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Means To An End …Becoming The End

In business when we hire new people the goal is to train them to do a job independently and not need continual training and reminding, reassurance, and driving them hard, to do a particular job. Some jobs this takes many months, other jobs it takes just a day or two.

In discipleship the goal is the same. The training (teaching) is a means to an end.

The end is spiritual maturity and a person who listens to, cooperates with and responds to the life of Jesus Christ within.

That is the most precise definition one can muster because this life of God in a cooperating and listening person looks different in everyone.

The act of training and discipleship is not THE end in itself.

If you’ve been trained in seminary or elsewhere that the training is the end itself, it’s time to retrain. All is not lost.

Not even evangelism is a legitimate end to justify the forever sermonizing a community. Sometimes Jesus is not evangelizing, there is no autopilot that if we do abc that is success. No hearing cooperating and serving the life of Jesus is the end for all ministry.

The Sunday sermon is engineered to be the end, it is either:

1) intellectual religious entertainment among the thoughtful Christians.
or
2) Repeated reassurance I am going to heaven among the evangelicals.
or
3) Repeated reassurance I am living a life pleasing to God (and myself) among the rich Christians.
4) Repeated reassurance I can try harder and be better and solve my problems, among the poor Christians.

Just to name a few.

If that is your ministry philosophy, forever teaching but never bringing followers to a place of self sufficiency your philosophy is deeply flawed.

Even Jesus did not do that. Jesus sent his disciples out after and during the training time, (within 3 years of beginning) then after only 3 years he left them alone to the Holy Spirit.

Paul would take just a few months to teach his disciples then leave them to the Holy Spirit. Him Leaving was critical to their growth and dependence on the Spirit as a group.

How long have you been hearing sermons you agree with? 5, 10, 25, 50 years?

The Sunday sermon (which I have loved for years) is more like a Greek pagan philosophizing tradition, adopted for Sunday mornings.

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Hang with the Lowly

“Nothing can be more cruel than tenderness that consigns a brother to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother from the path of sin.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Low expectations are also cruel. Things like assuming and expecting a person to remain forever immature, because of their gender or their history of selfishness, is wrong.

Excusing away and celebrating certain sins because we don’t want to be accused of something?

Discarding people because we want to only surround ourselves with good people. With people who think like us because a self help guru said so …is cruel, godless, and snobbery,, reject it. It is hostile to Jesus Christ.

Dear Christian, you must not be controlled by fear of accusation. Remember that Satan is the accuser, it is normal to get accused. Get used to it if you are going to follow Christ.

“Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:16‬ ‭

The NASB and ESV translate this is to hang with or associate with the lowly.

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Spiritual Assumptions

For the few Christians who actively hear things from the Spirit of God periodically or intermittently. How we react to what we hear is very important. Being led of the Spirit seems to be decreasing among Christians I circle with. But there are some who actively seek and expect to hear from Jesus Christ. And a common thing I have done and seen others do is to use their logical minds to make assumptions about what God means.

When God speaks something to us or leads us in a certain direction. We should learn to stop and never again add to it with our logic. “God said this … must be then that means this….” We often with impatience project our logical assumptions onto God.

Instead just let him continue the conversation, wait on him to continue.

Example: if a young person feels led to serve God with their life they should not immediately conclude they need to go to seminar and/or pursue an income from a church. We make the spiritual assumption: “Must be God wants me to run a church for Jesus.” that may be a huge mistake.

All the disciples of Jesus had logical expectations on Jesus and he did not meet any of them. They would often try to add to what he was saying with bad assumptions.

Perfectly logical, bad assumptions do GREAT damage to what God is saying to us. They can divert us onto paths he does not have for us or divert us away from paths that he wants for us.

Assumptions can often deceive us and make us into liars if we project them, click here for another example of this.

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