I have been kind of blank lately on topics for a blog post. So I thought I'd share the devotion a wrote and shared at last year's Women's Retreat. Hope the Holy Spirit uses it to speak to someone!!! (My apologies if it doesn't read too smoothly--this is just the draft I used to speak from!)
I had a hard time deciding what
I should talk about today for our devotion. Anything I could think of seemed
like it would fall short considering the audience. My presumption was and is
that any lady who would be committing her weekend to a women’s retreat probably
knows the basics. I didn’t think there would probably be a topic simple enough
for myself to grasp and talk about that would be the least bit challenging to
the group of ladies that would be here. So I prayed God would lead me to
exactly what He would want me to share and while I know what I will be sharing
today will not be anything new for any of you, my prayer is the thru the Holy
Spirit and in God’s perfect timing He will speak to each of you in a personal,
relevant, and fresh way.
With that said, I will back up
a bit to help you understand where I’m going with today’s devotion. I was a new
believer and moved to Cape in 2003. Having not been raised in church, it was a
very scary step for me to enter Cape Bible Chapel. For those of you who were raised in church or have been
going to church for many years, we can quickly forget the uncomfortable feeling
the unchurched can feel when stepping foot in a church. As a new believer, I
did not know God’s word. I did not know other Christians (except my 2 sisters)
and I certainly did not know what the Christian life looked like. Fortunately
for me, God used some very amazing Christians who reached out to me and helped
me grow in my walk. I had many very amazing, mature Christians in the small
group I joined who helped teach me God’s truth. In addition to that, there were
a handful of ladies (some of you may know them—Holly Black/Philips, Teri Jones,
Carrie Beth Smith) who opened their lives (and home) to me (as well as Robyn
Martin) and walked beside me in my new Christian journey. This study and
companionship went on for years and God used it to grow me in tremendous ways.
Looking back I recognize there was something going on that was more than just
friendship. I was being discipled.
After several years of Carrie
opening her home and meeting with us ladies, her season had come to an end. I
was so sad to see this group end and God led me to something very specific and
important I’d like to share with you today. He led me to John 21:15-17 and I’d
like to read that to you now:
15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter,
“Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love
me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you
love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time,
“Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love
you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.
The Lord led me to read these verses in Anne Graham Lotz’s
book, Just Give Me Jesus. (and to be
sure to give credit, this next section is right from her book—not my original
thoughts!!) As she describes Jesus’ intention in asking Peter “ do you love me
more than these,” he was asking Peter if he loved him more than the other
disciples?
Her question to us in application is how would we answer
that question?
·
Do
we love Jesus more than our friends?
·
More
than our family?
·
More
than anyone else?
·
More
than our career?
·
More
than our money & possessions?
·
More
than our popularity?
·
Our
comfort?
·
Our
beauty and our body?
·
Our
diet and exercise?
Could
Peter honestly say, and can we honestly say, yes, we love you more than these?
If you, like Peter, can say today that
you love Jesus even a little, then you were given a threefold mission plan. The first: “feed my lambs”
John 21:15
In her book, Lotz goes on to explain
that obviously Jesus wasn’t speaking of baby sheep. But in a spiritual sense,
he was. We know the Bible tells us Jesus is the Good Shepherd, so believers are
referred to as sheep. So the reference to lambs would be a reference to new
believers. Anne Graham Lotz tells of a visit in Australia where she was helping
in the kitchen. When asked what she could do to help, she was asked to get the
owners lamb out of the kitchen and outside. The friend handed her a bottle and
to her confusion, she was able to bottle feed the lamb. From this Lotz points
out: “Lambs can’t eat on their own. They don’t graze or nibble. They have to be
bottle-fed. New believers or young children are like that too. They can’t enter
into theological debates or get involved in word studies or argue the value of
lexicons or even interpret the parables. They have a difficult time digging out
truth from Scripture for themselves because it is totally unfamiliar to them.
