Tally
Ho, The Fox!
Chapter
1
How
Vital Is Vision?
Proverbs
29:18 How
Vital is Vision? "Where there is no
vision, the people perish."
Proverbs 29:18 In spiritual terms,
"Divine perspective", "wisdom", "insight", "illumination",
and "vision" are equal terms.
Many passages in the Word of God reveal the importance of such
vision. Psalm 119:18 says, "Open
Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy Law." Psalm 119:130 says, "The entrance of
Thy words giveth light, it giveth understanding unto the simple." James 1:5 says, "If any of you lack
wisdom, let him ask of God." In
Ephesians 1:15‑19 and the context, Paul recorded one of the greatest of
his prayers. This is one of the most
important prayers one human being can pray for another. It is a prayer for
"illumination", the one subjective thing needed for understanding
the things of God after the New Birth.
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see." For spiritual understanding we must have
both regeneration (salvation) and illumination (vision). The text of this study
shows us negatively how important "vision" is. An individual's seeing depends on the
"lens" he looks through, just as his
hearing depends of the "filter" he listens through. As we begin this study of the Master's
Great Mandate to His people, it is necessary that we understand the value of
vision. Proverbs 29:18 says,
"Where there is no vision, the people perish." This verse is universal and absolute. I. A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTThink, first, of the spiritual
concept that is presented here, the concept of “vision.” It is a specialized kind, spiritual vision,
the most important kind a person can have. Everything begins with
vision. You will be what you see, but
what you do not see, you cannot be.
You will become what you behold, but what you do not behold, you
cannot become. In other words, what
you look at lovingly, longingly, and lastingly, you will become like. You will be like what you look at. What you lastingly look at will determine
your life. So, everything depends on
how well we see. Oswald Chambers, the
renowned author of My Utmost For His Highest and other great
devotional works, wrote with great perception when he said, “It is easier
to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a call,
because then you are not bothered by what God requires; common sense
is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. But if once you truly hear the full
commission of Jesus Christ, the awareness of what God wants will be your goal
from that point on, and you will no longer be able to work for Him on the
basis of common sense.” Physical vision is a
combination of objective stimulus (something real in the surrounding world)
and subjective experience (the way the individual perceives the
objective stimulus). The objective
stimulus may never change, but once it registers upon the eyes of the
individual, it is subject to distortion, rejection, or reception — in short,
it is subject to the interpretation of the person upon whom the stimulus
acts. Perception is the
stimulus of everything. This formula
will prove true: Perception leads to Process (or Procedure),
and Process will lead to Product. In the What is spiritual
vision? The J. B. Phillips paraphrase
of Colossians 1:9 defines it for us. Paul wrote, “I pray that you will see
things from God’s point of view.” Spiritual
vision is seeing things from God’s point of view. But the Bible plainly tells us that His
viewpoint will not agree with ours (Isaiah 55:10). Thus, a radical spiritual adjustment is
necessary to bring our viewpoint into agreement with God’s viewpoint. Dawson Trotman, a man of
great spiritual vision, said, “Vision is getting on your heart what God has
on His.” But what does God have on His
heart? Our text answers that question
in one word: “people.” God has people
on His heart. How many
people? All people. God has on His heart every person on
earth. And He expects His children to
come into agreement with His concern. He seriously expects His children to impact the
whole wide world. Thus, a global
mission requires a global vision.
This means that most Christians need an “Atlas attack” in which
they begin to see their responsibility to carry the whole world in order to
begin to impact it for Christ. Ponder the question
again: What does God have on His heart?
What should be at the heart of the believer’s dreams and visions? The text answers: people. “Where there is no vision, people
perish.” Why, then, are 4/5 of the
world’s people only very poorly evangelized and very poorly educated in the
substance and strategy of the Gospel, with nearly half of the human race
never having redemptively heard the name of
Jesus? Would the kind of Christianity
revealed in the Book of Acts have tolerated this situation? Certainly not! Then what is the difference between the
Christianity of the Book of Acts and the version of Christianity that largely
prevails in today’s evangelical (particularly American) church? Is the Jesus of today’s church a different
Jesus from theirs? No. Is the Holy Spirit different? No.
