0
Back to Articles
Kate’s life is an excellent story about the power of personal discipleship to move someone from confusion to clarity in the faith. Kate starts her story, “I was so messed up. I was just running around trying to figure this out (life in Christ) in my late 20’s. I knew there was hunger and an unsatisfied feeling. So I jumped from church to church. [I felt] if I could just do enough. Volunteering. Checking boxes.”
From her years in the church, she had heard plenty of sermons and Bible study lessons. Nevertheless, she struggled to understand how to live the life Jesus promised in His Word. Kate continues, “How do you have a relationship with Him, this blob in the sky? How do you talk to, pray to, someone you can’t see or touch? Who is He? How does He relate to me?”
Kate experienced the nagging feeling there was something more; there was something she was missing, persisted. Then she found personal discipleship. A veteran in the Lord began to love her, answer her questions, and train her in the faith. “Then I found personal discipleship—lights started going on. Whoa. I could actually see, actually feel God pursuing me. Then I could see Him pursuing me throughout my past as my eyes were open.”
Kate’s heart began to fill as she encountered the One who had been wooing her to rest in Him. It deeply moved her that the God of all creation just wanted a relationship with her, to love her. “The first bit of clarity I got was about the Trinity—the different roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. HUGE. Biggest breath of fresh air. I just melted when I learned this.”
Many people struggle to understand who the Trinity is, let alone live in healthy relationships with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. As Kate encountered each One, she felt the burdens of her life fall from her. “Everything does not rest on my shoulders. I can relax back and He can shepherd my life! I was 29 and thinking I have to do it all myself. Control this and that.”
In Mark 8:22-26, Jesus healed a blind man in Bethsaida, on the western shore of Galilee. Rather than healing the man at once, Jesus did it in two stages. After the first stage, the man reported, “I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around” (Mark 8:24). The man had partial sight. He could see, but he could not see clearly. Jesus healed him again. Now, Scripture says, the man “began to see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). How many Christians are stuck, like this man, in the first stage? Jesus has touched us. He has changed our lives. We have felt Him move. He has changed our “sight.” Yet, like Kate, we are so confused. Where can we go to get the clarity we need? Who will sit with us, love us, counsel us, and train us so that we can walk in the fullness of Jesus’ promised life?
Personal discipleship is our Father’s design for His children to love and train one another. It is the perfect environment for generations of Christians to experience clarity and transformation, and power. Yet, many Christians feel paralyzed to disciple others. They lack the confidence to sit with others, impart life, and reproduce what they have in others.
I wrote MAKE: Unlock People – Personal Discipleship Jesus’ Way to simplify the work so that Christians begin making disciples. The ministry has boundless treasures for the one discipling and the one being discipled. I am eager for you to read it and be blessed with the Holy Spirit stirring you to step out and begin discipling others!
Kate finished this part of her story by saying, “I also learned that I just need to soak and receive God’s love for me. Let Him love me. I don’t have to get cleaned up. I was trained in spiritual warfare – had no clue on that. Light and dark – seriously?! Someone coming after me for thirty years – that’s what that was? In personal discipleship I learned through miscarriages and death the beauty of surrender, to want Jesus above all. And that gave me a transformed heart.”
MAKE: Unlock People – Personal Discipleship Jesus’ Way is the third book in my personal discipleship series. MAKE will be for sale at www.trexo.org and Amazon on Tuesday, October 26th.