So they need to be “bottle fed” or “spoon fed.” Someone needs to sit down with
them and teach them the stories and simple truths of the Bible. They need
someone like you, who gets involved in their lives for no reason other than you
love Jesus, and He has given you “lambs” as your mission.
Here’s my own personal illustration. A
few years back I was talking with my sister-in-law, Tessa on the phone and she
said she was canning. She’d mentioned how someone had given her a ton of
cucumbers. We continued on in the conversation and she later mentioned how many
pickles she would soon have. I was quiet and let her talk a bit longer and then
finally asked, “so are you telling me pickles are cucumbers?!” She was like,
“oh please tell me you are kidding and knew that!” I was shocked. I could not
believe I had lived 27/28 years (however old I was at the time) and no one had
ever told me that pickles are cucumbers!!! Anyway, I use that illustration for
our spiritual lives. I had no way of knowing this hidden truth about pickles,
until someone told me! The same goes for the gospel and truths of scripture. Hannah
Schultz said one time at a women’s event—it doesn’t matter where you are in
your walk with Christ, you are always ahead of someone else and God can use you
in their life. So as Anne Graham Lotz asks in her book, can you think of right
now any lambs you could be feeding? Your children? Children at church?
Teenagers/youth? College students trying to make their faith their own and not
their parents? New believers in a Bible
study you are in where no one else wants to take the time to answer their many
questions? Or even someone who is not yet a Christian and may seem resistant,
but need the truth fed to them because they don’t even know they need the
nutrition of it to unveil their eyes to God’s truth!
After Jesus said to feed His lambs,
Jesus’ next command is to
“take care of my sheep.” Lotz
describes it this way: “Sheep can get into all sorts of difficulty from
wandering away from the flock and becoming lost, to getting brambles embedded
in their wool, to suffering nose flies or attacks from wolves. They need
constant attention and care from the shepherd.” So now we know we have lambs in
our lives who need to be fed, let’s think about how we can live out Jesus’
command to take care of His sheep.
Examples she gives in the book of sheep
who need taken care of might be believers you know from church, work, anyone who
has needs. Think about individuals who are wandering away from church, drifting
out of fellowship with other Christians, people who are being lured into
worldliness, those who are lured by worldly popularity, prestige, position,
power, or just things? These are other believers who could be struggling
financially, or with marital problems, problems at work, physical illness or
emotional stress. We all have struggles throughout our lives and Christ’s
command to take care of His sheep gives us all the responsibility and commandment
to take care of other believers and meet their needs. The convicting thing
about this is we know we have people in need in our church body and we are
being disobedient by ignoring their needs. We are being disobedient by thinking
their problems and needs will be fixed by something or someone else. Jesus
commanded us to take on the responsibility and to ignore His command would be
to disobey Him.
Lotz gives suggestions on ways to take
care of these sheep. She says, “Call him, write him, encourage him, pray for
him, invite him to a ball game. Meet her for lunch, baby-sit her kids, make her
dinner or just help in practical ways.” I think these are all great
suggestions. I don’t know if you all do the same as me, but I tend to overwhelm
myself with what I can do to help others. However, God has recently shown me
that ministering to others can be a simple as just being a friend. Someone to
talk with, spend time with…someone who just cares.
The last command Jesus gave Peter was
to “feed His sheep.”
While lambs must be bottle fed, more mature sheep just need to be provided with
green pasture. Ways Lotz gives to do this is by opening your home for a Bible
study, or helping lead a Sunday school class. I love how Lotz puts it: “just
see what you can do to make sure each sheep is in a green pasture, grazing on
the Word of God for himself or herself.”
