HOW DO WE MAKE DISCIPLES We are going to look at three questions. The first one is the question that God put to Moses shortly after the incident with the burning bush where the call to serve was given, and Moses gave back all the reasons why not. WHAT IS IN YOUR HAND? Personally, my track record of making disciples in any traditional sense is not very good. It may be true that my name is known to the furthest extent of the Internet in the developing world, and that thousands of disciples have been raised to at least kindergarten stage, but when it comes to family, friends and neighbours my success has been somewhat lacking. I am the typical Englishman, which means that on a train it is perfectly possible to travel for hours in silence, simply because I have not been introduced to fellow passengers and neither they to me. On the other hand, when some young Brazilians friends took us for a short train ride into Oporto, they also carried their guitars. No sooner had the train pulled away then they began to play them and tell everyone in the coach about their faith. People enjoyed their songs and smiles. The Englishman vanished under the seat with embarrassment and feared the return journey. The fact is that we would all like a book with three infallible steps to success in making lovers of God and followers of Jesus, but there s no such thing. The infallible steps that is, the books are everywhere. Except, this is what I do know: 1. To make disciples, we ourselves first have to be disciples, not just believers or church-goers. Most of what I am going to say is about this because if we don't get this foundation right, the rest of the building however high it rises and however good it looks, will be very shaky and unpredictable in serving its purpose. 2. We need to do whatever Jesus says, which was the theology of Mary. When it comes to doing, I have another theology which is just as simple. Any theology which cannot be turned into a do-ology is only a kid-ology. In other words we are only kidding or fooling ourselves with pious words that neither change us or the world of people around us. 3. Whatever we do, we must do it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the story of the woman at the well in John 4.10, Jesus had two very relevant things to say in terms of making disciples. Firstly, if you knew the gift of God. You may be daunted by the list of gifts in Ephesians 4 and not consider yourself to be any of them. You may struggle to display the list of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 7-11 and say this is not me, but how about the Romans 12,6-8 gifts? In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. Speaking, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, being kind. The Vineyard churches commissioned some research which revealed that people generally tend to need at least six positive encounters with Christians before they will consider the witness of the seventh person and the gospel behind their faith. So being kind is no minor gifting. Then, what about the disguised gifts that you have in your hands, such as friendship. People come to church for many reasons, but they tend to stay for one and put up with all sorts of things they don't really like their friends and community and identity. Listening is a gift, for someone else so is the suffering you have experienced, so is your compassion, your weakness and your time. Your hobbies and your talents are common-ground and gifts that can open friendships. Each person you meet is a potential gift of God and has gifts to be recognised, mentioned and welcomed, but no one ever told him that. All too often the Church says, Believe what we believe, behave like we do and you can belong to us. So very few join us. On the other hand if we say, Belong with us, you are welcome; help us to do what we do, and before long you will believe what we do. That kind of attitude is a gift to all the people who want to know God but have no idea where and how to start, and find the church to be a forbidding and foreboding place, an alien culture. Secondly, if you knew who it is that asks you. In this context if you knew who it is and you do, that asks you - to go into all the world and make disciples, you would ask Him and He will give you living water. So, step one in making disciples is to ask Jesus, and keep asking, and we will receive.
Hebrews 10, 19-24, in The Message makes it very easy to ask. We can now without hesitation, walk right up to God because Jesus has cleared the way. So let's do this (looking outwards), full of belief, confident that we are presentable inside and out. (Because we are.) Let's keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going because He always keeps his word. Let's see how inventive (or creative) we can be. Inventive at releasing the genius of the Inventor, the Creator, the Christ in us, our hope of seeing the glory of God. The second question is this: WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART? Let me tell you how I discovered what was in my heart. Back in the 1990's one of the graduates from our first School of Mission in Nottingham, Dennis Taylor, went to serve with a mission in Portugal, his family going with him. The day came when they needed a visit but for the dates that were suggested, all the fights to Lisbon were full and my name had to go on a waiting list. Midway through the Friday morning the travel agent phoned to say there had been a cancellation and I could collect a ticket at London's Heathrow airport for a 4.30 pm Air Portugal flight. I had to leave in a hurry to catch a train to London which would only just give me time to get on the long, slow Underground service out to Heathrow. As the train approached the St. Pancras terminal in London it suddenly came to an abrupt half within sight of the platform, and there it remained for many a long minute. Men came with hammers and began to hit a wheel or the track until the train was able to inch its way into the platform, by now many minutes late. The Underground was as slow and as packed as always and I looked at my watch every minute with growing doubts about whether I would reach Heathrow in time. The queue at the ticket desk was long and exceedingly bad-tempered but with less than 30 minutes before take-off, and security and passport control still ahead, I pleaded and pushed my way to the front being called very name under the sun on the way. To reach the departure gate required a half-marathon but with literally seconds before the aircraft doors closed I was in my seat. In reality it was only half a middle seat in the back of the aircraft with me wedged in between a lady and her duty-free shopping and a remarkably rotund Portuguese gentleman on my left who overflowed into my narrow space. He smoked which you could in those days, he drank one brandy after another and just with fumes alone, my head swam.