Is the Bible different? Yes,
but the advantage at this point lies with us, not with the early
Christians. They didn’t even have
a completed New Testament. We do,
but even with this advantage, we are nowhere near their impact level. So what is the difference
between the Christianity that produced the Book of Acts and our kind
of Christianity? The only basic
difference between “their Christianity” and “ours” is one of strategy. Their strategy showed an apparent disregard
for building institutions and majored almost exclusively on building individuals. Their strategy was one of explosion
(outward) instead of implosion (inward). Jesus trained twelve men, “whom He named
apostles,” (Luke 6:13). Why did He
give a different name to them? What
profile, what highlight, what insight is intended when His main (you could
say His only) training process was centered in twelve men, and when He
turns from the typical word “disciple” to give them the different and special
title of “Apostle”? The key is surely
in the meaning of the word. It means
“to send away from” Here lies the key.
He built those specially chosen men to keep them “with Him” (Mark
3:14) only long enough to train and infect them with His Life, His
Vision, and His Strategy, and then it was His Design to send them
as far away from their training base as they could, or would,
or might go. His direction was:
Temporarily in, but Vocationally out! And the fact that the list of Gifts
(Gifted Men) He gave to His Church begins with “apostles” (Ephesians 4:11)
indicates that the apostle was given to the church to turn the members and
the ministry of the church outward. Jesus Christ fully
expects every saved person to be dominated by a vision that is always turning
his eyes and his feet out—to the ends of the earth. He clearly gave us a global mission,
but (I repeat) a global vision certainly requires a global vision. And I also believe that both the vision and
the vocation are to be individual and not primarily institutional. The “inactive” Christian of today’s
church, uninvolved in the task of world impact, is inconceivable and
intolerable in the plan of God. I believe that Jesus fully expects every
saved person to have a vision and a strategy (a strategy that was first
clearly modeled by Him) to impact the world to the ends of the earth and
until the end of time! Remember that God has all
people on His heart, and He expects no less of us. Henrietta Mears, the great Christian
teacher, said, “When I consider my ministry, I think of the whole wide
world. Anything less than that would
not be worthy of Christ nor His will for my
life.” As Christians, our plan has
always been one which calls for Total World Impact, and its specific
strategy is decreed in our Lord’s Great Commission. Anything less than this is man-made, and is
not big enough to satisfy God. It is a crucial insight
to realize that when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost in the full
release of redemptive power, the first stated outcome of His Coming was that
“your young men shall see visions and your old men will dream dreams” (Acts
2:17). According to the context, these
visions and dreams are not those experienced in sleep, but those experienced
by a heart which is filled with the Holy Spirit. In context, these dreams and visions are strategy
dreams and visions which will lead toward the more complete fulfilment of our Lord’s Great Commission. Such strategy dreams and visions should be
the daily stock-in-trade of normal New Testament Christians, not the
nebulous, mystical exceptions for a few flighty people. Sometime ago, several top
leaders of the corporation went to the president and asked, ‘What has the
first vice-president got on you that requires you to retain him? Why do you pay him such a fabulous salary
when he is so non-productive?’ When
the president asked them what they meant, they led him into the first
vice-president’s office and pointed through the small window which looked
into the workroom. The first
vice-president was leaning back in a swivel chair which was turned away from
his desk. His hands were behind his
head and his feet were resting on the window sill. He was unmoving, either asleep or staring
out the windows. ‘See what we mean?
That’s all he ever does, and yet he draws a fabulous salary. Why?’ The president soberly replied,
‘Listen closely to me. Last year, that
man in that seat in that office had one idea that netted this corporation
over $85 million . . . This year, he
has only one assignment . . . !’ ” Where is
the man in today’s church who is thinking God’s 85 million dollar
idea? Where is the man who is seeing
God’s 85 million dollar vision, or dreaming God’s 85 million dollar strategy
dream? The Creator-God of the Bible
never lacks giant creative ideas, but where are His common saints who are
seeing from His viewpoint strategically, and getting on their hearts
strategically what God has on His?
Another formula
concerning vision: No vision = total failure; Limited vision = little success; A vision — a plan — action = only a dream; A vision + a plan — action = a haunting dream
(guilt); but A vision + a plan + action = a spiritually
productive ministry. Note that the test of a
person’s vision is in the action that is stimulated by the
vision. Without action, both you and
your gifts will remain in the category of “potential.” Potential is dormant ability that
is never mobilized through vision.
