Thursday, June 9, 2016
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It was during the Gulf War, shortly before the ground troops attacked Saddam Hussein's forces in Desert Storm. Everyone knew he had large stores of chemical weapons and that the Allied soldiers were in danger of those weapons being unleashed on them. I saw this interview on television back then. It was with an American soldier who talked about the training the troops were receiving in chemical warfare. Here's what she said, "You know, it's funny. They taught us about chemical warfare in basic training, but no one paid any attention. But now, well, everyone's really paying attention, taking notes, asking questions."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Shaping Lives – The Jesus Plan."
Those soldiers were suddenly motivated to learn what they had been taught because now they needed it. Now they were about to use it. You can see that dynamic when you take young people on a missions trip. Kids who seldom read their Bible or pray or pay attention are suddenly on a rock early in the morning reading their Bible. They're praying out loud. They're asking questions! Why? Because they're in a situation, like those Gulf War soldiers, where they're going to need what they know - where they're going to use it!
Jesus knew that. He trained His future leaders that way, and, in the process, He showed us a process for getting people to really learn what we're teaching them and to do what they learned. That's discipling. If you're a parent, a teacher, a spiritual coach, a pastor, a youth leader, you need to build your ministry on this powerful pattern for life-changing teaching.
Our word for today from the Word of God gives it to us in Luke 9 beginning at verse 1. "When Jesus had called the Twelve together, He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases (which, by the way, they had watched Him do in the previous chapter), and He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God (there are three things, by the way that they had a chance to watch Him do-watch Him, and then do it). So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done. "
Well, you just saw Jesus' method of shaping a life. First, you teach the truth to people by word and by example. We generally do that part pretty well, but we stop there. So it never makes it past the person's head. That's why we need to do what Jesus did here: He had them immediately go out and do a little of what they just learned. That immediately connects their belief to their behavior, instead of what they believe being just a compartment. That's really important in a world where too many Christians just believe their beliefs, but they don't behave them. The final step in the life-changing process is to bring them back to talk about what happened when they did what they were taught.
You really could compress this into just a few words: learn it, do it, talk about it. That is a practical, workable definition of what it truly means to disciple a person. Discipling is getting them to connect their beliefs to their behavior. And if they learn it and they do some of what they just learned, and they come back and they talk about how it went - that's life changing.
For those soldiers in the Gulf War, the teaching didn't come alive until they had an immediate need for it, an immediate opportunity to put it into practice. So we need to give our children, our students, our congregation, our youth group the truth with projects - an immediate short-term assignment say, the next week, in which they do something that puts that teaching into practice. Your teaching is incomplete until you've given them something to do as a result of it. And then give them an opportunity to come back and talk about what happened.
Learn it, do it, talk about it. That's teaching that goes way beyond filling a head with spiritual facts. It changes lives!