Prayer: The Neglected Area of Discipleship

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part V of our series on Making Disciples

“Did you teach them how to receive all the grace that I poured into you?”

That, as we learned in our last post, is the question each teacher will have to answer on the last day.  And one of the most fitting applications is prayer.  It goes without saying that we ought to be discipling less mature Christians in prayer, pouring our experience out into them.

But, surprisingly, prayer is an area that receives comparatively little instructional attention at an individual level.

Arthur Paul Boers is pastoral theology professor at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and he points out in a well-crafted Christianity Today article that our individualism these days makes us reluctant to use the method Jesus used to train people how to pray:

Imitation.

We think if you don’t come up with all your own words it’s somehow insincere. What a weird modern idea! Of course you learn how to pray by imitating other Christians! And that’s why Christians need to pray together, out loud, with more mature Christians guiding the process. Sadly, that’s just not the way we pray today. Here’s what Boers writes:

Too often, people who pray do so only briefly, without discipline or organization. They pray “on the fly,” winging phrases toward God while commuting, or squeezing in an occasional devotional. Such prayers are ad hoc and self-directed: made up along the way, according to mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year.

Rather than having help, support, or direction from others with maturity or experience, many Christians decide on their own what to do. As a result, they find themselves increasingly disconnected and isolated from other believers. They are subjective; guided by their feelings of the moment, they freely abandon prayer modes (confession, praise, intercession). In the end, these Christians find themselves increasingly disconnected from God.

The question is not whether Christians ought to pray written prayers or spontaneous ones.  Rather, it’s:

How can Christians be discipled to grow in the Work of Piety of prayer?

Written prayers are one possible tool, but they can just as equally inhibit growth if we read them without learning how to imitate them in our own prayers.

Guidance on how to do that is key.  In our next post, we’ll see a real-life example of what it looks like to guide someone through the process of imitation in prayer.  Don’t miss it.

What about you?  How did you learn to pray?  What authors, books, pastors, or verses played a key role in your own prayer life?

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The Question Every Disciple-Maker Must Answer

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part IV of our series on Making Disciples

Jesus is getting ready to ascend into heaven. After three years, a death, a resurrection, and forty days of appearances he has raised up a tiny but fully discipled band.

Now, in Matthew 28:16-20 Jesus is dispatching them to disciple the entire world. So what are his final words to them? They’re surprisingly unsentimental. He doesn’t talk about faithfulness or perseverance or belief.

Instead, he speaks about discipleship. 

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

“Obey everything” is a really interesting phrase. I like what discipleship specialist Jeremy Pryor writes about that. He says:

“Obey everything I have commanded you” means discipleship must be comprehensive. Most people ignore this line with a sigh and saying to themselves, “See, it’s impossible.” We have an enlightenment definition of comprehensive knowledge but I think both Jesus and the disciples thought this was entirely possible, maybe in a 1–2 year process. Paul says to the Ephesian elders after 2 years, “I didn’t shrink from declaring all that God wants you to know” (Acts 20:27). So we move on to part 27 in our 49 part series through the book of Luke not considering that we are actually responsible to train each disciple in our care to obey “everything.” This requires an aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan for discipleship.

That’s the .W model.

And a big part of that model is that we can only pour into others what we are fully aware of having received personally from Christ.

Thus, we are not teaching only information.

We are, instead, pouring out a lifetime of experience—or, more appropriately, personal gifts received from Christ. We can disciple a student to share bread because Christ has shared his bread with us. We can disciple a student to heal and comfort because we have personally experienced the healing and comfort of Christ.

You can see this in the life of the apostle Paul. Christ has emptied himself into Paul, and Paul is deeply aware of this. He writes in Philippians 2 that Christ emptied himself and took on the form of a servant. Now, as the end of Paul’s own life approaches, he draws on the same language of self-emptying, in a personal note to his disciple Timothy. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:5-8:

But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

On the last day, the question of the Lord for each teacher will not only be, “Did you teach them to obey everything I commanded?” but rather, “Did you teach them how to receive all the grace that I poured into you?”

How would you answer that question?  What is your strategy for teaching others to receive the same grace God poured into you?

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The Cost of Christian Leadership

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part III of our series on Making Disciples

When it comes to discipleship, what is seldom noted is the amazingly high cost of this philanthropy to the teacher. In the Old Testament model – which Jesus himself embodied as we discovered in our last two posts – it is the students who receive the benefits as the teachers self-empty completely into them.

Paul is quite emphatic about this in his passionate letter to the Corinthian church.

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings—and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you!

For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.

We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!

To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly.

Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. (1 Corinthians 4:8–13)

It’s very touching when you see the personal cost paid by the teacher in the Work of Mercy of making disciples.

Teachers who grow to fullness in Christ empty themselves fully into their students, and that’s how students come to understand the graciousness of God and the trustworthiness of his love. And students are called to respond by going and doing likewise, at the cost of their own lives, just like Elijah did in passing on the prophet’s mantle to Elisha.

There’s a deep, moving loyalty here. Check out 2 Kings 2:1-14, our story to learn for the week:

Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  

And Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here, for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So they went down to Bethel.  And the sons of the prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take away your master from over you?”

And he said, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

Elijah said to him, “Elisha, please stay here, for the LORD has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So they came to Jericho. The sons of the prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take away your master from over you?”

And he answered, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

Then Elijah said to him, “Please stay here, for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets also went and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his cloak and rolled it up and struck the water, and the water was parted to the one side and to the other, till the two of them could go over on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.”

And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.”

And he said, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.”

And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more.

Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. And he took up the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water,(R) the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.

Now when the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho saw him opposite them, they said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” And they came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.

The disciple becomes the disciple-maker as the LORD, the God of Elijah, becomes to the next generation the LORD, the God of Elisha.

For whom will the LORD be your God?  Are you passing on to others what has been passed on to you?  If so, how are you training them to do the same?

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