Discipleship Training Part 1 - Discipleship Training

There we go.

All right.

Hey, thank you so much.

That was a very kind.

It's good to come home.

Love coming back.

Viv and I got in uh last night, and uh it's good to come back here for you guys.

Just uh Steve and I have been talking about the vision building wholehearted disciples of Jesus, right?

I say it right, and I love that.

I mean, every piece of that's important.

It's good to come back now.

Viv and I were up this afternoon at uh the crags, we're hiking back there enjoying the aspen.

And, you know, with any luck, we'll be here to watch Air Force Beat Navy tomorrow.

That I'd have to admit, though, that would be a in light of history, that would be quite a uh phenomenon.

So uh we're hoping.

Anyway, it's great to be with you.

Okay, I want to start by reading a passage of scripture.

And let's do like the uh like our ancestors, the Jews, when they read the word of God, let's stand.

I want you to open your Bibles to Matthew 28, starting verse 16.

We're gonna read the last chat uh last paragraph of uh Matthew's gospel.

And I want us to have this kind of ringing in our ears as we talk tonight.

Matthew 28, 16.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.

And then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and 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 that I've commanded you.

And surely I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

Now these are the very words of God.

Go ahead and have a seat.

Um, let's see.

We got uh Randy can put up my things up there.

Uh we're gonna talk about being and making disciples uh this evening and tomorrow morning.

Tonight I want to talk about being disciples.

And tomorrow, making disciples.

And I want to do something each time with you that uh will help you do both of that.

And that is we want to give you a simple method, a simple way to do this with working adult people in our culture.

We call it a D group.

So uh, but before we do that, I want to introduce myself.

Some of some of you I know, I've known you from pulpit rock, but uh there I am, rock bottomly, right out of the flintstones.

And uh it's true, there was a character with that name on the Flintstones.

It was my dad's nickname, I got it.

I've had to live with this all, and I've heard every permutation and combination of rock and bottom.

Um this is dad.

Yeah, you heard a little bit about him.

Was it John?

Yeah, from John.

This is my father.

I want to tell you a little bit of my story just so you can hear some common ground.

I'll bet we've got some common ground.

And it'll also kind of tell you why do I have this passion about making disciples?

I grew up in a uh in dad's house, and uh uh dad was the most formative person in my life.

You can kind of tell from looking at him, he is intimidating.

And he was as a kid.

I uh I idolized him, but I also feared him.

And uh, oh, wait a minute, go go back there.

Randy, you're a little bit ahead here.

So uh and we talk about we talk about God around the house, and dad said two things, says two things you need to know about religion.

One is for some people, this is the most important thing in your life.

So never make fun of a person's religion.

Second thing you need to know is the center of religion is God, and the truth about God is he does not exist.

He uh basically the truth is people um, you know, they can't face the fact that death is the end, and so they made up God, along with God comes heaven, and the hope of seeing dead people again.

And he says, that's how we got God.

We made him, he didn't make us.

And the truth is, is uh when it comes to your life, it'll be what you make of it.

There's nobody out there to either help you or stand in your way.

Now, Dad wasn't trying to be mean, that's what he believed, and he was just trying to help me as a young guy uh both uh appreciate the importance of religion in other people's lives, but to not get sidetracked or distracted by it as I grew up.

Now, there's another piece of life that's going on, and all of you have experienced that, and that is God, and God has a way of overriding all these influences.

Jesus said, No man can come to me except the Father that sent me, draw him.

And there is this drawing thing that the Holy Spirit does in the lives of people.

And I can remember even as a little kid, although I believed, as far as I know, everything else dad told me, I didn't believe this.

God was drawing me.

And there were times where I just had I just had a deep sense somebody was out there.

God was there.

I knew he was good, and uh, and I can remember praying to him from the time I was a little boy.

But I but as I thought about God, I thought, you know, nobody knows about God.

I mean, nobody's seen him, nobody's heard him, nobody's touched him.

Uh, truth is, nobody knows about God.

I figured when I died, I'd get to see him.

And my religion was simple.

I just wanted to live a good enough life so when he saw me, he'd like me.

That was it.

And so I was.

As a young fellow, I tried to do the right thing.

I prayed, but I had no idea that there was any way to know God except to die.

And then you get to see him.

Well, I left home and I wanted to follow in dad's footsteps and ready to go to the next.

I'm gonna do this.

I wanted to fly airplanes like this, and so I went to the place that's right down the road here.

And as you know, before you get to fly airplanes like that, there's a lot of this.

And uh and that's true.

God had my dream was to be a fighter pilot, and I wanted to go into the space program and that kind of thing, but God had a much better, bigger dream for my life.

It was to make me part of a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation.

To make me a peculiar man, peculiar, not weird, but a man with a very special and wonderful mission in life.

That's what God wanted to do for me.

And so he moved me in, my first year, with a roommate, Ed Powell.

Ed's a businessman up in Minneapolis now.

And uh Ed had come back from being away from the Lord, he got involved with the navigators, and they taught him how to grow spiritually, and as he grew, he became more and more excited about God and his love for him.

And uh he became more and more excited about sharing that love with the people around him.

And I was the person next to him, I was his roommate.

So he prayed for me, and and one evening, just before Friday night, we'd cleaned the room for Saturday inspection, and and I remember one Friday night, um, he he was gracious, but he was not particularly clever, or there was nothing, he was very direct.

He he we he just said, Hey Rock, tell me something.

Have you ever thought about God?

Have you ever heard about Jesus?

Have you ever read the Bible?

I mean, it was about that direct.

There was nothing, you know, sideways about it.

What he didn't know is I'd been thinking about God for a long time and just looking for somebody who would talk about this with me.

He didn't know that.

And I told him what my dad had told me, I told him what had been going on in my life, and I knew God was out there, and when I died, I get to see him, and I hoped he liked me when he saw me, kind of a thing.

And he said, and basically that night he sat down and on the on the floor of our dorm room there at the academy, he drew the bridge, you know, the bridge illustration that the naabs taught all their guys how to share the gospel, and he drew that uh for me.

