Understanding Spiritual Growth - Lesson 2

Dr. Stephen Martyn 
Understanding Spiritual Growth  
sf304-02
Description of a Mature Disciple 
Lesson Transcript

Welcome to session two, which is a critical piece of this small teaching series that I am sharing with you. This is kind of the vision section where we ask the Holy Spirit in full conjunction with the written word of God here to look forward and see, all right, what is the goal in this lifetime that I want to get a person to? Now, in terms of a mature disciple, another way to say this is, what does a mature disciple look like? Now, let's be real clear here. We're not going to be talking about perfectionism.

We're not going to be talking about any possibility of a person being to a point where they can never commit sin again. And, you know, so let's don't get into nonsense, but let's do get into clear biblical expectations about the character, their inner character and my inner character, and about the form and function of how they move in life. And let's be real clear about this lifetime movement in obedience to Jesus.

Look, what are we after? We are after individuals who fulfill Mark 12, 28. They live in the reality of loving the Lord. Well, let's just listen to it from the word. 

You know, the scribe came near. The scribe was a bright man, kind of jostling with Jesus a little bit or maybe even poking Jesus. I'm not sure punching him, you know, seeing to get seeing what kind of response he would get. 

And Jesus answered, look, the first is hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord, your God, what you know it with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There's no other commandment greater than these. All right. Well, what in the world would that look like if a person is walking in the reality of that great commandment? What would that look like? Well, let me let me start us out here.

And I think one of the one of the first things is this individual is going to have a saving. Encounter with. The living Lord Jesus. 

OK, I think another major thing we're going to see as we look down the road at what we want to see in place in an individual's life and more importantly, what Jesus wants to see in an individual's life is that what chains have been broken. So chains. Broken.

It's been one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to teach people coming to seminary who had really seriously bad lives at one point. Not that there's degrees or measures of sin. Sin is sin.

And we don't want to categorize one sin as being minimal and another sin being far worse. But there are those who have been collapsed, just chained, I mean, completely chained and unfree. So, Jesus wants to set people free from that.

I love celebrate recovery. I love those types of programs as such. They're also processes, big time processes that break the chains.

Now, what a true disciple of Jesus is he's he she they're going to follow. They're going to follow all of their lives, all of their lives. And, you know, I think the most important thing for us is this is self this is going to be self-initiating.

Following is going to be self-initiating. You as a leader or you as a coach or you as a discipler are not going to you're going to need to step out of this at some point. Not that you ever come to a point in your life where you don't need the body of Christ speaking into your life and not that you ever come to a point in your life where you don't need Christian counsel and Christian coaching.

That simply should not happen. But you're going to have the basics in place. Now, what else? I believe that the Lord Jesus wants those whom we disciple to be part and well to be deeply committed to a worshiping community.

So we're going to see deep commitment to a worshiping community. This is God's church and there are there are faithful congregations all over the world. And even though they may not be up to the standard we would want; we're still committed to being faithful within their ranks.

I think we're going to see people with Christian dispositions in place. Christian dispositions. Now, what's a disposition? It's just a way of living that's ingrained.

So, for instance, when I get in a car, you know, I buckle the seatbelt and, you know, we do all sorts of things on a daily basis that we don't even have to think about. It's just who we are. So Christian dispositions, I'm not even going to name them now.

I can't name them all, but we'll name some of the major ones as we move forward. We're going to see the evidence of a holy life. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, the fruit of the Spirit is there.

Did you sing the song? I won't embarrass everyone by singing the song right now, but you know it. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of those.

Galatians 5, 22 and 23. They're all in place. Now, I want to ask Chuck Coker, who's with us in the studio right now, who's head of Life Thrive.

This is an organizational coaching, a Christian organizational coaching ministry. He's got an important piece to add to this. So, Chuck, go ahead and come in, please.

Several years ago, there was a study completed at DePaul University that identified that if a person is going to be teachable or coachable, they must have a high degree of humility. There's actually a 69.09% correlation between humility and the ability to learn, grow, and develop spiritually. I love it.

So, a person who's full of himself or full of herself is going to wash out fairly quickly of any kind of high bar. That means high demand discipleship process. I love that.