It was this last command of Jesus’, to
feed His sheep, that led me to continue Carrie’s study in my own home. I opened
my home every Thursday night for whoever would want to come. This has been
going on for the past several years and there were many times I questioned if
God had really convicted me to do this because it would often end up being just
me and one other person. I would think—should I even bother with this? No one
wants to come!! But I felt God’s leading that I should always make it
available, even if only one person came. In fact there were several occasion it
ended up being only me and Sara Atkinson, who will share her testimony this
morning. While in my mind I was thinking, man why am I doing this if only one
person is coming—God was using it for much grander things because God used it
to minister to Sara because in His perfect timing He was unveiling her eyes to
His truth. It was nothing grand, nothing exciting (and to her probably boring)
and from man’s perspective it didn’t seem like anything monumental, but in
God’s perspective it was important because He used it among other things to
lead Sara to His truth. I learned thru that experience that even though the
things God tells me to do don’t always look the way I think they should, all I
need to focus on is obeying what He has commanded me to do. And we all know now
(if we didn’t already!) that He has commanded us to feed His lambs, take care
of His sheep, and feed His sheep.
One other thing Lotz goes on to say
that I want to make mention of is that there are hungry sheep everywhere. We
don’t have to go on a search to find them—they are all around us!! We have
neighbors, co-workers, friends, etc we are already in contact with. We live in
a world where people are starving for the truth. The majority of people we live
around in our culture are being fed on junk food. Many peoples’ main source of
truth comes from or is focused on reality television, trivia of what celebrity
couple is breaking up, consumed with sports, distracted by the state of our
government and politics. The people around us need real food. As Lotz says,
“Jesus offered Himself as the Bread of Life that comes down from heaven to
satisfy the hungry soul.” Most people would not be able to distinguish lies
from truth because they are never consuming the true Word of God to help them
distinguish what the truth is.
A friend just shared a great analogy
she had heard a speaker share a few weeks ago. The speaker told the story of a
family. The family had met a man who began spending time with them. He would
often hang out and while he did not share the same values as they did, they
decided to continue opening their home to him. They enjoyed his companionship
so they went ahead and overlooked the negative influence some of his values and
ideas may have had on them. Before too long the man began spending more time
with the youngest daughter. In fact they would spend hours together sometimes.
Not long after this the mother and father began to have conflict in their
marriage. The man’s influence in their lives had led them to compromise some of
their beliefs and standards and they began to experience a rift in their home
and marriage. The speaker went on to reveal who this man was…he was the television.
I LOVED this analogy. In fact, it took me a few minutes to even process the
magnitude of it. And I don’t share this to try and convince everyone they need
to throw away their tvs. The reason I
share this example is to tie back to what I was saying about how we have people
all around us who are not influenced by truth, but they are fed daily on lies
of the world. They are fed on worldly standards of what is right and wrong. As
believers, many of the basics seem obvious to us and we easily forget that
those around us who have been fed on junk food don’t know these truths of God’s
word. They need to be fed (either bottle fed or with a green pasture given to
them) with the Bible.
In fact, I’d like to share some
statistics I read about Bible literacy.
- Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels.
- Many professing Christians cannot identify more than 2 or 3 of the disciples.
- 60 percent of Americans cannot even name five of the Ten Commandments.
- 82 percent of Americans believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a Bible verse
- 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife
- A survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.
- A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that Billy Graham preached the Sermon on the Mount.
- Six out of ten Americans reject the existence of Satan
- Four out of ten Americans believe that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins
- Five out of ten believe that anyone who is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven
- Four out of ten believe that the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths
- Seven out of ten born again Christians said they do not believe in moral absolutes
- Only one out of ten Christians base their moral decision making on the principles taught in the Bible
- 54 percent believe truth can be discovered only through logic, human reasoning and personal experience
Okay, so I share those statistics not
to try and say Bible knowledge or trivia are equal to salvation, but just to
make a point that as believers who are commanded to make disciplies—Matthew 28:19 Jesus commanded us
to go
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit,” He didn’t just say you
should try this, but He commanded us to make disciples…and
judging from those statistics and what we see in our culture, it doesn’t look
like we are doing the greatest job. As one article I read put it, “The goal of discipleship is our
being formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.
