God of Comfort

A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.

-- English proverb

I came across this proverb earlier this week, and loved its potent simplicity. We instantly know it to be true, and it's far more elegant than a simple statement of fact, "Sailors become skilled through rough seas."

Everything in this statement is premised on the goal - a skillful sailor. That's what we want most out of sailor! If we're in the boat, we can excuse just about everything else if the sailor is skillful. Given the choice between a really polite unskilled sailor and a salty, brash, skilled sailor, we'd take the skilled one every time, especially in rough seas. Unless, of course, we're not in the boat. Then we just want him to be nice.

If this proverb is generally true, then why do we pray for God to give us "smooth seas" more than for Him to make us into "skillful sailors"?

Like the proverb, everything about prayer is premised on the goal. According to our prayers, it seems our goal is all too often that we would have smooth sailing. "Lord, just make the interview go smoothly. Just help the move be without any troubles. Just let my conversation with the principal to go OK. Just lower those waves a bit ... no ... a lot."

But that's not Jesus' goal for us. His goal for you is that you increasingly resemble Him in every way possible, much like a skillful sailor, experienced in navigating life as a follower, even when the swells are high. If that's the goal, then everything about prayer should be premised on that, praying for God to make us more Christlike rather than asking Him to take away the rough seas that produce skillful sailors.

A Christlike follower is what Jesus wants most out of a follower. If we're "in the boat," committed to the life of following Christ, then it's what we should want most, too - for ourselves and others. Unless, of course, we're not in the boat, unconcerned about the purpose of the sea. Then smooth seas are about the only thing left to pray for.

Guide your prayers toward the goal Jesus has ... as you pray for yourself, for your family and those closest to you, for your fellow believer, and for those who do not know Jesus. Pray for God to develop skillful sailors, and also pray for the rough seas necessary to make them so. When the seas are already rough, pray first for the rough seas to hone the skills of the sailor, and then for the waves to subside. We don't need to pray for hardship and heartache. We certainly don't need to develop a martyr mentality. However, we can certainly set our prayers on what Jesus wants most.

God is the "God of Comfort." That does not mean He's the God of comfortableness, but that He comforts those who are afflicted and overwhelmed. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now, the waves are crashing over the rails, I'm not lowering the boom and expecting you to buck up and just grow. "To the task, you scurvy dog ... Arrrrrrr!!!!" There are times when we just need comfort from the God of Comfort.

On the other hand, I do want to keep a weather eye to the horizon of discipleship and check ourselves that we're not praying for God to take away the rough seas He intends for the purpose of making skillful sailors.

I Don't Know How to Make a Disciple

We've talked a lot about "discipleship." So much so that some might be tired of the topic, or even just the word. One of the reasons we've talked so much about it is because of a conviction that we've talked too little about it for far too long. Perhaps we're overcorrecting a bit, but given that discipling others is the thing Jesus told us to be about, it would be disobedient for us to not keep this as our primary activity.

Despite all the talk about discipleship, we still have a nagging question, "But how do I do it?" Where's the step-by-step guide? What does it look like? I agree I should be about it, but I'm not sure what it is I should be about.

The definition of "discipleship" that I like the most is: moving from unbelief to belief in every area of life in light of the Gospel.(1) This definition allows for important ideas: that discipleship begins before someone is born from above, that everyone can be discipled, and that even after believing in Christ there are still areas of unbelief that need to move toward belief. This definition is an ongoing process, not something that we finish after a 12-week study.

Given this definition, it's easy to see why we haven't presented a "how to" manual. The possibilities are endless on how we can help one another move from unbelief to belief in an area of life. It can be a Bible study, it can be working side by side for some cause, it can be while grieving over the loss of a loved one. It can be formal or informal, planned or unplanned, face-to-face or side-by-side. How do we help one another identify our areas of unbelief, and then without judgment, encourage one another to move toward belief?