And what I heard is he shared all that, you know, he talked about the love of Christ's death for me and bringing us back to God.

I realized, you know, you don't have to wait to die to see God.

God has come to the earth, and that's what the life of Jesus is all about.

So we can see him, know what he's like, and uh know how he feels and how he thinks and what he does.

And uh not only that, but of course his death makes a way for me to come back, to get back, and come home.

And anyway, that night he asked me, You want to receive Christ tonight?

He said, You can begin.

This is you don't, nothing you have to sign up, no course you go through, but it's your heart.

When your heart turns from you running your own life and you let God be God in your life, you receive his son.

Marvelous thing happens.

He says, You're born again.

God actually comes, lives inside you, begins to talk to you, help you.

Your sin is forgiven.

Guilt and shame, it's washed away, and you're given the gift of life forever.

You can do that tonight.

And I told him, No, I didn't want to do that tonight.

The reason was I knew, even as an unbeliever, I knew you can't pretend with God, and that this was going to change the course of the rest of my life.

And uh so I wanted some time to think about it.

Well, he said, fine.

About a month later, he uh he uh took me to an Andrew dinner.

Andrew's was the one who went and got his brother Peter, brought him to the Lord.

Andrew dinners the Christian cadets brought their pagan friends, and uh I was his pagan friend.

And so uh somewhere down in Manitou Springs, it was an old pizza house.

I don't think it's there today, but uh so we all had pizza, and uh and that night Jerry White, uh who was a young captain teaching astro out at the academy, shared the gospel.

And Will Perkins shared his testimony that night.

I still remember this car dealer.

Uh shared how he'd been a kind of a, you know, anyway, a churchgoer, but never given his life to Christ, shared how Christ had changed his life.

And that night that uh God connected the dots.

And I understood the love of God that he would, I mean, that he'd, you know, die for me.

And and I I mean I understood there's a revelation of the marvelous love of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus dying for me.

And uh anyway, that night I bowed my head in my heart and gave my life to Christ.

That's how I got started.

Now, that that was the beginning.

From then, really from that moment, my roommate Ed Powell, who'd been involved with the navs, and of course, the wonder of the navigators is this what we're talking about tonight, helping people who are born again to grow up.

They're kind of the pediatricians, they're kind of the, you know, the help the new babies grow piece of the body of Christ.

It's a great place to be born because these folks understand how to tell newborns grow up.

So they don't stay newborns for decades.

And uh, and and so my roommate began to follow me up.

And as I look back on these early years, uh, really the navs gave me three things, and these are really right at the core of what you're all about.

First thing they did is they gave me growth.

They understood that we are supposed to grow, and that there are certain things that help us grow.

There's certain pieces, certain things that God has given us.

And if we eat those things, we as Jesus said, we eat them, we drink them, we we live them just like sunshine and water on grass, it's gonna grow.

And they didn't just talk about them, they did growth with me.

So my roommate, he would do a quiet time with me.

He memorized scripture with me, he did Bible study with me, he took me to places where Christians gathered and and fellowship together, he took me out to share my faith so that I understood how do you do this.

So uh he gave me growth.

He got those those those essential ingredients of growth, the word.

You know what they are.

They're the word of God and they're prayer, they're talking to God.

He began to show me how to pray specifically so I could see if God answered.

He would pray with me.

We used to pray together for various.

I'll tell you the first answer to prayer.

We we'd come back, it was finals, final exams, uh, duly year, and we had this geography final.

And you know, we'd studied a hundred countries, and the final is gonna be uh essays on five of them, five of the countries.

We came back after dinner, I can still remember.

He was reading through John with me in the morning, and that morning I had a question about what does this mean?

Well, we were gonna study geography after dinner, during call to quarters, for the next day.

Well, we got into this deal about uh, you know, he was explaining this to me, and I was fascinated, and we were tracking cross-references.

I mean, we lost track of time.

And we woke up about, kind of came out of this, I don't know, you know, come back from dinner about six and it was seven thirty or something.

We said, Oh my goodness, we're supposed to be studying for geography.

Well, he he'd memorized a verse, Matthew 6, 33, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all these things should be added unto you.

He said, Look, I don't know how this works, but why don't we just ask God to show us what's going to be on the test?

That'll shorten this a whole lot.

We are look, we're seeking first the kingdom of God.

I mean, that's what we're doing.

We weren't we weren't being negligent here, but now we need some help.

So let's pray, shall we?

Uh well, I don't know.

I I'm brand new.

Is this the way it works?

So he said, okay, God, look, we're sorry, we were studying and then we we we should have been studying, we're doing this, but we're seeking it.

Now we need we need to know what's going to be on the test.

So he said, Rock, I want you to write, okay, now I want you to just stop right now.

I want you to write down five countries that you sent.

I'll write down my five.

So I wrote my five, he wrote his five.

They were different, but we had different teachers.

We went the next day, and my five were on the test.

His five were on his test.

Okay?

That's the I re that was 40 years ago.

But I remember that.

I remember the crawling of my skin when I walked in and I saw my five, and I went out and I said, Ed, you wouldn't believe what happened.

And I said, and he told me what happened.

But see, he did growth with me.

We read John together.

We memorized 1 John 5, 11, and 12 together.

We prayed together.

And when we had needs, he prayed with me.

And uh when it, you know, and he showed me how to share the gospel, and he'd take me with him, kind of a thing.

So growth, that's the first thing.

And these are just simple things, but he did the growing stuff with me.

That's what we're going to talk about in D group.

Is it's not just telling people what they ought to do, it's doing it with them.

Second thing he gave me is he gave me attention, personal attention.

The first ten years of my Christian life, I was never without somebody.

I mean a person who was who was looking out for my soul.

I mean, who felt responsible to make sure that I didn't walk away.

I mean, the first ten years I had a person who felt personally responsible to make sure I did not walk away.

It started with my roommate.

