Tag Archives: Family

How I View My Disciple #3

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It is natural in a western culture to acquire a franchise mentality towards making disciples of Jesus.  It is an approach that works well to expand Starbucks or McDonalds because standardization guarantees a consistent product and easy replication, but it does not transfer over to kingdom growth.

A franchise has stringent procedures to follow with little consideration for the employee. Everyone must fit into the model, no matter his or her gifting, to insure the uniformity between the Starbucks in Salina, Kansas with the one in Frankfurt, Germany. (You will not find a Starbucks barista using her ingenuity to create a new drink for a customer.) There is even a uniformity of appearance that cloaks the personality, talent, ethnicity, gender, and age of the employee. We are all familiar with the Starbucks black hat and green apron but not with the people inside those uniforms.

In contrast, disciples of Jesus are best made in a family approach because they are the children of God and each child has a distinct relationship with the heavenly Father. The psalmist writes of this intimacy between Father and child in Psalm 139:13-15:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well;
my frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Since God is creatively involved in the uniqueness of each of His children it would seem advantageous for me to be intentional in discovering the beauty of the distinctiveness of my disciple.  Most of us have felt the pressure from others to be someone we are not or to do something we were not gifted to do. (In my own experience this feeling comes very close to that of rejection.) One way to love and empower your disciple is to intently listen to him to uncover the artwork of God in his inner man.

How To View Your Disciple

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How I view my disciple has a powerful effect upon him. It is impossible to hide from another what I truly think about him. A channel of subliminal communication between my inner man and the hearts of others transmits my true thoughts and feelings no matter how hard I try and conceal them.

My disciple is a child of God who is the apple of His Father’s eye so my view of him and care for him should be such that it pleases his heavenly Father. Even how I speak of him to others is important because God is listening in on all my conversations. One way for me to express love to God is to love and honor His child.

Between the Borst and Quigley families there are six young children in our group in Chicago. This was their first week of school so at our family gathering we prayed for each child by name asking the Lord to bless them and protect them this school year. Now I am not sure in ten years that any of the children will remember that we prayed for them last night but I doubt their parents will ever forget that moment. Matt and Stacey Borst, Jeremy and Julia Quigley all love their children and one way to love them is to love their children. Recently Matt told me that nothing gets to his heart as a dad than for someone to love his kids.

I am sure that the heavenly Father’s heart swelled with delight when Paul told his disciples in Thessalonica: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19).

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you” (1 Thessalonians 3:9).

 

Redeeming Memories

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The identity of your disciple is shaped by his memories. To understand him and his behavior you will need to become familiar with these memories. A way to explore both his good and painful memories is for the two of you together to develop a timeline of his life. This needs to be done in a context of trust because he will feel vulnerable as he discloses both his cherished and wounding memories. (It is hurtful for a cherished memory not to be valued by another.)

Your disciple’s memories may be distorted so it is important to discern how he remembers his past, whether accurate or inaccurate, because how he remembers events and people affects his behavior today. For example, he may remember his second grade teacher as not liking him because she placed him in “time out” over a minor playground incident, when in reality she may have been an excellent teacher, but what he will carry with him into adulthood is the inaccurate memory of “mean” Miss Crump. I have also had a disciple remember his family as “wonderful” but in reality it was dysfunctional, while still another presented his family as a bad experience but in actuality it was a loving home.

Israel’s fear distorted their memory of Egypt and the Exodus. They remembered things how they wanted them to be remembered in order to justify their actions:

The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.’  (Exodus 16:3)

Israel remembered how wonderful Egypt was but in actuality they had been miserable. Moses corrected Israel’s memory with the truth of their past so that they could rightly live in the future.

A couple things to keep in mind:

  1. When exploring his memories your disciple will be dealing with powerful emotions so expect contradictions and illogical conclusions, this is part of the memory correcting process.
  2. Remembering the past will take months for your disciple to process.
  3. The more painful his past the more resistance he will be to drawing up memories.
  4. Talk to your disciple’s family and friends to get an accurate view of the history of his life.

Bitter at God #2

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Your disciple has the potential to completely misinterpret the circumstances of his life, which could set him up to become bitter at the Lord. During the Exodus the Israelites surveyed their circumstances and concluded:

The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. (Deuteronomy 1:26)

Moses then gives a totally different perspective of the same situation:

The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.  (Deuteronomy 1:30-31)

The Israelites believed the Lord’s intent was hate while his true motivation was a fatherly love and they were convinced of their pending doom while in actuality the Lord was fighting for their good.