Therefore, "making disciples" (I prefer "discipling") is not like making widgets. There is a set way to make a widget, and once you've made a widget, it's done. It's a widget or it's not. When we look at making disciples this way, we naturally begin to reduce disciplemaking down to things like doctrine, spiritual disciplines, and behavior. Just get those three things down, and boom ... you're a widget. Agree to the right doctrinal statement, be able to check off your list daily that you read and prayed, and stop doing bad stuff. This is not a "disciple"!!!

The word disciple means student or apprentice. Those words aren't like widgets. They are postures. One is a student if she has the posture of learning. One is an apprentice if he has an ongoing learning-by-example relationship with a journeyman. A disciple is defined by an orientation toward Jesus, not an accumulation of knowledge and behaviors.

Therefore, making a disciple is not like producing a product. Rather, it is helping someone assume certain posture toward Christ. It's not about giving them all the information, but helping them orient toward the Teacher for all things. It's not about learning spiritual disciplines, but adopting habits that orient us toward the Teacher. It's not about better behavior, but living a life of learning how to live from the Teacher. How do you make a student? By helping them adopt the posture of a student, not by grading pop quizzes.

I recently asked some middle school kids if they were able to disciple one another. They all said no. Then I asked them if they could help one another move from unbelief to belief in some areas of life. They all said yes. They certainly can disciple one another! (Just don't call it that.)

Can we help one another maintain a student posture? Can we help one another develop an apprentice relationship with Jesus? Certainly. Just do that. You'll learn better and better ways as we all move forward in this journey together, but just do that. Just encourage one another to move from unbelief to belief in specific areas of our lives. That, of course, requires authentic relationships.

(1) Caesar Kalinowski

I Don't Want You to Know Me

I don't want you to know me. Not the real me. In fact, I work really hard so that you won't know me, and indeed so that you can't know me.

If you knew me, you'd know my faults, fears, and failures. I mess things up, I have selfish tendencies, I'm not up to snuff in some basic character issues, I get angry, I don't always eat right, and I say stupid things. It's embarrassing. "Aha!" you say - "I already know plenty of your faults." Yes, you do. You know the faults that I don't keep totally secret. You don't know my worst, ugliest, most disappointing, shameful faults. I don't let you. They are part of me, and since I have successfully hidden them from you, I have successfully prevented you from knowing me.

If you knew these things about me, you probably wouldn't like me. The faults I let you know about may be annoying, but they usually don't prevent people from liking who they think I am. But the faults I hide - wow - if you knew them, then you wouldn't like me. Or at least not nearly as much. People with my secrets aren't really likable ... not really.

Instead, I tell you just enough to fool you. I actually want you to know my lesser faults, because then I can fool you that I'm being "transparent." I'll let you know about my molehill problem so that you won't bother to ask about my mountain problem. I give you a splinter to distract you from the plank. To be honest, you're pretty easy to fool.

In other words, what I present to you is a false me. It's a projection of a person, an image of someone who doesn't exist, a catalog of qualities good enough to make a phantom likable. Who you think I am isn't even a person. You can't have a real relationship with an unreal person, so you don't have a real relationship with me, no matter how often I tell you I appreciate our "relationship."

You see, I'd rather you knew a false me than the real me. I'd prefer that you like a false me than be disappointed with the real me. I don't want to be rejected, so I don't allow the real me to be accepted. I can coast along pretty well if you like the person I project to you, and then I can pretend that you really like me. But you don't ... because you don't even know me.

I do this because I falsely get my identity and acceptance from you. I know intellectually that my identity is in Christ and my acceptance from God by grace through Christ. I know all that. And yet I still vainly try to get my sense of self from you. If I truly did get my identity from being in Christ, and if I truly did accept my own acceptance by grace from the perfectly gracious God, then I would let you know the real me ... the accepted me who knows who he is. But I don't. Instead, I put on you responsibilities that belong only to God.

I don't want you to know me because you're my idol. I don't idolize you in the worship-y way, but I look to you for something only God can give. Thereby, I foolishly make you my idol.