And uh, and then it was, you know, another guy at Purdue University, and then on down when I was in Georgia and flight school, and then when Bev and I were up in Tacoma, Washington, and so forth.

It was somebody who felt responsible to make sure that I continue to walk with God, not walk away.

Personal attention.

And what I gained from that is I knew I mattered to God.

I was not just a member of a congregation, I was just not a nameless uh face out in a church body.

Somebody was hovering over me, saying, you know, God loves you, you've got what it takes to walk with God, and He has a He has a dream for your life.

I never lost that voice in my ear.

Personal attention.

And the last thing I had got from them was a vision.

And the the vision was uh that God could use me in a significant way.

That I am, you know, it's true I was an Air Force pilot, it's true, you know, I'm American and all that business.

But my deepest, my deepest identity is I'm a priest.

I have been saved and ordained and set aside by God to help connect people to God so they can have life.

And that was a vision.

There was a vision of who I was and and that God could use me.

And uh so when we left the academy, you know, I went down to the uh Moody Air Base, which is in South Georgia, and uh I, you know, I said, hey, who's down there?

Well, nobody's down there.

You're it you you're you're the disciple maker.

So when you get down there, you just do down there with the young pilots what we've been doing with you here.

Go around, find out if there's anybody who has any interest in the things of God, and those that are will gather them together and and uh begin to get them in the word and pray for them.

And here, give them some of these verses to memorize.

You're it.

And uh so those are the three things early on that these guys gave me.

They gave me growth by doing it with me, they gave me attention, which gave me a sense of I'm precious, I'm precious to God, I'm precious to them, I'm precious to the future of what God wants to do.

I mean, there's no doubt uh, you know, that I had value because somebody cared about me, and then a vision that God could use me, and uh that I could have an e I could have an eternal impact.

I mean, me, I could do something that would last forever.

If I could help people find God, they'd have life forever.

Now, that that was my roots.

Uh now, since then, you know, when my time was up, I well, this is Purdue, that's where I went for graduate school and ran to go ahead and go to the next one, flew airplanes for a while, and then met this lovely gal who's with Campus Crusade.

And uh, from the navigator's perspective, I married outside the faith.

Um but if you were a navigator in those days, the only way you could get married was to go outside the faith.

I mean, I had to go find a find a crusade gal, and and so Bev was discipling women in the uh military through Campus Crusade, and we met and and uh married.

And then let's go to the next one.

I flew transports, and then really the next 30 years uh the last 33 years of my life, I've been doing pastoring uh churches.

And uh with a stint, uh let's go to the next one with focus on the family, a wonderful seven years with them, and now I'm here at our Lord's Community Church in Oklahoma City.

But I go back to those roots because uh those first years as a new believer, where I had somebody who understood what it meant to make disciples, and they did it with me.

And you know what that did?

That rescued me from the disappointment of a mild religion.

That's what it does.

When somebody disciples you, what they help you to understand is that God is to be the center of life.

And when you make him the center of life, he gives you abundant life.

And that's highly un-American, right?

Because in America we usually see God is out there, and I I'm glad that he loves me, and I put him, anyway, I put him at the edge of my life, and I always look at him as the one who's there to protect my prosperity and to help me when I need him.

He's there to help me fulfill my dream.

And that kind of religion doesn't work, it's very disappointing.

But I but when you make help a guy become a disciple, you help him realize, you know, God is to be at the center.

You're here to serve him, and if you'll do that, he'll take that little life of yours and he'll make it eternally significant, far beyond your wildest dreams.

But it takes somebody discipling somebody to make that shift.

Okay, well, let's talk about being and making disciples.

You got your notes there.

I'm gonna whistle through some of this because uh it's late and you guys I want to get to the practical part.

But let's just talk about being a disciple.

And uh let's go ahead, uh Randy, we'll kind of keep rolling forward here.

Uh we'll take a look at this business, we'll take a close look at what it means to be a disciple.

Um, let's go ahead and we'll click on disciple, move on.

Uh the call.

Uh, you guys have been talking about this with Steve uh a lot.

You realize that the call of the church isn't just to make nominal Christians or professing Christians, it's to make disciples.

You saw we saw that.

And we see that.

I want to tell you uh a passage and then tell you a story.

We looked at the passage, it's Matthew 28.

Uh and the core of this, of course, is 18 to 20, the last uh last three verses.

And if we work from the outside in, on the outside we have words of wonderful assurance.

Jesus said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

I've got all authority in heaven and on earth.

So whatever I want to do in heaven and on earth, I can do.

At the very end of it, he says, Lo, I'm with you always.

It's the assurance that he's with us.

Now, what does that mean?

It means as we do this, we have we have The assurance we can do it.

We have the ability to do this.

That's huge because most of us, you know, wonder, could I really do this with somebody?

What's amazing is, and I look back at the years at the academy, most of the guys who were doing discipling, the academy, we're talking about 17, 18, 19-year-old kids.

Most of them had not been walking with God, growing more than a few months, and they caught a vision for this and began to try it.

And as they began to trust God to use them to impact people, it's amazing what God did with available people because of his power.

So we work from the outside.

We have the assurance God is there, all heaven and earth, is going to be with us.

We come in, he gives us a strategy.

And uh if you look at this, there are there are uh let's go back to the one before that.

Uh there are three, actually, there are three, this is a little grammar here, there are three participles that tell us how to make disciples.

First one is that go.

The go actually is a participle, going as you go.

That's that's the way going.

In other words, the idea is we're to move out.

There is a going, there is a realizing that we're not just to huddle and kind of survive until we either die or Jesus returns.

We are given life, we're given power, and we're to be on the offensive, we're to be going.

Uh so he says, as you go, and you're gonna go, you're gonna move out from here.

Uh and then he talks about baptizing.

Baptizing talks about uh the importance of igniting love in the hearts of people.

That's really what baptism was.

When a person was baptized, they say, I love the person into whose name I'm being baptized, and I know they love me, and I want to devote my life to them forever.

