JESUS, THE HOLY SPIRIT and Me

Job Discriptions:

ME: disciple-maker
HOLY SPIRIT: discipler
JESUS: church-builder

“Our job is to make disciples. The Holy Spirit’s job is to disciple. Jesus job is to build His Church.”

Jesus last command is as important as the first, “Go and make disciples” is just the “how” of “loving God and one another.” Actually,”loving one another” is “loving God.” How can that be the same? The second commandment is the same as the first. How can we say, “I love God” whom we do not see that we cannot even love someone whom we see? [1Jn.4:20-21] The only way to show God’s love is for me to love you. It is through our love for one another that the world will know that we are His [Jn.13:34,35] And actually, this is true “worship service” where “faith expresses itself in love” towards your neighbor in the “field” where sheep is made for, not in the “barn” where they held their “endless” meetings and “weekly Sunday Schools” where graduation was still never announce when.

This is the foundation of our Christian life. Now, I’m gonna talk loud about where the action is.

ME and YOU

Our job is to “make” disciples. This is our job “description.” This is the reason why were left here on earth. This is worship unto God. Somehow we mix this up or confuse ourselves with our “hit and run” modern-day evangelism which lacks the intention of the Great Commission to build relationships. The intention is for them to be “the people of God” again, will be redeemed and will become a part of His Body, the Church. Church is about relationships; nothing more, nothing less. “Loving God and loving one another” is through a relationship. God is a Truine personality, it’s about relationship, without it love will be an unknown reality. We often say that to become a part of His Kingdom is not to go through religion but to enter into a relationship with Jesus. To have eternal life is to have a new kind of life/relationship that was meant to be “eternal.”

This is intentional discipleship.

Knowing “why” you are doing what you are doing is important in making someone a disciple. Oftentimes, the reason why we don’t know “how” to make disciples is because we don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing. We fall into a trap of a “destination disease” kind of discipleship programs. Collecting all the “right” materials and the “right” people and taught or train them in the “right” time in the “right” temperature room and they’re you go. You produce a bunch church-goers Sunday-after-Sunday, 58-weeks a year, both now and forever, Amen! This in turn repeated again and again in every church that resulted in “fit for all” curriculum. Finishing Class 201: MATURITY, does not make you a mature christian. It only gives you a diploma without a job!

Granted, you can use “Classes” “Curriculum” “Manuals” whatsoever. The question then is, “For how long?” Huh!

Honestly, how do you make disciples?

“I have been through a lot of discipleship trainings and seminars,” says a friend who is passionate to make disciples, “but my question were never answered: how?” I often challenge curious people that Jesus didn’t taught us “how” to make disciples just as He didn’t taught us “how” to heal the sick. He just said, “Heal the sick.” So He said, “Make disciples.” In the Great Commission He didn’t told us “how” to make disciples. He told us to make disciples. He said, “Go and make disciples…baptize them, teach them to obey…” He didn’t give a sermon on “how to make disciples” but He commanded, “As you go…do this!”

Jesus Way of Making a Disciple

So, thinking deeply how did Jesus make a disciple, since He is actually “making” people His disciples,” I found it very simple:

1. He makes friends
2. He look for people who believes in Him then…
3. He told them, “Follow Me.”

Let me explain a little bit….

Jesus makes friends with everybody. He mingles with people, He ates with people, He hangs out with people. When I was handling some youth, someone ask me to teach on how to get them. I said, “Well, if you will visit people, then this is how you do it: Walk with them, play with them, sit with them, sleep with them, swim with them, do things together with them and lastly, feed them and you can have them!” Hmnn…looks like it’s how Jesus did it!

Jesus listens to people and then talk with them. He “lead by listening” to what His Father is saying and do what He’s Father saw Him doing. He has people all around. Most Christians today have “walls” all around them that they cannot see what’s behind it. Especially, churches that held their “services” in theaters, after their “holy hours” they roam around looking for a nice place to eat and stalls to buy things. Church is finished right there and then. Church to them is just an “attendance-based.” As you know, we don’t “attend” Christ! They may “Sometimes visit our community and preach the Gospel, but they never visit the poor and the sick” says a villager.

For Jesus, church is in the field, not in the “barns.” His Father is glorified in everything He does and offers worship. For “churchy people” it’s “worship is singing.”

He’s Tracking!

Jesus may preach to the crowd, makes friends with many but only makes disciples to those who believe in Him [jn.3:16]. He is looking for people who will trust their lives in Him and can be loyal to Him [Jn.14:1; 6:67]. In the same way, finding “faithful men” who can be able to make disciples [2Tim.2:2], we should be looking for the same people who believe in us, trust us, and loyal to us. I can assure you, if you can find them they will be faithful to make disciples to their friends. I say, “their friends” because normally the people who has your belief, trust and loyalty are fairly your friends. That means you have built enough relationships to them already. What is just so sad is that many Christians don’t have “unbelieving” friends already. They have created their own “Christian World” with just a bunch of their “Christian Friends” who does “Christian Ministry” plans to build “Christian Schools” and sing only their Christian Carols called “Christian Songs” in their “Christian Church Buildings” and speaks their holy language called “Christianese!”

