Another illustration of this subspace communication is how alcoholics can instantly pick out one another in a crowd and discern if they are telling the truth.  An alcoholic cannot lie to another alcoholic.

Your disciple has transmitted these subliminal signals for years right past his parents, youth pastors, and teachers. Who does pick up on these cryptic communications are others with the same heart condition.

These subliminal signals cut through defensives and facades and connect with people of like heart.  The study of your disciple’s friends is a reliable diagnostic tool to understand your disciple’s inner man.  It is also important for your disciple to analyze his friendships so that he too can understand his heart.  There is a reason he has chosen the friends that he has and why those friends have chosen him.

The Role of Friendships in Making Disciples #1

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Friendships are a mirror of who a person is.  If you want to understand your disciple, get to know his friends.  Your disciple has chosen his friends and his friends have chosen him.

Parents, you should not be nearly as concerned about friends being a bad influence on your child as who your son or daughter chooses as a friend because the choice of friends is a reliable indicator of the inner man of your child.  Another window into your child’s heart is who chooses your son or daughter as a friend, because like attracts like.  Children know how to deceive their parents, teachers, coaches, youth pastors, and disciplers but friendships expose a person for who he really is.

Often when I point out this friendship mirror principle to my disciples it makes them uncomfortable. One guy recently said to me, “But I don’t want to become like my friends!” even though he was already exactly like his friends.  It is comfortable to live in denial believing that I am in a better condition than my friends, when in reality friendships are an accurate diagnostic tool for my heart condition.

Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back #4: Understanding Disciple Growth Patterns

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Love is never satisfied with status quo in the life of another.  Love inspires a discipler to “always hope, always trust, and to always persevere” (1 Corinthians 13) for the life of his disciple even when his behavior and attitude are to the contrary. Faith empowers love to look beyond the disciple’s backward slide to see who and what he can become through the power of the cross and resurrection of Jesus and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit living in him.

The disciple growth pattern goes something like this:  (1) there is an initial growth spurt, which encourages the disciple and gives him hope.  (2) But old scripting, which is often tied to his fears, draws him back.  (3) Disappointment moves in at this point, which feeds his fear, (4) and he reverts to his familiar coping devices.  Just as Jesus dealt with the fears of his disciples, so it is impossible to make a follower of Jesus without him facing his fears.

Making a disciple is a long process so these growth patterns are best understood in terms of months and years.  Old scripting from childhood is crafty.  It may lay dormant for months, which lures the disciple into over confidence so that he lets his guard down.  As a disciple maker not only should you not be surprised at the reoccurrence of these scripts but you should be on the lookout for them.

Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back #3

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The dark side of man enjoys the failure of others, regrettably even in the lives of family and friends.  This is evident in our appetite for gossip and our eagerness to hear of the drama in the lives of others. (By drama I mean the failure, conflict, hurt, sin, hatred, and hardship brought on by selfishness.)  Unhealthy people build their relationships around this drama, so that without the drama they have no relationships.

As a disciple of Jesus you must guard your heart against this taste for gossip and drama, which frankly is evil.   There is a fine line between entering into the life story of your disciple and being sucked into the self-centered drama of his life.  For some of your disciples the only way they will know how to relate to you is by creating drama, which may explain his unusual behavior and attitude towards you.

Not only is our nature drawn to the failure of others but Satan also draws our attention and the attention of our disciple to his steps backward, which can blind both of us to his progress.  Spiritual progress is difficult to perceive, much like the growth of a child, whereas failure is obvious.

Love, on the other hand, has the faith and strength to detect the baby steps of growth.  Paul tells us that: “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” 1 Corinthians 13. Our disciples should sense from us optimism grounded in a conviction that the gospel and the Holy Spirit are able to transform lives.

Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back #2

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To teach your disciple how to love is to teach your disciple how to forgive.  I have nothing close to a photographic memory except when I am hurt, rejected, or wronged.  (I wish I could remember the Bible half as clearly as I do the wrongs done to me.) There are many things that I have forgotten from my childhood but my hurts and disappointments are etched in my heart as if in stone. These memories are so powerful that they can even overshadow all the good that has been done for me.

People keep a running ledger of those they feel “owe me an apology” and yet Paul tells us that “Love keeps no record of wrongs” 1 Corinthians 13:5. Your disciple will learn how to release others from his ledger by experiencing God’s forgiveness in the cross of Jesus and then through your example of forgiving him and forgiving others.

