Cultivating Disciples
CCCAG Jan 27th, 2019
Scripture- Acts 4:36, Acts 16:1-3, 1 Cor 11:1
Intro:
Has anyone here ever gotten into an argument and when it's over you look back on and say man that was a stupid thing to argue about?
Back in the time before Facebook, or Twitter and other social media if you wanted to have online discussions with people you had to go to a chat room.
One of these discussions we are having was the debate about people who choose to live dependent upon other people or the government versus people who overcame despite everything life threw. There were 2 basic sides to this debate –
On one side you had the people who would give every excuse in the world why a person would need welfare to help support them. These people generally focus on where a person came from, the poverty they lived in, or everything in life that had been against them and therefore they needed the government to subsidize their lives.
On the other side of this argument- which was my side, there were those who said that this is America and no matter what color you are where you came from and poverty and no matter what life throws at you through hard work you can succeed.
America does not always ensure a result, but it will give you a chance if you're willing to work for it.
As with most online conversations, they usually devolve into passive aggressive attacks or just out right name calling. One of the people in the discussion called me out by name and said that it's very obvious I came from a life of privilege and it never known any hardship in my life and therefore had no right to tell others who have gone through hard times at all they had to do was work harder to succeed.
When you live in the poor areas, commonly called ghettos, you have a reputation you have to maintain if you don’t want to get beaten up all the time. Today it’s called your street cred- it’s the resume’ of how tough you are so other people don’t mess with you. I started reciting of my street cred to this person-
I told that person you have no idea where I have come from or what I've been through.
I said my parents split up when I was 4 and a half
My mom was on welfare
Most of my younger years were spent in a house where people were to either too drunk or too high to even cook us supper.
I got moved around to various relatives. Drugs were grown and sold in the houses I lived in. Even though I was relatively intelligent I kept failing in school until finally I dropped out at 16. I was functionally homeless for 2 years going from friend to friend and crashing with them. I made every mistake a young person could make in life and it 18 years old most people had written me off as someone who would never be anything in life.
I used that background to say that nobody helped me.
In fact, most people in Kenosha saw me as a loser and wouldn’t give me a single break.
NO government money, no program, no charity- I finally made a decision in my life to no longer be a victim of circumstances and made the choice to succeed in life.
I pulled myself up by my own boot straps and made something of myself.
The person who I was talking to replied- “Someone had to help you at some point”. I was so mad at that point that I just blew him off and shut down my computer.
I’m watching TV and fuming about this until I heard God say, “What about me? Do you think for one second you’d be as far as you are today after wasting half your life if it weren’t for me?”
God gave me a Job experience? (explain)
God started asking me those same questions-
“Remember when you mocked my servants as they tried to tell you the way to salvation, and they kept persisting even though you had people laughing at him?
God Said, That was me
“You remember that same person, and other believers at that factory that gave you rides to work so you could support your family?
God said, That was me
“You remember how many people blessed you financially as you struggled to dig yourself out of that hole you dug?”
God said, That was me
“You remember those people who came along side you and encouraged you in the ministry when no one else would give you a chance?
God said, That was me
I could go on and on about how God showed me in that moment how He used His people to help me in life.
I had Job’s reaction- repenting in dust and ashes.
These people who helped me are called disciples. A disciple is a follower of a teacher and that teachers ideas.
Jesus left us with very simple instructions as to our mission in life.
Jesus didn’t tell us to go forth and make Christians. He didn’t even tell us to grow a church. He didn’t even directly tell us to build a building or set up programs.
He told us to make disciples, so that as His disciples we can help pick up other people who are down and out spiritually and carry them until they can do the same thing.
Today I want to talk about what makes a good disciple of Jesus Christ. A disciple is known for having faith and loving God and others. That’s their core. The outworking of faith and love is multiplication- making more disciples.
Growing and cultivating disciples has three parts to it. It’s not a step one, step two, and step three process- These three parts will often and ideally occur at the same time and repeat themselves throughout your entire life.
Today we are going to look at these three processes and see how God uses them to bring us from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity
Prayer
I. Be a Barnabas Acts 9:26-27
Barnabas was a disciple in the early church. His name was actually Joseph, but he was known as Barnabas- a nickname which meant Son of Encouragement. Barnabas was one of the most loved people in the early Christian church because he was living example of the love and acceptance of Jesus Christ.
