Acts 1:6-14, 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
Some thoughts from the Acts passage, in particular “You will be my witnesses.” Also, in connection with that and in relation to recent discussions, some more on making disciples.
Some thoughts on witnessing
Does the thought of witnessing for Jesus scare you? Don’t let it. When Jesus said (Acts 1:8), “You will be my witnesses” was he giving a command? No, this is a statement of fact. It cannot not be. We who follow Jesus can’t not be Jesus’ witnesses. Jesus’ invitation to people is to “Follow me”. His expectation is that each person live the life of a follower of Jesus. As one lives such a life one is witnessing. As we interact with people they get to see what the life of a follower of Jesus is like and, hopefully, something of God rubs off us onto them. The technical term for this is ‘incarnational ministry’ – which means living as Jesus among the people to whom we minister.
Peter, in his advice on how a Jesus-follower lives, encourages us to “be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you” (1 Peter 3:15). This is called verbal witnessing – it consists of telling what we know; describing our experience. Hence there is both inevitability and intentionality in our witnessing. As people observe us speaking and acting as Jesus’ followers we are witnessing. As we give account of the hope that we have we are witnessing.
This is not meant to be scary, although it keeps us on our toes. Whatever we do will be seen by somebody. Many are tempted to fake it, pretending to be better than they are. But people see through such false witnessing sooner than the pretenders imagine. Best to be yourself, be real and focus your attention on following Jesus rather than on the people around us might think of us.
The good news is: we can do this. How are we able to witness? It comes out of the power of the Holy Spirit within us. Jesus’ first words to his disciples after he rose were, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21,22). Putting it in Kiwispeak that means: “Don’t be scared. You’re on the same mission I’m on and you’ve got the Holy Spirit to help you.” And that’s all we need.
Another forty days down the track and Jesus left them to it with assurance that they are his witnesses and with instructions to make disciples – and in the Holy Spirit’s care. As the Father sent Jesus, so he sends us, so we do well to imitate Jesus; to live as he did and to make disciples the way he did – led and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
This is Holy Spirit work so we aren’t the ones to make it happen. Consequently we can trust ourselves, our witnessing, our disciplemaking, everyone else, ministry, church, past, present and future – trust everything to the Holy Spirit. I believe that at this time in the life of Belmont Presbyterian Church we are trusting our church, our ministries and the people with us more and more to the Holy Spirit and so we are following him in what we do. I can say that I used to work for Jesus; now I work with Jesus.
Some thoughts on disciplemaking.
Jesus commands disciplemaking, so whatever else we’re doing we are making disciples. It is our purpose; it is our fruitfulness (John 15:16), the result of Christ living in us.
Being a disciple is about learning. Different people learn in different ways. We call them learning styles. Some learn by listening, others by seeing, others by talking, others by doing. I learn by imagining, or visualising – picturing in my mind, thinking a thing through and putting it together in my head, then applying it as appropriate.
It has also been truly said that we don’t really know something until we can apply that knowledge. We know we have learned something when we actually do it. I went to a workshop recently where we learned how to write a media release that will be read. What did I learn? I have it put together in my head but I don’t really know what I’ve learned because I haven’t written a media release yet.
I say this because it has to do with how we make disciples. Discipleship is a person living the life of a Jesus follower, learning as one goes along – learning and applying day by day. It is not the accumulation of head-knowledge but the application of our knowledge in learning to live life Jesus’ way.
Further, to make disciples requires a certain involvement in another follower’s life, of being with and developing people in faith, knowledge and lifestyle. It is best done one to one, one Christian involved in another Christian’s life, each helping the other to live the Christian life. Life on life involvement. Each sharing with the other what they’re learning and both are growing. Not going through a programme but going through life together.
We are all capable of following another person’s example. It comes naturally to us. That’s how we learned so much from our parents as we grew up. But example alone is not enough. We need to talk about and explain things because we can misunderstand the example we see; we can misinterpret other people’s actions. We have probably all seen this happen as a child copies a parent. When a child misinterprets what a parent is doing that child learns a lesson that was never intended. It’s like that with Jesus’ followers as well. Thank God we have the Holy Spirit to help us.
Last week I took my laptop computer to the workshop over the road from here. My laptop was driving me crazy because it was so unbelievably slow. After the technician had added more RAM and tidied up the internal workings it is now going so fast it keeps surprising me. We can be like that too. We can get clogged up with ungodly and unhelpful and wrong beliefs and behaviour patterns and we need the Holy Spirit to help us tidy up our internal workings so that we can be Jesus’ clear witnesses and effective disciplemakers.
So..
are you happier now about being Jesus’ witnesses? Are you more into making disciples? You can see, I hope, that we can relax a lot about witnessing and disciplemaking. It’s going to happen anyway as we follow Jesus and share our experiences with other folks.