Discipleship (part 3)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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for all that you've provided for us and even for this building for the shelter from the cold and Father I pray that as we look to your word and we look at your promise to build your church and how you have ordained to work through your church in our lives.

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Father I pray that you'd bless each one here in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I've been really wanting to stress how much we should value the church and I came across something the other day that I thought kind of underscores this.

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Would you believe that even atheists understand the importance of church?

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Yes, yes. In England there is now a church for atheists.

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I just, I like this. This is funny to me. It's believed to be the first atheist church to which

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I can only say no, not really. I could show you plenty of churches where atheists gather every week. But anyway, and it's scheduled to hold its first service on Sunday, that would be today in London according to a report from the

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Christian Institute. Now naturally it's led by a couple of stand -up comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans.

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They say they like many aspects of religion but don't believe in God. So no problem.

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They've created plans for now once a month meeting for those who don't believe. We thought it would be a shame not to enjoy the good stuff about religion like the sense of community just because of a theological disagreement.

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So they say the result is it's part atheist church and part foot stomping show.

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There will be a speaker on the theme each month but there will also be an awesome house band which

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Pippa will lead. Well, it sounds like most churches, so I'm not really... Then they say here, the plans just went too far for the reverend,

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I can't even say his last name, his first name is Savior. He's of St.

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Peter and St. Paul Roman Catholic Church. He says, how can you be an atheist and worship in a church?

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Surely it's a contradiction of terms. Who will they be singing to? You know, there's stuff that you just can't make up.

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So, and I did previously mention Saddleback Church and the number of programs that they have during the week.

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And my wife said, you know, maybe you should just kind of tell people some of the programs. These aren't all the programs they have.

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I went to their website here just to all quickly read through this. Under relational support groups, they have abortion healing and hope support group, active duty families, divorce care, empty arms, families with incarcerated loved ones, foster care and adoption information, foster care and adoption support group.

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That's after you get the information you need the support. Sorry. Grief support workshop, hope for separated men, hope for the separated wife.

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I don't want to even read that one because it's not right. Men on the edge, straight talk for wives support group, transitioning in the workplace for men, transitioning in the workplace for women, veterans of the armed services, under medical

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They have ADD parents and adults, Alzheimer's support group, Asperger's syndrome, bipolar workshop, breast cancer support group, cancer support group, chronic

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HIV AIDS, hepatitis C, infertility support group, kidney disease.

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Under celebrate recovery, adult children of family dysfunction includes adult children of alcoholics. Adult children of family dysfunction includes adult children of alcoholics.

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They have anger workshops for women, anger workshops for men. Chemically addicted for men, chemically addicted for women, codependent for men, codependent for women, codependent in a relationship with a sexually addicted man for women, financial issues for men, food issues for women.

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I guess men don't have food issues. Love and sexual addiction for women, sexual addiction for men, on and on and on it goes.

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So, all sorts of stuff there during the week. Yes? Yeah, how can you have a,

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Joni asked a good question, how can you have a theological difference with an atheist who doesn't have a theos, a god, well, yeah,

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I mean that's just a specious argument. In other words, they just don't want to get caught up in all the religious trappings, but they want to have this sense of community, which basically reminds me of the

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UU church over there in Worcester. But, I digress. I mean, you go by there and I think it's pretty much an atheist church, so that's been going on for quite a while.

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Okay, so we're talking about discipleship. Discipleship, and I think, you know, it struck me that the nearest thing

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I came to in my unbelieving days to discipleship, I mean, there is a certain student -teacher or teacher -student relationship.

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I remember my journalism teacher in high school got me all excited about writing.

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Why do you suppose I was excited about writing, not riding, like bike riding or riding a horse?

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Why do you suppose I was excited about writing? Well, because I didn't have to get up and speak.

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No, because he made it exciting, and there was something about the way he communicated about it that made me excited about it, and it also didn't hurt that he told me that I was a good writer, which

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I like to hear, and encouraged me all the more. But in addition to that kind of student -teacher relationship, when you're a police officer and you go into a radio car,

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I've got to tell you, I can't imagine graduating from the academy and going straight into a radio car and being by myself.

