Making Disciples in the home.

MARRIAGE

by my good friend Tim Mathisen

•In order to succeed in raising godly children we believe our marriages must take first priority. Our personal relationship with God should be first, spouse second, and children third. Healthy children require healthy marriage and an involved Dad.

•Don’t let children take over/control our marriages.

•Put young children to bed early. Kids are not getting the sleep they need and Mom and Dad need time together.

•Date night/breakfast once a week.  Be creative for specific time alone.

•Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, Eph 4:26

•Keep the walls of separation and anger away.

•Pray every night together, even nights-wife, odd night-husband. It’s hard to be angry at each other when you pray together.

•Pray for your spouse daily. Ask is there anything I can do for you today?

•Set an example you would want your children to emulate in their future marriages.

Loud Silence- Making disciples in the family.

Making disciples mostly means spending time and investing.  And in today’s society it is so easy to take for granted the family.  When I was in youth ministry in the 1980’s one of our kids in the group had a band named Loud Silence.  That name always cracked me up because they were anything but silent.  In looking at the Bible and the life of Christ, the loudest silence in all of Scripture is the 30 years that Jesus stayed in Nazareth with His family.

30 years, 90% of the life of our Savior and Lord was with family.  No miracles that we know of, no big things, just hard work being a carpenter.  To me this is the loudest silence in all of scripture.  Jesus was about the family.

Where does discipleship begin?

Discipleship begins with God and me.

From the Transformational Church.

Jesus proportions.

This was a painting that I did in 2011.

Making disciples. Why is it confusing when we say these words.  Surely Jesus did not want us to be perplexed about the Great Commission.  He is not the author of confusion.  If you look at the life of Christ; He was about making disciples.  This was primarily “investing in the few.”  The majority of His life (30 years), Jesus stayed in Nazareth investing with His family.  The other ten percent was mostly with the 12 disciples.  Sure Jesus worked with big crowds, but that was not His priority or plan for us. In fact, He never intentionally did ministry for a big crowd.  It just happened.  If we are truly going to make disciples it should be about investing in the few!

Messy Spiritual Formation

This is from my pastor friend Allen Newton.

“The truth is spiritual formation is pretty messy. It was for Jesus. Even after his crucifixion and resurection He was still bringing them along. I am wondering if that is why it is so hard to truly find discipleship in the church today. We don’t like “messy”. The closest thing I have found to real transformative discipleship is Celebrate Recovery.”

 

Church ministry vs Jesus ministry

Here is a little diagram that I made a few years ago to spark discussion

My first disciple post!

Why blog?  Because the word needs to continue to spread.  Making  disciples is the strategy to win our world for Christ.  Discipleship =  Time.  Time with God and time with a few.