Baptism is like a spiritual wedding.

It's a person who recognizes the love of Jesus and the love of God, and they give themselves.

Baptized into means I'm devoting myself to you for the rest of my life.

So we baptize, we help people understand the love of God and the kindness of God, and we stir up in them a desire to belong to Him for the rest of their life.

That's the gospel, that's the cross, that's that's that's evangelism.

So we're to baptize.

We're to help people realize the love of God and respond to it by giving their whole life to him.

And then we teach them.

And this just reminds us that uh this making disciples, you know, it starts by going out, finding people, helping them understand the love of God, and then we teach them.

It's a transforming, it's a change of life.

We're not just to teach them knowledge and information.

Notice he says, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you.

Teaching them to live this stuff, not just talk about it and understand it.

Teach them uh transforming.

So those are the participles.

Now, the main verb, there's one main verb in these two verses.

And it's now let's Randy, we can go to the next one.

And this is it.

It's make disciples.

That's the that's the verb, that's the main verb, that's what we're to do.

And uh the the tense of it, it's uh uh you don't need this, but it but it the tense talks about it is something that's urgent.

It calls for a determined decision to do this.

Drive a stake, just like you guys have as a church.

Decide this is what we're gonna do, because this is your mission, this is your main thing.

This is this is what I'm sending to you to do.

Don't get sidetracked with a bunch of other things.

Make disciples.

And uh it there's there's a drive a stake.

That's the tense.

The voice of it is uh it's active.

It means it's something we're to do.

It's not done to us, it's not done for us.

This is something the people of God do.

It's for you and me.

And it's an imperative, which means we're to take it seriously.

I mean, this this is a voice of authority speaking to us, saying, now this is what I want you to do.

And so I'm I'm just affirming that your purpose, your central purpose as a church is a wonderful thing.

You are right at the core of what Jesus told his people to do.

Go, therefore, and make disciples.

Now we'll talk about what that means in a minute.

Let me tell you a quick story.

And now let's go to the next.

This guy is, this is the guy who was the chief of staff when I came into the service.

I came into the service right at the end of a time where, in a way, the Air Force had kind of lost its way.

Now, what do I mean?

There had been a gap between the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

And so there was peace.

And so you've got all these people and all this money, and nobody really knows what we're doing.

We don't have anybody necessary to fight.

So the Air Force began to do some marvelous uh kind of things, but they were uh in all kinds of directions.

So they had these athletic teams, for example.

I mean, this is when we built these gymnasiums, and we had baseball teams and football teams and basketball teams and tennis and golf teams and boxing teams that were semi-pro.

It's where Roger Staubach went after the Naval Academy, he played military football, and then went to the Dallas Cowboys.

All I'm saying is we had, and then we had bands, and then we had base exchanges and commissaries and movie theaters and community centers and libraries that were second to none.

And then we had these education programs.

So it became hey, if you want to get a graduate degree, join the military and you get a master's degree from an extension.

So, and then and and and and then we had these base housing renewal projects.

So between the Korean War and Vietnam, we we had this in a way, the the the goal of the Air Force was was to make ourselves as high a standard of living and as comfortable and as attractive a lifestyle as you possibly could have.

So we built these marvelous buildings, had all these wonderful services, and you joined the Air Force to have a nice life.

And finally, by the way, can you see some parallels between the church and the military?

So finally this guy comes in as chief of staff, he's an old SAC commander, and Sack had been the one, you know, fighting the Russians.

They and he said, and this this poster began to show up in all the ready rooms and hallways and offices in the Air Force, and he said, the mission of the Air Force is to fly and fight, and don't you ever forget it.

It was his way of kind of yanking the whole thing back from base exchanges and bowling alleys and and you know, and bands and marching bands and softball teams to the reason we exist.

Now, Matthew 28 is Jesus reminding us, saying the same thing.

He's saying to the church, look, the purpose of the church is to make disciples.

And don't you ever forget it.

So you guys are doing a wonderful thing.

You're returning to the core, the mission.

Now, let me just let's go to another one.

Paul's gonna share the story, he might do that tomorrow.

Let's go to another one.

Meaning, what does it mean to be a disciple?

Let's just talk about that because uh that's if we you gotta know what you're trying to make uh here.

And if you look, uh disciple, it just means a devoted follower.

But this is important.

A disciple is a devoted follower who wants to be just like his teacher.

It's interesting, there are two words that have to do with learning.

One is the word uh, that's Greek word, mathao.

It means to learn.

It's where we get mathematics.

Matha, learn.

Matics has to do with numbers, metrics.

Okay?

Mathematics to learn about numbers.

Mathao.

Second word, math teo.

Mathateo means to be devoted to a teacher.

It's not just learning the subject, it is being devoted.

There is a heart, love, affection, sense of wonder, sense of awe about this person.

And when we make disciples, what we want to do is have people who fall in love with Jesus and their main goal in life is to become just like him.

It's a life thing.

And uh, so that's what we're talking about.

And you see this.

Jesus talked about this when when he talked about discipleship.

Uh what he what they took what they understood in the first century is is it's the imitation, it's the becoming like a person.

Now, I just say this because in the West, it's for much of our discipleship, it's mastering information.

It's knowing what he said.

It's knowing, you know, that, and that's true.

You have to start by knowing what he said.

But discipleship is far more than that.

It is a desire to become like this person.

The way they think, what they love, what they hate, what they live for, becoming just like the person.

Uh the Jews had a had a saying that to be a disciple means you walk in the footsteps of the rabbi.

You put your sandal prince right where he walked.

And if you go to Jerusalem, you go to Israel, you'll see rabbis and disciples, and they're right there, they're right together.

Uh they had another saying, it says, May you follow your master so close.

You're covered with the dust of his feet.

And again, it's that there is this affection for the person, for the teacher, and a desire to be just like him.

Let me show you another picture.

This is this is my little grandson, Rock.

He's named after me.

I'm Big Rock, he's Little Rock.

Yeah, Little Rock, there he is.

