Jesus did a few basic things with his disciples that we don’t usually do (at least not typically in westernized, evangelical countries). These are things that are so fundamental they’re like blocking and tackling. Too many ofus
modern disciples haven’t gone
thru the basics of training camp.
Here they are:
1. He required
and taught
abandonment.
This
is necessary to acquire spiritual eyes and become more fully dependent
on God
and eventually enter into a walk of consecration resulting in a
calling.
Jesus himself went into the desert for 40 days. Paul went to Arabia. In the desert of
abandonment, we get stripped of all preconceptions and bad habits, being
remade in God’s image.
You must be stripped before you can be clothed.
2. He practiced
personal
discipling – Jesus limited himself to a few
one-to-one relationships. He invested in a few people and gave
them an understanding of who the Father is with skin on. People need to
experience love to know God. As someone invests in us, we have our
identities
remade. We see ourselves reflected in the Father’s image thru a
relationship
with someone who is already walking with the Father.
Jesus said, “You’ve seen the Father;
you’ve
seen me.” I don’t think he was just talking about his divine nature. I
think
he was talking about this mystery that we are made in God’s image and
somehow
reflect the divine, like the moon reflects the sun. It boggles my mind
how that
works. I’m still learning about this.
3.
He imparted
spiritual authority.
You need spiritual authority
in order to exercise the power to do what the disciples did in Luke 9
and 10.
You get to “do the stuff.” Having seen the Father (that is, seen him
with the
eyes of your heart), you have confidence in his authority and become
confident
as his representative in this dark world. You are equipped go up against
demons
that want to kill you.
address the issues of injustice and begin to tap his deep wells of
compassion
for those who are in despair, healing them and setting them free. This
begins
with ministry to the poor in spirit – those looking for hope. And it is
these
very poor who themselves in time eventually infiltrate leadership of all
institutions in a society.
from your desert of abandonment, You’re imprinted with the Father’s
light
reflected in someone else. You begin to get comfortable in your new
skin. Why?
Because someone who “looks” like Jesus has invested in you, it’s time to
start
reaching out to others with the hope of the coming kingdom. And you do
this in
partnership with the Spirit using the authority he’s given
you.
things, and we often don’t do any of them. Add to this his investment of 15,000 hours over
three years in a few people,
and you’ve got a model that we moderns rarely replicate. But, like
archaeologists, we can still excavate and recover his original model. Are you up for it?
