PODCAST 11b
Developing a Passion for Disciple-making
Q. How did you develop such a passion to make disciples? Clearly this is coming from a place inside you other than simply duty.
In order to explain that motivation adequately, I want to begin with my home life as a child. I was raised by parents who grew up in farming, but who had moved to the city. My dad was a good story teller. He may not have regularly instructed us in biblical principles, but he could recite poems and lay out vivid word pictures from his colorful past. I remember him describing how tough life was on the Iowa farm where he grew up. I can picture the frozen rabbits ‘nailed’ to the shady north side of the barn in winter just high enough to escape the reach of coyotes (get that, a barn wall instead of a freezer).
I can see in my mind’s eye the large pork barrel in the kitchen where layers of congealed lard kept the season’s pig legs from decaying. And I can hear the quavering voice of my dad as he described how his own father auctioned off his pet dog without telling my dad what was about to happen. (Then after selling the farm, my dad’s family moved from the brutal Iowa winters to Los Angeles during the Great Depression). Once in SoCal, my dad slept on a cot in the garage; his sisters and parents in the house.
My dad experienced very little tenderness or communication from his own father. In fact gruffness, criticism, and rejection were the common dispositions from his father. My dad learned to avoid his father’s foul moods like stepping clear of land mines. To my dad’s credit, in his parenting of us certainly excelled to a great degree what he little emotional support he received from his own dad.
The role of our fathers in our lives cannot be overestimated. Scripture cautions fathers not to exasperate of provoke their children to anger by employing wavering or impossible perfectionistic standards (Col 3:21). The warning states that one’s child may lose heart or become a quitter if the father engages in exasperation.
One mischievous psychologist said, “If you want to turn someone’s world upside down when you see him doing something anti-social, just ask, ‘what did your father do to you?’” That can have a traumatic effect—in essence ripping the scar off of our father wound and exposing the pain to the light of day.
Under the Mosaic Law, God warns that the negative effect of Godless fathers is often ‘reaped’ to the third and fourth generation (Ex 34:6-7; Deut 5:9-10). Thank the Lord that God says that He is a Father to the father-less (Ps 68:5). For many of us have had disappointing fathers, unavailable fathers, and/or absent fathers.
We are designed to learn about our God in a relational space of loving and caring sonship—through the ministry of godly fathers (Deut 6:1-8). The godly earthly father holds us in his heart of love and ‘images’ (or models) to us both the authority and love of God. In that sense our believing earthly fathers are ‘the glory of God’ (1 Cor 11:3-7ff.). This was a statute in Israel that fathers were to be consistent teachers about God’s works, ways, faithfulness, and covenant so that sons would place their trust in God (Ps 78:1-8).
Fathers have such a powerful effect upon our identity, and upon preparing us for life in a sinful difficult world. We are to learn from our fathers that the world is built upon a principle of delayed gratification. And that in cooperation with this principle, we are to practice self-control, self-denial, honor, and service. In moving from boyhood to manhood the male has learned to make his decisions on principle rather than upon passion. There is no other way to become a useful contributing member of society. Hopefully a young man’s father has ‘initiated’ him through rite of passage (training) to this world of male virtue, principle, self-control and love.
Q. This is good reminder of how thoroughly God has thought through and planned out the essential role of dads in the spiritual mentoring. I know that we hear these truths at men’s retreats, but not enough in the context of discipleship.
Males with an uninvolved/absent father or non-existent father figure regularly attempt to initiate themselves into the world of men and masculinity. The iconic counterfeit of true fathering is the gang or the ghetto in which sex, drugs, and violence become the substitutes for masculine security, significance, and adequacy. A life of sensuality and criminality often has its root in cynicism about the availability of a father’s love.
Other than in gangs, nowhere are the consequences of the absent father seen more tragically than in prisons. (EX. See the example of the offer to send Mother’s Day cards and Father’s Day cards. No Father’s Day cards were sent because there were no meaningful relationships between fathers and incarcerated sons.)
Recently I was asked the question: “Where does your passion for disciple-making come from?” That question rocked me because it forced me to go back to my original response to my ‘father wound’ as a young believer. The Christian input in my home was about 99% from my mother. My father was accomplished at business, Barbecuing, fishing, property management, financial providing, home repair, socializing, and the like. But he wasn’t very involved in teaching us about God or about life in Christ.
My sister’s comment was: “yes, mom was ‘Sky’ and dad was ‘Earth’.” In other words, dad dealt with all of our physical needs—he was an amazing steward of possessions, property, funds, and investments. He was great at planning things. But he left the spiritual to my mom. Well, having grown up under this arrangement—as all I had ever known, I had no reason to think anything was out of sorts. Dad was my hero in subduing the earth, my mom my hero in Bible and ministry. What was wrong with that? All was well, right?