Okay.

Now, Little Rock and I have a very special relationship.

I show you this because I want you to see the heart of discipleship.

Discipleship is not some cold mastering of information, it's not some just trying to learn the principles and kind of woodenly put them into practice.

It is there is a heart bond that so loves and so admires and is so grateful for the master that I want to become just like him.

Now, Rock and I have a special, he does.

He loves it.

When he hears I'm coming, he'll go sit on the porch and just wait until I come.

And when he sees me, his face lights up and he jumps up and down, and he is so excited.

If there's a, you know, he's got a glass door and he'll put his nose right up there.

And when he, you know, I mean, he he uh he loves me.

And uh, and one of the things I notice about rock is whatever I do, he wants to do.

So if I'm shaving, he wants to shave.

You know, I do it.

If I'm brushing my teeth with one of those electric teeth brushes, ooh, I want to brush my teeth.

Where do you push it?

When I'm mowing the lawn, he wants to mow the lawn.

When I make weed eating, he wants to weed eat.

He's right there.

He just wants to be like me.

There is this heart thing.

Now, let me just say, when we talk about making disciples, this is part of the this is why worship, things like worship are so important.

One of the things we're trying to do is not just get people to be like me.

We want them to understand the love and the goodness and the kindness of God so that their heart loves Jesus.

Their heart loves Jesus.

Because what we're trying to do, what we're asking by the power of the Holy Spirit, by our example, by the things we say, is we want them to love Jesus who is the Messiah and to desire to please him and honor him and to be just like him.

And I go back, go back to that picture, the one before.

Look at that.

Can you see that little fellow?

He loves me.

Right?

This is he trusts me as he sees me.

Can you see in that picture?

There's a heart there.

That is discipleship.

I mean, that's the heart of discipleship.

Is I gain such a wonder for who Jesus is and how smart he is.

He's the heavenly man, he's the man from heaven.

He is God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

He knows much better than I know.

He sees a lot farther than I see.

And not only that, but he loves me.

That's that.

Yeah, did you ever see the passion of the Christ, you know, Mel Gibson's deal?

We saw it when we were here with Focus.

And maybe you had the same experience.

When that thing was over, we were there, Bev and I were there with a bunch of students, and nobody moved.

You know, we just sat there until all the credits had run through and they turned on the lights.

And what was it?

There was something about seeing the agony that he endured voluntarily for us that released in us a revelation of the love of God.

I mean, we were just stunned that God would go through that so that my sin could be forgiven and I could come back.

I'm just saying, you know, a big part of discipleship is we're trying to create this kind of heart for Jesus.

Because it's out of this kind of heart, this love of God.

That's where we want to learn his ways, and we want to allow him to change us.

We want to trust him, we want to see his best for our life.

So when we talk about a disciple, we're talking about uh, you know, we're talking about somebody who wants to walk with Jesus.

We want to learn his words, not just so we can be smart, but we love his words.

We know there is life in his words.

We want to imitate his life, and we realize he has life and we want to give it away to others.

Okay, let me just let's go on.

Uh passionate.

I'll tell you, I'll just throw, oh gosh, we're running out of time, but I want to tell you one story because this is this guy is uh Ray Vanderlawn in the middle, and Ray is a high school Bible teacher up in Holland, Michigan, and he does the you may have seen Focus on the Family, has this DVD series uh that the world may know.

Now, Ray comes out of a Dutch reform, very subdued, you know, German kind of.

Nobody shows any kind of emotion.

But but through Ray's involvement in the scriptures, through his understanding, his study of disciple, what this means.

I mean, he's broken out of that.

And uh he would come, the one of the highlights of teaching at focus is he'd come every semester for one day with the uh students, and uh and he'd start every session, he'd have a whole day of teaching the students about disciples.

He'd start the first session, and he'd say, I want you to say, I want you to say what what the first century disciples would say every morning, every night, at the beginning of every synagogue service.

We're gonna say Shema.

Shema means it means here in Hebrew.

And of course it refers to Deuteronomy, where it says, Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your strength.

He said, Now I want you to say these words after me.

Hero Israel.

Well, they we kind of grind through it like we go through the Lord's Prayer, you know.

And he said, Okay, now I want you to say it like a first century Jew, like a first century disciple.

And then he now he's impassioned.

Hero Israel.

We say, Hero Israel.

You know, the Lord is our God, the Lord is our God.

Love the Lord your God, the Lord is one, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.

Well, we had to do that about three or four times before the you know the level of passion would even approach.

He said, now you need to realize when a first century Jew would say this, he wasn't chanting through a confession.

He was expressing his identity.

This is who we are.

We are a people who the Lord is our God.

The Lord alone, nobody else, rules our life.

And we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength.

That's our purpose.

This is our identity, this is who we are, this is why we live, is to show the rest of the world what it means to love God like this and to show them the blessing, the kind of life that comes to people who follow God unconditionally with all their heart.

This is discipleship.

So what we're making here isn't just well-educated Christian people who are orthodox in their theology.

We're making people, you know, who are captivated by the love of God like little rock for me.

Their main purpose in life is to become just like a rabbi.

The main way they evaluate a day is have I loved the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength.

I mean, we're talking about great religion here.

I mean, religion that transforms, religion that allows God to come and do wonderful things.

So that's making disciples.

Okay.

Um, oh, let's see.

I'll tell you what.

Let's see what time it is.

Let's do this.

Um, why don't we stand in place?

You've been sitting, uh, because I want to get to a practical side of this.

I'm gonna skip some of this other stuff, and we'll talk about how to do it.

So just stand for about five minutes, stretch.

If you need a potty break, go get one.

Um, need some water or something.

Stand and stretch a little bit, and then we'll we'll get to how do you do this.

Five minutes, mill around, say hi, hug somebody.

So I can get you back to my name and a column.

Um okay, so we're talking about what what you guys have set out to do as a body.

It is, I mean, it's it's the mission.

It's what God has called us to do.

So what you're doing is an important thing.

