Here we are stuck in our homes. What a great time to stop and take inventory. Those of us who call ourselves Christians ought especially to take inventory of our fruit.
I’m looking out my window at a couple of peach trees. Every year they produce bad fruit – worm-eaten peaches. This year, I decided “I want better fruit. I am going to do a better job of caring for them.”
When it comes to bearing fruit, let’s face it, a lot of us are Christians in name only. The world views us as hypocrites. The world needs Christians to do better. And we can if we’ll take stock and make a few changes.
Maybe it would be a good idea to take at our at our lives and self-reflect. Jesus called his disciples to make disciples. What is your fruit? Who are your disciples?
Paul’s example
Paul is a good example for us. After Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, he had to take the time to grow into a new identity, learning what it meant to be a child of God – a son – before he could prove himself reliable.
Eventually, as a reliable man, he was able to lead people into faith and become a fruit-bearing man, pouring into others like Timothy, who in turn poured into reliable people. We see this 4-stage fruit-bearing cycle in 2 Timothy 2:2: “The things which you (Timothy) have heard from me (Paul) in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to reliable men who will be able to teach others also.”
Many young people want to skip this step of proving themselves relaible. If you ask their supervisor, “Is this person reliable? Does he do the work assigned him on time?” Too often, you’ll hear the supervisor say, “No, he doesn’t; he’s not reliable.”
Disciples are reliable
You can’t disciple anyone unless they can count on you to do what you promise to do.
A discipler sees the future in her mind’s eye and then makes a promise about it to those she would lead. Something like Jesus’ promise, “Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” Jesus made the promise “I will make you.”
If you read the book of 2 Timothy, you’ll see in the final chapter of that book that Paul’s co-workers generally fall into two camps: those who are reliable and those who aren’t. Reliability engenders trust. If I trust you, you have the most important thing you need to lead me.
The unreliable people Paul lists included Demas, who Paul says, “deserted me” and Alexander the metalworker who “did me a great deal of harm.”
The reliable ones included Luke, Mark, and Tychicus. They worked alongside Paul. Paul had a lot of stuff he was leading – he was planting churches, writing much of the New Testament, and making disciples everywhere he went. He needed to make some leaders if the work was to continue!
Homework
Stop for a second. Get out your journal or a piece of paper. Who have you poured into? Have you gotten them to the place of reliability, where they are making disciples of others? When we as a church get back to that, maybe instead of calling us hypocrites, the world might say, “Look how they love one another.”
This reminded of a minister who once asked his congregation “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
Another great blog. It’s a real challenge for those of us who are old enough to have collected a clutch of younger men and women. Here’s a question: How much of the mentor/mentee relationship is the responsibility of the mentee, in your view?
Another timely and sage post. I believe this is a huge reset we have been entrusted with and I humbly ask, here I am. Send me. Call me. With eyes and ears wide open. Shalom.
I agree with Mark–this is a sobering metric at this point in my life. I wish that I had been paying more attention to this 30 years ago. I suppose the best thing to do is make sure that this is on the front burner for the rest of my days. Thanks for continuing to point us to the Kingdom and what matters most. Disciples…fruitfulness…connected to Jesus/Abiding.
Good question. It’s both. But unless the would-be disciple has got a high level of hunger, it’s not going to go anywhere. I’ve written extensively about the issue here: https://www.sethbarnes.com/?category=How+to+Disciple
I’ll be you’ve got a lot of people who would count themselves a disciple of yours, Stacy. I just thought of this analogy:
Our paradigm of discipleship is often that of a garden, when in fact what we’re planting and growing has the life cycle of trees. Like trees, our disciples need a long time and deep roots. If we make that deep investment, we’ll see fruit that endures.
Yes. Transcendent truth.
We need to start with 2Chronicles 7:14. We as the church and Lovers of Christ need to get on our knees and repent and Turn from our ungodly ways. Then God will heal our land. We need to look into our own hearts to see what we can offer to Jesus for refining. May God have mercy on us.
Thanks for this Seth. I’ve been meditating on that exact line, “follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. The following, the making, and then arriving at our destiny. What a journey.
Deep gratitude to you,
M.