We're not through with the list, but I want to see if Dr. Mounts has a word for us on what he wants to see. I think one of the hindrances to discipleship growth is just busyness. Oh, yeah.

And you have John Mark Colmer's book, The Relentless Elimination of Hurry. And I just think when I was pastoring and I was watching people in the church that weren't growing, they were just so busy with either family or work or whatever that their priorities were such that growing in their faith wasn't a priority. It got lost.

So, we would maybe put it in the positive that they're going to have proper priorities. And they are hierarchical, right? As in my commitment to the Lord being the first, the primary, the main priority of my life. This is so good.

Let me let me add some more. Paul in First Corinthians 4, 1, Paul said this. Listen to these beautiful words.

Think of us in this way as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. Now, a steward was managing someone else's household.

It wasn't their property. It wasn't their house. It wasn't their goods.

They were simply set over it. So, I think that I want to see here, bring back that old term that is actually a biblical term. And that is a proper understanding of stewardship.

And let me, if you're in the AME church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and other expressions, you'll you still have stewards. And I love that. All right.

Now, what's the basic character of a steward? A steward understands that everything, including my life, all that I have been given, everything is the Lord's. You know, we talk a lot about tithing. Well, actually, the New Testament bar here is far higher than tithing.

We're talking about everything is the Lord's at his disposal, at his time for his kingdom. Now, I do believe what you're going to find with many beginning disciples is they don't have any kind of concept of giving to the Lord. And I, in the past, I have asked any number of times in these processes, I said, I want you to work toward a beginning point of tithing.

I want you to at least begin, let that be your first benchmark. And then the Lord will take you from there. But when we get out of this process, I want you to be at that level.

I think that's a good place in your discipleship journey. Now, here's a big one. And I'm going to come right in the face of what we say we believe, especially as Protestants, what we say we believe, but in actuality, we don't believe.

A major tenet coming out of the Protestant Reformation was this, the priesthood of all believers. Yet we actually don't practice that. It's very common today to see, well, for me to interact with people who think that if I can just get to the point of being a pastor, I'll actually be in ministry.

It breaks your heart. Let me tell you, that is an unbiblical view of what it means to follow Jesus. That's a cultural collapsed view.

Who is the minister? Well, I have friends who are physicians, who I've taken a globe-trotting with me on mission trips. Let me tell you, those physicians are full time ministers of the gospel of Jesus. My CPA is a full-time minister of the gospel of Jesus.

I have a dear friend who's a used car salesman in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rick Salter, bless you, brother. He's a full-time minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A minister of the gospel is somebody following Jesus. You know, I pray that you get this understanding and we recover as Protestants who we are, especially as evangelicals. Look, but each of us, Paul says, Ephesians 4, 7, was given grace.

These gifts are from him, according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it is said, when he ascended on high, he made captivity itself a captive. He gave gifts to his people.

Now, this is a tough passage to translate. I'll let Bill Mounce exegete it. But look at the gifts here in 11.

It's a pass. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. What? To equip the for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until all of us come to the unity of faith and of knowledge of the son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Now, that's God's word to us about who's in this business of ministry and who's not. Now, of course, the New Testament example is to set aside people for particular tasks. But let me just suggest, if you get people through a process, part of your business, especially if you're a pastor, is to commission them for the work of ministry that the Holy Spirit is going to call them to.

Now, here's another huge one. Another huge one. I want them, I think, more importantly, I think Jesus, the Lord himself, wants them grounded in the great biblical and theological doctrines of our faith.

In other words, what is classic Christianity? Another way to say this, we need to know our story. And I think you can pretty much assume that that won't be the case always. Sometimes you may get a very literate person in as a disciple who knows a lot about the faith, but they're actually not following Jesus the way they're called to.

But I think for the most part, we can assume that in this culture today, even if they grew up in the church, they do not know the story. So biblically, theological grounding. We're talking about people.

We want them to know the story. We want them to love the story of God's great salvation work from beginning to end. Are you seeing where I'm going here now with all of this? You need to know where you're taking your people.

You need to have some idea. I think you're invited by the Lord to have some ideas. OK, what's this going to look like? I just sit back and think about it.

These are people who are going to have their lives are going to be reframed away from me to thee. In other words, away from me or to thou to God. These are going to be people who rather than a big fat me in the middle of their lives.

