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Mega-city Churches 4: Help for disciple-making.

May27, 2007

Disciple-making involves bringing into the public sphere the wonderful story about Jesus.  But who is responsible for this? The excellent answer is, not us.

This is God’ s responsibility, but we are his agents, servants, messengers, explainers, persuaders, witnesses. We are his help. He is the great evangelist who comes himself into the public life of his world and into the secret places of the hearts of humans to whisper and shout and shine his own light.

He does this because he is Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit sent from the Father who brings the Father’s message. But he does this through human speech and words, spoken and written by humans. It is as though we human messengers and the Holy Spirit work together in the great task of making disciples.

That is one reason Jesus told his first disciples to wait until they had been clothed with power from on high. It was no use them rushing off on their own to tell the great message about Jesus – they would have got nowhere – unless it was prison.

Instead they had to wait until the divine messenger came upon them and filled them so they could speak for him. And when the Spirit came, speak they did. In fact Luke’s version of the story makes clear that the major impact of the coming of the Spirit was to help them speak. It makes sense since the Bible portrays the Spirit of God as a speaking Spirit.

What was true for the first disciples has been true for all the disciples since. Our work as messengers, agents, explainers and persuaders has to be done under the power and direction of the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit is the primary evangelist. We are the help.

But we are helpers at the front-line. Amazingly God has decided to use ordinary humans as his main spokespeople. Ordinary people who speak for him. Just as the Father sent the Son as an ordinary human, so the Son has sent ordinary humans as speakers on his behalf. Because he wants to express the message in ordinary human speech so ordinary humans will obey it.

And he has sent out all his people, not just some of them. He is engaged in saturation evangelism. Sending every kind of disciple so as to reach every kind of fellow human. And what if some are not very good speakers, or not very bright, or too frightened, or too ignorant? It doesn’t seem to matter to the Father because those are the kinds of people he wants as disciples of Jesus, the ones he asks to pass on his message. But what message?

Dale

Comments

I like the last paragraph, it tells that God use people not 'SUPER people'. He doesn't care with our deficiencies, all that He wants is a heart who willing to serve Him, to speak about Him. Just like the Bible says "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

Posted by Lidia on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 11:30:53

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