Tag Archives: Love

Meet the Parents

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A helpful piece of advice for making followers of Jesus is to meet the family of your disciple, no matter his age. Within minutes of meeting his dad, mom, brothers, and sisters you will have a deeper understanding of his behavior because it was within the context of these relationships that he developed his approach in relating to others.

Jesus told his disciples: “Love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) To follow Jesus is to love others, which means a large part of the disciple making process is teaching your disciple how to love and how to receive love.

For many of your disciples the home was not a place of love. He developed dysfunctional ways of relating to men through his dad and brothers and dysfunctional patterns with women through his mom and sisters. His framework for all relationships was formed by his parent’s treatment of one another, their treatment of him, and how they guided the children in relating to one another or in many cases how they neglected to guide the children.

Usually any façade, concealment, or pretense by your disciple, whether intentional or unintentional, will be exposed by meeting his family. I am often humored at how a person’s disposition can immediately change in the presence of his mom, or dad, or sibling. More than once I have been surprised when I have met the family of one of my disciples. The sooner you can meet your disciple’s family the deeper your relationship will be with him and the more effective your counsel.

The Art of Observation

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The objective for your disciple is to live his life as Jesus did. John writes, “This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:5-6) Part of your role is to observe your disciple in different scenarios in order to commend him when he is living as Jesus would and to exhort him when he is not, as demonstrated for us by Jesus with his men. He formed his team and observed them in many situations over three years, including how the disciples related to one another. Sometimes they did well and other times they did not but in each case Jesus was there in the moment both to commend and to correct.

It is not sufficient to obtain information about your disciple just from him. Even the most honest of people has blind spots, fears, and assumptions, which will limit and skew the information he will give you. Incomplete information will result in you giving him bad counsel and so it is important for you to observe your disciple in various scenarios over a long period of time to ensure that you have an accurate picture of him. This essential component of observation necessitates for you to live in close proximity to your disciple to provide the opportunities for you to see him in different settings.

This is one reason why I believe that the home is the optimal place to make disciples. The family setting provides ample opportunities for the parents to observe the behavior of each child in many situations and so they are able to give accurate and therefore effective encouragement, correction, and instruction. At home the children can both observe the parents living out the values of the kingdom of God and also experience those values as the parents serve and love them.

The Pursuit of Beauty

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Beauty transforms lives. To follow Jesus is to pursue beauty because he is the embodiment of all that is beautiful. The story of Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection is the most beautiful ever told.

Jesus demonstrates for us how to replace the odious with the beautiful through his interaction with his disciples. Beauty is cultivated in the life of a disciple by him experiencing the beautiful. Jesus taught his men the beauty of serving by washing their feet. Later they experienced the beauty of placing others ahead of themselves when Jesus laid down his life for them.

The cost of making a disciple is your willingness to sacrifice your life for your disciple in order for him to experience beauty. Just being taught about serving or being instructed about sacrifice does not change a life; rather it is by the laying down of your life for your disciple that he will come to understand spiritual truth. It is only in the experience of being served or in the experience of having another lay down his life for you does the life changing power of beauty take affect.

The Beauty of Belonging

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Man was created to participate in beauty and not just to be an observer. A lack of beauty rarely comes to mind when dealing with personal problems but when other approaches with your disciple have failed an absence of beauty should be considered.

There is beauty in belonging to others of which the Psalmist writes in Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” To paraphrase, being united to others is a beautiful thing.

This beauty flows from the eternal love between the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God designed man to enter into this beauty by being connected to Him and His other children. But sin in the Garden of Eden brought shame and a separation between God and mankind and man with one another, which resulted in ugliness.

A relational breach demoralizes and creates a void of beauty in a person which will compel him to desperately seek out perverted and distorted forms of beauty to compensate for this vacuum. This search will lead him to self-destructive attitudes and behaviors such as pornography, flirtation, sex, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, materialism, etc.

Your disciple will become confused and frustrated over the contradiction of this behavior. He desires to love, belong, and please the Lord and he is aware that his behavior is sinful and self-destructive but he continues it anyway and he does not understand why. He soon discovers that his self-determination and self-control cannot compensate for this void of beauty.

The nature of God moved Him to restore man’s relationship to Him and mankind’s relationship with one another through the death of Jesus.  So once where there was sin, shame, hatred, and discord there now can be the beauty of unity and peace. Although the story of relational restoration through the gospel is familiar to your disciple the implementation of this reality may prove difficult. A large part of the disciplining process is helping your disciple understand the beauty of how he is restored to God and how he can now be connected to others.

In closing,

  • Only make disciples in the context of community. It is in community that they will experience the beauty of belonging and how to love others.
  • As a community discuss how the group can help each member understand how he or she belongs to the Lord and to the others in the group.
  • Communicate regularly to your disciple how he belongs to his heavenly Father and also to the others in the community. (e.g. Tell him what you have heard from others in what ways they appreciate him.)

How I View My Disciple #4

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Each Tuesday evening our group of disciples has dinner together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This past week during our table discussion there was a frank honesty about our childhoods and how each of us had felt like we had not belonged anywhere while growing up. We had lived a detached existence.