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Of course, for most of you, you probably think, well, why would they have a police officer in a car by himself anyway?

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That seems dumb. There should be two of them, right? Yeah, well, it's cheaper to put one person in a car.

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Don't even ask me about that. But anyway, if you're in a radio car, when I came out of, because we would go, on the sheriff's department, out of the academy and into the jail, and even in the jail, they had a training program, but when you got to a radio car, for the first three months, you would have a training officer, and then for the second three months, you'd have a different training officer.

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What do you suppose that training officer was trying to do? This should be pretty obvious.

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What is he doing? He's training you. Now, my second training officer had a rather unique way of doing things.

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Let's see what you think about this. I would get in the radio car, and he would say, we were working from 11 at night until 7 o 'clock in the morning.

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And from 11 o 'clock until about 4 .30, he would say just about nothing.

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I didn't really like that. You know, every once in a while, I just have to go, Deputy Valorant, are you mad at me?

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Did I do something wrong? You know? What kind of discipleship is this?

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What kind of training is this? I don't really think that's very effective.

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Mark Dever, as I was talking about discipleship last week, he said this, he said that you need to have love.

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If you're in a discipling relationship, you need to love the people that you're discipling.

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He says, people will imitate your life even when you don't love them, but a leader who leads with love presents the best picture of Christ, and people will follow you best when you love them.

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It was really hard working with a guy where I just always thought, this guy hates me.

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I don't even know why, but he hates me. And you know what was interesting is

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I found out later that I think I was either his first or second trainee, and he thought

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I was, now I know this is hard to believe, he thought I was a little arrogant. But then he got his next trainee, and after he got his trainee after I was off training, and I would run into Bruce, I was the greatest thing ever, because his next trainee was so much worse than I ever was, and I was just like, well, see,

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I don't know. But if you show people how you care about them, they're more apt to do that, and really, the point

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I want to get across with the whole radio car thing is the objective of that is to kind of imprint yourself on your trainee.

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One of the things I learned from my second training officer was it's better to do something than to do nothing, and that might sound pretty basic, but when

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I got into, on my own, when they put me in a one -man car, and I was working day shift in probably one of the quietest areas in the entire county, it was easier to do nothing.

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But let me ask you this, what do you think it would be like to just drive around a small little area all day long and do absolutely nothing?

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Boring as all get out. So all I knew was I'm going, okay, now I know how to find guns, drugs, da -da -da -da, but I'm in an area where, you know, the cars that people drove were worth as much as my house.

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I'm not joking. So what am I supposed to do, pull them over and toss them out and say, you know, give me your guns and drugs?

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I learned to write parking tickets or to, you know, do whatever, go by the school and look for truants, do whatever

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I could to just keep myself busy, because I didn't want to just drive around for eight hours and do absolutely nothing.

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He had that impact on me, he had that influence on me, and when we disciple somebody, it really kind of leads into what

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I want to talk about here this morning. As a discipler, my goal should be to take what

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I think, and it helps if you're mature enough to know what your strengths are and your weaknesses are, but I should try to apply my strengths to that person, right?

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I should try to teach them what I'm good at. And if I know I'm not good at something, then

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I can do one of two things. I can either say, you know what, there are some things I can't do, let me give you a list of these things, or I can go out of my way to try to teach them anyway, at least from the

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Bible, even if my life doesn't perfectly reflect that. Of course, if you're doing that, you know, in the 12 steps, what do they call that?

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Taking a fearless moral inventory, right, where you evaluate yourself. Sorry, didn't mean to, didn't, hope you didn't plan on a 12 -step meeting this morning.

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But that's a good step, right? It's a good thing. A good step. See that? It's a good thing to evaluate yourself, examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith.

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Well, what would that mean? It would mean I'd look at my life and go, okay, that's the mark of a believer, mark of a believer, mark of a believer.

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Well, that's not so good. It's the same thing. Strength, strength, strength, weakness.

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It's good to know your strengths and weaknesses in any setting. I mean, let's put it this way, another illustration.