Christian leader Myles
Munroe, in a book entitled Understanding Your Potential, said this
about a believer’s potential: “The
wealthiest spot on this planet is not the oil fields of “Potential demands that
you never settle for what you have accomplished. One of the great enemies of your potential
is success. Small successes destroy
great possibilities! In order to
realize your full potential, you must never be satisfied with your last
accomplishment. It is also important
that you never let what you cannot do interfere with what you can
do. The greatest tragedy in life is
not death, but a life that never realized its full potential. “To simplify this concept
let us look at one of the most powerful elements in nature . . . the
seed. If I held a seed in my hand and
asked you, ‘What do I have in my hand?’ what would you say? Perhaps you would answer what seems to be
the obvious . . . a seed. However, if
you understand the nature of a seed, your answer would be fact but not
truth. The truth is that I hold
a forest in my hand. You see, in every
seed there is a tree, and in every tree there are fruits or flowers with
seeds in them. And these seeds also
have trees that have fruit that have seeds . . . that have trees that have
fruit that have seeds, etc., etc. What
you see is not all there is. So the
margin of difference between one seed and a food supply of wheat which could
feed the whole world is called ‘potential.’
‘Potential’ is the margin of difference between what you see and what
could be. Could it be that the
greatest sin of Christians lies in their unrealized potential? And the greatest unrealized potential today
lies in the area of the fulfillment of the Great Commission of our Lord. He has assigned to you a specific role in
Total World Impact, and it is a far greater role than you have yet played. This role will never be played without a
vision of its possibility. So
the most important thing in your life is to have and pursue a
vision that agrees with God.
Because your assignment is global, your vision must also be
global. Do you have such a vision? How do weak people like
you and me gain God’s vision? Here is
a workable formula: proper information plus spiritual illumination
will produce vision, which in turn will produce motivation, and
this motivation will lead to spiritually productive action. Note that vision begins with proper information. Just as physical vision begins with the
presentation of an external stimulus, so spiritual vision begins with the
truth of God in Scripture and all that Scripture relates to. The “building blocks” for such vision are: a working knowledge of Scripture and a
sensitive heart to hear it and obey it, an awareness of world geography and
national and ethnic cultures of the world, a spiritual appraisal of current
events, prayer, informative reading, firsthand experience (the “come and see”
of Scripture) of some of the world’s mission fields, fellowship with
visionary believers, sacrificial giving to missionary causes, meeting
productive missionaries and world-impacting Christians, and lifestyle
choices. You can begin to cooperate
with God in building spiritual vision into your life today. But it is tragically obvious that most
Christians you fellowship with regularly do not have such a vision. II. THE SAD CONDITIONThink, secondly, of the sad
condition that is specified here.
"Where there is no vision." The word "where" might be
paraphrased "wherever," so this is a universal statement. What does "no vision" mean in
Biblical terms? It means that there is
no awareness of God and His Perfect Plan.
It means that Satan, "the god of this world," has
"blinded the minds of men" to the only things that really and
ultimately count! They cannot see or
understand these things without regeneration and/or illumination (see I
Corinthians 2:9‑14). Thus, there
is no continuous traffic between heaven and the hearts of men. There is no commerce with that which is
invisible, eternal, spiritual—and real.
There is no listening to God and looking to Him. In short, "no vision" means that
men do not see "the High and Holy One, Who inhabits Eternity," so
we are limited to our little horizons and our selfish, petty, sinful
plans. Such a limited person with such
limited plans will finally implode into himself altogether. You see, everything begins with true
vision. Please note the word
"true". I use it in contrast
to no vision, false vision, and limited vision. We must sadly admit that
most saved people are nearly as introverted, self-centered and
survival-dominated as are lost people.
Why? Our text again provides
the reason: No vision. We seldom see
things “from God’s point of view.” We
seldom have on our hearts what God has on His—a whole world of individual
lost people. Each person has a center of perspective that
allows them to see everything one way - here is an example: Dr. Harold Lindsell, the editor emeritus of Christianity Today news
magazine, attended a Japanese eye clinic many years ago. While in class one day, the lecturer
suddenly raised a chart before the class.
He asked, “How many of you see the number eight?” Lindsell was the
only one in the class who raised his hand at this point. He later said that he thought it was a
conspiracy that the entire class had intended to play a trick on him. But then, the lecturer asked, “How many of
you see the number fourteen?” Every
other person in the class raised a hand!