I'm sorry for putting you in such an awkward position. It's unfair to expect you to provide what only God can. Plus, it never works. I can't be known by idols.

Read this again to see if you find yourself in this composite (but not totally fictional) character.

I Don't Have Time for This!

This Sunday is the last in our series on how Jesus redefines everything in our lives as disciples, pulling our thoughts mostly out of 1 and 2 Corinthians. To review, this is where we've been:

1. I am a Disciple (the "tree") 
2. I am on Mission (the "fruit") 
3. I am Being Transformed (the "roots")
4. I Worship the Risen Christ (the "trunk")
5. I Belong to a Community (the "branches") 
6. I am a Disciple who Makes Disciples (but what kind?) 
7. I am Missionary (learning to think like a missionary right here)
8. I am a Consumer (we can become consumers of church, rather than disciples)
9. I have a Vocation (our 3 callings)

This Sunday's message will be "I don't have time for this!" from 1 Cor 9:19-27.

And we don't really have time for all this ... do we??? I simply can't add all those things to my life, because I'm already hovering around the "overwhelmed" status. Quite frankly, I just end up feeling guilty about all this, which is worse than before.

We must be honest enough to admit whatever feelings like this we have, and we must be brave enough to explore those questions.

I'm not going to explore here what we're going to explore Sunday morning, but I did want to create a simple list of the series so we can see the big picture of where we've been. I also wanted to put the question about time in your mind in advance to get you thinking about it so that we gather together with fresh, real questions and ideas.

Let me prime the pump with the following:

• Does God ever give us too little time for what He desires for us?
• Are we foisting our idea of "time" onto God's plan? If so, how?
• What are we not fully believing that then leads us to think we don't have enough time?
• Are there things I'm not yet willing to give up in order to live life "on mission" according to a list like this? If so, how should I respond?

D17 P17: I Like the Entire List ... Except this One

For the last 17 weeks, we've looked at the "D17" - 17 truths about discipleship. We will list them all together next week, but this entry is about the last one. And it's probably the one I like the least, because it's the only one on the list that I don't personally aspire to. Perhaps the same is true for you, too.

Discipleship requires humility.

Why? Because Jesus. (To use the grammatically incorrect but common phrasing.) Because this is exactly how Jesus made disciples, and He expects us to make disciples the same way as He did. Consider two key events in Jesus discipling His followers. The more compelling of the two happened on the night He was betrayed as He shared the Passover meal with His disciples.

So when he had washed their feet and taken his outer clothing and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you speak correctly, for I am. If then I—your Lord and Teacher—wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that just as I have done for you, you also do. Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you are blessed if you do them.” (John 13:12–17)

This is His key example for His disciples - the lasting image before the Cross. They will continue His ministry of making disciples who make disciples with the humble attitude of a servant washing someone else's dirty feet. The Jews considered this task too demeaning even for Jewish slaves - only foreign slaves would be made to do this. Jesus says that His model of disciplemaking is something so humble that it's lower in stature than something they considered too demeaning for a slave.

He finishes by saying that if we do this voluntarily, we are blessed. How crazy upside-down is that? No matter how you turn this and twist this, you can't escape that the Jesus way of making disciples requires humility.

The second example is a teaching He gave to His disciples:

And Jesus called them to himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their people in high positions exercise authority over them. But it is not like this among you! But whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be most prominent among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)

The key phrase for me here is "It is not like this among you!" He didn't say that it shouldn't be or that we should avoid it. He said that it is not that way. Our "system" or manner of making disciples will not be making disciples if it's not like this - like servanthood. Not even Jesus came to be served but to be a servant to others.

Making a disciple is serving them with such a humble attitude of service that it is more humble than that of a slave. We cannot make disciples the Jesus way if we have an attitude of superiority, as if we're better than the one we disciple, or that we're their spiritual "hero." The Jesus way of making disciples requires humility.

