Journeys of Discipleship

Discipleship is truly all about God making you like Jesus, about sanctification, about how God is working in his people to continually reconcile them ALL to Himself.

Today I want to talk about several discipleship relationships I have been involved in over the course of my walk with the Lord. Some of them are formal, where we actually said “I want to meet with you for the purpose of discipleship,” some were more informal, and in those, so much of the time that we got together was spent in encouraging each other to run hard after Christ, be satisfied in Him and pursue His righteousness.

I believe that is the true purpose of discipleship, that it is part of the mission of the church, to bring each other to maturity in Christ. To LOVE each other in that direction.

My earliest and most constant discipleship relationship is with my mom, Myra. As I get older I see a lot more of the ways in which we are alike and I am so happy to see that. I blame it mostly on her constant involvement in my life and commitment to loving me the way Jesus would have her love me. Many people assume that discipleship is getting together and going through a book, and while we have at times done that, with tea and chocolate handy, so much of what I consider her discipleship to me is just her living her life in a way that glorifies God while having me around.

Something that I think she has done a wonderful job with is not giving up on being in my life, even when it was hard. In my early teenage years, for some reason it was incredibly hard for me to communicate with anyone, and anytime she tried to talk to me about anything serious I would end up crying and upset. She didn’t let that stop our relationship though, she got a journal and we would write each other back and forth about what was going on in our lives and what I was thinking and she would encourage me through that. She knows that often when I am up against a tough decision or some difficult circumstances and am not responding correctly, that I already know the truth, and the right way to respond, and that the best way to encourage me is to point me toward Christ and give me lots of hugs.

God has made her not afraid to show when she fails and she has demonstrated how she runs to her savior in these times and how to rightly treat other people when you have failed. I believe that this sort of transparency is incredibly important as we disciple and are disciple. As I have grown from just being her daughter to being her friend, God has allowed me to encourage her too, and I am very thankful for that.

Although my mom has been such a wonderful influence in my life, God has brought others along in my larger family, the church who he has used in my journey to love me toward Christ.

When we lived in Vallejo there was a woman named Deana, she is about 5 or 6 years older than me, got married at 18, has two kids and a husband in seminary. Though our lives to this point have been very different, all through my high school years we always connected and I always felt that I could come to her for encouragement and that I wouldn’t be judged for my struggles. We both were “officially” meeting with other people, but she was always someone I connected with. She took time to be interested in my life and listen to me. When I came back from two years away at college, she and her husband had moved ministries to our church’s college group and neither of us were meeting with anyone. She was still available to just be that encouraging presence for me and so I asked her to disciple me.

We started getting together and planned a book to go through. Although going through the book was great, the thing I appreciated was that she was not going to hold onto some program, but really try to be the encourager that I needed when I needed it. There were many times when we got together that we would just talk about our lives, pray, cook together, or take her kids to Costco. I appreciated that she was willing to just have me in her life and let me see how someone in a stage of life that I hope to one day be in loves Jesus. She was transparent, her kids were crawling all over us, it was real. She had things for me to pray for her about just as she prayed for me. She didn’t set herself up as an authority over me, but pointed me to the word in a loving way and was always interested if I knew something in an area that she didn’t. I learned a lot about how discipleship is a mutual encouragement.

God used her love, listening, and life experience to help me break a pattern of sin in my life. I was at a point where a sin was really disrupting my walk with the Lord, I was very depressed, and even asked God if He existed, because I saw my sin and knew how unworthy I was of a love like His. I was pretty broken and I was tired of pretending that everything was ok. I was tired of knowing the sin in my heart, but feeling like everyone around me was doing so well. Deana AND my mom knew something was going on, but both of them continued to love me and pray for me faithfully, even though I didn’t know it. God brought me to a point where I confessed my sin and doubt to Deana, fearfully, not knowing how she would respond, but I didn’t care anymore because I was so tired of it. She lovingly listened to me, let me cry, told me that she had struggled with the same thing before, prayed for me and pointed me to encouragement from the word about God’s love for me and His forgiveness. God gave me joy through that, and that led to even telling my mom about what I’d been going through and further healing. They didn’t judge me, they loved me and pointed me to the cross and the love of Christ as the answer for pain and sin. I knew those things, and I was saved, but this showed me how God uses people in His church to encourage others and help with growth and repentance and pointed me back in that direction. We are all equals in our sin and in the grace we receive, we are to show this to others when they fall and love them as fellow recipients of restoring grace.

