My Open Life

I have been thinking about a curiosity: where does Jesus’s Great Commission (“make disciples of all nations”) appear in the epistles? After all, wasn’t that Jesus’s final command? Isn’t this the primary mandate for the church? Why then isn’t that command echoed in the letters to the early churches?

I can recall only three places where the epistles tell us how to interact with outsiders:

“Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Colossians 4:5-6, ESV

“Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” 1 Peter 2:12, ESV

“In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” 1 Peter 3:14-15, ESV

Notice what’s missing? There is no command to “share your faith,” not even an admonition to steer the conversation toward spiritual matters. What the apostles seem to assume is that Christ-followers will live close enough to non-Christians that their lives will provoke questions and that spiritual conversations will emerge naturally. It seems that when the New Testament speaks of personal evangelism, it speaks of a kind of opportunistic, reflexive evangelism that is never forced.

That comes as a relief to many of us who have had our share of awkward experiences with door-to-door campaigns or “cold turkey” efforts on the street.

But don’t imagine that this takes us off the hook. Christ-followers must be close enough to their non-Christian friends for their lives to be accessible and observable. For an introvert like me, that is the great challenge: to open up my life to my non-Christian acquaintances so that God can reveal Jesus to them.

So what are we to do with this? As always, start where you are, not where you should be. Begin to pray that God will give you a greater burden for those non-Christian acquaintances on the edges of your life, people whom God loves dearly, ferociously.

Begin to pray and to think and to plan how you can create space in your life – in your schedule, in your home – for those people to get close enough for God to reveal Jesus in you. This is a long-term commitment. Friendships take time to mature, especially to the level where serious personal conversations can take place.

And I must add, in the interest of full disclosure, that you must be prepared for the possibility that God may want to reveal His glory and His grace in the way you handle suffering, so that your non-Christian friends become curious about the ”reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

Then, as over time you do life with your new friends, pray that God “let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6) so that your new friends can see Jesus.

Three Key Ideas about Making Disciples

It was Jesus’s last command to his own disciples: Go make disciples of all the people-groups of the world (Matthew 28:19). If we are going to take Jesus seriously, we can see that making disciples is the central mandate of the church, and everything else is details.

Let’s not rush past this. Think about what Jesus didn’t say to his disciples as his last command. Jesus lived in times that were more brutal and miserable than ours, yet he didn’t tell his disciples to “change the world” or “alleviate poverty” or “combat social injustice.” 

These are all right and good and worthy goals, and Christians should be at the forefront in these endeavors, but they are not the primary concern of the church. As soon as the church makes any other project an end in itself instead of a means to the end of making disciples, we are neglecting – that is, we are disobeying – Christ’s command. We are, in the words of Dallas Willard, committing the Great Omission.  

In his excellent book The Great Omission, Rediscovering Jesus' Essential Teaching on Discipleship, Willard says it so well:

Jesus told us explicitly what to do…. He told us, as disciples, to make disciples. Not converts to Christianity, nor to some particular “faith and practice.” He did not tell us to arrange for people to “get in” or “make the cut” after they die, nor to eliminate the various brutal forms of injustice, nor to produce and maintain “successful” churches.

These are all good things, and he had something to say about all of them. They will certainly happen if—but only if—we are (his constant apprentices) and do (make constant apprentices) what he told us to be and do. If we just do this, it will little matter what else we do or do not do.

So if our aim is to “make disciples,” how do we go about helping another person toward the goal of mature discipleship? With a nod toward Mark Howell, pastor and discipleship and small groups coach whose blog inspired this post, here are three key insights on making disciples:

“Disciples are rarely made in rows”

I get this line from Howell. And he’s right. We cannot institutionalize this task; making disciples requires loving personal attention, the kind of attention that we cannot give in large groups.

As an educator in Christian schools for four decades, my primary task was helping my students see and understand the Bible and the biblical worldview. As a teacher, cognitive achievement was really all I could assess, especially given the sheer numbers of students in my classroom (more than 100 every day, all in rows). I could ask good test questions to discern what my students knew and understood, but I couldn’t spend enough time with each student to discern what was going on in their hearts.

Education is not in and of itself the same thing as disciple-making. As vital as transformation of the mind is, there is more to making disciples than providing sound and effective teaching. Disciple-making is not just about making good theologians and Bible students, it’s about shaping the heart as well as the mind. This requires consistent, persistent personal attention, the kind of loving personal attention that can happen only in one-on-one or micro groups (2-4 people).

Don’t get confused about the role of curriculum in disciple-making

A. You don't have to use curriculum to make disciples. Jesus and his first-century followers didn’t have access to the vast array of disciple-making resources we have today. They didn’t even have the completed New Testament! Yet they made disciples, relying on the same resources we have now: God’s Word, God’s Spirit, and God’s people.

B. Completing a course or curriculum doesn't make you either a disciple or a disciple maker. Mark Howell says it well:

You don't become a disciple by completing a course or curriculum. While some studies might be better at generating the kinds of conversations that open eyes and soften hearts, completing a study or a course isn't like completing a degree program that qualifies you to use a title or certain letters after your name (like Reverend or PhD). Completing a course or curriculum also doesn't make you disciple-maker. You might earn a credential, but what makes you a disciple maker is that you're actually making disciples.

