How Serious are You Taking this Task?

I'm on a discipleship kick - hopefully for life!  I have a lot of thoughts about discipleship rolling around in my head like marbles bouncing around a room with hardwood floors.  As I begin to think about discipleship, the word is really awkward to me.  I mean, what is a disciple?  In the business world synonyms for disciple or discipleship would be mentor or life coach, business coach or something like that.  We do know that Jesus had disciples.  Some were really close to Him (Peter, James and John along with the rest of the 12 Apostles) and some were a somewhat removed (the 70 mentioned in Luke 10:1).  

We know that just before Jesus ascended into heaven that He told us that making disciples (passing on our faith to others) is to be a focus of our life.  Some of the things that Jesus said were involved with making disciples are; to be baptizing folks who want to follow Jesus and teaching people to obey everything Jesus said (we should know and obey those things for ourselves).  Paul tells us in 2 Tim. 2:2 that we should be passing on to 'faithful' people everything that we have learned and observed and heard from our mentors/life coaches/disciplers.  We are also to instruct the folks we teach about following Jesus to pass it along so the ball keeps moving forward.

If you think about making disciples and what it entails (baptizing, teaching them to obey everything Jesus said and helping the learn to pass it along to faithful people who will in turn pass it along too), this is a life long job description.  This making disciples business cannot be done on the fly or in passing or be caught by osmosis.  It doesn't just happen.  I appears that Jesus and Paul intended this process to be intentional.  Jesus, Paul and others were deeply serious about our role in passing on our faith in ways that will strengthen people to pass it on as well.  Every believer should be taking this task very seriously.

How serious are you taking this task?

"Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"  Matthew 16:24-25

Making disciples is serious business.  If you are a follower of Jesus, it is a business that you should be involved in!  More on this next week....