An exciting element, to me, in the church today is that we have been privileged to learn so much about God; yet we are just getting started! I love it! We are always entering the front door of eternity as His children ready to soak up the tour of His informational call!
Historical repetitivity, though, has reduced the vibrant cutting edge of discipleship in places to mere habit-forming insensitivity. We become reduced to going through the church motions without inclination toward the radical Spirit within us. In places, have we not become dull in our efforts to portray overcoming and winning life?
Erwin McManus nailed this theme. Discipleship has become the mechanism for uniformity rather than uniqueness. Yet if we learn anything about God through John, it is that God has no problem with spiritual eccentrics. The point, of course, is not that God makes us mentally or emotionally imbalanced, but that He makes us passionately unbalanced.
Discipleship bugs guys like me.
I'm truly poor at the concept.
Yet for my four decades of ministry, I find that those whose trump card seems to be "Discipleship" it can also immediately be coupled with two very strong characteristics which causes me hesitation; legalism and arrogance. The bold clarion for discipleship seems to fall into the quick and slick trap of "we do God best" which is nothing more than post-practice of the Pharisee walk.
We must be attentive, though, to God's call to be disciples. This call is His transforming desire for all. Within this concept we will find not the insistence that we become domesticated by adhering to the strong voices who train. But rather may we become liberated by the Holy Spirit to become wild about potential and possibility.
Discipleship is not about domestication that we form a singular lifestyle. Rather it is a most freeing ploy to engage the Life of Jesus into the framework of where we live, walk, and breathe.
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