One of the ways that Barnabas showed Christ’s love and acceptance was bringing Saul of Tarsus into the church after Saul’s conversion experience. Remember, Saul, who was later called Paul was the man whose whole life up until this point had been murdering and imprisoning Christians.
Let's read about it
Acts 9:26 When he (Paul) came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.
Think about what Barnabas did for Saul here.
The closest modern example I can think of would be one of you bringing Osama bin Laden into church on a Sunday morning and saying that now he's a Christian and I'm vouching for him.
But that is who Barnabas was.
He is the quintessential example of what a friend looks like.
Barnabas was known for creating dialogue, settling arguments , and bringing 2 opposing sides together in peace.
In fact, I think of Barnabas were alive today he could get Donald Trump and Nancy Polosi together and hammer out a compromise inside of 2 hours. That is just the kind of guy that he is.
His example for us today is This- all of us in order to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ need to have a friend like Barnabas.
A friend like Barnabas is going to show the following attributes –
#1- he will tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurts, but you can trust it will be done so in love
I’m going to preface this- this illustration is a generality- meaning it is not a personal attack against any one person or people, but just a general condition I have observed so please don’t be offended. I struggled including this but couldn’t find another way to explain it. I want to be very careful here because I don't want to offend anyone since virtually everyone here is from a rural area.
When I first moved to Whitehall, I was met with a challenge that hindered me for a few years. I didn’t know how to talk to people.
I don’t know if you know this, but there is a difference between how people talk in a city and how they talk here in a rural area.
Living in a city, people are going to tell you in no uncertain terms exactly what they think of you. There is not a lot of ambiguity there. They don’t care if you are offended.
What I have found living in a rural area is that people are more concerned with being nice.
I’m not saying people rural areas lie or are being dishonest. There is just more of a focus in politeness and being nice.
I point this out because sometimes because even in the Christian church, we think that being nice is more important than being truthful with a person.
What does this have to do with being a Barnabas to someone
The bible says “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” It means that if you are being a friend to a person, you need to tell them the truth in love. To do otherwise is like pouring a drink for an alcoholic. You are contributing to the problem instead of standing firm for a solution.
It doesn’t be a jerk about it, but sometimes the nicest thing you can do for a person is be honest.
Husbands, this does not mean if your wife askes you if she looks fat in this outfit you answer truthfully…
#2- A friend like Barnabas will stand by you even when you are the least popular person in the world.
He may not agree with what you have done to make yourself unpopular, but his relationship with you is not based on your performance but on a sense of Apape love for you.
After a Barnabas like friend confronts a bad behavior, he is willing to stand by you and help you to get to the other side. I think in the church we are way too fast to throw people under a bus. I have read countless articles about people who say that the church is the only organization that routinely shoots it's wounded. We need to be better than that. We need to be a hospital for the sick not a museum of supposedly perfected Saints.
#3- When you do mess up, A friend like Barnabas will risk everything to make sure that you have every chance you can for redemption
Imagine if Jesus treated us like some church’s treat their members? I’m not excusing bad behavior at all- Jesus wants us to live obedient and holy lives. But we are human, we will fail, we will mess up, and we will sin on occasion.
I had a friend who was a pastor in a church and the head of his elder board came to him and confessed a horrible pornography addiction, and his wife had just found out about it and was asking for a divorce. This man was devasted as the weight and consequences of his sin were weighing heavily on him. The wife was already talking to some of the people in the church, and rumors were spreading like wildfire. The pastor was fielding emails, social media posts, and phone calls demanding this man be brought before the church and publicly excommunicated.
The pastor refused to do it. He said that the man had repented and had resigned from the elder board and was seeking help and it was up to the church to forgive. A special meeting was called in which a strong contingent of people demanded the pastor discipline this man. The pastor refused and walked over and stood next to the man and said, if you throw him out, you will have to throw me out too.
That’s a Barbabas- a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Not only do you need a person like that in your life, but you need to be that person to others.
The next step to cultivate disciples and work on your spiritual maturity is
II. Train a Timothy Acts 16:1-3
Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
See one, do one, teach one. This is become a mainstay in modern medical education. When we are teaching a new procedure to a person we will show them how it's done. we will take them step by step and exactly how you do it. Then we will show them in real time how you would do the procedure. After that we will let you do that procedure a couple of times until you are comfortable with it but we really don't consider you to have mastered it until you have taught it to someone else.