So what role does curriculum play in making disciples? At first, a disciple-maker may feel the need of the structure and direction that a good curriculum can provide. But as a disciple-maker grows in experience and confidence in making disciples, he or she will develop a set of skills and methods that will work in the process, and curriculum will become auxiliary, even unnecessary.

Disciple-making is a slow, patient, pains-taking, long-range process

Education is, by its very nature, a time-bound endeavor. A course lasts a semester. A degree will take a few years to complete.

But disciple-making isn’t education; disciple-making is more like child-rearing. Raising a child takes a long-range and enormous and loving investment of personal time and energy. 

It takes a while to make a disciple. Just as parents must acknowledge that children grow and mature at different rates, so also we must give God's Spirit time and space to bring about the growth and maturity that will enable our disciples to stand and make disciples on their own. 

As Howell puts it, “You can’t microwave a disciple.”

The educator in me would love to be able simply to choose a good disciple-making curriculum, recruit and train a few good leaders, and roll it all out in a great multi-media launch. 

That may be a good way to launch a program, but it’s not a good way to make disciples. If we want to make disciples who make disciples, we will have to gear down our expectations about numbers and time, and we will have to pour our time and energy into a few at a time.

In other words, we’re going to have to make disciples the way Jesus made disciples.

How to Hear the Voice of God

There is an old joke about a man who asked his pastor how he could “hear the voice of God.”

The pastor wisely advised him to read his Bible out loud.

There is great truth in that. What exactly do we mean when we say we want to “hear from God” or “discern the will of God”? 

Is it true, as I have heard it put more than once, that 90% of the will of God is revealed in the Bible? Are we sometimes looking outside Scripture to find what God has already said in His Word?

How God has spoken truth to us

Theologians like to divide God’s revelation of truth to man into broad categories: general and special.

God has spoken generally in nature, where, as the psalmist put it, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

The glorious images we have been able to capture by the Hubble telescope were not accessible until the last few decades, yet those glories have existed as long as the universe has existed. What purpose did all that beauty serve for all those millennia before man could appreciate it? The beauty of the heavens has, from the beginning, declared the glory of God.

God has also spoken generally through our conscience, that inner sense of right and wrong that warns us when we are about to do wrong and sounds the alarm when we have actually done wrong.

So, yes, God has spoken generally, to all people, through means outside Scripture. But if all we knew from God is what He has communicated in general revelation, we would be utterly lost: we would know from nature that there is a Creator and from our conscience that we have no business being around Him.

Which is why we need special revelation, the Scripture, the written Word of God. We need details about, for instance, why the world is so broken and how it will someday be made right and how we ourselves can be made right. These are details we cannot access through general revelation; words must be used to inform us, so God has given us His Word.

So how do we “hear” from God in the Bible?

Everyone who can read knows what it is to “read” a page while the mind has wandered elsewhere, so that at the end of the page, the reader comes out of the trance and realizes that he hasn’t the faintest idea what he just read. The mind wasn’t involved.

And everyone who has tried to read the Bible consistently knows that sometimes nothing is really happening except accomplishing a task: I have known, intimately, what it is to engage in fruitless “checklist spirituality,” where my heart isn’t involved.

So, yes, we must acknowledge that we can “read” the Bible without hearing from God, without engaging either mind or heart.

How can I read Scripture intentionally, not just with my eyes but with my mind, and not just with my mind but with my heart?

Six suggestions

There are many methods to engage the mind and heart in reading Scripture, and there is no formula that will work for everyone everywhere. But here are some methods I’ve used and some others I’ve heard of:

1    1. Reading expectantly and prayerfully by taking a few moments to prepare my heart and mind before I begin reading. “Open my eyes, Lord,” I echo the psalmist, “that I may see wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).

2    2. Choosing a short text, a verse or two, to write down and keep with me throughout the day. I am a compulsive list-maker. I keep a list of tasks on an index card with me to keep track of tasks. I sometimes will use the reverse side of my index card to write down a verse from the morning’s reading, to keep that text in front of me.

3    3. Lectio divina is an ancient method of reading the Scripture in which the reader reads the text aloud, slowly and prayerfully, to give space (in time, in the mind) for God to speak through His Word to the reader. This method engages several physical actions simultaneously: the eyes, the ears, and the voice.

4    4. Reading the same text every day for a week. Lately, I’ve been feasting on the psalms, going back to the same psalm day after day to re-read the text, looking for something I haven’t yet seen.

5    5. Memorizing a text, maybe that short text I wrote on the index card, so that I have God’s Word with me, in my mind, where God’s Spirit can use His Word to speak to my heart. It's hard to hide God's Word in my heart without first giving it a place in my memory.

6    6. Journaling. CS Lewis said, “How can I know what I think unless I write?” By writing down my what I’m seeing in Scripture, I force myself to reflect carefully on what God has said and what it means to me.