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If someone is into bodybuilding, what do you suppose probably for male bodybuilders, not that anybody here is intending to be a male bodybuilder, what do you suppose that their weakest point almost always is?

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Did somebody say their bicep? That'd be wrong. John? Calves. Their legs.

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Why? They're hard to reach. They're hard to work on. And you know what?

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You don't get immediate gratification. And it's that way, I think, spiritually for a lot of us.

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We have weak areas, and you know what? It's not maybe as much fun to work on those. It's easier to kind of do what we're good at and, you know, kind of pump ourselves up, so to speak.

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But it's good to think about our strengths and our weaknesses, and here he lists some of them.

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And just think about some of these things. If I'm younger and I'm looking for somebody that I want to disciple me, it's good for me to know my own weaknesses and to look for somebody who would be stronger in these areas.

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Think about this. How Christians work. If you work with Christians, if you have the blessing of having other

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Christians in the workplace, it's good to see how they do things. It's good to see how Christians in the church serve.

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If you see somebody who comes in and from the time that they enter the door until the time they leave, you see that they're busy, whether it's cleaning up in the kitchen, they're serving in the nursery, they're teaching a

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Sunday school class, they're picking up programs after church, they're fellowshipping with people, they're trying to meet the needs of the body, you say to yourself,

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I don't want to be anything like that person. I want to be the guy who just comes in, picks up a bulletin, sees what's going on and goes home.

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No, of course you want to be more like that person who's serving. And for some people, we just think, I don't know how to do that.

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What do you do? You attach yourself to somebody who does that, right?

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How do you learn to serve? You follow somebody who serves.

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What do you suppose, well, let me just ask you. If you're going to, if you're a young person and you're having, you just got married or you're looking to get married, you want to raise a family, who are you going to talk to about how to structure your life, how to raise your kids?

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Who are you going to go to? Your best friend who's not married and doesn't have any kids, that's right.

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Sorry, Flo, that's not what she said. Obviously, right?

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You look at somebody, you just go, okay, I don't know that much about this person.

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Here's what I do know. I look at their kids. I like their kids. I look at what seems to be their relationship between the husband and wife.

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I like that. They seem to really get along. How do they do that? And that's the person that you say, well, that's who

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I want to disciple me. How about,

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I just remember this man at Grace Community Church, I've mentioned him in different ways before, but there was a man, and I don't care what you said to him.

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If you said, it sure is a sunny day out, he would do what? He would quote scripture to you, but more on point, almost always, without fail, it was a proverb.

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Why do you suppose it's so great to be able to quote proverbs like that? Well, because we'd all like to memorize scripture, but again, if we're just pointing more directly, what's so great about the book of Proverbs?

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It's wisdom, and it is wisdom applied. It doesn't just theoretically talk about things, he gets into the nitty gritty about how to live life.

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And so you just think, okay, how, just imagine a couple comes in for counseling, and I say to them, well, why are you here?

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And, you know, I basically pre -programmed an hour, or an hour and a half, or whatever, and for the first 15 or 20 minutes, the husband just kind of sits there, and the wife tells me all the problems.

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What would that tell me right away? That the husband's really shy?

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No, that's not, what would that tend to tell me? Maybe she thinks the problems are all with him?

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I'll tell you something that becomes readily apparent, though, it's that there's a leader in this relationship, and it's not the guy.

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I've even had times where I ask the husband specifically a question, and the wife starts answering. I'm just like, okay, but when you're talking about how do

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I learn to resolve conflict? How do

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I learn to get along with other people? How do I learn to be in a marriage, and to not have, you know, talk of divorce, and all these other things?

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How do I learn that? Well, we learn it from older people who've been there, done that, and we want to, we want to,

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I think it's fair to say, we want to attach them, we want to be, attach ourselves to them, we want to be their disciple.

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We want to learn how they do that. It's not magic. It's not like I can walk over to somebody and just go, you know, here,

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I'm going to give you all the secrets to a happy and successful marriage. It doesn't work like that.

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It takes time, it takes observation, it takes learning. How many of you would say,

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I'm not me, but you? How many of you would say that you are great evangelists?

