Moldovan Meanderings: Meditations: Discipleship

Discipleship: Not just the same old jazz.

One time in Moldova, I was asked to give a short talk to a youth group. During the talk, I mentioned that some people say that there are many ways to God. At the end of the talk, a girl approached me in a jovial manner. I thought that maybe she was joyous about something I had said. She was, but not quite in the way I had intended.

I had been speaking in Romanian and she informed me that as I had mixed up the words ‘Cai’ and ‘Căi’. On face value, there doesn’t seem much difference to an English speaker, but the little accent on the ‘a’ changes the words meaning. ‘Căi’, which is what I was intending to say, means ‘ways’, however ‘Cai’, which is what I actually said, means ‘horses’. So, I had informed the church youth group that some people say that there are many horses to God. This particular girl found that extremely amusing. At least it brightened up her day a little.

In life, we can often get nonchalant about things that are familiar to us. By the above situation, I was already very used to speaking in Romanian, so hadn’t check carefully what I was saying. As Christians, discipleship is a topic that we have (or at least should have!) heard a lot about. Thus, we it can become very familiar to us and we can start taking it for granted. Actually, though, in the Bible discipleship is one of the key topics and something that we Christians should be fully involved in.

Two Analogies

One way in which discipleship is described in the Bible is in terms of the growth of a seed. In 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 it talks about a seed being planted, watered and then made to grow. A seed doesn’t just instantly become a plant; there is a process of growth from something small into something well developed, or in other words, from a simple seed into a small sapling eventually into a fully functioning plant.

In the same way, when someone becomes a Christian, they received the seed, which is the Word of God (Luke 8:11). However, they are not instantly a fully functioning follower of God. They are still rough around the edges and have much to learn. Gradually, they are watered as other Christians help them and as they learn. Finally, in many cases after much time and many difficulties, they become fully fledged followers of Jesus, who are living for Him and being efficient in their Christians lives.

A second perspective is that of the birth and growth of a child. This in many ways is similar to the analogy of the seed but adds an extra dimension. Like plants, humans don’t start off mature. We develop in the womb and then are born as little infants dependent on our parents and then others on the way, who guide us to maturity. This then gives rise to the concept of spiritual parents; those of us who are more mature in faith, helping others who are less mature grow in faith. Paul talks about being a spiritual father, for example, in 1 Corinthians 4:15.

There are many Biblical examples of these sort of discipleship relationships. Elijah and Elisha, Moses and Joshua and Jesus and the apostles to name but a few. In Matthew 28 at the end, there are the famous verses of the Great Commission where Jesus calls his disciples to go and make disciples throughout the world, so if we consider ourselves to be His disciples then we should also be making other disciples.

How does a disciple look?

Once I was at an evangelistic camp. At the end, one of the campers shared that she was nervous about coming to the camp because she thought that she would meet there lots of slightly odd skinny people with blond hair and blue eyes. People started looking at me. Fortunately, though, the girl concluded that the people she met were much nicer than she had expected.

People can have stereotypical images of what Christians are like. Sadly, some of these can be accurate, although often not always. I read in a newspaper one time an article about new students getting started at university and it included a comment something like ‘help, I’m only meeting Christians’. Christians are often thought of as being boring or socially inadequate. When we think of disciples things can get even worse as this word conjures up images of men with beards, dressed in robes and sandals. Actually, though, as we’ve seen above all true Christians are disciples and the characteristics of a true disciple presented in the Bible are very different to those presented by the world.

Much could be said about these, but just briefly we see in the Bible that true disciples are people who:

-Put Jesus in first place in their lives (e.g. Mark 8:34). When I was finishing university in England, in many respects I would have liked to have stayed there to study more but I realized that this wasn’t God’s plan for me, so I had to give up what I wanted in order to do what He wanted.

-Base their lives on what the Bible says (e.g. John 15:7). If something is important to us, then we take notice of what it says. When I play board games, sometimes situations arise when there are different opinions about what the rules are. For example, in Catan, if someone’s road has had a house built into it by another player, can they continue to develop the road? In such moments, my instinct is always to turn to the official rules that came with the game and see what they say. This doesn’t always solve the problem because some situations aren’t mentioned in the rules or alternatively sometimes people make a fuss! When it comes to our lives as Christians though, God has left us a very clear authority in the Bible to follow.

-Communicate with God by prayer (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 5:17) If we love someone it’s obvious that we want to communicate with them. Not only that, but if we don’t communicate with someone, we won’t get to know them. I know a lot about the queen of England, but I don’t actually know what she is like as I have never communicated personally with her. This is all to say that if someone is a disciple, he will want to communicate with his master, especially if he loves him. They way we communicate with God us by talking to him through prayer, in the same way, that we talk to other people, except that we don’t physically see God, but nevertheless we know He is there due to the responses that He gives.

-love and has fellowship with other Christians (1 John 1:3). Sometimes people say that they believe in God in their own way and so don’t need to go to church. They just pray on their own at home. However, God calls us to be in relationship with other Christians. It is difficult to get through the challenges of life on our own and in any case, the church is described as the family of God. If we are a part of that family, it would be strange to not want to spend time with our relatives!

-Produce fruit (Matthew 7:20). We’re not talking here about having green fingers, but rather there are two types of spiritual fruit that Christians should have. Firstly, are the changes made by the Holy Spirit in us as seen in Galatians 5:22,23. Secondly, there are other people who we have helped to come to know Jesus as illustrated by Paul wanting to visit Roman in order to have a harvest among the people there (Romans 1:13).

-Obeys Christ (John 8:31). It is one thing to know what to do, but it is another to do it. Many people have studied and know well the Bible, but do they actually put into practice what is written there?

These are then some of the things that we should be helping others develop in their Christian lives. Of course, before we can help others, we need to be making progress ourselves in these things. Assuming that this is the case, then we should also naturally want to help other people, younger than us in the faith. This is our calling and anyway, the best way to learn is to teach others. The question is then how can we help others to develop such characteristics in their lives?