Look, we're going to we're going to see the whole work of Christ. Right in the middle of their lives and over on their infrasight, over on their interiority, they're processing and thinking of themselves now as Christ's followers. And over on the relational side of their life, they are seeing that, whoa, they're actually called to love others and that no one is there for them to use or abuse.

They're to be Christ to others. Then you're going to see down wherever the Lord situates them, they may be retired. And by the way, don't back off of discipling retired people.

My goodness, you can get a treasure there. Don't back off of discipling young people. You know, you want to disciple whoever the Lord brings to you.

But in their immediate situation, they see that situation as a place to live faithfully, in other words, to live out the gospel wherever they are called to serve. And don't get them in this thing of thinking they've got to move on to something higher or greater. No, a disciple is going to serve right where they are living right now.

If you're Lydian, you're a silver or purple yarn, you know, be who you are right where the Lord be in Christ, right where he has placed you. So as we move from our immediate situation, wherever our life situation is, and we think of the greater world to the universe is not there to serve me anything. I am there to serve the needs of the world.

One of the things that has truly surprised me in this whole discipleship process is not only seen in in in the groups that I've been so privileged to take through such a process, but seen in many, many, many other places. You know, you end up discipling someone and what's going to happen or you end up discipling a group of people. It's going to be worldwide.

I mean, somebody in that group is going to have a calling from the Lord to go over into Macedonia. So, we see the world, as Wesley said, as our parish. All of this now is focused in on who Christ is.

All right, you get in the picture. I want you to be excited about how the Lord wants to use you as a humble servant who doesn't have everything together, who may be afraid of such a such a process, who may have concerns about whether you've got what it takes or not. Look, it's not about you.

It's about what the Holy Spirit can and will do in a surrendered, humble, dependent life that seeks help from not only him, but from others. And I'm thinking also now there's other thoughts in the room about what we look for and what we want to see, because this list is not complete. Please, Brother Bill, go back on your earlier question about, you know, what are some of the things we've seen that get in the way of discipleship? And you hit it really well, I think, and that is this idea that the official clergy are the ones that have to obey all of the Bible.

And I'm a backseater, and I'm just going to coast. Someone told me once, I'm going to take a front seat on earth and a back seat in heaven. And I wanted to say there are no back seats in heaven.

But it's the idea that that's what all those Bible verses and the call to discipleship applies to. That's the pastor. We pay him to be holy.

And I just think that's got to be one of the really big things. I remember when I first went on the NIV Translation Committee, one of my first questions is, why didn't you call them saints? Why did you call them holy ones? And I didn't expect the answer I got. And the answer was, as soon as you say something, they're saints, then people say, well, I'm not a saint, so this doesn't apply to me.

And so by calling all of us holy ones, in the committee's judgment, I think it was right, it said that, no, we're all together, and we're all called to be obedient and to grow in our discipleship. So the idea that, well, that's what other people do. I don't have to do it.

It's got to be one of the really big impediments to discipleship. It is, Bill, and it's hundreds of years old. After the early church period, now we're talking moving on into 5-600 AD, a horrible, horrible mistake was made.

And that is exactly what you pointed out. We've got a two-tiered discipleship plan, and it's not biblical. Now, the Reformation tried to correct it, and I don't think the Reformation has succeeded yet in correcting it.

We still have it. You cannot look back and say, oh, those terrible people who did that. No, we're doing it right now.

So, amen, Bill. I definitely appreciate that. So this means that you as the disciple maker, particularly, especially if you're a pastor now, you're going to have to let go, and you're going to have to start seeing your gifted laypeople as peers in ministry and receiving their coaching and receiving their correction and receiving their guidance.

This is a team-based thing, and it's a huge calling on the church. The world is falling apart, and we do not have the time for this nonsense of a two-tiered approach in ministry. All right, are you getting the vision? Man, I'm praying you do.

Is your heart yearning a little bit? Moreover, would you really like to see just a few people like this amongst those you serve or with your colleagues in business, with friends? This is possible in the Lord. He can bring it about in your life. So the call is to yield to his invitation, to be humble, to submit, and say, I admit, I may not know how to do this, or I may, I don't know, but I'm going to let this be a priority.

Blessed be the name of the Lord who calls us to his priorities. Amen.