Tag: Disciple Making

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Gifts Spiritual Gift

Activate Spiritual Gifts More Easily

Heart-shaped candle in her hands.

Activating Spiritual Gifts may be much more easy than you expect. And there are keys that help, keys that help hugely!

This key will make sense by hindsight. The key is service, or actually seeking to use your gifts. And there is another key that successful users of Spiritual Gifts do more than the rest of us – they ask questions.

The error I long made, and maybe you have, too, is to try to discover or use a gift without actually applying it in service or asking questions.

A useful way of thinking about this is to Follow Jesus. Model your ministry after what Jesus does.

Jesus ministers as he sees or hears from Father.

You can do this, too.

But how do we start, and get results? Simple: respond to a need. Bring the Kingdom of God to what is needed. Restoration is what Jesus did again and again. And, he destroys the work of the devil, the adversary.

You can do the same. How?

Look for needs, look for a need in someone’s life. Ask questions, such as:

  • How do I help or minister to this need?
  • What do you want me to do about this?
  • How do I pray for this situation, this person?

Then simply pay attention to what comes to your attention next. Being careful not to let thoughts, associations, ideas, images, or any experience pass by without assuming and accepting that this is an answer to your question.

And, because, as Dan Pendergrass once told me when I was asking about why replies from God are so often surprising, he said simply that God knows more than we do.

What we miss, in activating our gifts, too often or easily, are things like this:

  • Forgetting to bring God’s agape love to a person with a need.
  • Neglecting to ask how to minister.
  • Forgetting to ask how to pray for the person you are loving and for their need.
  • Not realizing that what comes to your attention next is actually an answer and reply from God. It’s unexpected, seems too easy, seems too ordinary.

How do you get started, if you don’t see where or how to get started? Ask Jesus to point out to you or bring to your attention people who need ministry or service or restoration (of health or well being).

Ask and serve. Ask and minister. In serving or ministering, you are applying and using your Spiritual Gift where needed. A great way to be living.

Categories
Disciple Making Evangelize Faith Jesus Preaching Kingdom of God Ministry

Jesus Never Said that He Came to Save You

In him was Life, and Life is the Light of men. (See John 1:4.)

Sometimes the assumptions built into our local traditions help us get things wrong.

Jesus repeatedly said that he came to give us Life. The Life of God (in New Testament Greek: Zoe). Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say his purpose was to come to get you into heaven.

He repeatedly said that he came to bring you Life, Zoe: the Life of God. Heaven is included.

He came to get Life into you: the Life of God. (Something the first Adam lost.) Relationship restored!

Jesus never said to make converts; he said to make disciples. (Converts are included in making disciples.)

He came so you can start helping to bring heaven to earth – now. Wow! You get to help bring heaven to earth.

Salvation is included, and you will go to heaven. And later in our New Heaven and New Earth, God will literally be our Light that we see by, in the Temple.

Help bring Heaven to earth: preach the Good News of the Kingdom. Heal the sick. Free the bound. Make disciples of all nations, all people groups.

Also, you get to pray for heaven on earth:

8 “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6: 8-10, NKJV

So…my thesis here is that Jesus did not say he came here to get us into heaven, even though he does get us into heaven when we respond with faith. What he repeatedly said was that he came here to give us Life. The Life of God, in us, does result in heaven. And later, into the New Heaven and New Earth.

It’s like that he did not say we were to make converts. He said to make disciples – this should be our focus when evangelizing. Which will result in stronger and more effective Christians than by focusing on making converts. Let’s follow Jesus and do what Jesus said.

Let’s do and minister as Jesus showed, taught, and as he still says to us today in Scripture, with Holy Spirit. Doing as Jesus teaches is better than following local traditions.

Categories
Prayer

Disciple Making Made Easier

A disciple is someone who learns and who applies and practices what they are learning. It’s a lot like an apprenticeship.

Making apprentices of Jesus who grow into living and ministering more like Jesus is part of your job. (See Matthew 28, for example.)

When you go to minister, take a partner. If you can’t take one, find one on the way or where you are going to minister. Ask them to partner with you.

Explain in advance what you intend to do and what you expect. Discuss afterwards how things went, so you both can review and learn. This is key to disciple making, by the way!

You can ask them to help you with practical details and to help things go more smoothly. Allow them to make a vital contribution this way.

When one of you talks, the other prays. This adds value to the ministry, and hugely. When someone else is praying for you, you can usually notice that you seem smarter, more inspired and more gifted. Do not deny this to the people you are ministering to. Have people pray for you and you pray for other people – see, this can be done in groups!

When you have a group present – ask the people to pray for you, to pray for the person ministering. That you follow Jesus better, and minister with love, faith and power even more effectively. This usually has very noticeable affects. It draws the group in. It helps them help minister to you. It multiplies the power of your ministry. Many effective minsters have people pray before, during and after ministry time. More effective ministry happens: the ministering person is more inspired and inspiring. More gifted. The power of Holy Spirit is more noticeable.

You may notice that you are doing some disciple making with the people in the group.

You can do this even when the group has non-Christians in it or when it’s entirely non-Christian. What a great way to plant seeds and to get people to share in ministry. Remember – when they are with you this way they are more likely for you and not against you and what you are doing.

Be a disciple. Learn and grow into being more like Jesus. Help others do the same – occasionally – and with some people on an ongoing basis.

It’s amazing how much you’ll learn by being a disciple maker.

And…you’ll notice that your life and ministry are never the same again, after you start making disciples – apprentices for Jesus – on purpose. What a great way to more easily and more quickly learn, grow, become a better disciple.