We've looked at disciple.

What does it mean?

Um it means uh a devoted follower, and it's a heart thing.

Um it is, it's it comes out of a sense of wonder and awe and affection and gratitude, uh, which of course is our response to our rabbi, to Jesus.

It's uh somebody who really loves Christ.

And uh the main thing in their life is they want to honor him, please him, become just like him.

And we talked a little bit about uh, what do we talk about?

Talked about the process.

We didn't get to talk about the process.

But I uh but what I want to say on the process, and I'll just do about two minutes on this, it is very different than normal church.

And you know that if you if you're a reader of the gospels, you know Jesus, Jesus raised up disciples in a very different way than the normal church.

Um and you see that.

And the things down there under that number three process, just to fill them in, I'll just fill it in.

It starts with lots of love.

Um and again, this is why we have to be more up close and personal.

Lots of love.

Um, you know, John the apostle in John 13, he loved, he loved his own, he loved them to the end.

And uh love begets love.

And so we'll talk about that even tomorrow night.

He grows through relationship.

Jesus talked about he chose twelve that they might be with him.

And so discipling, frankly, there's very little to no discipling occurs on a Sunday morning in a group like this.

Now that that's not bad.

I mean, God calls us to be together, and we worship together and we sing together, and there is a sense of community, and there's this, and in the worship we get a sense of the wonder and the majesty of God, and the pastor teaches uh most of it goes in one ear and out the other, right?

If we're honest.

But the pastor preaches well, it creates a hunger for us to want to know the book ourselves, and so the best.

Fruit of great preaching is people who go home and read the book themselves.

Because that's really where God speaks.

That's how you learn it.

And you learn to live it.

And uh so it grows through relationship.

And so a lot of discipling isn't here, it's around a kitchen table, it's around a living room, it's uh it's face-to-face as opposed to uh looking at the back of somebody's head.

The process is active, in other words, uh discipling isn't about mastering information.

You start with information, but discipleship is about a changed life, it's about doing life differently.

And so if you notice when Jesus made disciples, you know, he'd take them with him.

There was a lot of doing things together.

Uh it's active.

He had them do the stuff.

Uh, it's not passive, it's not uh just sitting and listening.

And the focus is on um it's on life, uh transformation, I would say, not just information.

It's a change of life.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Purpose of God is to change you from little devils to little Jesuses.

And we've got about 70 years to get that done.

And it takes every bit of that through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the washing of the water, through the Word of God, through connection and God doing and healing and restoring things in our life.

Uh but discipleship is about transformation, not information.

And so it's very different than normal church, particularly the way we do it in the West.

So, with that, what I want to do, I want to skip down to practicing together.

I want to give you something that we've been working at uh in Oklahoma City.

It's very simple, um, and it and it needs to be.

Many of you care are busy, and and it's true.

God has you.

God, the plan of God for your life is that you work at a responsible job, that you are uh parents, you're husbands and wives and parents of children, and uh you're involved in your communities.

Um, and so I want to give you a very simple but highly nourishing way to both be a disciple and make disciples.

We call it a D group.

And we're gonna do it.

The best way, I'm not gonna explain it first.

I want to do it, and so let's go there.

Thank you, Randy.

You've got the right place.

Disciples group, let's go to the next thing.

Um I'll get to this in a minute.

Let's go to the next thing.

Here it is.

D group can be as small as two people.

Two people meeting together.

No more than six.

It's all men, all women, because there's an openness, there's a transparency that's important in this that you can't get with a mixed group.

You can meet anytime, any place.

You can meet in a home, you can meet in an office break room, you can meet at Starbucks, you can meet wherever.

Um, some of our groups meet early in the morning before work, some meet late at night after the dads put their kids to bed, some meet uh afternoons, late, whatever, uh Saturday, whatever.

Takes about an hour and 15 minutes, if we're just honest, to do what we do.

And uh they last anywhere from 12 weeks to forever.

We have some that go 12 weeks and then they kind of break up, multiply, and get some new guys.

Some of them are lifelong friends, and uh and they they do this together for long stretches of time.

And the purpose is simple, it's to help each other grow.

Let's go to the next one.

This is what a D group looks like with men.

Go to the next one.

There's Bev with a group of girls.

Uh, let's go to the next one.

Uh I say a D-group is a lot like working out together at the Y.

I mean, we're here, it's not just hanging out.

Now we do hang out, and you're gonna see in a minute.

I mean, people who've been in a D group for two or three weeks often know each other much better than people who've gone to church together for 15 years because of what they do together.

Um, there is some intentionality, some things that really open and bond that we do.

This is basically the uh, it's very simple in format.

We say it's up, in and out.

The up is some time in the word, and we're gonna show you how we do that so that we really get nourishment out of it.

In is we share life.

I'll show you how we do that.

And the out is uh we talk to each other about the one person in our world that we sense.

God wants us to help find Jesus.

And we help and we encourage each other to make progress in that.

Up in and out.

That's the basic format of a D group.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to do one.

So, what I want you to do is rearrange yourselves so in your little clusters of three, okay?

All women, all men.

So you're gonna have to move here a little bit.

Um but get and spread out.

I want you to spread out uh, you know, out around the edges here, little groups of three, okay?

So groups of three.

If you want to do four, you can do four.

Groups of three.

Let's do it.

Okay, groups of three.

That's it.

You can sit them on the uh sit them on some of the chairs up around the edge.

Oh, this is a good group right here.

Sit up on the steps up here if you want.

Good, good.

Okay, this is a great group.

Sit up knee to knee.

That's what you want to do.

Knee to knee.

Turn turn your chairs into little circles so you kind of get knee to knee up there, so you get close.

That's good.

That's a D group.

A D group is a group of companions, it's a band of brothers, it's a brand of sisters.

And we're gonna work out together.

Okay.

Okay, now I'm gonna walk you through what we're gonna do.

We're gonna do this because we've got 30 minutes rather than 75.

But it's gonna help that you're just three.