For those who refuse to intentionally make disciples because they don't feel qualified or good enough, there's good news! You've got a lot of the humility required already! Now, that sense of inadequacy comes from a model of discipleship that expects the discipler to be the superior one, the "expert." But it is not that way with you. Now, all you have to do is turn that humility into the attitude of a servant with respect to someone else's discipleship. Every follower of Jesus can be a discipler of others, and the ones who think themselves pretty special are the least qualified.

If we don't grab onto this last truth of the D17, then the entire 16 truths before this one will not be effective. Humility is non-optional. We cannot make disciples with pride, arrogance, or even a sense of superiority. We can only make authentic disciples of Jesus by being more humble than First Century Jewish slaves.

D17 P13 - We got the heart before the course

I was always taught this order: evangelism, conversion, discipleship, service. That's the order of how things happen, and pretty clean lines in between them. Maybe a person is involved in service while he is being discipled, but the norm is that Christian service comes largely after the bulk of discipleship. Never mind that little nagging voice that says, "But, when is anything in the Christian life this tidy?"

There are some other questions that challenge this tidy order:

• Scripture calls some people disciples of Jesus before they convert (e.g. John 6).
• Scripture calls other people disciples of people like John - no conversion involved. 
• The word disciple just means "student" or "follower."
• Jesus taught people to serve as part of discipling them, not after (and ... gasp ... perhaps even before they converted).
• Paul talks about evangelizing the Roman believers (Rom 1:15) - people who already converted and are being discipled. Evangelizing the converted???
• Jesus tells His disciples in the "Great Commission" (Matt 28:18-20) to disciple people from all nations, not specifically to evangelize them.
• Every believer is told to disciple, but not every believer is equipped to do what we've typically labeled "discipleship." Something has to give, and perhaps it's our narrowed view of what it means to disciple someone.

Not only does the Christian life not fit into a nice, tidy progression, the New Testament doesn't fit into it, either.

Instead of any semblance of an inviolable order, what we see in Scripture and in our lives tends to be more like:

• Discipling someone is the process of orienting them more and more toward Jesus, no matter where they are spiritually. To recall our very first definition of discipleship: "Discipleship" is the process of moving from unbelief to belief in every area of life in light of the Gospel." That's something that everyone can do at any point of spiritual development.
• All of these activities are acts of discipling someone. Evangelizing someone is discipling her. Someone's conversion is a milestone is the larger process of discipling. Service is something learned as part of the discipling process, and in fact, every act of service is part of one's discipleship. Everything is part of the larger concept of discipling.
• Evangelizing is something that can be done after conversion, too. Therefore, evangelizing someone is more than just the words that guide him to conversion.

This is a completely different model than I was taught (and perhaps a number of you, too). But it certainly squares better with our observations of Scripture and life.

This is our 13th entry in the "D17" (the 17 truths of discipleship):

Discipleship begins before conversion.

The incremental process of growing ever more complete as a follower of Jesus is discipleship, which starts before conversion and continues after conversion. Once someone converts, that doesn't mean she stops moving from unbelief to belief in every area of her life in light of the Gospel.

This also means that conversion is really the job of God the Holy Spirit, not us. Our commission is to disciple, not convert, because we can't convert anyone. Disciple them, and God will do the converting. Teach them about conversion, pray for it, encourage it, but since you can't make it happen, don't try. Cultivate a rich environment for conversion to occur by discipling, but expect the power for conversion to come from God, not from your words or magnetic presence.

With this understanding of discipling, it is now something we can do with anyone. Any influence to move from unbelief to belief is an act of discipling, and that's the very thing Jesus commanded us to do.

D17 Part 8: Stop telling me what to do ... and just show me

Then Jesus began talking about pouring water into the basin as He showed a PowerPoint picture of a basin on the screen, and then He began to colorfully describe washing the disciples’ feet, gesturing with His hands in the air. He then surprised them by pulling out a towel as an illustration, which He then put on the pulpit so people could see it as He spoke. 

