Being Effective as a Disciple Maker
Being a disciple-maker and making disciple-makers is not a natural thing and is not the result of human effort or ability alone, but it involves human effort. Making disciple-makers is supernatural.
This is the first principle of making disciple-makers.
The standard set out for a disciple in Luke 14:26-27 is very clear, the disciple must make Jesus the highest priority. Jesus must be prioritised above parents, children, brothers and sisters; Jesus must be prioritised above the disciple’s life.
A person that has not made Jesus the highest priority has not met the qualifying standard of being a disciple of Jesus.
The same scripture in verse 27 is also clear that a person who has not consciously died to himself, including self-ambition, reputation, opinions, and other self-things does not qualify as a disciple of Jesus.
Before the Lord Jesus left the world, His disciples, including the Apostles were not bold and effective. Even after they had been with Jesus for three years, they were still weak, afraid, fearful, not bold, and were not confident. They ran and abandoned the Lord Jesus when He was arrested. In fact, one of them ran away naked, leaving his clothes behind.
What changed these disciples and made them into the type of disciples that we read about in Acts is the coming and filling of the Holy Spirit. You can read about this event in Acts 2.
The Lord Jesus had told them in Acts 1 before He left that they must go and wait because it was necessary for them to be baptised with (immersed totally in) the Holy Spirit. We are told that they obeyed and waited constantly in prayer (Acts 1:14) for several days until the event in Acts 2. After this event, we are told several times in Acts about how they either spent time in prayer, were filled with the Holy Spirit again or how others were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Being filled and full of the Holy Spirit is the reason these disciples acquired and functioned as they did in the book of Acts. In Acts 13:52, the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. The same with Paul in Acts 9 and Cornelius and his household in Acts 10.
Nobody can be a disciple-maker without being filled with the Holy Spirit. Those who are not filled or full of the Holy Spirit, may be able to perform some basic Christian religious actions and activities by their own effort, but they will not have the desires, motives, affections, and abilities that we see in the disciples, in the book of Acts. The desires and affections propel us in making disciple-makers.
The strong desires, affections and convictions produced by the Holy Spirit is what God promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and in Ezekiel 36:26-27
Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV [26] I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. [27] And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 NIV [31] "The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. [32] It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, " declares the Lord. [33] "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. [34] No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
What God is saying in the scriptures above is that He will not write the laws of the new covenant on a stone, which was a physical object and outside of the individual and the people of Israel had to read it and then try to obey it. Instead, in the new covenant, God will write the laws into the core of each individual, He will write it into the core of what makes each one of them who they are – into their desires, affections, convictions, dispositions, etc.
The result of writing the laws into their desires, affections, convictions, dispositions, etc. is that the disciples will obey God because they want to and they will enjoy obeying God, and they have convictions for their obedience.
Imagine a person that hates eating fish, but likes ice cream. Now imagine that we perform surgery on the tongue of that person and we alter the taste buds on the tongue of the person through surgery to make fish taste much better than ice cream, and then imagine that the surgical alteration also made ice cream taste horrible when the person eats it. That is similar to what God is saying in Jeremiah 31:31-34. God said He will perform spiritual surgery on each person that becomes born again (in their heart) so that their desires, affections, convictions, dispositions, etc. are altered to love righteousness, want to know and love God as well as other people.
Being genuinely born again is crucial
The foundation for the supernatural life required to be a disciple maker comes through being genuinely born again.
Being born again is a supernatural thing that makes a person to be sensitive to God and desire to obey God. It alters the core of the person, fills and empowers the person with the Holy Spirit and it enables a person to be a disciple-maker.
Yielded to and directed by the Holy Spirit
One of the things that we observe about the disciples of the Lord Jesus is that they were yielded to and directed and syncronised by the Holy Spirit to what God was doing and to each other. That is, God moved different people to move into action at different times without being told or pushed by a person.
For example: Acts 8:26-29 Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is desert. 27 So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28 was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.”
We see another example of this yildedness, inner direction and syncronishing work of the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit directed and synchronised Ananias with Saul in Acts 9 such that as soon as Saul got born again, Ananias showed up to pray for him.
Again, the Holy Spirit directed and synchronised Peter with Cornelius in Acts 10. That synchronised behaviour is prominent among disciple-makers and makes a group of disciple-makers to behave like an organism, moving into action without being told or pushed.
Jesus said in John 15:1-5, I am the true Vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that continues to bear fruit, He [repeatedly] prunes, so that it will bear more fruit [even richer and finer fruit]. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have given you [the teachings which I have discussed with you]. 4 Remain in Me, and I [will remain] in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself without remaining in the vine, neither can you [bear fruit, producing evidence of your faith] unless you remain in Me. 5 I am the Vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him bears much fruit, for [otherwise] apart from Me [that is, cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.”
It is crystal clear from the analogy in the scripture above that fruitfulness, especially in making disciples, is from being in proper relationship with the Lord and being vitally connected and staying connected to Him. Fruitfulness in making genuine disciples is not just the work of human effort.
The other thing that we should note in verses 4 and 8, is that it says that fruitfulness is an evidence of your genuine relationship of faith and connection of faith to Jesus.
Making disciple-makers is not a technique, an event or an activity, it is a spiritual lifestyle.
If your spiritual life is not vibrant, if you not abiding in Christ, if you are not genuinely connected prayerfully, with an established pattern of obedience to the Lord Jesus, you should first address this area. There is no shame in admitting that you need help in this area.
One of the things that the Lord Jesus spent time to deal with in the life of His disciples over a period of about three years were barriers to His Lordship and His ways. These barriers were inside as well as outside of the disciples and they include barriers of traditions, barriers of wrong teachings and belief, barriers of previous experience, barriers to their faith, barriers of spiritual pollution, etc.
These barriers are often not obvious and many of them wear the cloak of spirituality and appear to be spiritual and have become acceptable in churches.
To be effective, you have to realise that you were formed within a religious tradition that can be a barrier to what God is doing.
Most of us only know the current way of doing church, and to an extent, have settled in it, accepted it and are comfortable with it.
Jesus says in Luke 5:39 that it is not easy to change and embrace something new once you have embraced, experienced and settled in something else.
Luke 5:39 “And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately[f] desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”
Be careful not to be controlled by desires for the old wine. You see, as a result of your religious background, education and experience, there is a huge possibility of you being suspicious, or thinking that you already know all about making disciple makers or that you have done it before.
You should really take time to pray that God will make you into a new wineskin.
At the end of your life, you should have several disciples for the Lord that have been raised through your life. That is what Apostle Paul meant when he said in 1 Thessalonians 2:19 NIV [19] For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?