Thoughts on Discipleship (4): 15 Best Insights

My beloved mentor Professor loves to assign what she calls the “15 Best Insights” assignment at the end of each class.  Students are to peruse their notes, hand-outs and assignments, and gather together what they consider their 15 most powerful insights they gleaned from the class.  They can be personal or universal, profound or simple (but isn’t it the simplest things that are profound?), and they don’t even have to be from her! They can be from fellow students, guest speakers, or jewels of truth derived from study during the class.  I’ve enjoyed this assignment, and applied it to the “Discipleship Class” that God has had me in for the last ten years.  Several of these are from Caila, since I figured she’d be a good resource to figure out what “worked”!

1. If you want to disciple women, your whole life must be an example. In 1 Corinthians 4:15-17 Paul says, “Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” (emphasis mine) As Paul consider himself a father in the faith, so we must consider ourselves mothers in the faith.  He urges them to imitate him.  Later in 1 Corinthians 11:1 he exhorts them, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” The point is that as Paul models his life after Christ they can model their life after him.

I remember my first semester of leading Bible study, I attended a “mugger” at Varsity House, a Christian boy’s house on campus at OSU. These “muggers” (instead of “keggers”) were dance parties with root beer floats.  I attended, and since I love love love to dance, I was dancing my heart out. But I was also dressed provocatively, perhaps not for a regular college girl but provocatively for a Bible study leader and one who was devoting her life to helping other girls follow Christ.  A remember a bunch of my Bible study girls showed up, and I had this sinking feeling in my stomach the whole night, realizing I wasn’t being a very good example.  I went home early and couldn’t sleep.  The next day I took the entire day and went out into an open field, with my Bible, and wept before the Lord and asked Him to change me.  I asked Him to help me to live in such a way that I was always an example, not in a proud or self-righteous way, but in a humble way, understanding that others may but I cannot.  Something changed in me that day.  I haven’t always lived as an example, but I have seen growth by the grace of God.  After that incident, when friends would go out together to dance clubs or bars, though I knew I had the freedom in Christ to go along, wisdom told me to avoid even the appearance of evil, and to never do something I wouldn’t wholeheartedly encourage my Bible study girls to do themselves.

When we consider that others are watching everything that we do, this should motivate us toward Christlikeness!  Related to this idea is…

2. You Cannot Teach Others What You Do Not Know Yourself. This is related to the above point, but as disciplers, we will find that God will strategically allow us to walk through certain things in life, so that we are prepared to share and help others later on as they go through similar things.  We can only take our girls as far as we ourselves have gone.  This is why I was stubborn in my Bible studies and only taught lessons that I wrote. Obviously the first year it was great to have a book of Bible studies to follow, and I did once take a group through Experiencing God, but I feel like that was the least impacting thing we did.  The most powerful lessons were the ones I owned because God had written them on my heart.  And, it never ceased to amaze me how God had them perfectly timed for the girls in the group. In fact, the joke was always that Caila could see exactly what was coming in her life in six months, because it was what I was going through at the time.  Without fail, I’d go through a trial or experience, share and teach about it, and then six months later she would find herself in the exact same trial or experience!  She even had gave birth to her son six months after I gave birth to mine!

They say that a teacher is primarily a learner.  This has become a theme in my life, as I identify myself primarily as a learner, one who goes through things, learns, gleans, and then hopefully is able to help others along the way.  More is caught than taught.  We disciple others by living in such a way that lessons are being developed with every breath we take.

3. The Most Effective Discipleship Takes Place Living Life Together. Jesus didn’t have little one-hour meetings scheduled with his disciples.  He lived life with them!  He ate with them, drank with them, ministered to others with them, and performed miracles in front of them.  They spent every waking hour together, except for the times when Jesus needed to be alone with the Father (more on this later, each of us requires a different amount of alone time).  His life was given to these men. This was his method.

This doesn’t mean that more formal methods of mentoring have no value.  My weekly meetings with Professor Clemen are invaluable to me–she is a mentor for a specific area: an academic internship.  But real life discipleship, as Jesus did, cannot take place in neat little one-hour slots.  Real discipleship takes place in the nitty gritty details of life.  This is where most things are learned.  This cool thing about this is that you can disciple someone this way without them even knowing it!  By simply living life as an example, you are discipling all who come in contact with you.

I remember early on in college I struggled with what would be called an eating disorder (I just like to call it sin).  Darcy never brought it up (at that point), but I remember she invited me over to stay the night at her house once when her husband was away.  We stayed up late talking, then in the morning got up and had our quiet time.  She silently modeled for me having a daily time in the Word and in prayer, and then I remember she showed me how she made healthy home-made lentil soup in her crockpot, and then made us big bowls of delicious home-made oatmeal for breakfast before I went home.  It sounds silly now, but I was astounded by this.  Darcy was trim and healthy, and modeled for me what it meant to eat in such a way that honored the Lord.  I remember going home and trying to think of healthy things to eat so that I could honor God better with my body.  That’s discipleship!