Disciple-makers are to lead people to Christ and help them mature spiritually.
Disciple-makers should have an intense love, concern and lifelong care for
those to whom they are spiritual parents. When we lead people to Christ, we are
to stand by them, helping them grow in Christ until they are fully trained.”
So in order to help others grow and mature, we must be teaching them the truths
of Gods word. 1 Peter
2:2-3 says this: “"Like
newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in
your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” That
is what we do with discipling the lambs and sheep. We first give them the milk
and then move them onto solid foods—or in other words the meat of truth. Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “In fact,
though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the
elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the
teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant
use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil" So we
ourselves need to make sure we are moving on to solid foods and then we are
commanded by Jesus to disciple others and help them move on to solid foods.
If you are like me, you probably often
tell yourself, “can I really make a difference anyway?” I wanted to share a
great story with you about that. There was a Christian gentleman named Edward
Kimball. He had felt the Lord leading him to go and speak to one of his
students employed as a shoe clerk. He recounts that day with this quote:
I
thought maybe my mission might embarrass the boy, that when I went away the
other clerks might ask who I was and when they learned might taunt him and ask
if I was trying to make a good boy out of him. While I was pondering over it
all I passed the store without noticing it. Then when I found I had gone by the
door I determined to make a dash for it and have it over at once.
In spite of his hesitation and fear of
sharing the gospel with this young man, Kimball found him in the shoe store and
with tears in his eyes he shared the gospel of Christ’s love to this young man.
Kimball says he does not even remember what he said—but this young clerk
received Jesus Christ that very hour. Probably none of you here know or
remember who Edward Kimball was, but many of you here probably have heard of
the young shoe store clerk—DL Moody (for any who may not know, DL Moody went
on to become a famour evangelist and founded the Moody Church and Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago.
The author of “Down to Earth
Disicpling” who wrote about this story said the following quote:
Though Moody attended church services,
that is not where he came to Christ. It was not even in Sunday school
class—though both the class and the church services prepared him. It was not a
program that reached Moody, but rather the one-to-one personal attentiveness of
a fearful Sunday school teacher.
And I think that is the most important
thing we need to remember if we want to go and make disciples. Yes, ministering
to others at church on Sunday mornings is necessary and great. But discipleship
takes more than that (and many that need discipled won’t be found in church
anyway). It requires, like he said, personal attentiveness. Meeting one on one
with people or in smaller groups. Displing means going along side someone in
their life and helping them see how to live according to God’s word. I will
give you another example in my life.
Several years ago I had a curling iron that the on button broke off. So
I would grab something to use that was small enough to stick in and power it
on. Time after time, I noticed this painful sensation in my hand as I did it. I
began to think, wow am I getting arthritis? It seems like every time I put my
hand in this position to stick this thing in here to turn this curling iron on
my hand hurts. Hmm..I couldn’t figure it out. Well eventually (and I’m
obviously slow to clue into things) I realized that the tiny metal cuticle scissors
I was using to power on my broken curling iron was electrocuting me. The reason
my hand hurt was because I was shocking myself. Now—if I had had a person of
more intelligence by my side while doing this—I could have learned much earlier
that I was actually shocking myself and avoided doing the same, painful action
over and over everyday. Isn’t that what discipling is? Walking daily in a
relationship with someone and helping them see—God wants us to do this, or
God’s word tells us to avoid that?