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Raise your hand. I'm not going to say that, but what do you suppose the secrets to evangelism are?

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One should be so obvious, it's a key to evangelism,

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Stephen. Okay, you're not worried about what the world thinks of you.

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I think that's a great one. It's too good for what I'm, I mean,

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I'm looking for the most obvious one. What's the most obvious one? Janet. Just do it, that's very obvious.

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You need to be saved. Okay, we're getting closer. Amelia. Reliance on the

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Holy Spirit is essential. Yes. I heard the right answer from somewhere.

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You need to know the Gospel. It is absolutely essential if you're going to evangelize somebody that you have to know the

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Gospel. You have to be fearless, you have to rely on the Holy Spirit. All these things are true, right? But first you have to know the

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Gospel. But the second part of it is, how do you find ways to talk about Christ to people?

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That's not so easy to learn, right? Anybody can learn the Gospel. You can teach, now that I have these grandkids,

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I'm going to adjust this appropriately. I think you can probably teach a four or five year old. I used to say you could teach a two year old, but I don't believe that now.

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You can teach, I must say, no, probably not.

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Probably not, that's pretty funny. I think you can teach a four or five year old intellectually to understand the

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Gospel. It's not difficult. The difficult part is, how do

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I then go about finding ways to put it into conversations and stuff like that?

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I mean, I've been with people. We could be having dinner. What would you like for dinner? And they go, oh, really,

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I'd just like to have all my sins forgiven. Would you like some dessert?

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No, but I'd like to talk to you about Jesus Christ. You just said that to the waitress?

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What's she going to think? Who cares what the waitress thinks about us? She has to depend on us for her tip.

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It's not the other way around. Talk about fearless.

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A few years ago, my friend Tony was at the side of the Super Bowl. I don't know if he's going this year or not.

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I hope not. Last time they threw food at him, I think it was a burrito or something. You have to be fearless to stand up there and proclaim

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Christ. But in a one -on -one conversation, it's not so hard. But some people are just like, well,

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I want to, but I just don't know how. Well, how can you learn? By hanging around somebody that is really good at it.

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Observing how they do it and go, you know, I could do that. I can do that.

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How do you learn how to, well, there are two answers to this.

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How do you learn to persevere through trials? One is by going through trials.

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That's absolutely right. That would be the hard way to learn how to persevere through trials.

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The other way is when somebody is going through a trial and you see them handling it well, you go, you know what,

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I'd like to learn. How do you even have the right mindset to do that? I mean, if the

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Lord loves you and you haven't learned to persevere through trials, He'll teach you. You might not like that as much as the other way.

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How do you learn to fight against sin? Again, you can steep yourself in the

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Bible. You can do all those kind of things. Or you can look at someone else who doesn't struggle with the same sin you do.

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Like, here's one that I don't even think most people even think about. They think it's somebody else's problem.

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This is one of my favorite sins to talk about because everybody else does it and not me. It's gossip.

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Controlling your tongue. Saying things that you ought not to. How do you learn to not do that?

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Well, I go back to my friend from California.

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If the first thing out of your mouth is the Word of God, you're not going to stumble in too many ways with your tongue.

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If your first thought is what proverb applies to this situation, you're not going to stumble.

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The problem is too often we think about what is going to get the biggest response to, or how am

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I going to get the biggest response to what I'm about to say. Just talking about discipleship, it really is life on life.

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It is that kind of imprint. What's probably the primary discipleship relationship in everyone's life?

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What's the number one thing that everybody, or most everybody, either has or will at some point in some way or form or another get involved in?

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What's that? Children. Yep. Because, well, look at it this way. I know that everybody's involved in a discipleship relationship with regard to parenting and children because you're either a parent or a child.

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And if you weren't a child at some point, I don't know what to say. I mean, you heard

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Pastor Mike this morning. He was quoting his, for those of you who were here, talking about his dad.

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We learn things from our dads and our moms. And it's true no matter what, right?

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Whether they intend to teach us anything or not, we learn. One of the things my dad taught me was that I didn't want to be a smoker.