The traffic from Lisbon to nearby Estoril on a Friday evening had to be seen to be believed and inch by inch we reached the home of the doctor who was hosting my friend Dennis and his family. The doctor took one look at my grey face, observed the ache that began in my chest and exited in my back, and said, Sit down. Out came the stethoscope and the blood pressure meter and he looked, listened, poked and made me put my tongue out and say Aaaah. Go to bed, he said, we will talk in the morning. In the end, feeling better but none the wiser, I was told to see my own doctor back home, who did all the same things as our Portuguese doctor plus some blood tests. A week later he called me in to tell me what was in my heart. Cholesterol, he said, And enough of it to put you on the wrong side of the gravel. No more cheese, bacon, butter and cream for you, my boy. And that is how I discovered what was in my heart. Of course, these days what is in your heart can be a pacemaker, stents, Ramipril, Simvastatin Benecol and a host of other strange things. But that is not answering the question. Now, what I wonder is in your heart? I don't mean in the physical organ beating in your chest, which is the home of cholesterol and Benecol. I mean in your heart, the deepest inner depths of man, the home of warm, living faith and hope, yet according to Jeremiah 17.9, the heart is deceitful above all things. Beyond cure, he says, who can understand it? - but, say I from my own experience, beyond hope it may be, but not beyond change. Pepe, a pastor in Barcelona had to have a heart transplant and afterwards he was just the same man, same personality, everything. No change. God though does a better job, for he can turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Let s do some comparisons: What is in the Father's heart? For mankind: For God so loved the world, John 3.16. For the believer: You didn t choose me. I chose you, appointed you to be my friends, go and produce lasting fruit. John 15.15. What is in the heart of man? As in generic, mankind. There is a verse in the beginning of Proverbs 30 that sums up the heart cry of the common man, over his beer, or when he is alone facing yet
another disappointment with himself, others or life in general. This is what he says to himself: I am weary, O God; weary and worn out. I am too stupid to be human, I lack common sense. I have not mastered human wisdom, nor do I know the Holy One. Who but God goes up to heaven and comes back down? Who holds the wind in his fists? Who wraps up the oceans in his cloak? Who has created the whole wide world? In other words - who is in charge of this world? What is his name - and the name of his son? Tell me if you know Tell me if you know who can show us a way out of this mess! The only question is how we tell him. The lesson is that in every gathering that we put on, even the social activities, we need to always make room to feed the heart of man and not just his stomach and mind. So what is in your heart, and how shall you find out? You can sometimes find out what is in your heart very simply by looking at your cheque book because as Jesus said, Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be. Matthew 6:21. Or is that too simplistic for us? The fact is that in a man's heart are deep waters and the Bible says that one who is wise will draw them out, pull them up, spread them out. Proverbs 20.5. Paul did that when he wrote to his friends in Rome that, My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. Paul had it clear. Personally I find it more difficult although after all these years, there are some things that I know for sure. However, on a day to day basis, mostly I do not even know what I want, or even need. Curiously enough 1001 advertisers say they do know and pay to tell me. We perhaps all need some heart surgery. 1. Give your heart to the Lord. Because only he can satisfy the longings in there. Proverbs 23.26. 2. Ask God to give you the desires of your heart. Not the desires that are created by marketing of things you never even knew that you needed, but the desires that are created by the Creator, as expressed in Psalm 37.4. My prayer is, Lord, do not give me what I think I want, or need, give me your desires because I know that having his
desires in your heart gives me a sense of direction in life and is a certain cure for emptiness and vanity. Bob Pierce prayed this, Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God, Shortly afterwards he began World Vision and later on, Samaritans Purse to minister to orphaned children whose suffering breaks God's heart. 3. Follow your heart and the desires that God gives. God has a curious way of asking questions when he already knows the answer. Adam, where are you? He asks because he wants us to put our feelings into words and speak them out. Joseph said to the waiter and the baker, Tell me your dream. God, speaking to young Jeremiah, asked, "Jeremiah, what do you see?" So, what do you see? What is in the deep, undisturbed waters of your heart? Will you dare to bring it the surface and into the light? As Jesus said to John in the book of Revelation, "Write the vision." To take us towards the final question, let me tell you another little story. A few years ago on New Year's Day Pilar and I were walking on in Barcelona, in the area where they have parks, plazas and the major exhibition centres. We saw some conference signs with a Cross and an arrow pointing up the hill so being curious we went to see what was happening. We came across a gathering of more than 87,000 young people filing into a massive hall to sit very quietly on the concrete floor, listening to gentle, acoustic live worship music from a low stage in the centre. No fuss, no flashing lights, no smoke, nothing that the Church would normally employ to attract young people. We had come across the annual Taizé conference which had brought young people from every European country. I listened with astonishment as the 80 year old founder of the Taizé movement; Brother Roger spent 20 minutes instructing the young people on their final day together, on what to do when they returned home to bring their families and friends to follow Jesus. He said: Follow Jesus. Do what he says. Do it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I am telling you this because if an 80 year old monk working in total low-cost