Something we have to remember about
discipling is—it does
require some sacrifice. It means sacrificing the time we’d rather use
working extra hours at work, or the many hours we’d rather veg in front of the
tv, or even that spare time you had reserved for yourself for some “me time.” So
it can require the sacrifice of time, and second, the sacrifice of your standard. Notice I did not
say it requires you to sacrifice your standards, but rather it requires you to
sacrifice your standard. What I mean by this is that if you are going to reach
out to the lost or to believers who aren’t walking in the truth, you will be
exposed to ways that don’t meet your standard. Cursing, promiscuity, drunkenness,
immorality, worldliness—all these things are not the way we as believers want
to allow ourselves to behave, but in reaching others, instead of trying to
project our Godly standard on them—we must meet them where they are by showing
them God’s grace (the same grace we’ve been shown)—without behaving that way
ourselves. And before we begin looking down on them for their outward sin, we
must, first, quickly remind ourselves of our inward sin that isn’t as obvious. And second, remember if we are any different
from them—it is only by God’s grace because as the Apostle Paul said in 1 Cor. 4:7, “What do you have
that you did not receive?” Jesus hung out with prostitutes, drunks, and
the immoral. He met them where they were and so should we.
And third, the sacrifice of being comfortable. Doing
this requires stepping out of your comfort zone. It requires not caring about
what others may think about you and going out on a limb to reach out to that
other person.
I don’t know about you, but I get
uncomfortable doing things and saying things that someone may not agree with,
something someone may not want to hear, or ministering to someone when I myself
know I am not qualified. So I will share two areas of struggle in myself when
it comes to discipling (or even in mentoring): 1. being self-obsessed; attack of the enemy.
1.
Being
self-obsessed. If all I do is worry about saying the wrong thing, or
worry about what so & so will think if I do this, or harp on anything
negative about myself—I am still being self obsessed even if it is in a
negative light instead of a positive, prideful light. A wonderful book I highly
recommend by Tim Keller is “The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness.” Here is a great
quote from the book which I believe sums it up: "...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking
more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less."
2.
The
attack of the enemy. As you disciple or mentor someone,
you will hear the enemy say to you—“who are you to try and help or advise
another? Look at your life, you don’t have it all together!” As Jesus did we
have to combat the enemy with scritpure, which says “God’s power is made perfect in my weakness.” 2 Cor.
12: 9. Our goal in discipling or mentoring someone is not to try and
make ourselves look perfect, but rather to show that person we are sinners and
to point them to the Savoir.
Below you will see the wheel illustration use by The Navigators. That
is what our life should look like. We walk in faith with a vertical
relationship of prayer and the word to hear God speak and to speak to Him; the
natural result is the horizontal work of witnessing and fellowship. When we are
moving in our walk, that wheel is turning. What people shouldn’t focus on is
us, but rather when that wheel is moving we see Christ is the center. As a
wheel turns the spokes are a blur, it should be Christ in the center that is
seen by others.
So
jumping back to stepping out of our comfort zone for others, I will again use
Sara as an example since she’ll be sharing her testimony today. She graduated
school with my husband, so the only connection I had with her was the couple
times I’d met her thru him. But when she became pregnant, I found a way to try
and connect with her. I think that is another key in disicpling—is meeting people where they are at. If
we wait to connect with them until they get saved or become a believer or start
going to church, we will probably never have the opportunity to connect with
them. When I found out she was pregnant, we were able to meet up for coffee or
dessert and just talk about life; and in her instance the connection was
pregnancy. Thru that we were able to connect and build a relationship. And at
that point in time, Sara was a very different person. We didn’t have a lot in
common, but the goal for me was to find at least one way to connect with her
and fortunately pregnancy was a way we could relate. And when we look at the
example of Jesus what he showed us was not the goal of trying to build a huge
church, but he focused on personal attentiveness and relationships
with a few men. Sometimes I think we
question whether we can make a difference, or maybe we even question if just
focusing on one person (or just a few) is of significance. We may ask ourselves,
wouldn’t it be better to do something big. Something that would affect more
people? I love this quote by Charles
Spurgeon: “Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when
forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts and not on marble.”
