Who, Me? Make Disciples? - How God Has Equipped YouSample

Day 3: A Heart for People

A disciplemaker must love those he or she wants to help. And love sees people the way they are and then serves them.

A disciplemaker’s goal is to build people up in Christ. The apostle Paul said, “Knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1 NIV). It was Paul’s love, more than his knowledge and abilities, that established hundreds of Christians throughout Asia Minor and Europe. He was able to write to the Thessalonians, “We proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:6-8 NASB). 

Love, like faith, expresses itself in action. Therefore, Paul went on to say to the Thessalonians, “Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you” (1 Thessalonians 2:9). Paul called himself a servant to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 4:1). Serving is love in action.

Several years ago a Chinese Christian stayed with us for a month. He observed how I tried to train people using my programs. Finally he confronted me: “You train a man and he can only become what you are, but if you serve a man, the sky is the limit.”

This liberated me from thinking of discipling as getting people through programs and methods. I began thinking of how to serve each person to help him or her become more mature in Christ. The person, not my program, became the focus. 

We have a beautiful picture of serving in Jesus’ life. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” He said (Matthew 11:28). The invitation came at the end of a very difficult day. Jesus had just had to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles had been performed because they did not repent (v. 20). People who questioned His motives had called Him “a glutton and a drunkard” (v. 19). And John the Baptist had just sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (v. 2). 

Jesus had had enough disappointments that day to make most of us withdraw, sulk, and cry. But He invited others to bring their cares and burdens to Him.

Love gives us the capacity to serve others even when our burdens are heavy. It enables us to put our cares aside for the moment and give ourselves to someone else. Without love we will never truly disciple others. They will have to fit into our schedule and needs—and they won’t, and shouldn’t have to.

Paul and his co-workers shared the gospel as well as their own lives with the new Christians at Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 2:8). What do you feel are the most important things you can share with younger Christians?