Hitting the Mark with Discipleship

Tyler was a young believer who started to meet with Mark for discipleship.

For one year, they met every Thursday morning over coffee.

They talked about work,

hobbies,

sports,

the Vikings,

Politics,

and Tyler’s new truck.

But at the end of the year if you had pulled Tyler aside and asked him:

“So how are you following Jesus differently today than you were twelve months ago?”

Tyler would give you a blank look.

And the reason for the blank look is because nothing had really changed.

See, Tyler knew Mark’s favorite coffee.

He knew Mark’s political views and who he voted for.

But Tyler couldn’t tell you one new thing he had learned from Mark about walking with Christ.

Now, at least Mark tried.

He did more than most Christians will ever do.

But… if we are going to invest out time like Mark did,

wouldn’t we all rather invest it in a way that hits the mark of discipleship?

In a way that has the potential to bring real spiritual fruit?

Last week we talked about choosing someone to disciple.

We met Bob, our Bible guy,

and Bill, our relationship guy,

and we said discipling is simply helping someone else follow Jesus.

It’s doing spiritual good in a person’s life.

And I asked you all to stop and think of one person that you would try to do this with.

Maybe that starts with writing their name on a note next to your bathroom mirror and beginning to pray for them and for opportunity.

Or maybe it means asking them to coffee.

So did you do that?

If not, why not?

What kept you from the great commission last week?

Because whatever that is,

you need to stop and rebalance you life.

You need to get the order and priority correct.

Because there is a reason Jesus leaves us here after we get saved.

And it’s not to simply to be busy with the things of this world.

It’s to fulfill the great commission of making disciples and building up disciples.

So, if you didn’t find someone to begin doing spiritual good for last week,

repent, and get at this next week.

Now, once you’ve chosen someone,

how do we avoid being like Mark where we spent lots of time with little results?

You have to have a plan.

You can’t just meet and hope the person learns to be more like Jesus,

Anymore than a football coach can get 22 guys together and just hope they become a skilled and coordinated team by hanging out on the field together.

When it comes to discipleship,

The focus is twofold.

1. What a person knows.

2. How a person lives.

So it’s the “what” and the “how” that we focus on.

Following Christ includes both.

And based on the person, the focus is going to shift.

Discipling Bible Bob is going to look different than discipling friendly Bill,

because Bob already loves the truth and needs to grow in love,

and Bill already loves people and needs to grow in truth.

But for both of them, and for every person you will ever disciple,

you keep one eye on the head and one eye on the heart - or we could say, on their life and the way they live.

So first off, discipling requires knowing truth.

1 Timothy 4:16 ESV

16 Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

As followers of Jesus, we must all grow in the knowledge of God in Christ.

And the Bible is clear about how that growth comes.

Romans 10:17 ESV

17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

So the teaching matters and we must take it seriously or the person will not know how to emulate Christ.

When I was in football.

As a defensive end, my favorite move to use on people was the swim move.

But I hated the RIP.

Because was terrible at it.

But anyone who knows anything about football knows that you can’t just have one move - no matter how good at it you were.

Because only having one move as a defensive lineman is playing scissors every time in Rock, Paper, Scissors.

The other person is going to know exactly how to counter you.

The same is true with the Christian life.

There are going to be aspects of it that we are naturally better at,

and some aspects that we are naturally worse at.

And we need to develop all aspects of our Christian walk,

Unless we want the world, the flesh, and the devil to block us from becoming more Christ-like.

In discipling, we want people to actually understand things about God.

We want them to know why we pray.

Why we share the gospel.

Why we bother joining a church and submitting to it.

Why the sovereignty of God is not just a doctrine to argue about but a truth that changes how you walk into Monday morning.

And here is where a lot of us go wrong.

We treat discipleship like it is mostly accountability.

Did you read your Bible this week?

Did you stay away from that sin?

Are you being “a good boy?”

Now don’t get me wrong, accountability has its time and place.

But that is not the heart of discipleship.

Jesus told us to make disciples by teaching them to obey everything He commanded.

Which is sadly the part we often skip right over.

Because people cannot obey what they have never been taught.

Which is why accountability without teaching is just behavior management.

True discipleship teaches the head and then aims it at the heart.

Think about it.

You can tell someone to forgive the person who wronged him,

and you can check in next week to see whether he’s acting vengefully toward them,

But until he understands that he himself has been forgiven an un-payable debt by God,

you are asking him to do something he has no power and no reason to do.

The command just lands on bare willpower.

But if you teach him the gospel of his own forgiveness first,

then forgiving his neighbor stops being a rule he keeps failing and starts being the only thing that makes any sense.

And what parable teaches us this directly?

The parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18.

The Word of God MUST sit at the center of any discipling relationship.

That might mean you literally walk through a book of the Bible together.

And that’s not as hard as it sounds.

Pick a book of the Bible and start reading it together.

And grab a good Bible commentary or two to help you understand it.

One of my favorite ones is a free one by Dr. Thomas Constable.

www.soniclight.com

And, I just found this out last week.

But he has all of his Bible teaching recordings on there for free as well.

With discipleship, the Bible is the main thing, not the side thing.

This is why Paul wrote:

Philippians 2:16 ESV

16 holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

That is the our goal with discipleship.

We are helping another person get a grip on the Word of life and refuse to let go.

That means reading it.

That means studying it.

That means understanding it.

And then, that means obeying it.

And yet, what do we often do?

We pick our favorite Christian author to read.