Rewind a little bit here: Why we look for people who we can make disciples who believe in us and not in Jesus? Trust in us and not in Jesus? And loyal to us and not to Jesus? Answer: They are your “unbelieving” friends. They don’t know Jesus yet. Let your light shine, let them see your good works. This is the key here, not “hit and run” evangelism. Stop winning souls, start making friends. They cannot get away with our change lives! We can overcome them with Jesus Blood and the “word of our testimony!”

By the way, making friends is the key in making disciples. This is how making disciples could be the job of everybody and not one-man, simply because everybody has friends who believe in them, trust them and loyal to them.

Do we really have to look for people who will believe in me?

Honestly, the world out there is dark and they are looking for some light. Jesus is the Light of the world, the reason why you have been given a part of that light [good works, Eph.2:10, Matt.5:16] it’s because for the world to see you “for awhile” and then you lead them to Christ!

Lead for “awhile”

We are not told to make our own disciples. We are only told to make them Jesus disciples. And so while you’re making friends and soon enough you’ll lead them to Christ and right there, you take “off” your hands. You’ve done you’re part. Like John the Baptist, he only “lead for awhile” and then his own disciples followed Jesus as soon as Jesus appears in the scene.

Just a quick on how we make disciples here, this is number 3: He told them, “Follow Me.”

1. Believing
We “intentionally” tell a friend, “I will make you a disciple.” The intention is mentioned right from the beginning. This is for him to know that he is one now! We don’t say, “Follow Me.” We only say word for word, “I will make you a disciple of Jesus.” Based on experience, we can always assure that he wants to be Jesus disciples. The key is because he believes in me, trust me and loyal to me.

2. Repenting
“What’s that?” Is always the response of a curious person. And curiosity is a sign of a prepared person. Look at Nicodemus, very curios about Jesus. Inquiring him “by night.” How about Zaccheus, very much curious. Imagine “climbing on a tree” just to see Him? Of course, it’s logic enough to understand that Jesus would invite Himself to his house he would surely say a big, “YES!” As quick as we can, we don’t go though a series of teaching about repentance. We just say, “leave your sin. Jesus has already saved you 2,000 years ago, and now that you know and believe. Leave you sin and…”

3. Baptizing
“Bury yourself along with it in the water of baptism. If you want to follow Jesus, He will kill you and that’s why I will bury you. You’re dead in your sins, Eph.2:1, You must deny yourself.” We baptize him directly, as quick as we can. The faster you make disciples the quicker Jesus comes. If you are slow in making disciples then you are probably the reason of why He’s not coming yet?  By the way, one who makes the person a disciple, his friend, is one who will baptize him.

4. Receiving
After he will arise from the water we laid our hands, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Either he speaks in a tongue or not it doesn’t matter. We depend so much on the Holy Spirit in this. Based on experience, this is still to happen quick yet and we are excited for that. Like Peter, while he speaks the Holy Spirit came! But in our times of having “relational discipleship” the Holy Spirit enabled 3 disciples to speak in a tongue instantly without laying on of hands or prayer. Boom! We got our “detailed stories” of this in our sites.

5. Accepting
We say, “Now you are a part of us and we are a part of you. We are family. I have become your father/mother in the Lord and you have become my son/daughter in the Lord.” [Eph.6:1]

 

What Church did you go to?

Based on experience, they never ask where is our church is, later after a month or two they start asking, but they experience already a “being church together as family” in a daily basis. Yes, we do “daily here from house to house.” We encourage brethren to live closely together to be able to watch over one anther. No “schedule” of meetings “weekly.” How can you put a “schedule of meetings” on that where you just live next door to each other? We got “detailed stories” in our websites, yes with “s” as we don’t have an “official” website for all. Each has different stories of how they make disciples and how they relate together as family to each other.

Accepting is very important when it comes to making disciples because this is where the “relational stuff” begins to happens, of course from the time you start making friends it started already. We call this, “relational discipleship.”

Why “becoming father in the Lord” and “children in the Lord?” Because church is a family, so it has parents and children. Second, is because normally those who believe in you are younger than you. This is how we can change the next generation of Christianity! Older generations parenting the younger generations.

“MAKE” DISCIPLES

Our job is to “make” disciples. It’s a quick happening so that it can be fast to reach the growing population. It is simple because our job is only to “make” him a disciple, not disciple him! As Floyd McFlung says, “We [make] disciple the lost to convert, we don’t disciple the lost.” It is quick just as my friend Mike Peters would say, “We are only taking men to Christ for him to be discipled.”

See, our job was never to disciple people as we are not the Holy Spirit. We are only to “make” them one. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit in us, use it to hear Him as He leads you to lead unbelievers to Christ. You are led for that, not to “disciple” him. This is what makes ‘discipleship’ complicated because we are doing someone else’s job. The question is, “Who’s disciple are you?” If you are Jesus disciple then who’s you’re discipler? The Holy Spirit.

This is being a discipler then, being led by the spirit of God. It’s the leadership of God, being spirit-led. This is “Class 201: Maturity?” – able to hear God. “For as many as are led by the spirit of God are called sons of God”[Ro.8:14]. A child may need guidance, but a son is led by the spirit. A “child” may be, but he didn’t receive a baby Holy Spirit!

THE HOLY SPIRIT: the discipler

To be continued…..