This Doesn't Have to Be Difficult (III)
Discipleship = Relationship + Content + _____
Sorry for the delay in getting this out. We’ll be back to regular schedule and programming next week.
-B
I often describe my time in Rolla as both the fastest 20 months of my life and the slowest 20 months of my life. The fastest due to the rapidity with which events and dates seem to appear in view through the windshield of time on the horizon before me and then flash past me only to vanish on the horizon line in my rearview. At the same time, change and growth feels glacial in its development, simultaneously slowing time to a near agonizing suffocation of minutiae to accomplish in my day-to-day existence.
Don’t misunderstand me, please. This is in no way a complaint, but I occasionally feel like I’m using an oven to cook three different things at once. I estimate the approximate temperature needed; how roasting sweet potatoes, assorted veggies, and some cod filets affects their cooking time; the order in which I need to insert them into the oven, as well as which rack will best serve the purpose of cooking completely and thoroughly. Sometimes it comes together perfectly and I feel like a genius. Other times, the veg over-roasted, the sweet potatoes undercooked, the fish a little dry.
I think this is the “dirty little secret” of discipleship in some ways. We all know it, but we don’t talk about it. It takes time.
On multiple levels…
Investment
If discipleship is a matter of the relationships which help us and others live increasingly to the glory of God, then we must reckon with what it takes to build a relationship with someone else. When I consider the relationship forge, a few elements spring to mind.
The first element is intentional proximity, either physically or digitally. To build a relationship, you must be intentional about the space between you and another person, bridging the gap between the two of you. This could be going to grab lunch, sending a text, arranging a Zoom or FaceTime meeting, or even, dare I say, calling someone on the phone *gasp*. Such connection invests time in another person, ascribing honor and value to him or her by your very presence, real or virtual.
The second element is intentional communication. Inhabiting the same space as another does not a relationship, and subsequently—discipleship, make. There must be communication and communication takes time. I sometimes feel like Treebeard from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, “…it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.” We consider how to best speak to one another and labor diligently to be ministers of reconciliation with one another…
Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.1
A kind gesture, a humble phrase, a gentle correction, a patient conversation, a forgiving heart…these require intentional words spoken purposefully.
A third element is intentional service. Of the imperatives that flow out of being in Christ found in the New Testament, Christians should consider others, believers and otherwise. The Greek means to hold an opinion of or about. That opinion of others speaks volumes about your view of Christ. Paul’s letter to Philippi perhaps says it the most clearly…
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.2
The commended investment flows out of a heart transformed and completed by grace. The apostle John writes that loving others is evidence that God loves us and that love invests time in other believers.
So the question arises: Am I investing my time into other believers? Am I prioritizing relationships as one of the best uses of my time? With so many options for how we can spend our time, the Bible informs us that not only are we to invest in our own spiritual growth, but as we are also key cogs in the spiritual development of others, we are called to invest outwardly as well.
Development
Discipleship is a crockpot rather than a microwave. Even as conversion happens in an instant when the Holy Spirit regenerates and cleanses us, it is the first step, not the end of the journey. Sanctification happens progressively. Again, as discipleship is a matter of the relationships which help us and others live increasingly to the glory of God, said definition implies that where you are today is not where you were one year ago and not where you will hopefully be one year hence. Pursuant to the growth nature of Christianity, there will be at times a gap between expectation and performance. For example, knowing that lying is a sin is simple enough, but a compulsive liar reversing course and learning to speak the truth does not do so instantaneously. Correction requires a standard held up as the exemplar and a corrector to encourage and hold one accountable to the standard.
Paul wrote so severely to the Galatian church because they were deserting grace as the means of transformation in order to ascribe to some form of performative religion. His ministry in Galatia and through this letter aims, as all ministry ultimately aims, to guide and work and teach and correct and rebuke (when needed) and exhort the Galatians, in his words, “until Christ is formed in you.”3
The desire for change may strike the head of the match to provide light and heat for an instant, but a match was not created to sustain a fire, only start one. The type of life discipleship desires begins with the spark of regeneration and hopefully grows into a conflagration which spreads to everyone around it. Such explosive and consuming growth seems like it should be more catalytic, but sometimes it’s a slow burn; others, a wildfire.
Our relationships add fuel to the embers lest the flame burn itself out. Time spent together, investing in one another, pouring our lives into one another helps us maintain both the course and the pace of growth. As we w engage with one another, we regulate and shape and affirm and oversee and admonish and instruct and assist and support and extoll and commend and command and edify and lift and so much more because every believer is “in progress,” an individual becoming wholly changed. We become new in an instant and walk in newness every instant thereafter which means stumbling and fumbling forward as we learn to walk with a new course and new affections.
All of which means, we need grace to supply the power and diligence for our sustained, life-long pursuit.
The Necessity of Patience
You may create a rubric for evaluating growth, but you cannot force it along. It isn’t a skill you develop by executing phase 1, followed by phase 2, then phase 3, 4, 5, and so forth. Often it feels more like you sometimes have phase 3 thinking but phase 1 activity which quickly morphs into phase 4 level stuff all while your desire is in phase 37.
Because discipleship takes an investment of time in order to see development, you must wait. Two King James style concepts spring to mind: steadfastness and long-suffering. In modern times, we tend to say faithfulness and perseverance, but the KJV terms feel more substantial, weighty even.
Steadfastness conjures images of an anchor clung to, or a course held to in spite of storms and trials. Long-suffering paints the picture of, well, suffering for a long duration of time. Duh. Both demonstrate an understanding that the process can sometimes feel like drudgery, like a slugfest with yourself, like a wearying cross-country slog on foot through fen and bog, like a test of what you really believe.
Some of you are saying, “Aint that the truth!” right about now. So as we grow, as we invest in relationships to help us and others grow, patience must rule the day.
At this moment, I’m sitting out on my deck. I am smoking chicken on my grill and the smells arouse my hunger. My nose alerts me to the deliciousness that awaits, but I must have patience. Eating now would make me ill, rushing the process would dry the meat out and make it unpalatable. So, no matter how eager my tastebuds grow, I will wait. Patience will rule my appetite because this meal requires time.
In the same way, by grace we know we are being transformed, slowly over time, into a being that better reflects God’s glory. The struggles with self and tribulations of the world we face in the moment are producing in us “an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.”4 So we wait patiently, with grace for ourselves and grace toward one another, because it is grace which saves us; it is grace which sanctifies us; it is grace that sustains us.
Be patient with one another.
Be kind to one another.
Welcome one another.
Instruct one another.
Love one another.
It isn’t easy per se, but it’s not that difficult either.
~SDG~
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Col 3:12-17
Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Php 2:3–4.
Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ga 4:19.
Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), 2 Co 4:17