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Pastor's Corner

Three Things That Will Help Us Persevere In Our Mission To Make Christ Followers

 

Jesus calls all those who follow Him to spend their lives helping others know how to follow Him. If we embrace this mission we will almost immediately begin to experience the three realities of discipleship: First, we will see people begin to grow, mature and follow Christ. This is an exciting privilege to experience as they learn new things and begin to apply them in their lives. Secondly, we will experience those who don’t understand. They don’t seem to respond no matter how we explain God’s Word. We labor and labor and see little visible growth. Thirdly, we will experience rejection, even anger as we seek to help them follow Christ. So the question is: how can we persevere in making Christ followers when two-thirds of the time in discipleship, all we experience is gradual or very little growth at all?

Three things that will help us persevere in our mission to make Christ followers:

1- Know God’s part - God Himself is working. God alone is the one who can change the hearts of men, not us. John 6:44 says that unless the Lord draws, no one can come.

2- Know your part - God commands us to be ready to give a reason for the hope within us (1 Peter 3:15). Our part is to walk with Christ and bring someone along side us as we walk. God is working and we are the instruments that He uses!

3- Know their part - The person we are working with (discipling) must respond to God and to us.

Discipleship is about showing others how to walk with Christ. Dragging is not walking! Our part is not to try to drag people into the kingdom. God must work, we must work and they must walk. Read Matthew 19:16-22 about the rich young ruler, and ask yourself, “Did Jesus fail because this man didn’t follow,” or “did Jesus do His part perfectly?”

Never forget that those we disciple are ultimately disciples of Jesus, not us! God is not dependant on our perfection to win someone to Christ or to help them grow in Him. We do our part and trust our God to do His.


For resources on discipleship and evangelism, click here.