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How did he teach me that? You know, you hear all the stories about, oh, you want to smoke, huh? Here, smoke this, and then smoke that, and, you know, chain smoke, and I'm going to make you throw up, and you're never going to want to smoke.

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My dad didn't do that. All he did was smoke. I remember he always drove

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Volkswagens, you know, up until the late 70s or something like that, I think when the wheels fell off his

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Volkswagen. And, you know, the old bugs, they had, you know, kind of the rolled -down windows on the side, but then remember what they had in front?

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They had that little mini window, and you could tilt it in or out. And I can remember my dad smoking, and I would pop that thing open and literally stick my face out the, you know, just my nose and mouth out there so that I wouldn't have to breathe a cigarette smoke.

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He taught me not to smoke without ever saying a word. And parenting is like that because whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the things that you do, you're teaching your kids.

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You're teaching your kids how to treat a woman. You're teaching your kids how to submit to a husband.

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You're teaching your kids how to discipline kids. You're teaching them how to talk to kids.

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You're teaching them all sorts of things just by living. It's probably the most intense discipleship relationship there is.

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You're teaching them the importance of church. You're teaching them the importance of the

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Bible. You're teaching them the importance of fill in the blank. What else are you teaching them?

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How to spend money. How to decide how to spend money.

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Everything that you do has an impact on your children. Now, to just get back to discipling, period, it should be happening within the context of the local church.

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Now, how do you decide? What would be a good way to decide to ask somebody to disciple you?

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Besides what I've said already about evaluating yourself or whatever. Well, let's put it this way.

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Most every guy here wants to be discipled by whom? They want to be like Mike.

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You know, I remember what I said when I graduated from seminary. You're supposed to give a little, you get five minutes.

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I've listened to those recordings. Some guys go on for like 15 minutes. And, you know, they said five minutes.

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We're very strict about that. And I was like, I always tried to follow the rules. And I had this vision if I went five minutes and one second, they were going to stick some kind of shepherd's hook out there and pull me off.

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But I said, you know, one of the things I said was, why did you decide to come to seminary? That was one of the first things you were supposed to put there.

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And I said, well, because I want to be like Mike. Not Michael Jordan, Michael Avendroth.

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And it really came from a relationship that I had with Mike starting in Los Angeles, really going to his

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Bible study. And then I met him, and we started going through, I think, you know, something light and fluffy like Lorraine Bettner's book on predestination.

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Everybody wants to be discipled by Mike, but guess what? There's only one person

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I can guarantee you in this church that is going to be discipled by Pastor Mike. Well, actually, there are four people

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I can guarantee you that are going to be discipled by Pastor Mike, and those would be his four children. Everybody else is just kind of when he can squeeze them in.

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So how do you get somebody to disciple you? I'll tell you what you do.

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You go home. You wait by your phone for Pastor Steve to call you up and tell you who your discipler is going to be,

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Steve Nelson. That's a way to go.

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It used to be a way to go until they stopped those CBD sales. Yeah, you used to be able to go with us and just kind of, what do you learn,

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Steven? What do you learn by going to a CBD book sale? And all you have to do with that is just say, well, stop by Starbucks.

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Yeah, you could learn a lot just by going through a bookstore.

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What authors are good? What aren't so good? I used to just go, oh, you don't really want that book.

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It's only $3. It's not really worth $3. What other ways can you be, how else can you find somebody to disciple you?

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What's that? You can ask the leadership and wait by the phone for Pastor Steve to call you. No, you could ask us to direct you to somebody.

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But you know what? That's not always easy. Why? Because it gets back to what

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I was saying earlier. If the ideal discipler for someone is someone that is strong in an area where they're weak.

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You're a young married person, and I know that you and your wife are having some problems.

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So I'm going to put you with someone who's older and knows what he's doing. Well, that would be great, except guess what?

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It's impossible for me to know what goes on inside your home. We haven't yet reached the point where the church thought it wise to set up a camera in everybody's home.

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So we can see what's going on in your kitchen. You know, oh, it's dinner time. They're fighting again.

