The Number One Thing to Invest in a Disciple is…
…your time.
This is far more costly than any amount of money you can give. It will be inconvenient. There will be times of frustration. It’s not the most efficient process you’ve ever been a part of.
But that time spent pouring over God’s word and praying through the issues of the heart and eating and laughing together and teaching/learning to share the Gospel and sometimes even doing nothing at all…all of it is investing in someone in a way that will pay off down the road, possibly in a way that you’ll never see.
Looking back over the history of those who have discipled me, its pretty clear that the most meaningful contribution many of the people in my life have given me was not a new teaching or a skill. They simply opened up their homes, their lives, and their calendars to me. I learned the most from those who made time to show me who they were.
We live in a rushed society. There will always be a temptation not to be generous with your time, but the most effective disciple makers will be those who spend time with those they are discipling.
Who are you spending time with?
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Uneducated and Untrained, But with Jesus
Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.
Peter and John were uneducated and untrained men. In this way they are almost the exact opposite of the kind of people we would prefer to serve our churches or share the Gospel. We like people to be educated and trained–we believe they are better to lead and to guide others. Instead, Peter and John were the construction worker, the pizza delivery guy, or the car salesman of their day.
The difference was that these two men had been with Jesus. They had both trained underneath of Him as followers while He was here on Earth and by the presence of the Holy Spirit, they had been with Jesus in an ongoing way since Pentecost. It was the fact that they had been with Jesus that made these guys different from the other unlearned and untrained men that the rulers and Elders were used to.
Often in Christianity, we do this backwards. We select workers who are trained and educated but haven’t been with Jesus. We’re content with well-trained men who know theology and how to teach, but don’t bear the marks of having been with Christ.
On the other hand, we cannot just look to people who are untrained and uneducated to serve and proclaim the good news apart from Jesus. We have to teach people, trained or untrained, to be with Christ. They have to understand the vitality of a life lived close to the resurrected Jesus.
The sweet spot…the place where Christianity becomes alive and infectious and reproducible…is where we can equip normal, everyday people who many would look at and call untrained and uneducated to be with Jesus. If we can put the Gospel and the truth of Christianity in the hands of a common man who knows how to be with Christ, we are that much closer to turning the world upside down.
Wisdom, Foundations, and the Sermon on the Mount
I woke up this morning stirred to write about the importance of foundations. So often many of the people I know have been sidetracked in their lives because their lives were built on the wrong foundations. Those with any kind of construction experience know that if a foundation is slightly off, the whole building built on top of it will suffer. The problem is so often we want a building so badly that we neglect building foundations in our lives the right way.
Several weeks ago I was talking to a co-worker about a house her family owned at a beach. It was built on firm ground and had weathered several storms well. There were other people who had wanted a house so close to the beach that they had built their houses on sand. These houses had significant storm damage that had totally ruined these houses. I looked at her and said, “Have none of these people read Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish builder?” Apparently, they had not.
Jesus told this story:
Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.
One of the things that has been revolutionary in my life and the lives of others I know is really applying this simple story to our lives. We in the West spend a ton of time teaching people what to believe about God, Jesus, and Christianity. But according to that story, none of that is building our lives on the solid rock. Instead, building our lives on a solid foundation means listening to Jesus’ teaching and doing what it says. The foolish man isn’t someone who resisted the teachings of Jesus, but he is someone who heard and didn’t put into practice what Jesus said.
And while obeying all of Jesus’ teaching is important, this teaching ends a famous set of teachings by Jesus that we call the Sermon on the Mount. This parable is meant to emphasize the importance of practicing the teachings Jesus gives in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. So often we will spend time in our house churches and discipleship groups reading the Sermon on the Mount and talking about how we can build our lives obeying these truths. The disciples that have done so are the ones who have stood the test of time.
The promise of Jesus is that there will be storms that come. Some of them are the general storms of life, testing and trials that are common to every era of history. Some storms are the storms of persecution, which Peter promises that everyone who lives a godly life will endure. There will also be eschatological, end-time storms that come and test the foundations of individuals and the church. Regardless of which storms we encounter, it is by obeying the truths found in the Sermon on the Mount by relying on the power of the Holy Spirit that we stand strong in the hour of testing.
But the time to build the foundation is not in the storm. The time to build a strong foundation is now. It will be too late to begin to obey Jesus’ teaching in the midst of the storm. Are you reading AND obeying Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5, 6, & 7? If not, it’s not too late to go back and begin to put into practice the things Jesus taught there. If you are living out those truths, start thinking about how to train others that you are bringing to Christ and raising up to obey these truths.
The future you and those you disciple will thank you.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 