That is why every single person here needs a Timothy in their life.
Do you see through the scripture we just read how Paul trained Timothy? Paul didn't say, “It's great that you want to go into the ministry. Now go to college for 4 years, do 2 years of internship, and then find a job at a small church to get some experience.”
That's not how Paul did it. He immediately took Timothy under his wing and let him see the work of the ministry right off the bat. That doesn't mean that Paul did not spend intense times of training with him.
It doesn't mean that Paul didn't require Timothy to gain some didactic knowledge of the scriptures.
It doesn’t mean that Paul didn’t have some behavioral limits on Timothy that may have seemed foreign and even silly to a Greek Teenager- like getting circumcised. That’s a pretty big deal.
What it shows is that Paul took Timothy from where he was and trained him to be an elder in the church.
Look at Verse 4 again
4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey.
It wasn’t just Paul making these pronouncements or handling church discipline, it was this teenager Timothy doing it also.
See one, do one, teach one. This was very personal, this was very hands on, and this was a huge time commitment for Paul to invest in this young man to someday be able to stand on his own when Paul was no longer around.
And look at the result Paul’s deliberate relationship with this young man-
5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.
None of us will ever be sharp spiritually until we have a Timothy in our lives. For parents, it’s largely your children, but once they are grown your new Timothy might be the parents of a new born or a new married couple in your church or even a young single man or woman that needs one on one guidance from an experienced saint to learn how to walk with Jesus in a world hostile to everything we believe.
That’s why we all need a Timothy in our lives
The 3rd and last way we cultivate disciples and grow spiritually is
III. Pursue a Paul 1 Cor 11:1
Paul says- Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
The week before last I had gone down to Milwaukee to attend a conference for emergency medical workers and firefighters. Before I left someone asked me why I would bother going to something like that considering that I have all this experience. I said because there's always someone smarter than me and if I'm going to grow at all as a paramedic, I need to find that smarter person and learn from them.
One of the classes I took when I was down there was on managing critical patient’s on ventilators. I considered myself to be pretty comfortable in this area and figured this was going to be more of a review then an actual learning time. Boy was I wrong. The guy who is teaching the class have been a flight paramedic both for helicopters and for fixed wing aircraft for over 20 years he has literally wrote the book on ventilator management. His name is Eric Bauer and he open the class by saying this, “If I have any expertise in what I’m going to talk about this morning, it’s because I have surrounded myself by people way smarter than me.
If you want to learn, you have to be willing to be humble and let others challenge your thinking and practice until it becomes razor sharp.”
I thought man I want that guy to speak that thought to my church. I'm not sure he's a Christian though but that is an incredibly biblical thought that he told us.
One of the greatest lessons that I have learned in life is this lesson here.
If you want to grow, you need to surround yourself with giants, not fellow midgets. You need to have someone to challenge you in life to help you grow, especially spiritually!
Our natural human inclination is to drift in life and not like to be challenged. I am telling you if you have that mindset you might as well just pick out your tombstone and die spiritually because you will never grow and if you are not growing in your faith you are declining in your faith.
There is no middle ground.
It will not always be comfortable , in fact sometimes it will be painful. You may have to admit that for years you've been wrong about something. It may cause you to change your entire way of thinking about something. It may even include you changing a direction that you are absolutely positive was right for your life.
These godly mentors are absolutely necessary for you not only just to make it as a Christian but to grow and be fruitful as a Christian.
Ron Auch Senior
Dennis Pearson
Jerry and Kelsie Newbrough
Nelson Clair
Verne Lee
Ed Day
Craig Amos
Art and Barb Provencher
Larry Liebe
Rich Lemberg
Dale Hazard
Conrad and Gen Phillipson
And even our own
Roger Dissmore
People that have spoken and continue to speak into my life. Even if they don’t see themselves that way, they are my spiritual Giants that helped my little midget self-grow in the things of God.
You need a giant in your life to follow them as they follow the LORD.
Amen?
Find a Barnabas, Train a Timothy, and follow a Paul
Let’s be a church family that is committed to following the hard path of being a disciple.
Conclusion
Altar Call