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Okay, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Pastor patrol. That might be fun though, right?

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Maybe I could have some kind of, I don't know, green light on top of it. You can't use blue or red, some kind of green light up on top of my car.

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Just like the old days. Peggy.

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Well, I think that's the first part especially I'm going to harp on, and then we'll talk about the second part. That's a great answer.

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The first part she mentioned was get to know people in the church. It's pretty hard if you're new to the church or if you've consistently been the person who's first in, or I'm sorry, last in, first out.

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You know, you're using the accounting way of doing things, LIFO, last in, first out. I remember that from my accounting class, which

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I took, you know, 25 years ago. If you're that person, it's hard to figure out who should disciple you because you don't know anybody in the church.

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If you're going to figure out who would be good to help you in certain areas, it's good to know the people in the church. So that would be part of it.

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And the other part you said was, and this is good too, is you want people that are going to point you to Christ.

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You want people that are going to steer you to the truth. Now, there may be some people that you think, you know what, that guy really knows how to run a business.

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You know what, that guy really knows this, that, the other thing. Those are all well and good, and they have their place, but that's not the purpose of a discipling relationship, is to learn how to run your business better, or how to, you know, play your guitar better, or whatever.

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Your purpose is to grow in Christ, mature in Christ, become more Christ -like.

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And you do that by picking areas where you're weak, and the other person is strong, and you say,

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I want to learn how you do what you do, how you think how you think. How you think how you think.

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I want to learn to think like you. Right? Other ideas?

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Yes. Yeah. That's a great answer,

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Carmen. I mean, you know, she's involved in the women's study. Well, again, it gets to, the more involved you are in the church, the more you know the people at the church, the more you can kind of figure out,

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I mean, look, I have to be honest with you. If you don't know that you have weaknesses, let's open our

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Bibles to Hebrews. And this is a very familiar verse, but I hope that you will find it applicable today.

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Hebrews 4, verse 12,

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For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

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Verse 13, And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

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How do you suppose that applies to what we're talking about here this morning, Carmen? That's exactly right.

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It eliminates your blind spots. It opens your eyes to areas maybe you didn't even know that you were struggling with.

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And you just think, you're reading the Bible and you just go, that is not me. Or, I've stopped doing that.

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Why have I stopped doing that? As we become more familiar with Scripture, even as our lives are more steeped in Scripture, I mean, there are so many ways this is applicable.

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I think the best times in my life,

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I think, for me personally, spiritually, were guess when? When I was working 56 hours a week and going to seminary, why?

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Because every minute counted. I had no time to waste. The number one thing, and I've said this on many occasions, the number one thing

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I learned in seminary wasn't the economic trinity and all these other things, the eternal aspiration of the

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Spirit, all the things I like to throw out just because they're interesting. It's not those things that really challenged me.

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What challenged me was how much time I wasted and how much I could get done when

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I really had to. And so I can remember even walking out during my lunch hour at work, in the middle of the night, it would be like 1 .30

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in the morning, walking out to go to the gym. And you know what I would do while I was walking out to the gym?

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Pray. Pray. Why? Because I needed to. And when

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I was in the elevator by myself, what would I do? Pray. Why? Because I needed to. When everything in our lives comes down to this, you know, work, study, pray, family, church, that's it.

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There's no time for anything else. Then guess what? Every second that you have now counts. And that's how our lives should be all the time.

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But they're not. They're not. But as we are steeped in the

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Word, as we allow the Word to do its work, it reveals our weaknesses. It shows us what we're not doing.

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One of the things I'm most thankful for these days is just the availability of electronic media because I can study a lot, and it's a lot easier than it ever was for me.

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I mean, you can bring up the Bible on your iPhone when you're away from everything else.

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You can bring up the Bible on whatever. I have it on my computer. I have it everywhere. The Bible surrounds me.

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It's a big advantage over the way things used to be. But we have to use the

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Bible to really reveal to us the weaknesses that we have, and it's by doing that that we then think, okay, these are areas that I need to work on and I need to strengthen myself in.

