Before You Make Disciples, You Must Become a Disciple

So you mentioned that you address misunderstandings of what it means to follow Christ. What would some of those that are most prevalent in our culture be? Including, I know you mentioned in the book the responsibility of each disciple to make disciples, but along with that, what would some others be that you address?

Becoming A Disciple

That’s good. When I started to write Follow Me, part of me… I’d written in chapter five of Radical, talked a good bit about disciple making. And I wanted to write a book more intentional about disciple making. And I actually started writing, okay, here’s how to make disciples biblically. What does this look like? And Jesus and his disciples, the Book of Acts and the New Testament, all the New Testament, what does this look like? But then, as I was writing, I felt along the way, I feel like I’m trying to cajole people to make disciples.

Disciple Making Disciples

We need to do this. The more I thought about it and the more I looked, especially in the gospels, when these guys stood on a mountain in Matthew 28 with Jesus, they didn’t have to be cajoled into making disciples. They had seen him die on a cross, rise from the dead. These guys were ready to make themselves. They didn’t need to be told to stop and wait because they were going to mess it all up if they didn’t have the spirit inside of them, and so they were ready to go.

So what did they understand about discipleship that made making disciples just make sense? And so that’s where I went back and said, okay, maybe we are not aggressively making disciples of Jesus because we’ve misunderstood what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in the first place.

And so there’s definitely… I am burdened, no question, by the reality that scores of people in our culture and in contexts around the world, scores of people culturally identify themselves as Christians who biblically are not followers of Christ. And some people say, is that possible? I think it’s not just possible. I think according to Jesus it’s probable. He said at the end of his most famous sermon, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, do all these things in your name. Many will say to me. Many. He used the word many. And he says, I will tell them I never knew you away from me.

What Does It Mean to Follow Jesus?

So not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only he who does the will of my father is in heaven. So what does it mean to follow Jesus? We need to ask that question biblically.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? And so I want to ask that question, so I’m burdened there. And then I’m burdened on another level when it comes to disciple-making, the spectator mentality that sometimes pervades the church, oftentimes pervades the church, that I’m just zealous to war against. The spirit of Christ in every single believer, has empowered every single follower of Christ to fish for men. And so you’ve got this great commission to go baptize and all go baptize, teach in all nations, we’ve turned into a comfortable call to come be baptized and sit in one location. And so I’m burdened on that level.

I think those burdens go together. I think maybe one of the reasons why we’re not actively, urgently make a disciples in our lives is because we’ve misunderstood what it means to be a disciple in the first place.

The Goal of Follow Me

And so my goal in Follow Me is to show what it means to be a disciple, and at every point, tie disciple making to that. So as Jesus transforms our minds, what we believe, then, okay, we can’t help but to share this gospel. If we believe people around us are going to hell without Christ, any kind of love for people will compel us then to share the gospel with people. Do we desire that? It just transforms our desires. He gives us the desire to see the gospel spread. The glory of God may know… We love the glory of God more than our own lives as disciples of Jesus. Our will. Our will is now abandoned. It’s not, Lord, what is your will for my life? It’s Lord, I know your will. It’s revealed in your word. How can my life best align with your will?

And then relationships in the church. We talked about some. Commit yourself to the church, to glorify Christ. And then our whole purpose in the world, the way that plays out here and among the nations. And so to show how as he transforms us, he compels us to make disciples. And we begin to realize that from beginning to end, New Testament Christianity, to be a disciple is to make disciples.

Again, how that looks in different people’s lives in different ways, but sharing the gospel, leading people to follow Christ, showing people how to follow Christ, teaching them to obey Christ. This is something we all do as followers of Christ. And I think we’ll only do that with zeal and urgency that scripture calls us to when we understand what it means to be a disciple in the first place biblically.