I'm gonna kind of push you through this a little fast, but I want you to taste it.

I want you to do it together.

Then you can tell me if it's any good.

Um, okay.

First of all, uh let's I'll tell you what.

Let's okay, if you don't know each other, sh uh share your names, home, and what you did for fun in high school.

Okay, you got about two minutes to do that.

Okay, many of you already know each other better than people.

You've been to church more than fifteen years.

Fun in high school.

Okay, oops, what did I do?

Oh, there you go.

Okay.

Okay, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the up part, all right?

And uh I want you to take your Bible.

Here's what we do on the up part.

We're gonna read a chapter of scripture.

Now, if you're leading a group, you can pick any book off the shelf of the Bible that you think would be helpful to your group.

If you've got a new group of believers, you can use the book of John.

Uh, you know, you've got a bunch of businessmen, maybe you'd use Proverbs.

Um, I'm gonna use the book of James for our time because it's wonderfully practical and uh it it's easy for all of us to engage with.

So if you've got your Bible, we're gonna first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna read this chapter.

And the way we do it is we read it aloud, just going around the circle.

Um and if you know if somebody doesn't have a Bible, you can just uh uh pass it to them.

And and there's no set number of verses, just read a chunk of it, kind of dividing it by the number of people you got.

So James 1 has, what does it got?

27 verses, about nine verses apiece.

So just quietly get your heads in together, and I want you to read the chapter aloud.

Now, after you do that, the second thing that I want you to do, it's coming up here, is I want you to write.

We say journal, and uh we do.

Everybody in our D group has a journal, and uh what we use is the real simple little uh, it's it's like a Target or Walmart composition book.

It looks like this.

And on the front of it says uh father's words, and uh this is what this is what we use.

And uh what I want you to do is after you've read it aloud together, then we're gonna be quiet, and I want you to take a few minutes just quietly to write, and this is what we're writing.

We're not writing some theological insight or something that you think is wrong with the world out there.

We're gonna write what is it that you sense God is saying to you out of this chapter.

Now, before the creation of the world, God knew that you'd be here tonight, that you'd be reading James 1 tonight, and there's a reason he wants you to read that.

There's something he wants to say to you about your situation, about your heart, about your set of circumstances.

And that's what we're listening for.

We're listening for what the Holy Spirit.

Now, this is a spiritual listening.

We're listening for what the Holy Spirit wants to say to you personally.

And that's what you're writing.

Uh just two or three sentences.

It doesn't have to be that long, but just enough to make sure that you've heard writing.

You can't, you know, you can do a lot of things without thinking.

You can talk without thinking, right?

You can read without thinking.

It goes in one ear, out the other, but you cannot write without thinking.

You have to you have to know what you're trying to put on that paper.

So, first step is just read it aloud.

Then after you read it, we're gonna stop and be quiet, and you're writing, and you're listening, you're going back through it.

Usually what I'd say is just go back through it, kind of read through it yourself, and you're looking for that little place where you sense the whisper of God that this is for me.

And then you write that down.

Okay?

And then once you've done that, you're gonna share.

And uh you're gonna share what you wrote.

And very simply, you start by just reading what you wrote, and then if you want to add anything to it, you can.

Now, I'm gonna put a leader of the group, okay?

The leader of your group is the oldest person in the group is your leader.

Okay.

Now, now that we've all figured out who the oldest person in the group is, see, you already know more about each other than people that you've gone to church with for 15 years.

Um, so leader, you're gonna just lead them around, lead them through this process.

I'm gonna give you about uh seven or eight minutes to do this.

Read it aloud, then be quiet, write down what God is saying to me, and then go around and share that with each other.

Okay, and leader, you're just your job is just to go first.

You just go first.

All right, go at it.

Good.

Once you finish reading, you want to be quiet.

And just let each one kind of go back slowly, look at it.

And what you're listening for, and and my guess is as you went through the first time, there was a piece of that, and you could sense if you're you're tuned in, the spirit would have said, That's for me.

That's God speaking to me.

And that's where you want to focus.

So take time just to go back to what God's saying, and then write that down just in two or three sentences.

And leaders when you've uh when you sense everybody's had a chance, you can see if they've stopped writing.

Then you go first and and just read what you wrote.

Just start and just simply have each one read what they wrote.

And then they can add anything to it that they want.

Something to teach or discuss.

This is very personal.

What is God saying to you?

Okay, and once you sense that uh everybody's had a chance to write, leader, you all you do is go first.

You just get to go first.

Put your heads in there close where you can talk to each other.

Okay, I'm gonna give you about another two minutes, so make sure everybody gets a chance to just share what they sensed God was saying to them.

Two minutes.

Okay, now I'm gonna move you through a little bit faster than you want to go, I know.

Randy, would you put up that next slide?

Put up the rock.

Okay, two more minutes.

All right, two more minutes, good.

Okay.

Okay, let me just break in.

You may not have had a chance to go all the way around the circle, but I want to I want to move you on to the end part.

We just did up.

And up was pretty simple.

We read the scriptures together, and then we listened for what God is saying to me.

And uh, and then we had a chance to share that.

Now, I mean, if you think about what's going on here, it's a significant thing.

I mean, you we're learning to live the Bible, not just to know it.

And uh I mean, and that's what Jesus wants us to do.

So don't worry about the pieces you don't understand.

Look at what you do understand in there and what is it God is saying to me about my life.

I mean, this is powerful stuff that we just did.

We just read the scriptures, and then we we're humble enough.

There's an exercise in humility here of sharing with somebody what God is saying to me.

Where I need to hear his voice.

Sometimes it's a word of comfort, sometimes it's a word of correction.

Uh sometimes, you know, it's a something that a light that comes on.

So we're we're we're in the word of God, but we're learning to live it, and we're sharing our life.

I mean, you learn something from each other by what God was saying to you, particularly as we get open and honest about this.

Now, we want to go to in.

And the in is where we're sharing life together.

And uh the power of the in, God says this.