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Other thoughts about discipleship? Questions or questions about, okay, yes,

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Joanne. Well, that's a great point,

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Joanne. It's a lot more organic, right, to use a really cool word. It's a lot more organic when it just happens, it's just part of our, it just grows up out of our natural what we're already doing.

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You know, we're serving alongside someone, and it just becomes natural to just talk more to them, spend more time to them, send them an email asking them a question about something that we were talking about.

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You know, it just becomes an extension of what's going on. And maybe you're not even thinking, I'm in a discipleship relationship, but you are, just by virtue of serving next to that person.

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That's a great point, Joanna. Other thoughts or questions?

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Okay, we will get to our ninth point, just talking about the church and the things that we ought to be looking for within a church, and we get to biblical church leadership.

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And I think, I'm just going to leave it there, and we'll close in prayer, but I think, just kind of summarize it this way.

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Discipleship, we are or should be in a discipleship relationship of some kind all the time.

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Now, it may be a formal one where we're getting together with some objectives, things we want to work on, and then we're going to move on.

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It may be informal. Pastor Dave talked about, you know, just doing regular life stuff and then talking about gospel principles,

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Christ honoring things or even real life questions just while we're doing something simple like painting a fence or something like that.

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It grows up just by virtue of serving together. It happens by virtue of staying and meeting and fellowshipping with the saints.

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It can happen in all kinds of ways. But again, I would just go back to the number one way it works is this.

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The number one way it always happens within a church is in the home. We talked about husbands being spiritual leaders in their home.

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Well, that starts with being a spiritual leader of their wife, presuming the husband's saved, being the spiritual leader of the kids.

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And of course, the wives and the mothers are also discipling their children. Let me just say this about parenting and then we'll close because this isn't a parenting class.

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But here's what I would say. Parenting and discipleship are a lot alike in this respect. As a parent teaches a child to do something, at first, what do they do?

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You know, if you have a really small child, you tell them every little thing and then you watch them do it.

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Actually, you probably do it for them. And then you tell them everything and you watch them do it. And as time goes on and you can trust them more, then you just tell them to do something.

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You don't tell them maybe the how of how to do it. And they just continue to grow. And then you just kind of, at some point later on in life, much later on in life, you will just suggest things to them and they'll know what to do.

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Why don't you do something around the house? Like what, Dad? You'll get to a point where they won't say like what,

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Dad. They'll be able to look around and go, okay, I see what needs to get done and I'll just do it. It's a growth process where it's less hands -on and more just kind of let them go.

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And it's the same thing with discipling. At first, you might have to model exactly what to do for them because they might not have a clue.

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If somebody says, you know what, I'd really like to learn how to evangelize. Well, again, getting back to what

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I said earlier, what's the first thing I'm going to do? I'm going to say, okay, give me the gospel. That's what we used to call vapor locking where you just,

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I can't talk. That would not be a good start. Or I read this thing

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I was posting with regard to this charismatic woman who said she saw God the

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Father. And I read what she called her testimony. And in the entire testimony, I just thought, there's no gospel here.

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There's no indication that this person got saved. This is just a testimony of an experience. This has nothing to do with any of that.

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And so if I say, give me the gospel, give me your testimony, and I say, you know what, that was a lovely story when you get done.

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That was a lovely story, but there's no gospel there. Then I'm going to have to walk through exactly what the gospel is, and we're going to work on that for a while.

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And then we're going to get to the actual evangelism thing. So every situation is going to be a little bit different.

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But it's teaching. Discipling is teaching. It's life -on -life teaching. And in that respect, it very much models or very much looks like parenting or teaching or anything like that.

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It's a process. Anyway, let's pray, and we can handle any further questions next week.

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Father, Lord, you are so good in granting us your word that we can apply it to our own lives, that we can, even as James says, we look at that perfect law, we see it, and we see ourselves, and we really are often horrified by what we see.

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Father, I pray that you would conform us in the image of your dear son, that you would use people, your word, and circumstances in our lives,

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Lord, to make us mindful of the areas that we need to grow and to seek counsel and help in those areas from those who are indeed stronger and more experienced and have walked this road before us.