There will be times that your disciple will take a couple of steps backwards which may surprise and disappoint you. During his failure it is easy for both you and him to focus on the two steps of regress.  One way to help him understand forgiveness is to focus on the step of progress rather than on the two steps back. Often his experience has been people holding his failure and sin over his head to use them as leverage.

Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back #1

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Spiritual growth in the life of your disciple moves to a three-steps-forward, two-steps back cadence. What is important for the discipler is to focus on the one step of progress rather than to get discouraged over the two steps of failure.

The extensive account of Jesus’ time with his disciples allows us to witness this rhythm of growth in the life of his men.  Jesus is patient with the maturing process of his disciples because he never loses sight of what each man could and would become.  Paul writes: “Love always hopes” (1 Corinthians 13). It is vital that your disciple always senses this hope from you especially in the midst of his failure. Hope focuses on the step of progress, which can be difficult because often there is twice as much failure as there is progress.

In closing:

  • Regularly point out to your disciple the steps of progress he/she has made in recent months.  I usually do this four ways: face-to-face, in a note, text message, and email.
  • Tell your disciple what other people are noticing about his growth.
  • Help your disciple learn from his failure but do not let him dwell there. People tend to dwell on their steps backward and lose sight of their overall forward progress.
  • Frame for your disciple the maturing process in context of years and therefore he must be patient with the process.  Jesus spent nearly three years with his men.

Love: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

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In 1972 Eastern Airlines Flight #401 to Miami was using the most advanced commercial airliner in the world being flown by a pilot with 30 years of experience.  On their final approach the indicator light that the landing gear was in place had not illuminated.  While the pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer focused on the $12 burned out light bulb the airplane crashed into the Everglades killing 99 people because no one was flying the plane.  The moral of the story is: keep the main thing the main thing.

To be distracted from the main thing has consequences. Recently I was involved with a relational conflict between two church planters.  I asked one of the pastors when was the last time he had told his fellow pastor that he loved him, after an awkward silence he replied timidly “a couple of years ago.”   Meanwhile, I spoke at a church that has a history of interpersonal conflict.  After the service the pastor asked if he could walk me to my car to ask me a question.  He asked: “Do you think that it is important for me to tell the individuals in my congregation that I love them?”  At that moment I began to understand the reason for their church’s relational troubles.

Peter tells us our main thing: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8 Our main thing is based on the truth that our God is love (1 John 4:16), our message is love (Romans 5:8), and our distinction is our love for one another (John 13:35).

In closing a quote from the poetry of Thomas Traheme:

You never enjoy the world aright. . .till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world . . . [1]

[1] Thomas Traherne, Selected Poems and Prose (New York: Penguin Classics, 1991)

On Loving Well

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The guiding question for my sister Margie’s life and ministry is: “Am I (or are we) loving each individual well?”

We measure what is important to us.  An insight into American Christianity is what it does not measure.   Some noticeable questions missing from evaluation are:  How many of our children are following Jesus into adulthood? Do our people love one another?  How healthy are our marriages?  How many of our converts continue to follow Jesus after 5 years? What is our reputation in the world?”

Love requires us to consider at what rate we can effectively add people to our ministry.  If we randomly keep adding people then we put ourselves into a position where not only can we not love the new people but we also are unable to love those who are already in our ministry, which is to say we can love no one.

To love requires time.  If when I say “I will spend time with you” to a new comer, requires me to say “I do not have time to spend time with you” to someone who is already in my ministry, then there is the possibility that we have become too large.

I can hear some say, “But I thought disciple making and the gospel is about multiplication and expansion?!” Exactly! In order to multiply and expand we must love well.  To not love well is to hinder the replicating process.

False Advertising

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Making disciples of Jesus requires time.  We come dangerously close to false advertising when we declare that we are a church or ministry of “God’s love” and then the people in our ministry are too busy to spend time with one another or with outsiders.  It is hurtful to be told by someone “I love you” and then they do not have the time to spend with you-especially when you need them.  Who has not been stung by family or friends who were too busy to get together? Love cannot just be verbalized but it also must be demonstrated as seen in God’s love for us: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8

It has been said that the gospel declared but not demonstrated is not heard.  Since the gospel is love, I would add that a love declared but not demonstrated is not heard.  The words “I love you” mean little without the action to accompany those words.  Action requires time.  If I have no time then I am not able to act and therefore not able to love.

This then begs the question: why am I so busy? I have wondered if my busyness is an attempt to avoid slowing down enough to realize that either (1) I am not loved, (2) that I do not know how to love, or (3) I understand the cost to love and I am unwilling to pay that price.  It is also less painful to blame the void of love in my life on busyness rather than having to admit that I am not loved or do not know how to love.