“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how.”
Mark 4:26-27
The farmer plants, waters, fertilizes, drives away pests and parasites; and yet he does not fully understand how the seed grows into a full-grown plant.
So it is with us: we do not know how growth takes place, for that is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings life and growth out of our efforts. There are other Scripture passages and examples that we need to consider whether we are a trainer or a trainee.
And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown; when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. And these in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
Mark 4:13-20
This is perhaps one of the more disconcerting Scripture passages about the Christian life. Only one of the four makes it. All four heard and received. All four showed signs of life. Only one made it.
Not only do we not understand the life and growth brought by the Holy Spirit, but we do not understand well the failure mode: the work of the enemy. We are in a battle; we have an enemy, and there are casualties. There are spiritual pests and parasites that we have to resist. Every struggle and difficulty that life presents can help prepare us for the spiritual battle for our souls. It goes without saying, then, that we should not eliminate every struggle or obstacle in our children’s lives since they, too, will have to resist the enemy and do battle for their spiritual lives.
Modern society is teaching us that all pain is bad and there is a pill for anything that ails us. Imagine training a football player to avoid pain at all costs!
My old high school football coach got out of coaching. I asked him, “Why?” He said there was so much interference by parents that he could not prepare the young men properly. Helicopter parents are not doing their children any favors by making things easy for them or by suggesting taking a pill for all that ails them.
And God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…”
Genesis 1:28a
“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”
Matthew 28:18b-19a
Again, we do our part; but the Spirit brings life and growth. When a married couple cooperates with God to bring forth a child they are signing on for a lot of work and pain. But the reward is a child whose life and growth is given by God and protected by God. They will work for a few decades with this child; others will continue the growth and work. The Lord oversees his/her entire life.
And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4: 11-16
The Holy Spirit forms people differently so that they may serve in the formation process in different ways: apostle, prophet, pastor, teacher, evangelist. The church is gifted in the power of the Holy Spirit, but those many and necessary gifts are dispersed among many people that dispersion serves, to foster interdependence … by His desire, we need each other. The Christian “Lone Ranger” cuts himself off from the many gifts which are needed for his own maturity. Those gifts are needed to” grow up in every way”.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18a
So too, discipleship is not carried out with a “human point of view”. This new creation person and their new creation discipleship must be imbued with the power, the presence, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As such, the new creation disciple becomes somewhat unrecognizable from his old self.
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field…
1 Corinthians 2: 5-9
Paul minimizes the work of the disciples in deference to the work of the Holy Spirit. This is true even if the disciples are Spirit-led and unusually inspired in their words and ministry. It is true, not only in the comparison of the Divine to the human, but it is also true due to the time of exposure. The discipler gets limited time with each of his disciples, but the Spirit works 24 hours a day and seven days of the week. The discipler works from the outside in and the Spirit works inside the disciple at the deepest interior levels. In times of ministry or deliverance, the Holy Spirit and the discipler work together, but the Holy Spirit has the power.
To summarize Choosing Discipleship, consider the following:
- If Jesus is who he says he is.
- And we know that he is,
- Then it makes the utmost sense to live your life as a totally dedicated disciple of Christ.
This article by © Bob Tedesco is excerpted from Choosing Discipleship: Embracing the Call in a Modern Culture, Chapter 19, published in 2019 by Credo House Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Bob Tedesco is a profound teacher and prolific writer on building Christian family life and community in the light of Christian truth, Biblical wisdom, and the call to live and grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. Check out his previous articles and books in the Living Bulwark archives.
Top image: Illustration of the mystery of conception, life, and growth, by © Kevin Carden, from Christianphotoshops.com. Used with permission.
Bob Tedesco is a profound teacher and prolific writer on building Christian family life and community in the light of Christian truth, Biblical wisdom, and the call to live and grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. Check out his previous articles and books in the Living Bulwark archives.