The teacher spoke to Mr. Lindsell, “Sir, has
anyone ever pointed out to you how seriously color-blind you are?” You see, there was no deceit involved. Every person in the class that day was
telling the truth—as he saw it. One
man actually saw the number eight while all the others saw the number
fourteen. This is a classic example of a paradigm. The center of this
perspective blots out from vision everything that is not accommodated, and
causes the vision to be totally dominated by that which is accommodated. So one’s paradigms are all-important. A lady approached Dr. G.
Campbell Morgan, a great Bible teacher of the past, and said to him, “Dr.
Morgan, do you really believe that God is interested in the little things in
our lives?” Dr. Morgan replied gently,
“Madam, you surely don’t believe that anything in your life is big to God, do you?” This is what a center of
perspective does. It dismisses certain
data as irrelevant, and elevates other date to the position of “truth.” However, a paradigm may be so totally
subjective (self-determined) that it has no basis in objective reality at
all. Indeed, the paradigm may not even
allow objective reality. *Let me give a Biblical
example: The thirteenth chapter of
the book of Numbers records the story of the nation of Human intelligence will
always give you your point of view.
Only a miracle of illumination will give you God’s point of view. Therein lies the
difference between “no vision,” without which “the people perish,” and
“vision,” by means of which the people flourish. Imagine no spiritual
vision in the pulpit of the church you attend. Imagination is not required if you visit
many churches! I Samuel 3:1 says, "The Word of God was precious (scarce) in those
days, and there was no open (frequent) vision." A reading of the national history that
ensued from this point will reveal that tragic things resulted from such a
loss of vision. What if there were no Gospel preached in the pulpit of your church? No awareness of man being lost without
Christ? No trust in the transforming
power of the Holy Spirit? No unfolding
of the deep, rich, eternal counsels of God?
No exposure of the infinite riches hidden in the Word of God? No equipping of the listeners to "live
in heaven and on earth at once"?
No teaching of the work of the Spirit‑filled, Word‑adapted,
prayer‑oriented, disciple‑building Christian life? Imagine a pulpit with "no
vision". Some years ago, a great
Southern Baptist pastor was praying prostrate on the floor of his study one
morning, asking God for an anointing of the Holy Spirit's power upon his
ministry. Over and over, he passionately
pleaded with God, “Lord, give me Your power.
Do not let me preach and minister without Your power.” Every serious preacher has prayed this
prayer with earnest appeal. However,
he declared that suddenly it seemed that the roof over him opened and a hand
came down and touched his shoulder and it seemed that God’s voice spoke
within him, saying, “My son, stop praying!”
When he became quiet, the Voice seemed to clearly say, “My son, with
plans no bigger than yours, you don’t need My power!” Is your vision
God-big—for His glory? Where are the
plans, the dreams, the visions, the strategies for total world impact that
truly tax the miracle resources of God?
Where is the strategy that requires ongoing miracles for its
sustenance? Where is the vision that
is so big that human resources (whatever the kind or amount) cannot possibly
sponsor it? The only eternity‑sized vision any of us will ever need is
in the Great Commission given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. If your pulpit is not obsessed with the terms
"make disciples" and "all nations," how can God possibly
be expected to put Heaven's approval upon it?
Without this magnificent obsession, the pulpit of your church is
marked by "no vision." Then, it is only a short step to a pew,
a people, with no spiritual vision of these things. A rule of inner church life is, "like
pastor, like people". The people
will gradually take on the spiritual profile of their pastor. Suppose, in this succession, that the
people in the pew did not have, or lost, their vision of the supernal glory
of the Gospel? And of the absolute
magnificence of Jesus Christ? And of
the greatness and glory of our worldwide task? And of the possibility of impacting the
whole wide world with Jesus Christ and His Gospel as the early Christians
did? Someone truly said, "The
steps from risktaker to caretaker to undertaker are
very short steps." Why do church members get
much more excited about a thousand other things than about God, spiritual
things, heaven, hell, and eternity?
