Explore
Follow Us

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

Continued from: How to be a disciple, Pt. 2    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 …
By Seth Barnes
By Seth Barnes
Continued from: How to be a disciple, Pt. 2 
 
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.

Comment

  • Christine

    Excellent! I agree wholeheartedly with your comments regarding spiritual discipleship vs. education. Not that education is unimportant but we are only here on earth for one blink, 1/2 a blink or a quarter of a blink so to speak. Also, not only does discipleship require availability it requires being purposeful. In our kids (10 yrs and under), we are purposeful about teaching them, taking every opportunity and not letting those moments get away.

Comments are closed.

More Posts

Subscribe to Radical Living:

Subscribe to Seth’s Blog

Receive updates on the latest posts as Seth Barnes covers many topics like spiritual formation, what if means to be a christian, how to pray, and more. Radical Living blog is all about a call to excellence in ministry, church, and leadership -as the hands and feet of Jesus.

Seth Barnes

I'm motivated to join God in his global reclamation project. He's on the move, setting his sons and daughters free from their places of captivity. And he's partnering with those of us who have been freed to go and free others.

Explore

Go Deeper

© Adventures In Missions. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | RSS Feed | Sitemap