Q. What changed your perspective about the spiritual role of the husband and father?
Once the Lord saved me at the age of 25, I began to ask a question toward my late twenties: “Is that right that a male should learn everything about God from his mother and none of those truths from his father?” The more I asked the question, the more upset I was and the more motivated I became to find a spiritual father figure. I reasoned, “After all, if Timothy had massive Christian input from his mother and grandmother, and God sent the apostle Paul to him as a wonderful masculine discipler, how about me? (2 Tim 1:5).
Well, the Lord is so merciful. There is a beginning part of the story I failed to mention. The man who had the most influence upon me for the sake of the gospel was Bud Keith. He was the key witness in my life when the Lord was drawing me to Himself. Bud was a new believer and a man’s man. He was confident, aggressive, an initiator, a communicator, a generous nurturer, and a bold witness for Christ. He was a weight lifter and came from a family of bare knuckle boxers in Indiana! I had found my masculine mentor (I thought). I grew under Bud’s mentoring from the time of my conversion until my second year in Bible College (1972-1975).
Then I began to realize that my mentor had feet of clay. His theology was quite Arminian and he had little respect for my reverence for God’s sovereign grace. Thus, we drifted apart. So began a pathetic cycle of searching for, and attaching myself to father figures, placing them upon a pedestal and then seeing them have nowhere to go but down in my eyes. Like a spoiled child, I became demanding before the Lord.
My ultimatum went something like this, “Lord, I want you to finish my patriarchal spiritual parenting!” “I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I don’t accept the fact that my Christian home experience was a spiritual matriarchy.” “I want you to do something about this!” “I want you to make up for what I didn’t receive.”
I wanted answers to come in the form of a perfect earthly spiritual father figure who would provide the biblical instruction, life view, and godly masculine parenting that my earthly dad never gave me. “Finish my spiritual fathering was my heart’s cry!”
Thank the Lord a paradigm shift came the first year I was married (1983). This is only traceable to the Lord’s gracious dealings with me. For why else would I have reasoned: I will provide for other men that which I personally long for. Out of this new way of thinking, I began to taste what it was like for God’s fatherly love to flow through me to others. This involves imitating our Savior’s ministry.
Q. If I can interrupt here for a moment, do your believe your ‘eureka moment’ of seeing that God wants you to be fulfilled by investing in others is unique, OR are there parallels here which all disciple-makers share?
Well, to answer that, I would add that during His earthly ministry, our Lord carefully cultivated “Father hunger” among His disciples—opening up to them the reality of perfect love and care from God Almighty, their Heavenly Father. The Upper Room Discourse contains the greatest concentration of “Father hunger” cultivating passages in the New Testament. (Note: there is a kind of ‘food for the soul’ in spending time with one’s father. Consider dads as source of honor, dignity, principle, belonging, acceptance, grace, blessing, favor, reality, mentoring, virtue, initiation, etc.)
So as disciplers, we are following the example of Jesus in cultivating Father hunger —we seek to have our disciples come to the marvelous realization that the God of the universe has adopted those who are in Christ as His own beloved children (Jn 17:23-26). Jesus introduces us to the Father and brings us all the way to the Father. Jesus is the source of perfect favor and belonging from the Father. That is the power of God’s grace in the gospel. Christ is our source of favor and blessing and belonging with God the Father. We don’t measure up—the Son of God measures up on our behalf—commending us to the Father.
Q. So what happened when you began to invest in others? Did your demand for a spiritual father figure start to diminish?
In a word, I forgot myself—joyful self-forgetfulness was the immediate byproduct. As a result of investing in others, I began to experience the benefits of that timeless principle that we are watered by watering, fed by feeding, blessed and fulfilled by blessing others—this became my regular experience.
Two great ‘dots’ became connected in my mind: discipleship makes the experience of sonship tangible. I found that where my spiritual parenting of others was consistent and faithful, men began to learn that the love and grace of their Heavenly Father was constant, consistent, and covenantally available every day. These were spiritual realities that had to be learned in a relational space of love and care and life on life soul care.
Thus began a journey of fulfilment in ministry I never could have dreamed of when I was first converted. I marveled as I began to consider the ways of God in this: to be a disciple-maker as a lifestyle, the Lord had to bring me to a point (through much disillusionment) in which I was finally ready to give to others what I always wanted. I would be a spiritual father figure committed to spiritual parenting (1 Thess 2:1-12).
