Iron Church, part 2

Discipleship Multiplication made plain

So… the previous post was written Tuesday, but I guess I forgot to hit the send button. Another day of being woken up early. While I was on the treadmill, got my praying done—for the 40 UK students I am praying for through Pray UK, and my neighbors on the Bless Every Home app.

I think about Mark chapter 1 quite a bit. It is a great model for being a disciple who makes disciples. If you read it as if it were a discipleship manual, it will guide you well into being a disciple who makes disciples.

Let’ take a look:

Make sure to spend lots of time with your Heavenly Father (mark 1:12)

Share the Good News of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:15— by the way, thisnwas John Wesley’ favorite text to preach from)

Pray that people will be delivered from demonic oppression. (Mark 1:22 and following). You stay committed to evangelism and discipleship long enough and you will come across people oppressed by demons. Like healing and salvation, you are not on the hook to make it happen. It is our Lord who has this power, so you pray for them. If you do not believe in demons, you are going to have a hard time being a disciple, if only because you are going to get rolled by the spiritual forces you say you don’t believe in. Bigget problem, though, you don’t believe what Jesus believes.

You pray for people to be healer (Mark 1:29-34). Again, you are not the healer. You ask God, and He will do what He has determined to do.

Find a quiet place and spend much time with your Heavenly Father. Then get up and do it all again.

I left one out. It’s the one multiplication depends on. It’s the limiting factor… if you don’t do it, the rest of the plan, while good stuff, won’t get the job done, won’t follow Jesus’ evangelism and discipleship model.

Mark 1:17… Jesus calls Peter. “Come follow me, and I will make you fish for men.” This is a three-part plan. “Come, follow Me.” This is consecration of ourselves to Jesus as Lord, consecration to His purposes. “I will make you…” Jesus has a plan. An evangelism school where you can learn how to fish for men. Now, it so happens the school is on display in the Gospels. Just go do what Jesus tells you to!

There’ the hard part. That’s where we get stuck. Learning more about Jesus. Talking about it. Learning Greek to talk about it more precisely. What about doing it? See, until we do what He is asking, we won’t get out of school and into the world to fish for people.

So get out there and do it. Look, I know I said it is simple. It is. I did not say it was easy. Go do it. And gather some others with you to show them what Mark 1 says, and train and encourage them to do it. How cool would it be if you grabbed a few buds, went out and did evangelism and discipleship for a season, and then they went and grabbed a few buds… it’s been going on for 2000 years. Let’ get serious!!!