Part 1: Two Ditches

For years we have had a saying in our ministry:

“Truth travels the road of relationships.”

What do we mean when we say that?  We mean that when we build a bridge with someone in the form of a relationship, it opens up the opportunity for them to hear truth from us.  And in this case, when we say truth, we are talking about the John 14:6 Truth who goes by the name of Jesus.  A relationship with someone is our best opportunity for them to welcome the gospel.

But, like with most roads, this road has two ditches.  The ditch on one side is trying to travel the road before it’s finished.  When we live in this ditch, those we meet feel like projects rather than people.  When someone senses that you have an agenda, that you only asked them a question about themselves so you could get to your canned spiel, the road crumbles.  They aren’t open to hear what you have to share.  There was not really a road in place for the Truth to travel.

The second ditch is the one most of us get stuck in.  The road is there, it’s ready, and it’s strong, but we can’t seem to get around to the Truth. 

“I am waiting for just the right moment to talk about Jesus,” we tell ourselves. 

But the fact is that we have had 8 months of moments come and go with our friend and none of them seemed “just right.”  And to make things worse, now we feel like if we bring up Jesus at this point, they are going to say, “Wait a minute, this is the most important thing in your life and you’ve never mentioned it for 8 months?  What the heck?”  But they might not say heck.

Tomorrow we will feature another great post from Jonathan Dodson from Gospel Centered Discipleship about how valuing the relationship above all else is actually a barrier to sharing our faith. 

Next Monday we will look at how we can avoid the second ditch of building a road for Truth that Truth never travels on.

by Michael Smith

Community Pastor

Fellowship Bible Church of NW Arkansas

mismith@fellowhsipnwa.org

Recently I got a chance to watch Bryan Loritts’ opening talk from the Downline Summit this spring.  He offered a challenging question: is your church a battleship or a cruise ship?  Take a moment and let that hit you.  Is your church taking the battle to the enemy, with every person fully committed to winning the cause?  Or is it a cruise ship, existing merely for the comfort and enjoyment of its many passengers?

Convicting concept and powerful metaphor.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the metaphor easily extends beyond “the church” when I consider who the church is.  The church, you see, is me.  And you, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ.  So I have to look at my own life.  At my own family.  At my own checkbook.  I have to ask myself, am I in the battle or on the cruise?  So I thought of a few questions I am wrestling with that you might want to ask yourself as well.

1. Am I getting orders from the Admiral or giving orders to the cruise director?

2. Do I eat and sleep where my commanding officer tells me, or do I spend my time deciding which buffet to visit?

3. Do I start each day equipping myself for battle or do I begin my day planning how I will entertain myself?

4. At the end of my days am I weary from work for the cause or am I unsatisfied because I have spent my day feeding my appetites?

Talk it over with your man or woman. 

Tomorrow, a classic article on “Consecration to a War Time Lifestyle” by Dr. Ralph Winter.

So the name of this blog is R3ally.  It sort of looks like rally, but it has a 3 in there.  It’s clever and confusing.  Is that good marketing?  We don’t know.  But we do know that we are passionate about the r3 concept.  But after a few weeks (and months … is it years already? This is our 350th post!) the original vision starts to lose some air.  It’s like the helium balloon on “The Office” that was up in the rafters of the warehouse … eventually it floated down to the floor and they smashed it with a forklift.  Rather than letting our r3 vision float down to the floor for smashing, we’d rather rather pump it up every now and then.  So here goes:

the first R is for REACH.  This means reaching people for Christ.  This means taking the good news that even though things on this planet are a mess, there’s an answer.  The answer is a person and his name is Jesus.  We want to reach people with the good news that Christ died for their sins and wants to invite them into a resurrection life that begins now and lasts forever.

the next R is for REPRODUCE.  This means DISCIPLESHIP.  We don’t want to reproduce ourselves… one of each of us is enough.  We want to reproduce CHRIST in someone else by investing our life in them.  This is what the bulk of the content on this blog centers around.

the final R is for RELEASE.  We don’t make a disciple of Jesus Christ so we can set them on the shelf and admire them.  They aren’t trophies, they are arrows that we want to fire into places we could never go.  We want to release them to Spirit-empowered ministry. 

And here’s what we like best about it: that released disciple is released to  … you guessed it… REACH someone for Christ, REPRODUCE Christ in them, and RELEASE that person to biblical ministry.

I lied about one thing.  That’s not what we like best about it.  What we like best about it is that it CAN’T FAIL because it’s Jesus’ own method and it’s exactly what the New Testament is all about.

And that’s why we are here.  That’s the single reason we are posting five times a week and tweeting and Facebooking and tumbling … because we want to be your ALLY in living and R3 life. 

Got thoughts?  We’d love to hear from you.

crawfordifland:

“For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into His kingdom and glory.”

- 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12

During my senior year of high school I was in a discipleship group with my friends Zach and Brad. Every Tuesday morning we would meet at Brad’s house or at the nearby Starbucks at 6:30 to get in the word, have accountability, and reflect on what God was teaching us. Brad, on staff at our church, would lead Zach (who was then a junior) and I (a senior) through a passage or principle from scripture, talking about how we could apply it to our lives, and in doing so, how we could stand firm as true young men of God in the tough environment that was high school. We experienced accountability. We talked about hard things. We wrestled. We disagreed. We learned.