This all leads back to my premise in this introduction that effective disciple-making flows from sonship realized, actualized, reckoned, and lived out as one’s core identity. We don’t receive our Heavenly Father’s love as ‘end users’. The man or woman who is living upon God’s love will not be content until he or she is investing in others and pouring that love into them. That is the very essence of passion for disciple-making.
Q. This makes great sense relationally, but I am thinking that churches also need to see that this is to be normative theologically.
Indeed, for a moment let’s go back to the Deuteronomy passage: a child is to have his own father as his spiritual teacher (Deut 6:3-7ff.). Sons and daughters are to learn of God in the ‘relational space’ of deep care and within a context of the activities of daily life (Deut 6; Ps 78:5-8). Our earthly fathers play a profound role in our spiritual development and a major role in what we think of God Almighty.
Our earthy fathers are to add ‘tangibility’ to what it means when love and authority reside in the same person (1 Cor 11:3-12). And, our earthly fathers are to model what it means to provide spiritual instruction while holding us in their hearts of love. As such, it is clear that fathers not only teach about God but also exhibit His character to us.
Pastor and theologian Paul Zahl suggests the following. The vast majority of the criticism, abuse, friction, and resistance pastors receive from church members results from ‘transference’. In other words, the pastor who is very much a father figure by the nature of his role receives the invective the church member is still feeling toward his own father. Zahl suggests that countless church members carry unfinished business toward their earthly fathers and then project that upon the pastor.
This can come very close to home when we catch ourselves thinking about God through the filter of our own relationship with our dad. I like to ask the people I am discipling: “Have you grown in your trust and intimacy with your heavenly Father that you have learned to take joy in sharing your thought life with Him throughout the day?”
Q. Can discipleship provide a kind of healing corrective so that we can learn more about God’s care by experiencing His love through the spiritual parenting of a discipler?
Yes, I am convinced that discipleship is the missing factor in learning doctrine as it is meant to be learned—in a relational space! If we can leave behind my passion for discipleship for a moment, I want to talk about the link between the doctrine of sonship and discipleship.
Sonship is not universal; it is a gift of God’s grace. God is only “Father” to those redeemed by grace. To the rest of humanity, He is Judge. Sonship is a distinctively Christian concept, not developed under the old covenant. Israel’s experience of God focused more upon learning to fear their Heavenly King (Is 6:3; Hab 1:13) (J. I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 202).
The holiness of God, even the dread and terror of God before Mt. Sinai was designed to teach the awesomeness of His holiness and the need of a Mediator (God must provide the way of approach). We instinctively do not find His moral majesty attractive— His burning purity, moral rectitude, and unbending justice intimidate us, even repel us. Why? Because we are little, lousy, lustful, and lacking.
The wonder of adoption embraces the fact that this gift of grace makes Christ our elder brother and God our Father. The whole covenant of grace may be expressed in “I will be a Father to them and they will be sons and daughters to Me” (2 Cor 6:18). Adoption is the greatest transition imaginable: from alienated and orphaned by sin to cherished children of God; from God haters to lovers of the Heavenly Father (Joel Beeke, A Puritan Theology, p. 539-540).
Sonship is a new relationship with a new factor—the adopted child of God has bold and confident access to God through the blood of Christ (Eph 3:12; Heb 10:19-22). The child of God now bears the ‘spiritual DNA’ of the family of God—they belong to God’s ‘forever family’. Sons of God have a loving Heavenly Father who cares for them; this is the heart of the NT message. Now some of us have had wonderful earthly fathers, and some of us disappointing or absent fathers. But, every child of God now has a Perfect Father in heaven (Packer, Ibid, pp. 203-204).
God wants us to be a reflection or reproduction of Jesus’ own relationship with Himself not only in intimacy but in obedience. “. . . but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’ ” (Jn 20:17). The sons of God love the brethren and they do not practice sin (1 Jn 2:29; 3:9-10; 5:18) (Rock solid evidence of those who are God’s children) (Ibid.).
Like Christ their Head, the sons of God have a resolve to do their Father’s will. They submit to their Father as the One who commands and who in His sovereignty brings to pass what shall be. We could say that salvation and with it adoption ‘recalibrates us to God’s omnipotence (we have filial fear of God); to God’s omnipresence (we walk with God and commune with Him); to God’s omniscience (we trust God and wait upon Him). We could summarize this by looking at Christ’s relation to His Father.
AUTHORITY: Christ lived to do His Father’s will (Jn 4:34; 5:19; 6:38; 17:4). AFFECTION: Christ lived in the Father’s love (Jn 5:20; 15:9-10). FELLOWSHIP: Christ was abiding in His Father (Jn 8:29; 16:32).