The answer? No vision, thus no
motivation, because motivation arises out of vision. Careful study of the
Gospels and the Book of Acts will disclose that the typical Christian Church
is run far more on the basis of tradition than on the basis of
illumination. Someone wryly said,
"Churches had better do and say everything right the first time, because
they are going to do it the same way from now on." When the loss of vision
occurs in pulpit and pew, we may be sure that there will be no spiritual
vision in public life. What if
Christians totally lost the vision of their role as salt and light (Matthew
5:14‑16) in a decaying and dark world?
What if we lost our vision of ourselves as "bodily
substitutes", or representatives, of Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 5:20),
"in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom we shine
as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of Life" (Philippians
2:14-16)? What if we lost our vision
of our high status as "ambassadors for Christ", commissioned to
mediate our King's cause in this dark and alien world? But we don't have to guess about it. The absence of vision is clearly observable
in pulpit, pew, and public life—merely by examining the occurrence of the
consequences declared in this text. III. THE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCESThink of the serious
consequences that follow the sad condition of "no vision". "Where there is no vision, the people
perish." It has several
different meanings. It means "to
cast off restraint, to loosen, to dissolve, to break up, to go to pieces, to
go naked, to perish." So look at
the tragic consequences of a loss of vision among Christians. First, when there is no
vision, the people of the society, of the community, of the church, of the
home, "cast off restraint".
This is the moral effect of a loss of vision. A loss of vision produces moral anarchy, in
which "every man does what is right in his own eyes." Incidentally, note that when there is no
awareness of ultimate reality, men do what is "right in their own
eyes", not necessarily what is apparently wrong to them. Remember, too, that "right" and
"wrong" are always relative terms to those with merely natural or
carnal minds. "Right" and
"wrong" are absolutes only to those with a truly spiritual
mind. "There is a way that seems
right to a man, but the end of it is death" (Proverbs 14:12). Note that
the man is certain that his way is right; he never dreams that his way
is Satanic and destructive. Again, the
difference is in the revelation, the vision, the
perception of the individual. It is
absolutely amazing to observe how people who are totally blind to spiritual
reality give total credibility to their own understanding! That men everywhere today
have cast off restraint is agreed by everyone. Autonomy, anarchy, and self‑determination
are increasingly wide‑spread.
The difference between the Son of God and sinners is evident at this
point. Jesus said, "I do always
the things which please my Father" (John 8:29), but the motto of sinners
(indeed, the essence of sin) is, "I do always those things which please
me." Some future sculptor may
picture twentieth century man with his arms wrapped about himself in loving
embrace, kissing his own image in a mirror.
However, lest the tragic seriousness of such a situation be absorbed
in mild humor, let the words that John Milton placed in the lips of Satan in Paradise
Lost correct us. Satan showed the
inevitable acknowledgment of sinners who pursue their selfishness without
restraint when he said, "Myself am hell."
Because the ideas of men disagree so radically when each is a law unto
himself, world tensions continue to mount.
Where there is no frequent vision among men, no clear word from the
living God, no vital Christianity, then the people
cast off restraint. Second, this strong
Hebrew verb also means "to disintegrate." “Where there is no vision, the people disintegrate.” This is the social effect of a
loss of vision. Sin, which increases
proportionately in a society with the loss of spiritual vision, has a
centrifugal force about it, driving men outward from the True Center of Life,
God Himself, and thus driving them from each other. So we have a fragmented, divided
world. Society begins to "loosen,
dissolve, break up, go to pieces." The word "split" is used to
describe many situations in our world.
We have split atoms, split families, split nations, a split world, and
split personalities. A psychiatrist
pulled into a service station one day driving a pickup truck. In the back of the truck were three
chairs. When asked where he was going,
he replied, "I'm going to visit a schizophrenic!" How often individuals are "going to
pieces". A college girl said to
her room‑ mate, "I feel like a walking Civil War." Her roommate replied, "That's nothing,
I'm a walking World War!"
An individual can weather almost any problem if he is inwardly united,
but he is vulnerable to any attack if he is in controversy with himself. The story of Judas in the
New Testament concludes with these words: "Now this man purchased a
field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in
the midst, and all his bowels gushed out" (Acts
1:18). As you know, Judas hanged
himself, and this physical collapse resulted either from his ineptness in
trying to hang himself, or as a result of the bloating and decay that
resulted from his dead body hanging on the rope for some time. The Amplified Bible says, "He burst
open in the middle of his body."