The first rule of waterskiing is, “Don’t look down at the water,” which of course is naturally what new skiers want to do. The skiers’ adage that instructors tell new skiers says, “If you look down you’ll fall down.” Israel focused on the wrong thing by looking at their circumstances and therefore concluded that God hated them while Caleb, in the midst of the same conditions, looked at the character of God and found courage.

Your friendship serves as a point of reference for your disciple as he is tossed back and forth between his despair that God is failing him and his belief in the goodness of God. Just as the instructor in the boat yells to the new water-skier, “Don’t look down at the water!” so your role is remind your disciple to focus on the character of God and not on the circumstances.

In Closing:

  • Although it is difficult to watch your disciple’s faith being tested it is an essential part of his maturing process.
  • Not only do threatening circumstances reveal to you your disciple’s perception of the Lord, it is also the only way he can know the degree of his trust in the Lord.
  • The Lord will not test your disciple one millisecond beyond what he can endure nor give him an ounce of trial more than he can bear.

Teaching Your Disciple How to Forgive #4

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Recently a guy said to me, “Lewie, what is wrong with me? I am doing the very things I swore I would never do!” His dad later asked me, “What has happened to my son? I feel like I don’t know him anymore.” A dramatic change in your disciple’s behavior is probably not as sudden as it appears. Though hidden for years a root of bitterness buried in the secrecy of his heart will eventually manifest its fruit in his life.

While young your disciple can manage his bitterness and keep it at bay. But as he grows older he accumulates more hurt and disappointment that if not dealt with properly moves him towards a tipping point where the bitterness overwhelms him and takes over his life. Even his future is now controlled by his past hurt.

There is an agenda behind all bitterness.  Your disciple targets his bitterness with precision. A son or daughter knows exactly what will hurt and disappoint his mom and dad, as any student knows the values of his school, and a parishioner understands what will get the attention of her church.  The bitter person uses this knowledge as a means to either get the attention of another, to seek revenge, or to cause a person to pay for a wrong done.

Some closing insights on bitterness and forgiveness:

  • Not only will it frustrate your disciple but it will also be futile to try and get him to change his behavior before he understands how to forgive those who have hurt him.
  • You will need to partner with your disciple as he confronts his past because fear will hinder him from facing his hurt and disappointment.
  • All bitterness is ultimately directed towards God.  (More on that later.)

Teaching Your Disciple How to Forgive #3

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Most people are unaware of their bitterness. As a parasite keeps itself undetectable to its host so bitterness eludes your disciple. Together you and he must diligently search for the bitterness in his heart because if not dealt with properly it will destroy him.  Oh, he may live to an old age but his inner-man will shrivel up, harden, and contaminate those around him. Bitterness in never confined to the individual, it is an infectious disease that will adversely affect others around him as told in Hebrews 12:15, “ …that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” It will devastate his marriage, family, and friendships.

One reason that a person is unaware of the bitterness in his life is because of his misconception of the characteristics of bitterness.  We tend to think of a bitter person as cantankerous, resentful, hateful, and negative. Your disciple compares himself to those he considers bitter and is convinced that though others may be bitter, he certainly is not.

I have found that the best way to ease into the topic of bitterness is by having my disciple tell me his life story. I begin the process by having him draw a timeline of his life on a piece of paper.  Over weeks we build the timeline as he tells me of the events of his life from birth until the present. As your disciple tells his story you are listening for the hurt and disappointments no matter how young he was at the time or how seemingly insignificant the incident.

A couple of insights about bitterness:

  • For many the years immediately after college is a time when they struggle with bitterness. (I will explain more in a later post.)
  • Bitterness has the intent of revenge aimed toward a particular individual or organization.
  • Whenever you find bitterness you can usually uncover a disappointment.

Symbol Usage

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Recently a Christian told me that there was nothing he enjoyed more than lighting up a cigarette in front of other Christians just to make a statement.  Cigarette smoking has become for him a symbol that he uses to disassociate himself from a certain “brand” of Christianity.  Cigarette smoking in itself is not a symbol but when smoking is used to convey a message it becomes a symbol.

