Tag Archives: childhood

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 #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.

Disciple Making and Children #2

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Recently I was with a Jewish couple that had converted from Judaism to Christianity.  One difficulty in the transition was the home life.   Judaism had provided for them a template for a Jewish home (e.g., keeping the Sabbath, Passover, and feasts, etc.), whereas Christianity gave them little help on what a Christian home should look like.  (Other than they were told to be sure and get their children into Sunday school and youth group.)  As Voddie Baucham points out, Christianity’s approach to ministry communicates to parents: “leave the spiritual training of your children to the professions.” [1]

God gave the Israelite parent the responsibility for the spiritual training of their child.  To be an Israelite meant to train children for a lifetime-not only were they expected to teach their own children but also their grandchildren.  “…teach them to your children and to their children after them.” (Deuteronomy 4:9-10)

Since God is familial (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) the best environment for a child to learn and experience the nature of God is in a family.  Are there benefits for a child in attending Sunday school, children’s ministry, vacation bible school, and youth group? Sure.  But the best context for him to experience sacrificial love, belonging, grace, and a servant’s heart is in a home.  Here, day after day, year after year, a child learns what it means to belong in a family just as the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are in perfect union.

[1] Voddie Baucham  http://media.sermonindex.net/15/SID15607.mp3

 

Disciple Making and Children #1

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Around 80% of the children who are raised in an evangelical church will leave Christianity at college [1].  If the number were 50% we should be concerned, but at 80% alarmed. Yet churches seem to be more concern about their numerical growth than they do about losing their own kids.  Churches spend thousands of dollars on church growth conferences, consultants, and materials searching for the key to their expansion, while spending comparatively few resources to help parents with their marriages or on how to disciple their children.

In many cases if a married couple volunteers for ministry in their church, they will be required to have some type of training and be under the apprenticeship of an experienced leader for a period of time.  But when a couple announces to that same church that they are expecting their first child they will given little or no training on how to raise that child.

There is something inconsistent about strategizing on how to reach our community and the world when we are unable to reach our own children.

[1] Glen Schultz, Kingdom Education; 2002 Southern Baptist Council on the Family.

 

When Your Disciple Dramatically Fails #3

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There is no simple formula for making disciples.  The Modern Western approach would like for you to think that to mix the right ingredients, at the right time, will result in a disciple.  I am humored at publishers trying to simplify the disciple making process into a step-by-step curriculum.  Disciples are made as a result of the triadic relational interaction between the disciple, discipler, and the Holy Spirit.  These relationships are complex, mysterious, and often risky; this is why many would rather choose a safe, non-relational approach to ministry.  Programs can be done without a relationship, disciple making cannot.

The bond of love between you and your disciple will not only draw you into his failures, but you may find yourself the object of his failure, even as Jesus was the object of Peter’s betrayal.  If Jesus’ disciples brought him pain, what makes me think that my disciples will not hurt me?  If Paul’s disciples brought anxiety and disappointment to his life, what makes me think that I will not experience the same questioning and betrayal?

Forgiveness is the nature of God and therefore an important lesson for your disciple to learn.    A disciple learns how to forgive by being forgiven by his discipler, just as Jesus forgave Peter after his very public failure.  (I can hear Jesus’ critics saying, “What kind of teacher is this Jesus guy anyway?  Look!  Even his own disciples have betrayed him!” ) To lay down your life for your disciple is to open yourself up to hurt, pain, and maybe even public ridicule.

Though we were an enemy of God, he took the initiative in seeking an adoptive relationship with us to become his children.  Paul writes: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8). Your disciple’s behavior may not deserve your love, but that is beside the point.  Love reaches out to her enemies and to those who betray her.

A couple of closing thoughts:

  1. Your forgiveness of your disciple is an opportunity for him to understand the forgiveness and love of God.
  2. You are able to forgive your disciple because Jesus paid for his sin on the cross.  (Even his sin against you.)
  3. To Parents.  Children are a disciple of their parents.  Your child will fail somewhere along the way and bring you heartache, disappointment, and possibly public shame.  You are to forgive as Jesus forgave Peter.  (Be aware.  Your other children are watching how you handle the failure of their siblings.)

Sin and Your Disciple

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Sin is the principal issue in your disciple’s life.  Man was designed to love and to be loved, sin prevents both.  It has estranged him from God and alienated him from others.  It has opened his life to the dark force of shame; a shame that prevents him from drawing near to God and prohibits him from building authentic relationships.  When man lives a detached existence his behavior becomes unstable, erratic, and often self-destructive as he explores ways to attach to others and to belong.

As a discipler, one of your first concerns should be to gain an understanding of your disciple’s perspective of his sin, the cross of Jesus, and his relationship to it.  There are even those who grew up in Christian homes and gospel centered churches that have not been able to apply the gospel to their lives.  Pride and disbelief will cause your disciple to make himself the exception to the rule by believing that he has sinned beyond the patience of God. He must humble himself and acknowledge that he can do nothing to pay for his sin.  His forgiveness is a gift from God because of his mercy and love.

The truth of the good news of Jesus is best learned and experienced in the context of a loving relationship with a parent or a discipler.  The parent/discipler provides an environment of love and forgiveness which illustrates the gospel for the disciple as he explores the gospel and applies its truth to his sin.

A couple of closing thoughts:

  • Most people (including believers) will never have anyone talk with them about their sin and the application of the gospel to their lives.  If you do not discuss it with your child or disciple probably no one will.
  • Just because someone has “made a profession of faith” at some point in his life does not mean he believes he is forgiven by God today.
  • Your disciple’s behavior, rather than his words, is an indicator of his understanding of the gospel.  (Is your disciple comfortable with God? Does your disciple love others well? Does your disciple receive love well? Is his life style contradictory?)
  • Our God is love.  Our message of the gospel is love.  Our love for one another is an expression of the gospel.  Love is a reliable test of a person’s understanding of the gospel.

Love and Right Thinking

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One of the first things to do as a discipler is to stabilize your disciple.  When someone is insecure because of rejection, loneliness, shame, or detachment, not only does his mind not think clearly, he can be irrational.  (A simple illustration of this was your inability to concentrate for a test or to make good choices after your college girlfriend broke up with you.)  What brings an inner steadiness to your disciple is an understanding of God’s love.  Paul writes of this stability in Ephesians 4 “…being rooted and established in love…” Later Paul connects love and right thinking in Philippians: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ…” (This is not a quick process and usually takes months.)

I begin the relationship by asking my disciple to share his story so that I can listen for the points of suffering, rejection, voids, hurt, and disappointments in his life.  His life stories give me insight into his inner man and God’s approach in his life.  It is at these points of suffering that I introduce him to the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God is made of up of three strands:

  • God’s Power- God’s power means God is able to do anything that is in harmony with His wise and holy and perfect nature.
  • God’s Wisdom- God’s wisdom means that God always chooses the best purpose and the best means to that purpose.
  • God’s Love- God’s love means that God eternally gives of Himself to others.  (This definition understands love as self-giving for the benefit of others.)

Stories are powerful conveyers of truth.  I refer to the life stories of biblical characters to illustrate the Lord’s sovereignty in the life of his children. (e.g.  Joseph, Moses, Ruth, Esther, David, Daniel, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.)  Disciples relate differently to different biblical characters, so we explore the various characters until we find one that resonates with him.