Okay last week I proposed that people post a 200-word reflection on the previous week's gathering, and then interact with others from there. Quite frankly I've loved this part of my experience at George Fox. So, once again I'd encourage you to post a personal reflection based upon our conversation (this time about discipleship). After posting yours, read others and ask questions, make comments and encourage!
I know that takes a high level of vulnerability, but it could also be very transforming!
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Discipleship-As mentioned yesterday sometimes I too get caught in the ease of "just live a beautiful life and let the rest happen" and I think there is a good challenge in that....however, people can live beautiful lives without relying on the Holy Spirit. Kind of like "even sinners love the lovable". And that is where taking it a step further and influencing people (through prayer and lifestyle)to make choices that are contrary to their flesh is important. It takes a reliance on the Holy Spirit and having an ear tuned to His voice in order to do it well. I have tried to "disciple people" in my own strength and it is a poor representation of Christ. I find myself in that place when I have forgotten (as I often do) that I am Christ's servant.....and that is what discipleship is really about.
I agree that life requires intentionality and focus, yet I often get hug up on people giving "living a beutiful life" such a "lacking" wrap. For me a "beutiful life" definately does not just happen. I have to rely on the Holy Spirit and be sensitive to that leading more than if I "discipled" people, that is easy cuz it involves more of a check list/production element. Living beutifuly and Godly is a more "have to be reliant, tuned, and intentional; which seems to be more relational.
What if God is like a diamond, where relationships between people represent the facets of the diamond, with the many different kinds of relationships contributing to the overall brilliance?
Much of the discussion regarding discipleship has centered around a sort of subtle proselytizing of the people we know—and most of us have denounced this practice as quite distasteful.
But what if discipleship is something different? What if it’s less about “teaching” the other person in the relationship & more about making ourselves vulnerable in the relationship and open to learning something new? What if it’s less about sharing our faith (although could be an aspect of it) & more about sharing the other’s concerns?
What if discipleship is not about entering a relationship with expectations of future life changes, but rather, it is about entering into relationship freed of these dangerous expectations? Most of us enter into relationships—platonic, romantic, whatever—with expectations. What if discipleship is really the most freeing of all?
Within the openness and the vulnerability, change will happen. People will grow. Ideas will flourish. Action will ensue. God will be there. And he will shine like a diamond.
Okay, I'm going to hold back commenting in the hopes of this not being the Adam-show. Great initial posts (I have tons I'd like to say...and eventually will.)
I'd really encourage you to draw one-another out: ask questions, ask for further clarification, etc. Sorry, now I feel like a teacher, but this can be a blast!
I love the concept of relationship and vulnerability and bagging the "expectations" related to a future state of being, yet I think that we can't totally get rid of expectations relationally. What I do think we can do, and seems that Jesus represented and the OT retry and retry that God does in relationship, is that we can decide how we will respond to those met or unmet expectations. That is where the relational beuty or disgust takes place in my oppinion.
Lindsey:
Are we really "Christ's servants"? I think more along the lines of serving God & trying to do in the way Jesus did, rather than serving Jesus. (In a way this is a technicality, since they're also the same being...)
Theresa:
You're right--we really can't leave all expectations behind. One could even question whether the lack of expectation would itself but an unhealthy burden on relationship...it might even lead toward a pattern of consumeristic relationships.
The word I was looking for came to me last night: unassuming. The way that the word "discipleship" has been used (and that seems so icky) implicitly assumes that someone is better than someone else. Ugh.
If we all stay unassuming in our friendships & other relationships, then we will be able to work through our differences & expectations as you say.
Adam: no boys allowed. :)
Steph, if you are a Christian then you are, indeed, a servant of Christ. More than that, all Christians are slaves of Christ, as all the Apostles (who wrote epistles) called themselves (Rom. 1:1, Gal. 1:10, Phil. 1:1, Titus 1:1, James 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Jude 1:1, Rev. 1:1). Before we were slaves to sin but are now slaves of righteousness (Rom. 6:18) thanks to Jesus' death on the cross. We were bought with a price.
Jesus, in teaching any would would deny themselves and follow him to be his disciples, taught that this self-denial is letting go of self-determination and replacing it with obedience to and whole dependence upon the Messiah.
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