As gruesome as this sounds, it gives us a
perfect illustration. One translation
says that Judas "disintegrated".
He literally "came apart".
But this was only a final, physical symptom of what had gradually
happened for at least three years previous. He
had displaced the only possible center, the Divine "cement", which
would have integrated his personality and made it a unified whole. He really "went to pieces in the
middle." And Judas could well be
the "patron saint" of this age.
The Bible tells us (Colossians 1:17) that in Jesus Christ
alone do "all things hold together," but when men lose "the Beatific
Vision of Jesus Christ", society has no cementing influence, no cohesive
force, no integrating center. Individuals
and institutions disintegrate when Christ is not in control. This is the social result of a loss of
spiritual vision. Third, this Hebrew word
also means “to be unclothed,” or “to go naked.” Presumably, since every other use of the
word is spiritual in nature, this meaning is also spiritual. What a rich field of Biblical study is
opened to us if we see this meaning as applying to the spiritual condition of
human beings. The translation, “the
people are unclothed,” reveals the personal effect of no vision. Consistently throughout the Bible, the
saving of sinners, their “justification,” is seen in terms of their being
“clothed” with the protecting and qualifying righteousness of Christ, and
their condemnation and judgment are seen in terms of their being unclothed
and exposed to judgment. In fact,
throughout the Bible, clothing is a picture of both sin and
righteousness. Dirty clothes are often
used as a picture of sin and self-righteousness, and clothes clean and white
are used as a picture of the covering, qualifying righteousness of
Christ. If you wish to pursue this
idea further on the pages of Scripture, these passages will prove to be a
rich and rewarding field of study: Genesis 3:7, 21; Zechariah 3:1-5; Matthew
22:11-13; Luke 15:22; Romans 13:11-14; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:5-14;
and Revelation 19:7-8. It is that second work,
the work of stripping and reclothing the sinner
that is in mind when our text says, “Where there is no vision, the people are
unclothed.” John 3:36 says, “He who
believes on the Son has everlasting life, but he who believes not the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” The believer who is trusting Christ is
covered by the righteousness of Christ and escapes the wrath of God against
sin, but the unbelieving sinner is unclothed, and thus fully exposed to every
force that will destroy him. “Where there is no
vision,” more and more people remain “unclothed,” or unprotected for time and
eternity. This is the personal
consequence of no vision. Finally, the Hebrew word
is accurately translated in the King James Version. It means to "perish". "Where there is no vision, the people
perish." Compassion is surely
called for here, simply because the commodity in danger is
"people". If it were animals
or plants, it would not be nearly so serious.
But it is people, individuals like you and me. They "perish". In John 3:16, the word "perish"
is placed in antithesis to having "everlasting life". To perish means to be involved forever in a
living death and a dying life—in a place called hell. Meanwhile, I Corinthian 1:18 indicates that people without Christ are in a present state
of perishing. This perishing of people
is the spiritual and eternal effect of a loss of vision by
Christians. Three people every second
perish without Christ—and the Church has largely lost it's
vision! Hell fills, and Heaven has
vacancies yet to be filled! All
because the Church's vision has faded! Years ago, a wealthy
business man went to The words of Proverbs
29:18 were written by King Solomon, a man in whose reign the vision
faded. And there was no more
disastrous failure in the history of The alternative before us
is clear: it is either "vision or division"! This is true universally, nationally,
locally, but especially is it true in the Church of Jesus Christ and in the
individual Christian life! We must, we must,
wait upon God in quietness and prayer, armed with a deep sense of need and a
teachable heart, and ask Him to restore the vision—of His overwhelming
Personal Glory, and of His overpowering Plan for us and the world! As the vision is restored, we will
rediscover that His entire Plan is revealed in our Lord’s Great Commission,
and that the mandate there is to “turn people into disciples.” Dawson Trotman was right
when he said, "Spiritual vision is getting on your heart what is on God's
heart—the world!" Paul prayed
that the Colossian Christians might "see things from God's point of
view" (Colossians 1:9, Phillips).
What a revolution would occur if we did! An Addendum for the
Vocabulary Session (May offer additional
help in teaching the Vocabulary Session) Additional definitions of a “Disciple”; all of them add useful
insights: A disciple is “a person in training.” A disciple is a pupil, a student – in short, a learner; so the matter of being a disciple
(and of building disciples) involves a steady, developing and purposeful use
of the mind. A disciple is an apprentice, or an intern (check
the definitions of these words).
