How to be a disciple, Part 3: The available heart

One of the biggest obstacles that keeps people from being discipled is that they’re too busy to do it right. Discipling takes oodles of time – you have to carve that time out of your schedule and be available. Jesus set the gold standard for time required – three years @ 16 hours of availability a day is about 15,000 hours.

15,000 hours of availability may seem like an impossible goal, but we’re talking about shaping a life. We send our children to college and graduate school for double that time just to shape their minds.

Do we have such a low regard for the time requirements of true discipleship that we won’t consider changing our priorities? Many of us who are parents can’t see the idol that we’ve made of education, giving it a priority far above their discipleship.

When our children fall away from the Lord, we despair and wonder what we did wrong, never calling into question the priority we gave their spiritual development.

I’m not being spiritually elitist here. Discipling requires availability. You can’t do it without committing large blocks of time. If you’re in a discipling relationship and are struggling to find the time, consider making it your top priority, as Jesus did with his disciples.

Discipleship costs.