He says he gives grace, he he resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

And there's something powerfully humble about telling the truth about your life.

The good stuff and the not so good stuff.

And when we do that, there's this release of grace.

I mean, he releases grace.

And sometimes he does it through just the help and comfort that comes from the group, sometimes he does it through things he does through the Spirit and so forth.

But that's what we want to do in the end part.

A life question.

Basically, what we've got is in the way we do it at Our Lords, we have a list of 31 of these things.

And frankly, what I do is I cut them all up, I put them in a bowl, and I use the lottery system.

It's casting of lots, and we pull one out.

And now, sometimes as a leader, I have a sense of something I think it'd be good for the group to talk about, and I'll bring that.

But often I don't.

I just show up and I say, God, you what do you want us to tell the truth about today?

We'll pull one out.

And it's things like your marriage, what's happy and what's hard, what's going well and what's really hard.

Uh you know, your work, same kind of thing.

What are you enjoying and what's really hard?

Anger, where are you angry and how are you dealing with it?

Fear, where are you frightened and how are you dealing with it?

Your kids, if they were to describe you in three words, how would your children describe you at this stage of your life?

And why?

Uh or it's something like, what has God been saying to you?

You know, I mean, that's a good question.

What has God been saying to you and what are you doing about it?

How are you responding?

It's the old Methodist, how is it with your soul type questions?

Now, this has two good things.

One is it makes us stop and look at the things that are important and say, How is it with my soul?

And the other is it gives us the opportunity to tell the truth with some companions in the faith.

And and that has that has power to it.

Uh grace.

So here's the question.

Life question is simple.

This is a very simple question.

In your present life, what's happy and what's hard?

What brings you joy, delight, what's really, and what is a source of heartache at this point in your life?

Okay?

So, leader, you get to go first.

Okay.

Okay, about three more minutes, so make sure everybody gets a chance to share their happy and hard.

Three more minutes.

Okay.

Let me break in, and I know this, I know we're pushing things, but here's what we want to do now.

Let's go back, Randy, to that slide before.

Now you just heard each other share about your life, right?

We did a life question.

So it may be about marriage, it may be about anger, it may be about fear, it may be about here, happy and hard.

So now we want to stop and pray for each other.

Uh but we want to do this in the way God tells us to do.

He talks about praying at all times in the spirit.

What does it mean to pray in the spirit?

Well, it means to pray as the spirit shows you what to pray.

That's what it means to walk in the spirit, keep in step with the spirit, be filled with the spirit.

It means to follow the lead of the spirit.

And so we're going to pray for each other.

And uh simple way that I do this, I just say, hey, pray for the person on your right.

But before we pray, we want to be quiet and we want to listen.

And we do, we want to say, uh, Holy Spirit, would you show me how to pray for this person?

Now you're listening on two levels.

Some of you, this you understand this, and this is just a review.

Some of you, this may be new, but you're listening on two levels.

You're listening because they just shared their life with you.

They just opened their life and they told you, hey, this is what's really happy.

It's going great, and this is what's really hard.

It's really hard.

So you listen to that.

And you're saying, Lord, what would you how would you have me pray for this person?

So you you pay attention to that.

And uh it may be that's God shows you j j just common sense from what you heard.

Let's pray about that for some relief or thanksgiving.

But it's also true that the spirit may bring to mind something else.

Sometimes uh and uh if you you're used to hearing the voice of God, sometimes just as you're listening, there'll be a word that comes to mind, a verse of scripture comes to mind, a picture comes to mind.

But sometimes it's I mean, God gives you a feeling similar to what he feels towards this person.

Um so you're listening both to what the Spirit is saying and to what the person has just said.

Okay, and then out of that, yeah, you want to pray for each other.

So I just want us to be quiet and just listen.

Everybody's gonna pray for the person on the right.

Okay, okay.

So you're remembering what they said, but you're also saying, Lord, is Is there anything else?

Is there anything maybe they weren't even talking about?

Is there a something that you'd have me pray for them?

So let's just be quiet and listen.

And then when I say go, again, leader, you go first and pray for the person on your right.

And I'd encourage you just to lay a hand on them.

I mean, it's a way of blessing, it's a way of touching.

Just lay a hand on their shoulder and uh and pray as the Lord leads you.

But let's be quiet.

Just be quiet.

Shh.

Lord, would you come and would you show us how to pray?

Teach us to pray as you lead.

So just listen.

Lord, show us how to pray for each other here.

And pay attention to what comes to mind.

Sometimes it's just a word, a verse.

But let the Lord kind of focus for you what you want to pray.

And then, leaders, you just go first.

Put your hand on that shoulder and go around your circle.

Now, once you finish praying for each other, I just want you to do one more thing.

And that is, I want you to go around and just very briefly, each of you, just in a sentence or two, pray for one person in your world who needs Christ.

Just pray God would draw that person to Himself or give you the opportunity to speak.

But think of one person in your world who needs Christ.

Maybe a family member, maybe somebody you work with, maybe a neighbor.

But think of one person in your world who needs Christ.

And just pray for that person.

Okay, let me just break in.

I know some of you all are.

I'll let you continue here in a minute.

But you just done a D group.

Up, in, out.

You let God speak to you through His Word.

You shared that with each other.

In, you shared your life.

You opened the window, let some people peek into your life.

And uh and then you prayed for each other.

That's in, that's a companionship.

And then out.

We thought of somebody.

We kind of opened our eyes, let the Spirit of God kind of open our eyes to somebody out there who needs Jesus.

And we had an opportunity to pray for that.

That's a D group.

Pretty simple.

So tonight we talked about being a disciple, what that looks like.

And you got to taste a little bit of the kind of thing that if you're in it, it could really help you grow over a period of time.

Tomorrow we want to talk about making disciples and how God can use you right where you are, both with people in the body and beyond the body, to uh to make disciples of others, help others grow.

And so we'll talk about making disciples, how to lead a group like this, the kinds of things uh that you need to do as a leader to really keep it on track and that kind of thing.