Compare Jesus as pictured in Isaiah 50:4-8 (see the NASV here!). A disciple is an understudy, a person who voluntarily places himself under (often spoken of as being “at
the feet of”) another, binding himself to him to learn from him and to pursue
his goals. Both parts of this compound
word, “under” and “study” are crucial parts of The Process of being a
disciple and of enlisting others to be built as disciples. The Process of becoming-to-be and of being-to-build
(the discipline of being a
disciple) ,and of being-to-build (the discipline of
becoming a discipler), and of building-to-be (the discipline of building disciples), and the ongoing
goal of being-to-build for you and your disciples, will always involve the
submission discipline of being “under” the assignments, accountability, etc.,
of a discipler, and of continuing endlessly to “study” all the dimensions of
the Christian life. Gerhard Kittel’s Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament contains this important sentence in
definition of the word “disciple”:
“The word ‘disciple’ (mathetes) always
implies the existence of a personal
attachment which shapes the entire
life of the one so described.” (the emphasis is
mine, not the author’s). So a disciple is a person who is learning to live the life his teacher lives
(remember Luke i6:40b). In fact, in
the Epistles, a disciple is often called an “imitator.” Somewhere I saw this wise sentence: “To a disciple, every day is a classroom, every experience is a lesson, and every
person is a teacher.” Additional ideas under the words “Discipler”
and “Discipling” From the New Testament standpoint, a disciple is
a teacher-in-training. Hebrews 5:11 says plainly to the lazy,
immature believer who has cooperated in his own immaturity, “For the time
(that is, considering the length of time you have been saved), you ought to
be teachers.” Note the expectation
that every maturing Christian should be a teacher. Illustration: a growing Christian approached a veteran Disciple-making (discipling) is the intermediate objective that links the immediate assignment (being a
disciple; living the vocational Christian life in all its activities,
accountability and vitality) with the ultimate
goal (fulfillment of the Great Commission through and army of
disciple-makers). The verb for “discipling” is used in Matthew
13:52, which deserves a lifetime of study, and Acts 14:21, which is part of
an incredible New Testament model for missions,
evangelism, disciple-making, and world impact (see Acts 14:19-22). Discipling is simply close friendship between two committed Christians (or, it is
fellowship in Christ) which is motivated
by God’s vision to impact the world in His way. In almost all cases, one of the two
Christians leads in teaching, providing insights, instilling strategy,
deploying the other in on-the-job training, etc. Someone described it as “unselfish
sponsorship of another person in order to accomplish God’s ultimate
purposes.” Additional insights on “Disciplines.” “Discipline” is the
accountable action of applying oneself to being and
building disciples. “Disciplines” are
the areas or categories in which this application must be steadfastly
made. “Disciplines” are the areas of life that reveal
the cost of being a disciple and of
building disciples. The cost is a
large part of the appeal in The Process.
Illustration: A loose wire gives out no
musical notes, but fasten the ends of the wire, and the piano, the
harp, or the violin may be born. Definition of discipline: Discipline means the enduring of short-term pain, when necessary, for the enjoying of long-term gain. Tom Landry, the late great (Christian) coach of
the Dallas Cowboys, said, “It is my task as a coach to renew the minds of my players and to get them to do things they do not want to do in
order to accomplish the things they do want to accomplish.”
Note the tension between the
things they don’t want to do and the things they do want to accomplish. It is the coach’s task to make that tension
both creative and constructive. The disciple’s
part? To become mature enough that “the things you don’t want to do” become desirable because of “the things you
want to accomplish.” Illustration: “You can’t borrow a violin today and play
in Carnegie Hall tomorrow.” A visitor
to Additional ideas on “Multiplication.” The purpose of
disciple-making is to mobilize the individual believer to future-generation
multiplication and total world impact. The early followers
of Christ were discipled in order to disciple others, teaching them in turn
to do the same, until through the process of multiplication, their influence
reached the uttermost parts of the earth. Multiplication is
third-generation leadership training by building complete vision into your
present disciple. So the building of a
disciple must include the vision of multi-generational multiplication. “A leader who wins
people, adds; a leader who develops
other leaders, multiplies.” Illustration: On the day Noah’s ark landed on |
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