Making followers of Jesus must be done in a group. A large part of the disciple making process is accomplished through my disciple learning how to interrelate with his brothers and sisters in the family of God.  I have wondered how much of Jesus’ training of the twelve was achieved through the disciples learning how to live together for three years vs. the “classroom” instruction of Jesus. I have also wondered how much of the teaching of Jesus flowed out of the conflicts between the disciples not too dissimilar from a parent using sibling discord as a teaching moment for his children.

The essence of our God is the familial interconnectedness of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Their identity is found in the eternal love bond to the other persons of the Godhead. Because we are created in the image of God a disciple can only come to understand his identity and purpose by integrating into a family context with his heavenly Father and his spiritual siblings. In contrast, our culture pushes him toward individualism and independence, which can only lead to confusion and ultimately self-destruction.

Just as a my disciple cannot know himself or understand his giftedness apart from being in this family context, so I cannot know my disciple apart from seeing him interact with his spiritual siblings.  His relationship with God is not visible to me which means he can deceive me into thinking he has a good relationship with God when in reality he may not.  One way I can get a glimpse into my disciple’s relationship with the heavenly Father is through seeing how he relates to others and how others relate to him.

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 I View My Disciple #2

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The kingdom of God multiplies by disciples of Jesus making disciples. Jesus used a seed as a picture of how his kingdom expands. Different types of seeds multiply in different ways.  A strawberry has 200 seeds but a cherry only one. The strawberry has a fast germination each season whereas a cherry pit takes 6 years before it will produce fruit. Although the strawberry plant quickly produces many berries and thousands of seeds it has a short lifespan whereas the cherry tree will produce fruit for many years. The point is not that one seed is better than the other but that they multiply differently.

I have made disciples long enough now to observe their multiplication patterns. Scott makes disciples like strawberries. The Holy Spirit has gifted him to be able to make many disciples quickly but effectively. Dave on the other hand is more like a cherry. He has only a few men but years later his men have proven to be fruitful.

Love should empower me to allow my disciple to be who the Lord intended him to be and deter me from trying to conform him into a type of multiplier that I think is best. It is God who has made my disciple so I had better align myself with the Lord’s purpose for him rather than my ideas.

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).

 

Why Disciples Don’t Grow

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The environment I create in which to make disciples has a greater “formative power” over my disciple than what I say or teach. Although addressing academics, I believe Parker Palmer exposes why our homes, churches, and ministries fail at making disciples of Jesus:

What do students consistently learn that you never intended to teach? . . .the whole culture of the academic community with its systems of rewards and punishments . . . [and its] rules and relationships. . .comprise of a ‘hidden curriculum’ which [has a] greater formative power over the lives of learners than the advertised curriculum.

I am presently evaluating our ministry in Chicago searching for “hidden criteria” or “hidden agendas” that send a double message, which confuses my disciple and invalidates my discipling efforts. The temptation for me is to deflect the responsibility for my disciple’s lack of spiritual growth on him when in fact I may be the problem due to the means by which I am discipling him. I will naturally create an environment that is comfortable for me, catering to my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, which is great for me but a detriment for my disciple.

One example of this is the time that I had gathered a group together to study the bible as a means to make disciples. Most of the people were growing and enjoying the study but some were not. I assigned the blame for those not maturing on them. My reasoning was, “Others in the group are appreciative and growing, so you must be the problem.” It was not until after I had discovered that two in the group had learning disabilities that I realized that I had made spiritual growth inaccessible to them. (In their mind God was inaccessible to them.) I had told the group that this was a safe place to become a follower of Jesus but then chose a means that excluded those who were dyslexic. I had sent the wrong message not through my words but through my means that if they read well, remembered the information, stimulated by the content, and could contribute to the discussion that they were a follower of Jesus.

In closing,

  • If your disciple is not growing, evaluate your approach with him or her. One approach does not fit all.
  • Look at your discipling environments from the perspective of each disciple. How would an introvert feel with what I am doing? What about an international student? Large group settings stimulate some while others are uncomfortable with more than six people.
  • Gather input from your disciples on what they are experiencing from the environment that you have created. Listen especially to those who seem uncomfortable or not growing.
  • Evaluate your successes. Often ministries give credit to the wrong thing for their success.  For example, usually disciples will list their relationship with their discipler as the reason for their growth, not bible studies, teaching, or group time.

Bitter at God #3

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The absence of prayer and meditation on the Word of God in the life of your disciple is an indicator that he may be bitter at the Lord.  The lack of a quiet time is not a discipline issue but a relational one.

Our ministry has many young adults, which means a lot of dating. I am humored at how the same young man who struggles to find time for devotions will discover plenty of time for his new girlfriend. What motivates these couples to make time for one another is not a newfound discipline but love. We spend time with those we love and we make time to do the things that we love.

Man is created in the image of God and therefore we relate to him in a similar way that we do with our fellow humans. As we withdraw emotionally from those who have wronged or disappointed us so we withhold our hearts from the Lord when disillusioned with him. We are usually ill at ease around those who have hurt us and so it is awkward to spend time in prayer with the God whom we believe has let us down.

In closing:

  • The type of people with whom your disciple spends his time is an indicator of his heart condition. Bitter people usually do not spend time with Godly people.
  • Help your disciple understand that his relationship with the Lord is love centered and not just a discipline.
  • When your disciple is struggling with prayer and time meditating on the Bible check to see if he may be disappointed with some circumstance of his life that he has carried over into his relationship with the Lord.