Whatever the motive behind your disciple’s symbols it is important for you to investigate them in order to know and understand him.  He may not even be aware that he has embraced certain symbols let alone what the motive is behind them and so it is your job to help him explore the reasoning in each of his symbols.  Some symbols are noble while others are self-destructive.

There are several ways that your disciple may use a symbol:

  1. Identification.  He chooses symbols to identify to whom or what he belongs.  Neal’s room is decorated in team pennants from the Bulls, Cubs, Bears, and Black Hawks as he unabashedly declares himself a Chicagoan.
  2. Disassociation.  Another use of a symbol is to distance oneself from a particular person, group, or ideology as seen in the cigarette illustration above.
  3. A Weapon.  Symbols can be used as a weapon to hurt others.  A child knows exactly which symbols will upset his parents or “get his parent’s goat” as the saying goes.  A child can also target his parents by desecrating a symbol that his parents hold dear.
  4. A Cry for help.  Your disciple may have cried out for help for years to his parents, friends, teachers, and to fellow believers to no avail, and so in desperation he turns to a “flare gun” symbol that he hopes will get someone’s attention.

Longing to Belong

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Parents and disciple makers get it wrong when they try and form a person’s character by outward conformity.  It is putting the second thing first, the cart before the horse.  To make a disciple of Jesus begins by engrafting him into a group (family) where he belongs and then out of this belonging will flow the character of Jesus. It is the first thing.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “…you can’t get second things by putting them first.  You get second things only by putting first things first” [1]. It is fruitless to try and get your disciple to live by kingdom values or to have a right attitude if he does not understand to whom he belongs.  You will become frustrated and you will frustrate your disciple if you do not begin by helping him unite to God and to a people, which I would argue are inseparable.

Man is created in the image of God, which means he was designed to belong.  When your disciple feels disconnected his behavior will become erratic and often self-destructive as he seeks to compensate for his detachment.   He will attach himself to some inappropriate group through inappropriate bonds to give the illusion that he belongs somewhere and to someone.

When Jesus called his men to follow him, he was also calling them to belong to a group of 12 other men. Jesus formed a community not only because it flowed out his nature but also because he knew that for his disciples to live as God intended they must belong to one another through bonds formed by love.

In closing:

  • Rarely do I disciple someone apart from being with him in community.
  • A large part of the discipling process is teaching your disciple how to love and receive love and how to serve others and to be served in community.
  • Starting a discipling community is difficult as seen in Jesus’ disciples’ relationship with one another.  It is more difficult than starting a bible study, small group, or maybe even a church plant.  It takes months and years rather than weeks.  The process does become easier as your disciples learn how to love one another.

[1] C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 280.

 

The Manipulator #3

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A manipulator disrupts and neutralizes your disciple’s relationship with his family and friends. She subtlety drives a velvet wedge between your disciple and all his relationships.  Relationships that once were strong are now strained.  In the beginning the wedge is imperceptible so that it seems as if the manipulator wants a relationship with your disciple’s family and friends but then over time there grows a distance between him and all his relationships.  A good manipulator deceives your disciple so well that when his relationships do become detached he believes that others are the problem, not him.

In Daniel chapter 6 we see how effectively a manipulator can neutralizes a relationship. King Darius loved Daniel and planned to promote him to rule over the whole kingdom.  Yet manipulators who surrounded the king were so crafty that they were able to neutralize his relationship with Daniel even though Darius was the most powerful man in the world.  (Never underestimate the shrewdness of a manipulator.)

The account states:

Then they (the manipulators) said to the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O King, or to the decree you put in writing.  He still prays three times a day.”  When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made ever effort until sundown to save him. (Daniel 6 13-14)

In the end Darius was powerless to help Daniel.

Random closing thoughts:

  • A parent who is a manipulator seeks to control his child and all the child’s relationships under the guise of “good parenting.”
  • A mate who is a manipulator creates a distance between his wife’s relationship with her family and friends.  He may not want children for fear that he will lose control of his wife or have to share her with someone else.
  • A child who is a manipulator will drive a wedge between his mom and dad and will seek to control his parent’s relationships with his siblings.
  • A friend who is a manipulator disrupts a person’s relationship with old friends and family.
  • A new girlfriend should not disrupt a guy’s relationship with his parents or friends but actually she should be a catalyst to draw his family and friends closer together.
  • A non-manipulator will fit into existing family and friend relationships.

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.