Not too long after this, while I was serving in our church’s junior high ministry, God brought a girl in the ministry who wanted to start getting together with me for discipleship. It was a big answer to prayer, because while I wanted to be involved in discipling, and I do believe there were people I was involved with unofficially in this way, I wanted it to be at someone’s request. I wanted it to be because I had built a relationship with someone and they saw that it would be beneficial in their life. I didn’t want to try to manufacture that with someone. A discipleship relationship requires trust and transparency and if someone has no prior experience with you that shows them this, it’s most likely not going to work very well.

So we started building our relationship and she asked me if I would start meeting with her! This was a very different experience for me. I knew that I didn’t want to be fake, I didn’t want to set myself up as an authority in her life, I knew she already had Christian parents, so she didn’t need that sort of figure in her life. I just decided that my role would be to encourage her, love her, and point her to Christ. Basically I wanted to do for her what Deana and my mom had done in my life. We started meeting and it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Not because I felt like some great spiritual mentor, or that I was God’s great gift of wisdom to her or because we made it through a lot of books or anything. We didn’t make it through a lot of books, we started a basic theology book and got through about a chapter and a half of it in the whole time we were meeting. I often went to our meetings feeling like I was empty, like I had no idea what God wanted me to say to her, like a bit of a failure because I didn’t have some great thing planned to teach her. This of course was all silly, because God was working on my heart and He wanted me to share my life and the things he was teaching me with her.

I fully believe that God wanted me to KNOW how inadequate I was, because he was graciously teaching me exactly what she needed. As I met with her, committed to listen to her about her life and encourage her to love Christ above all, the answers came. I usually felt like I was maybe half a step ahead, because usually the advice she needed was something I had been struggling through applying to my own heart that morning or the night before. I had to face my own conviction in order to give her the encouragement that she needed. And it was hard, but I needed to say, “Oh, you’re struggling with an issue with your parents today? That’s funny, because I was really upset with my dad about basically the same thing this morning and this is what I need to do to be right with him and with God, and we’re in the same boat, so this is what we both need to do.”

That transparency was so important. I learned that we can’t set ourselves up to be some great Christian role model, because God will humble us until we remember that we are just sinners who He has loved. When he uses us in someone else’s sanctification process, it is really just another part of ours. I am so thankful that I have seen my dear girl, my friend, grow so much through the time that we met and even since then. She is such an encouragement to me, when we met, it usually just turned to praising the Lord for his goodness and for who he is. I truly believe that helping someone see the glory of a great God will change their hearts and lives.

I have had less than positive discipleship relationships. I have seen others have someone attempt to “be their discipler” but not be willing to be transparent. I've seen some who want people they meet with to only see the parts of their life that they have under control, but unless they can see how the grace of God is changing your life, how will they grow in that? Others expect “their disciple” to trust them with the deepest heart issues without wanting to really be involved in their life more than an hour a week. I have seen some who listen to issues and then give out 5 verses and expect the disciplined disciple to come back better next time. I have seen lots of people attempting to disciple others through a very academic process, assigning papers and books and books to memorize, though what the “discipled” needed was someone to see that they were struggling with school and with loving Christ at all.

A revelation that struck me while I was writing this all out is that, even though these experiences happen, God is the one who in ALL my experiences is discipling me. He is creating the heart of a true disciple and believer and in his sovereignty He gives relationships that may not be ideal, but which are used to show us pride in our hearts and to make us grow. So even though these may not have been the way I wish they had been or think would have been right, I am thankful for them.

I thank God for his process of conforming my desires to his and that He has allowed me to be part of His church, using others in my life, and using me in others’ lives. This is how he makes us grow.