Or we listen to a sermon from our favorite pastor.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

That’s not all bad.

But it’s we aren’t trying to make people experts of our favorite Christian author or pastor.

We are trying to make the Word of Christ dwell in them richly!

This is why our church doesn’t have a billion book studies going on every week.

It’s not that book studies are bad.

It’s that they are supplemental.

And so we try to build our life together on God’s word,

which is meat.

Instead of good Christian books, which are vitamins.

Discussion Question 1:

Why do we so easily turn to book studies instead of the Bible?

Knowing God is supposed to change the way you live.

This is why Paul reminds the Galatians that they have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God (Galatians 4:9),

and the whole point is that this changes everything.

Because we know God we now live as strangers in a world that is constantly pressing us to look just like it, not Jesus.

The Bible calls us to resist the world’s current, and to instead be:

Philippians 2:15 ESV

15 … blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

Being light is a big part of discipleship.

For a Christian to truly grow in Christ-likeness,

they need a godly life put in front of them to look at.

That’s why Paul constantly says: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

On our football team, we had guy who was legit amazing at doing the RIP move.

And while I never got as good at is as he was,

I did get better at it by watching him.

That’s how Christian discipleship is meant to work.

If we going to be light.

If we are going to show people HOW to live like Christ.

We have to spend time with them.

We have let them into your ordinary life.

That might mean having younger believer over while you make supper, and you talk while the oven is going.

That might mean inviting a younger man to stay after dinner and watch you lead your kids in family worship.

The point is, so much of discipling is just doing what you were already going to do,

but bringing somebody along and having a real conversation with them while you do it.

That is how Jesus did it.

He walked, and He talked, and the disciples watched.

But this only works if you are willing to be seen.

And I mean really seen.

Facades and fakeness wreck the whole thing.

If the only version of you anyone ever gets is the cleaned-up, Sunday-best, everything-is-fine version,

you are not discipling - you are performing.

The people you disciple need to watch you blow it and repent.

They need to learn from your mistakes, not just your victories.

Think about it:

Are there any married couples in this room who have never had a fight?

All of us have.

And we need to model what it looks like when we repent of that.

Or when our spouse is responding sinfully - we can show how to respond graciously, but also with loving admonishing.

Or if either the husband or wife is sinning, we can show them how to disagree while showing honor and being Christ-like.

Because is all disagreement sin?

No it’s not.

Question

Paul told people to imitate him. To our ears that can sound arrogant, even uncomfortable. Why could Paul say it without a problem, and why do we squirm at the thought of inviting anyone to imitate us?

Look at how much Paul let Timothy see. He writes,

2 Timothy 3:10–11 NIV

10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

Think about that list.

Timothy did not just hear Paul's sermons.

He saw Paul's patience under pressure.

That is what we are after.

We want the people we disciple to grow in prayer.

To get better at sharing the gospel.

To stay planted in the church instead of bolting the first time somebody offends them.

To put up with the member who rubs them the wrong way.

That what discipleship does.

And a lot of that happens through discussing Sunday’s sermon or Sunday School lesson on Monday morning over coffee.

You heard the Word preached,

and now the two of you sit down and ask,

"Okay, what does that actually mean for the way we live this week?"

And your small group is meant to help you do the very same thing.

Discussion Question

Being transparent means letting people see the mistakes, not just the highlight reel. What is it about church life that makes that kind of honesty so hard, and what kind of church culture does it create when everybody keeps the mask on?

So with discipleship we are aiming at two things.

Helping people understand better,

and helping people live better.

Its the head and the heart.

But to do that, you need to know the actual person sitting in front of you.

What are their interests?

Where do they come from?

What do they love and what do they fear?

Where have they been hurt?

What sins keep tripping them up?

What do they hope for?

You cannot know any of that from across the room.

Which means one of the very first things you do in a discipling relationship is the simplest thing in the world.

You ask questions.

Lots of them.

How did you come to know Christ?

Where did you grow up?

Were your parents believers?

What about your grandparents?

How did you end up doing the work you do?

You start there, with the ordinary stuff,

and over time, as trust grows, the conversations go deeper.

The walls come down a little.

And eventually you’re able to address the matters of the mind and heart.

But to do that, you have to truly listen.

You can’t just be waiting for your turn to talk.

When we stop and break it down, the how of discipling is really not that complicated, is it?

You do not need a seminary degree

and you do not need a program with a binder.

It is friendship with a clear aim.

It is making a friend and then walking that friend in the direction of Christ.

And that involves knowing God and His ways,

and living out the way the Bible calls us to live.

We want to be accurate in what we believe and holy in how we behave.

Remember Bob, who loved the truth, and Bill, who loved people?

The reason we keep both aims in view is that both of them meet in Jesus.

John says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and He was "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

Did you catch that?

Grace and truth.

The very two things we have been chasing all morning, held together perfectly in one Person.

Bob's truth and Bill's love both find their home in Christ.

So when you sit down with your Bob or your Bill this week, remember what you are really doing.

You are not the destination - You are a signpost.

You are pointing a fellow traveler to the only One who is full of grace and truth.

And the only reason you have anything at all to hand them is that He first handed Himself to you.

When Mark met with Tyler he aimed at a friendship.

But we need to aim higher than that.

We need to aim at Christ.

Bring people along into your ordinary, unimpressive life,

open your Bible with them,

let them watch you follow Jesus and fail and get back up,

and keep pointing past yourself to the One worth following.

That is the aim.

And all of it is to the glory of the God Who’s Son we serve and trust.