simplicity, can successfully make enthusiastic disciples out of tens of thousands of young Europeans, allegedly the most gospel-resistant sector of European post-modern society, then we must be able to make disciples where we live. What do we do first? Beginning in Matthew 9.3, Jesus shows us the job - teaching, preaching and healing and shares his suffering at seeing so many sheep without a shepherd, wandering far from God's love whilst the harvest is (not was or will be) plentiful. The problem he says is that the workers are few and he asks his early followers to pray and ask God to thrust out into the harvest fields some of the people who are comfortable in synagogue or church. Did they pray? We can imagine that they did and as often happens God has a funny little way of inviting those who pray to be his answer to their own prayers. In Matthew 10, this is what happened; those that prayed were the first to be called. What you see next is how Jesus made, and still makes disciples. Jesus calls us to be with him. The fact is that if we want to make disciples of others, first of all we must be disciples ourselves, men and women under the discipline of the word of God. Notice that Jesus did not primarily call them, or us today, to a location but to a person. He called them to spend time with him and as we do that: Jesus equips us with what we need. He gives us spiritual tools to do a spiritual job, to handle that most precious of all commodities, not gold, but the eternal soul of man. 10.2. Jesus deals with us personally by our name. There is a list of names with all their weaknesses, fears, doubts, hopes and strengths. Names known by God, not an impersonal ID, NI or passport number or ebay identity, email address or password. 10,2-4. Finally, Jesus sends us out with instructions. It might be weeks, months or even years later, when He knows we are ready, not when we think we are ready (or not). 10.5-16. We will have a good idea where to go, what to do, how to live and what problems to expect. So, the third and final question after what is in your hand, what is your heart, is:
WHAT IS IN YOUR DIARY? This is a fundamental, bottom line issue because our time is the greatest gift that we can give. Ask anyone how they know that someone loves them. The answer has to do with how much time that someone spends with them because the best measure of love is time. This is why your diary is important: 1. To be with Jesus requires time; it is good measure of how much you love him. For example, there are three levels of spending time with Jesus. The first and most basic level which we instinctively learn is to ask, so that we might receive. Secondly, we might move on to seeking Jesus for the love of hearing him, to know his wisdom and his ways. The promise is that if we seek we will find. Finally, and few go this far is to knock on his door as the head of the church and to go in when the door is opened. You are not likely to leave the room anytime soon. You may sit in silence listening and looking. Jesus may sit in silence listening to your heart. You are present to him and he to you. Nothing else matters. He is sufficient. Out of this time will come everything else, the works that spring from faith having heard the word of the Lord for yourself. 2. To do what Jesus says requires time for people, because first and foremost we are in the people business, not the property business or the projects or purchases that many people talk about in church. In the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus showed us one very good way of ministering to people and that is to engage with a manageable group. Jesus and Paul both liked the idea of having twelve close friends and followers as disciples. That gives you chance to know people by name and have them know you. Jesus took the loaves and fishes, which is a good picture of all that you and I may think that we have to offer. He took the total inadequacy and looked up to heaven, which is the first thing we should do. Then allow yourself like the bread and the fish to be broken, in our case by the suffering of people. The allow yourself to be given to people as God's gift to them, and you will see something remarkable because grace has an imperceptible yet miraculous way of multiplying the little that you have to offer. 3. To spend time with Jesus and with people does require time, but to ask for the Holy Spirit requires no time at all.
For any vision to work and for any call to succeed we need the genius of the Holy Spirit, his power and the keys of David that open doors. We need not our own strength, contacts and resources but his way of drawing people, his divine appointments, his bringing of the key men and women of peace to us, or maybe his way of making us the man of peace for that opens the door for someone more gifted than we are. Finally, let s revisit the story of how one day an angel visited Mary with an astonishing proposition that was going to be terribly costly. Notice Mary s question, speaking on behalf of all of us: How can this be, since... Whatever God asks you to do is likely to be impossible in your own strength, and it is very likely that you will also say, "How can this, whatever it is, be" followed by "since" or "because" followed by a list of all the reasons why the idea cannot ever be. God s answer to you today is the very same as it was for Mary. How can it be - "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and something holy will be born." And that is the only way that will bear fruit for the souls of men and for eternity. Mary s response was, Let it be unto me according to your word. Can we say the same, come what may afterwards as God begins to do it? To close, we are going to invite the same Holy Spirit to come upon us and to ask for the same power of the Most High to overshadow us, so that something holy might be conceived right here and now, and born in a short while, to grow into something great, for the glory of God. In Luke 11.13 Jesus promises to give the Holy Spirit to all who ask for him. We are asking for the Holy Spirit to begin to work the works that only God can do. My hope is that Jesus will begin and not stop to confirm his word with signs and wonders following in the next few days and weeks. Mark 16.20. No September 2013, Dr Les Norman at www.dci.org.uk You are free to use, copy and repeat this session everywhere.