To be honest, it was the best preparation for college I could have ever gotten. 

I read these verses from 1 Thessalonians last night and couldn’t help but be reminded of the word discipleship. In this passage Paul is writing to the church in Thessalonica, reflecting on his time with the church body, and instructing them on how they ought to live in Paul’s absence. Paul reminds them that, as an older brother in Christ, he dealt with the church as a father deals with his children: always encouraging them, always comforting them, and urging them to live lives worthy of God, who calls them into His kingdom and glory. 

I think this is what she discipleship model should look like. Too frequently do we say that we want to form a “small group,” but far too often do we find ourselves distracted by other lesser things. I admire Brad for his model and for his leadership - he followed this verse for sure. He was always encouraging and always comforting - above all, he was always willing to listen to our problems and struggles - much like our Heavenly Father (read about that in the previous post on Rest). He urged us to live lives worthy of God…which often times, looked completely different from the lives our classmates and peers were living. He also exposed us to the mission of God - the fact that God calls us to be ambassadors for His Kingdom and to bring Him glory on this earth still amazes me. Are you kidding me? God chose me of all people to make Him famous?

Yep.

The encouragement and comfort I received from this discipleship group filled me up every week and left me with more joy that I knew what to do with. Zach and I would enter school on Tuesday mornings (often times late), being so filled and encouraged that we couldn’t help but smile all day long, especially when we saw each other in the halls. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have made it through senior year without those two guys. 

And you know what? Genuine discipleship like that has a tendency to continue. 

Brad eventually moved about an hour away midway through the school year, but Zach and I kept on meeting, every Tuesday morning at 7:00. The talks we had were not always easy, but they were some of the most valuable times in my life. The intentionality of those times made such a huge difference in my life. High school wasn’t always easy. Life wasn’t always easy. But knowing that I had friends and brothers in Christ with whom I could talk about what I was going through was so encouraging. 

Discipleship isn’t just about accountability (though that is a part of it). It’s not just about getting in the word, or sharing prayer requests. Though these are all good, that isn’t the primary aim. What was Paul’s mission among the churches when he originally wrote this letter? What was Jesus’ mission from the beginning? 

To make disciples of Jesus that make disciples of Jesus, and in doing so, to advance God’s kingdom and make Jesus famous.

Jesus made disciples. They made disciples. Paul (one of those disciples), made more disciples among the churches. Those churches made disciples. 2,000 some years later, Christianity is all over the world. 

But somehow, I think we’ve lost focus on the whole “discipleship” thing. 

For the longest time, I went to church every week. I prayed. I read my Bible. But not because my faith was mine. I did most of it because it was what my family did. Did I really have a personal relationship with Jesus? Was I continually seeking after Him day by day? I don’t really think so. I went to church out of habit, prayed occasionally, and maybe read my Bible. 

But once I really experienced Jesus through discipleship, focusing on how to live as a young man of God in this “present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), my life was changed. When you encounter Jesus, your life doesn’t stay the same. I discovered that I was able to encounter Jesus through fellowship in a group of young men with a common purpose - to make disciples and make Jesus famous - and that was incredible for me. 

But discipleship won’t continue unless it is done the right way, with the right intentions in mind, and most importantly, with Jesus at the center.

So step out in faith - get a group of men or women your age and do life together.

Rejoice together.

Mourn together. 

Have hard conversations.

Ask hard questions.

Challenge each other.

Bear each others burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Walk with one another through life. 

But most importantly, “encourage each other, comfort each other, and urge each other to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

There is no doubt that part of discipling someone is teaching them to pray.  Prayer is sharing our heart with God, learning what is on his heart, and praying his heart as we are led by his Spirit and his Word.

God desires to reveal himself and his will to us through his Word and his Spirit.  God desires for us to pray in agreement with him so his Kingdom will come and his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Prayer is a relationship which deepens as we grow in the knowledge of who God is. We all start as babies crying out from our needs and pain, and progress as we grow in the knowledge of our awesome God.  The more we know God the less we talk and the more we listen.  As we listen through his Word and his Spirit, we begin to pray the desires of his heart.  Jesus prayed, and according to John 17:7-8 Jesus and the Father are one, and Jesus has given us the words that the Father gave him.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” (John 10:27)  As we grow from babies to children we know the voice and character of our mother and father. As we grow as believers we grow to know voice and character of our Father God. This wonderful relationship continues to grow and mature as we live our lives in Christ. We are His disciples!

Jesus has commanded us to make disciples, teaching them to observe all things he commanded us…and he is with us always.   (Matthew 28:18-20)

As we are disciples and as we co-labor with God to make disciples, we walk and talk with God and listen to his voice and pray his heart and will for our lives… as well as for the lives of the people has given to us. We pray in his Name, (authority), and we pray his will be done in our lives and in the lives of others for his Glory.

By Peter Nougier

Email him at pnouguier@gmail.com