Elisa was the ultimate example of this kind of discipleship.  In fact, we never had a “meeting” in a traditional sense.  We always met up at one of our houses, and she always had her kids with her.  I remember when she took me with her on her monthly Winco/Costco shopping day, helping her push her enormous cart loaded with a month’s worth of groceries for a family of five.  After a long day, we lunched at Sweet Tomatoes and talked about life. She modeled so much for me–how to feed a family of five on a tight budget, how to make healthy food choices, and how to meal plan for an entire month!  I have to smile right now as I realize that I do the exact same thing–meal plan for a month, make a once a month trip to Winco and Costco, and stay on a tight budget.  That was discipleship!

Elisa even chose to disciple me in the most intimate of topics–childbirth.  As a youngest child, and one who wasn’t necessarily big on kids to begin with, I was clueless about babies, and terrified of childbirth.  When she became pregnant with her fourth child, she invited me to go with her to one of her check-ups. I got to learn about pregnancy, nutrition, infant development, and a host of other topics.  Then, when it came time to give birth, she invited me to join her husband in the room where she delivered!  Some of you are thinking, “No way would I do that!” I don’t think I would either. But we had a special relationship, and I cannot explain how much that experience helped me not be fearful about my own delivery.  I even got to hold their son just minutes after he was born. I was humbled, honored, and privileged that she would choose to let every life experience serve as a teaching tool for me.  There aren’t words to express how thankful I am to her.

4. Life Discipleship Requires Vulnerability and Humility. The experiences above required Elisa and Darcy to be incredibly vulnerable.  When we open up our lives to our disciples, we are opening up ourselves to the possibility of pain, criticism, and betrayal.  Jesus knew this better than anyone, and chose to be vulnerable anyway.  Just before Judas betrays Christ, we see the John 13 example of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  And what does he say, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (vv. 14-17).  Jesus chooses the path of vulnerability and humility even though it would cost Him his life. Even though He was God (Phil. 2: 5-8).  He humbled himself for the men who he loved, and made himself open and vulnerable to them.

There will be times when in your attempt at living life together, in your attempt at vulnerability, that a disciple will hurt you.  This is guaranteed.  They will criticize you or perhaps talk about you behind your back.  Give grace.  Forgive.  Disciple them even by your response to their hurtful act.  In fact, your response to the hurtful situation will preach louder than any sermon you could share.

It’s also possible that as you open your life to your disciples that they will see things that you need to change!  Just as our children point out ways that we err (my brother used to make a deafening siren noise from the backseat whenever my dad would go over the speed limit), so our disciples can be tools of God’s purifying and sharpening us (Prov. 27:17).  I remember when one especially difficult girl (read Loving Rebecca under Featured) pointed out how I always greeted everyone else more enthusiastically than I greeted her.  I had unknowingly made her feel like she was an obligation, something I had to do, rather than a cherished and loved daughter of God.  When she confronted me, I agreed and asked forgiveness. She was right.  This is the not-so-fun part of discipleship…having dozens of little eyes on us to point out our flaws. 🙂 But it’s good for our character, and leads us to godliness.  We do well to be quick to acknowledge our weaknesses and move forward.

5. Sanctified Favoritism is Ok; Jesus did it. The hardest lesson I learned the first few years of discipling was that I couldn’t have this kind of relationship with everyone. I used to have 10-15 girls in my small groups, and would try to meet with every single one of them during the week (this was on top of being in college full time and working part-time!).  What I found was that I was able to give them all a little bit, but not able to give anyone a lot.  In my attempt not to play favorites, I wasn’t doing anyone any favors.  Jesus models a different sort of system.  He did play favorites, in a sanctified sense.  He had the multitudes, He had the seventy (Luke 10:1), then he had the twelve disciples (Luke 6:13), He had the three whom He singled to be with Him on special occasions: Peter, James, and John (Mark 9:2), and He apparently had the one: John (John 13:23).  If Jesus had this model, who are we to think that we should do something different?  Once I quit feeling guilty and began praying for supernatural wisdom with who to specially invest in, God began to single out girls, girls who were Faithful, Available, and Teachable (yes, this is the FAT acronym but girls don’t really like to be called FAT so I spell it out).  It was these girls who I spent special time investing in–these girls who I now have to marvel at when I see the great things they are doing for the Lord.

Want a quick way to burn out and get frustrated?  Don’t do this.  🙂

We’ll stop there for today.  More to come…