Why Discipleship?
“Why discipleship?! It’s the only thing Jesus asked us to do, to make. Anything else is a sad compromise and bound to fail.”
All of us wrestle with these questions:
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?
What is my reason for existence?
Am I making a difference or just taking up space?
These questions haunted me through my high school and early college years. I sought to gain approval and purpose through performance, achievement, and pleasing teachers, parents, and coaches. I made the teams, I got the grades, and in college I found myself leading a fraternity, serving on the student senate, and advocating for high schoolers to come to our university. Yet, on the inside were the nagging questions, “Who am I and why am I here?” I wondered why I was in my body and not the guy in the room next to me. Was there a plan or design to my life or was it all of chance and all up to me to make it happen?
The answer to my questions was not a book, a movie, or a lecture. It was a person. I was introduced to Jesus Christ in my frat room, hung over from too much fraternizing, but sober enough to want to know what this friend had discovered that made him so confident about his faith.
“Sandy, if you died today where would you be?” I figured that God graded on a curve, like my geology class, and that I would get into heaven on a C-. There were lots of worse sinners right here in the frat, so I had to beat the mean!
Jeff( my fired-up Christian frat brother) amazed me with his confidence about the destiny of his own soul. “I know where I’m going. You want to hear how I know?”
He came back into my room with a tract, The Four Spiritual Laws, and proceeded to introduce me to the idea that Jesus was personal, and could be known and received into my person by simply asking. I had been to church a lot, even confirmed in my denomination, but never heard that Jesus was personal and wanted to be known and loved. I could not pray the prayer at the end of the tract fast enough!
Everything changed! I found my true north, my reason for being, and the leader I had been desperately seeking to take me on the adventure of living with purpose. I had no idea how hungry I was for Jesus! I cried tears of joy for the next couple of days, listening to nothing but worship music and telling everyone who would listen what Jesus had done for me. I was full of love, gratitude, and passion for the Lord Jesus. I let go of all my plans and ambitions and told Jesus I would go or do whatever he wanted of me. I had found my reason for being, to follow and serve the living Christ!
One of the greatest gifts Jesus gave me was to see my girlfriend, Margie, bow and ask Jesus into her life. This remarkable woman has been my life partner for the last 48 years! We both still love and serve Jesus with our whole hearts, and he gets all the glory for that.
Now, let’s get to the point of this column … Why discipleship? Why does it matter? What’s the big deal?
After Jeff led me to Jesus that Sunday afternoon, he took me to a meeting led by the local para-church ministry that was teaching and training Jeff. I was amazed that there were many more students like me who had just met Christ and were hungry to grow in understanding his Word and his call on their life. The excitement and energy was tangible. The Holy Spirit filled our hearts with love for God and each other. It was nothing like I had ever experienced. I had found my people, my calling, and my cause for the rest of my life.
Immediately I was given a sponsor, a discipler who would take me through the basics of the faith. As the weeks went by, I was trained in how to share my faith and thrust into some awkward conversations with total strangers in the Student Union to talk about Jesus and their souls. I saw people bow and ask Jesus into their hearts and lives! I was hooked!
When I read Jesus words in the Gospel of Luke they made perfect sense to me:
“If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, this is the one who will save it.”
Luke 9:23-24 NASB
I instinctively understood that Jesus had to have first place in my life. How could he lead me if I kept second-guessing him with my own agenda? As a college student, it was easy to give him everything because I didn’t have much. But the stake had been driven in the ground. “Jesus, I am yours and you are mine. Do with me whatever you want. I trust you and want no one else but you.”
Now, imagine a different start to my life with Jesus. Imagine I am sitting in church and given an invitation to receive Christ. I pray the prayer, raise my hand, and fill out a card. A week later I receive a note congratulating me on my decision and encouraging me to come to church, attend a Sunday School class, and then join a small group. I do all these things.
I am sitting in a pew, a chair in a classroom, or on somebody’s couch and listening. I listen a lot. People are nice and friendly, but no one is really getting to know me and no one is passionate about helping me follow Jesus with all my heart, soul, and strength. The emphasis seems to be on not sinning, being nice, and coming to all the meetings. And give my money.
I lose interest in being a Christian and stay home and watch TV on Sundays.
I love the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the church of his day:
“We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ.”1
Cheap grace is still poisoning the church today, with a version of Christianity that has removed the high call to follow Jesus and make disciples and replaced it with a comfortable and socially acceptable invitation to believe some information about Jesus and the cross.
The consequence is a generation of churchgoers who expect that church will be mostly boring and occasionally interesting and entertaining, but that is all Jesus wants. Just believe who I am and what I did for you on the cross. There is no call on your life or grand and glorious vision of being in mission with the Master. Just believe and come sit, soak, and sour.
Jesus called the disciples to make more disciples, like them! Not pew sitters, churchgoers, and self-righteous tithers! He wants followers who love him and are growing in their knowledge of him. He wants men and women of courage and faith, who sincerely trust him in this hard life and live to help others know him and follow him!
Why discipleship?! It’s the only thing Jesus asked us to do, to make. Anything else is a sad compromise and bound to fail.
For God’s sake, let’s be a disciple and make disciples!
FOOTNOTES
1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York, NY: Touchstone, An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.), p. 53.