The point is not that you do all of these; I offer suggestions only to prime the pump. Each of us must find our own methods of engaging with the Scripture. 

Find what works for you, with your learning style and temperament. Use it, make it a habit not only to read Scripture every day but also to engage with it, reflect on it, and ask God to speak to you through His Word.

This is one prayer God will always answer, “Yes! I thought you’d never ask!”

Getting a Grip on Scripture

I used to joke with my students that “you don’t have to be mean to be a teacher, but it helps.” I would use that line whenever I had to insist they do something they didn’t want to do (which was, of course, often). I called on that mean streak once when I used a volunteer to help me with an object lesson on how to “get a grip” on Scripture.

Justin Gravitt is a name that will be familiar to regular readers of the Discipleship Weekly, as I’ve often featured his blog posts. Justin is serving as a discipleship coach for some PPC leaders. In one of my recent meetings with him, he said something that has been quietly unfolding in my mind ever since. He said that the key component for our engagement with the Bible is not necessarily Scripture memorization… or Bible study… or any other particular method for engaging the Bible.

The key is not how we engage Scripture but that we regularly engage Scripture. For some people, like Justin, the best way to engage Scripture is by memorizing it. Justin commits key verses to memory and often recalls and uses them in our conversations.

But for other people, it’s Bible study. Justin told me he knows some people who study the Bible almost as a hobby. They spend hours in the Scripture because they love God’s Word, and they love to study it.

How we engage God’s Word might vary from one person to another, depending on life circumstances and personal gifting and passions, but it is vital that our engagement with Scripture be regular and not happenstance.

And yet we know it’s not quite so simple. It is possible for us to hear solid preaching and teaching and read our Bibles every day and even commit it to memory without engaging it in our hearts.

We might be tempted to think that knowing God’s Word is all that is necessary for spiritual growth.

But then there are the Pharisees…

The Pharisees had committed vast portions of Scripture to memory and spent countless hours discussing and parsing out the intricacies and nuances of the text. Yet when they met God’s final Word to man – the man Jesus, God in human form – they failed to recognize him and opposed him throughout his time on earth.

So there must be something more to engaging Scripture than simply knowing it. As well as the Pharisees knew the Bible, somehow they failed to get a grip on Scripture. Or, to put it more precisely, the Scriptures never got a grip on them.

Which brings us to my object lesson for my students on getting a grip on Scripture. Your own hand, with its four fingers and one thumb, serves as a vivid illustration. One time when I explained this “hand illustration” to my class, I had a boy – a strong boy with a strong personality, chosen specially for this illustration – stand in front of the class holding a heavy a large Bible with one hand, without using his thumb. The more machismo, the better.

Then I went on to explain how to “get a grip” on the Scriptures.

“Your pinky,” I told my students, “is hearing God’s Word, as we do in church in hearing good preaching and teaching.” I know that many of our people love sound biblical preaching and feast on the many excellent opportunities available on Christian radio or in podcasts.

I went on: “The ring finger is reading God’s Word. We not only hear other people talk about the Bible, we read it for ourselves.

“The next finger is studying God’s Word, which takes us past a superficial reading into deep reading for lasting understanding.

“The index finger is very important. It is meditating on God’s Word, thinking deeply about what it means and how it might apply to your life.”

I took some time to elaborate on the significance of each of the fingers. Every now and then I would check with my brave volunteer, to see how he was doing holding a large Bible with one hand without using his thumb.

By now the muscles in his forearm were beginning to burn. Of course his macho pride wouldn’t permit him to show any emotion on his face, but everyone was beginning to understand, especially the boy holding the Bible, that the thumb would be crucial in getting a grip on Scripture.

“The thumb,” I said, “is the most important digit in this illustration. The thumb represents applying what I learn, putting God’s Word into practice in my daily life. Without the thumb, it’s impossible to get a good grip on Scripture, and it’s impossible for the Scripture to get a grip on my life.”

Here I would tell my suffering volunteer that he could now use his thumb to grasp the book. He would sigh with relief at the difference it made to use his thumb.

Just so, we cannot get a good grip on God’s Word – and it can’t get a grip on our lives – until we ask ourselves that all-important question whenever we engage Scripture: So what? Until we’ve contemplated what difference the truth of God’s Word might make in our lives and until we’ve taken actual steps of obedience, our grip on Scripture is tenuous and uncertain… and merely theoretical.

Regardless of how and how often I interact with Scripture, I haven’t fully engaged it until I get a grip on it by obeying it. Until I put into practice what I learn from God’s Word, I am merely storing up insights the way a man might collect comic books or baseball cards. If I am collecting biblical insights without applying them to my life, I am deceiving myself, and my spiritual growth is stunted.

James warns us about this self-defeating way of engaging Scripture: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22, ESV).

I don’t want to be that guy, the man who thinks his vast and growing collection of biblical knowledge means he’s growing spiritually, when he is really only deceiving himself. I want to get a firm grip on God’s Word by letting His Word get a grip on my life: I want to be doer of the Word and not a hearer only.