The Hole In Our Discipleship
By Josh Dickens
As Jesus’ ministry drew to a conclusion, he commanded each one of his followers to make disciples. While most Christians, agree and believe in discipleship, and affirm the need to be about making disciples. The rate at which most Christians place a priority on discipleship reveals a lack of outward expression of discipleship itself within our lives and churches. Historically, the church has had various approaches to discipleship. Typically these approaches have been crafted, modeled, and published only to have the next generation of Christians claim to have corrected the previous generation’s misguided applications. Discipleship definitions, books, conferences, thought leaders, and churches abound. One thing, I have come to believe more than anything else in regards to discipleship is that I am not one more book, conference, message, or fill in the blank from making or not making disciples. I have to come to grips with the reality that the way of Jesus has to transform my life. I have to be transformed and begin seeing others the way he sees them. As this happens within my own heart every moment of the ordinary has the potential to become holy.
Christ was the first successful human to ever live. In Luke 5:1-11, Jesus is walking by the sea and sees two boats. He gets in them and teaches the crowd. After teaching, Jesus directs the fisherman, who at this point had been fishing all night to no avail, to pull out and cast their nets again. Those fishermen would end up with a haul, only fishing legends are made of, as the nets began to break from all the fish as they pulled it into shore. I love the line at the end of the passage where it says, “And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.” This is as if to say, after this, they were convinced. We are going wherever you are going. Whatever you are up to is what we are going to be up to, and we are willing to leave it all everything we have ever known for you.
This story is so simple, yet so full of the realness and rawness that is discipleship. What am I willing to give up? What am I willing to leave behind? Until Jesus has shaped and molded the events of the real and raw moments of my life, I am in no state to make disciples. The reason we struggle to make disciples is that we struggle to be with Jesus long enough for him to take us out to sea again. Discipleship doesn’t happen by osmosis, it takes time. A wise Christians once shared, it takes time to abide with Jesus. And time is typically the one thing we are not willing to give up.
Discipleship is sanctification in fellowship with both Jesus and others. Sanctification takes time, sometimes a very, very long time. Instead of fighting the temptation to view this call to the long haul as something to be kicked against. We are called to lean into it. Lean into the confession, lean into weakness, lean into the struggle, and most importantly lean into the process of time. It takes time to be changed by Jesus to help others be changed by Jesus. As followers of Jesus let us not be known for rushing past this transformation but embracing it.