I'm privileged, once again, to be teaching young preachers this week. The school of Preaching I've participated with draws upon the experience of working preacher, college professors, and others to invest in the ministry of up and coming preachers. This is convicting! I've decided that I must also go beyond merely the teaching. I spend time with them, I eat with them, I go through life with them. I then tell them to do the same with their church members, leaders, and students. Why? Because I am called to make disciples.
When Jesus commissioned His disciples, he called them to make disciples. We are all believers because someone else invested in us in this way. It's mandatory. Yet it also should be done without compulsion; consider this a minute; you have found the cure for all cancers do you keep it to yourself, or share it freely, or do you try and profit from it? Jesus said (to the woman at the well) that he would give "streams of living water." Can you stop such love from flowing from you? Then it is not a suggestion to go and make disciples. Just as you cannot contain God's love, so making disciples is a natural byproduct of the love and presence of Christ. Let us, then, stop trying to damn the rivers of living water, and pass on what Christ has given to us; let us make disciples in Christ's truth and love. Matthew 28:19-20 ESV Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Acts 1:8 ESV But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
John 15:16 ESV You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
John 15:8 ESV By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
1 Peter 2:9 ESV But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Romans 10:14-15 ESV How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