Another challenge to discipling, I
believe is authenticity. 1
Peter 2:12 says, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they
accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the
day he visits us.” Paul also says in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, “Make it your ambition to lead a
quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we
commanded you; so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in
any need.” So in order to disciple others you must 1. Have been born again and be a follower of
Jesus Christ; and 2. Be living it out. As the author puts it in Down to Earth Discipling, “If
the gospel has made no difference in our lives and if we are not attractive to
nonbelievers, then our words about Christ are to no avail.” Paul tells us that we are to be the “sweet aroma of the knowledge of
Him. (2 Cor. 2:14). As Christ followers, do our lives reflect what we
believe? Are we genuine? If we say we are a Christian and we have truly been
born again—because we know there are plenty of people who claim to be
Christians and are Christians in name only, they have not displayed a life that
has changed and turned to follow Christ—do our lives show it? Because if we are
going to tell others to follow Him and obey Him, the only way they will be
convinced of such truth is if we stand out from the rest of the world. Is there
something different about us? Do we do things differently? Do we handle
situations differently? Do we react differently? To me—this is very convicting.
Most importantly—when we don’t behave the way we should are we genuine in
admitting our guilt and repenting openly for nonbelievers to understand the
message of the gospel?? As I mentioned earlier, we can never be perfect—but are
we genuine in that we are trying to practice what we preach, but when we fall
short we confess it and repent.
A couple final thoughts. If you are
like me, you may be thinking—I am not equipped to do this. I have too much to
learn still. Or I need to be fed, I don’t have time to feed others. My response
to that and what I have learned from experience is—you will learn more by
trying to minister and disciple others than you would just trying to feed soley
yourself. If you know you are going to lead a Bible study or you know you are
going to meet with a friend to discuss a particular subject of the Bible, you
have to prepare yourself. So you will feed and equip yourself as you walk along
side that person. You can learn things together and be challenged by the same
things. As one of the books I was reading put it, “A laborer can have the same struggles as a new
believer.” I can tell you from experience that I get just as much or
more from the Thursday night Bible study I lead. The ladies God brings to that
group are more of a blessing to me than I ever could be to them. I am sure I
learn more from them and by preparing for our study than I would on my own. As
it says in Proverbs 27:17,
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Sharpen others and
they will do the same for you. And for that iron to sharpen iron—it must touch.
I hope you all will be challenged like me to touch others lives, in a personal way.
People matter. Relationships matter. Everything else is just fluff.
APPLICATION: In the upcoming week,
will you challenge yourself to do at
least one of the following things to live out the command of discipling
others?
1.
Meet a friend one-on-one for coffee, dessert, walk in the park, etc. with
intention of encouraging them in the faith.
2.
Call someone (who would not be expecting
a call from you) to intentionally ask them how they are doing, to minister
to them, and to encourage them in their walk with Christ.
3. Mail a note or card to someone with words that direct their
attention toward Christ, His love for them, and their need for Him.4. Pick a person you see weekly in
Bible study, at work, school, church, etc. and regardless of whether they are a
believer or not, be intentional in talking to them, praying for them, and
building a relationship with them (with the ultimate goal being to encourage
them in the faith).
I want to close with some words that
were the confirmation to me to speak on this topic. A few months ago I went to
the Joel Rosenburg simulcast where he was talking about the state of our
country along with Bible prophecy. God in His perfect timing had Joel close we
these thoughts:q
1.
Who
is investing in me? (do you have a mentor or someone discipling you)
2.
Who
am I investing in? (who are you discipling?)
He used the example of Paul and
Timothy. Ask yourself today, “who is my
Paul and is helping me become a better woman of God? And who is my Timothy that
I am investing in?
Lastly, we have to remember that it was
a command by Jesus to go and make disciples. In his simulcast Joel said
something so convicting. He said, when you get to heaven and you come face to
face with God and He asks,
“Where are your disciples? Show me your disciples” What will you say?
It’s not a question of if we feel like it, but a command by Jesus Himself. When
you see Him, will you be ready to show Him who your disciples were?
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