HONOR: Christ served to honor and glorify His Father (Jn 5:22-23; 17:1).
As God loves His only begotten Son, so He also He loves His adopted sons (Jn 12:26; 16:27; 17:23-26). Our sonship is modeled and patterned after Christ’s Sonship (Ibid.). Our mandate is, like Christ, to imitate our Father in character and in so doing to ‘prove to be sons of God’ (Mt 5:44-48; Eph 5:1-2; 1 Pet 1:14-19) (Ibid, 211).
Q. This is so foundational, so sonship is not only our identity in Christ, it is our lifestyle.
Obedience is a clear mark of adoption and the first sign of adoption. Because God’s ‘seed’ is implanted in us at the new birth, the child of God will not and cannot live in habitual sin (1 Jn 3:9-10). Obedience springs out of a principle of faith, thus sonship is the motive for obedience—“gracious souls believe God and [therefore] obey His commands” (Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, pp. 235-236). Sons of God love the Father’s presence and have a lifestyle of continual childlike obedience (Ps 63:1-2; 106:3). Their obedience is informed by the Word of God (Jn 16:13; 17:17; Ps 119:6) (Ibid, 236-239) (Demonstrate yourselves to be sons of God.)
Since universal obedience is the clear mark of sonship, it is beneficial to investigate our claim to true religion. For true religion is living as a son of God in relation to the Father. Here are self-examination questions from J. I. Packer:
- Do I value my adoption and the privileges of being son of God as a daily reminder?
- Have I sought full assurance of my adoption?
- Do I treat God as Father, honoring Him and seeking fellowship with Him?
- Do I think of Christ’s authority as well as His divine sympathy, knowing He perfectly understands me and cares for me as my Kinsman Redeemer?
- Have I learned what displeases my Heavenly Father and am I sensitive to avoid them?
- Do I look forward to the hope of heaven?
- Do I glory in the privilege of God my Father in filial fear (reverence) consciously caring for His reputation by my behavior? (Packer, p. 229).
Consider the Father’s infinite generosity. He gives us Himself in Christ —‘exporting’ the truth, life, light, love, joy, and belonging of the Holy Trinity. Which comes into our lives by the Spirit through union with Christ. Our relation to the Father is described especially in these passages: those who serve Christ will be honored by the Father (John 12:26; 14:23). The Spirit is sent from the Father and the Son (Jn 14:16). To those who love Christ and keep His Word, the Father will love him (Jn 14:23). Ask the Father in My Name—joy in answered prayer (Jn 16:23-24). The Father Himself loves you —ask of Him (Jn 16:25-28). Consider the intensity of the Father’s love for us in Christ (Jn 17:23).
Q. So with our sonship comes both privilege and obligation—that ought to be central to our biblical content in disciple-making.
Sonship is the believer’s core identity. Sonship is comprehensive—over all of life.
We must learn to understand the Christian life in terms of our adoption, for Christ has given us His own right-relatedness to the Godhead. Now everything from forgiveness to supply to obedience to transformation to destiny is tied to our sonship. We are to live out our sonship as our most important defining relationship as sons of the Father. Holiness is living life in God’s ‘forever family’ by the family relationship and rules (holy, moral, righteous order in God’s family).
This gracious gift of adoption is the greatest change imaginable—to go from defiled enemies to adopted sons is a greater miracle than a clump of dust becoming a star. Whereas justification is a legal term, sonship describes close relationship of tenderness, love and belonging. The cost to God to adopt us as His sons was infinite. It is adoption through propitiation. Therefore adoption shows the greatness of God’s love (1 Jn 4:10). In Christ we are sons of God who enjoy safety, certainty, and belonging (Ibid, pp. 206-210).
Sonship lived out means reckoning our Father’s care for us (His love, supply, care and concern). That involves a life of faith and trust in which we say no to anxiety (Mt 6:25-26, 31-33). For, what we view as ultimate source will be what we serve (Ibid, 213). Sonship is a life of exulting in God. Consider the dimensions which are touched by sonship: we rejoice in communion with the Lord as sons. We rejoice in our spiritual liberty having been freed from the rigor and condemnation of the Law. We rejoice in the countless restorations we experience by gospel grace. We rejoice in fact that this is our Father’s world (Beeke, p. 550) (EX. note Sierra experience so soon after salvation—before salvation we saw an autonomous creation and suppressed all of the ‘glory pointers’.) (God is Divine Owner of all: Psalm 24; 89:11).