Dialogue Of Discipleship

I used to constantly fuss at my kids, always telling them what they were doing wrong. Until eventually, they just stopped listening.

And if I be completely transparent, I used to do the same thing with my husband. I will never forget one day I was griping at him and he looked at me and said, “Why should I try to change, when you’ll just find something else I’m doing wrong?” God had to teach me through some very hard lessons that when you are just constantly telling someone what they are doing wrong and giving them nothing to build with, you are damaging relationships instead of building them. Human beings need dialogue to build with, we need exchange, or we will tune each other out.

 
I did the same thing when I first started ministry. Until one day, the Holy Spirit showed me that I was doing the very same thing that made me not want to go to church anymore when I was a teenager. I didn’t want to go sit and listen to someone bark at me for an hour, rather than teach me. I’m just being brutally honest here, and I know that there will be a lot of people whose knee-jerk reaction will be to defend themselves, but the reason I am sharing this is for the sake of transparency. I am simply being truthful. What I needed at that time, was someone who could teach me how to relate to Jesus, someone who could meet me where I was in the darkness and show me the way out. Not someone who yelled directions at me from their mountaintop of righteousness.

The people who the Holy Spirit used to help me, were those who were honest about their struggles. Those who said, “I was an alcoholic too, but here are the things He taught me about debauchery and drunkenness…here are the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned. And here are some of the thoughts that I still struggle with, but here are the ways He has shown me to resist them.” That is true discipleship. John tells us that those who abide in Christ ought to walk in the same manner as He also walked, and beloved, Jesus related to people (1 John 2:6). He met them where they were at, He sat with them and ministered to them in ways that they could relate to and understand: agriculture, light/dark, fish, bread, water. The Gospels vividly depict a Savior who sinners seemed to find more approachable, than those who felt they had no sin.

I’ve also learned that if someone wants their sin more than they want to obey Jesus Christ, there is no amount of preaching that will change their heart. The only person who can deal with someone like that is the Holy Spirit, so the most helpful thing you can do for someone in a situation like that is to pray for God to give them eye salve so that they may see and to give you the words they need to hear at the proper time, once He’s dealt with their heart. We must be willing to pour out our hearts in prayer for the very souls we are trying to reach. Through my own mistakes, the Spirit has shown me that there are two ways we can have hardness of heart: a hardness of heart toward sin, and a hardness of heart toward sinners. One keeps us in our sin and the other causes us to sin, even in the midst of our fervent pursuit of righteousness.

 
And beloved, I will share with you one more very important thing God had to teach me by His own Spirit: He has not called us to be conformed to the image of the prophet Elijah nor John the Baptist, He has called us to be conformed to the image of His Son.

(Romans 8:30) For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.

 
(Rev 12:12) They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

(Mark 3:3-6) Then Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, “Stand up among us.” And He asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” But they were silent. Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored. At this, the Pharisees went out and began plotting with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

(Eph 4:17-19) So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity.

(Posted on Facebook 2/19/2021 Talitha Koum)