So He walked over to Simon Peter, who was seated in the 3rd row. Peter interrupted the monologue and said to Him, “Lord, do You talk about washing my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I have been talking about, you do not realize now, but you will understand when you stream the video of this later.” Peter said to Him, “Never shall You talk about washing my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not talk about washing you, you totally ruin the wordpicture.” Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, then not only talk about washing my feet, but also talk about washing my hands and my head.”

Jesus said to him, “He who has studied all about bathing needs only to talk about his feet, but has pretty much talked about being clean in general. And you talk a lot about being clean, but not all of you.” For He knew the one who was thinking really hard about betraying Him; for this reason He said, “Not all of you talk about being clean.”

So when He had finished talking about washing their feet, and put away His lesson props and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have illustrated for you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, talked about washing your feet, you also ought to talk about washing one another’s feet.”

On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, knowing He had so very little time left to teach His disciples, He takes all the time necessary to wash 12 pairs of filthy feet. Why? It takes less than a 10 seconds to say, “You should serve one another with the same kind of humility as it takes to wash a bunch of dirty feet.” Boom. Done. Lesson over, discipleship accomplished (right?). Instead, He just washes their feet, and then talks about it.

His entire ministry is filled with doing all the things He would later expect the disciples to do. He even had them do some of those things while He observed and then gave them feedback on it. That was how Jesus discipled them. Like the washing of the feet, Jesus showed them how to disciple one another by discipling them as He expected us to imitate.

Our 8th truth of discipleship of the Seventeen Truths of Discipleship (the "D17") is:

Discipleship has to be modeled and experienced.

We are called to disciple one another, and to do so as Jesus discipled the Twelve. We can assume that Jesus demonstrated for us not only the what but the how. Disciples are learners, but they learn primarily by doing. That's how Jesus discipled them. We are too much in the habit of trying to disciple one another by talking only.

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. (James 1:22)

Let's drop any expectation that any disciple will learn anything significant about the life of a disciple unless they see it modeled and experience it firsthand. Don't expect disciples to learn how to pray without prayer being modeled (by the way, the Lord's Prayer is nothing except Jesus modeling prayer rather than lecturing about prayer). Don't expect disciples to learn how to read the Bible devotionally until it's modeled for them. Or talking about their faith, or being generous, or serving those in need, or using his or her talents to bring human flourishing in others, or anything else about the genuine Christian life. And especially, don't expect disciples to learn how to disciple others without experiencing being discipled.

Model for others what you want them to learn about following Christ. Seek out those who can model for you what you want to learn about following Christ. Talk about discipleship ... but wait until after actually doing something disciples do.

The Church in the Book of Acts - Descriptive or Prescriptive?

How does the Book of Acts inform us on what a modern church should be like?

View 1: The Church in the Book of Acts is merely descriptive. Luke (the author of Acts) was not intending to record what other churches must do, or even should do, but just what the First Century Church did do. Clearly, there were incidents of bad behavior, confusion, mistakes, arguments, and changing structures. In fact, it's impossible to replicate the "First Century Church," because it was a moving target. This view is favored by a majority of the modern Church, especially highly institutionalized churches.

View 2: The Church in the book of Acts is prescriptive - Luke is informing us how we should do things. We must return to the ways of the First Century Church, because that's the way the Apostles did it. The modern Church has become too enamored with the methods of the world, too corporate, too institutionalized, too dedicated to its own infrastructure to be effective. And that failure is precisely because we have fallen away from the organic, grassroots example in the Book of Acts. We must replicate the First Century Church and her ways. This view is favored by the house church movement and the "emergent church" advocates.

In all fairness, these two views as described are oversimplified. Each view is far more nuanced and accommodating than described here, but the differences are clearly illustrated in this condensed form.

The question is an important one, because it affects how we position our church gatherings, priorities, and activities. It affects how leaders lead, how goals are set, how groups meet, where meetings happen, and how success is measured - virtually everything about church life can be defined by whether a local church favors one view of the other.

Let me introduce two more views, based on the first two:

View 3: This is more of a salad bar approach. Pick and choose which aspects of the First Century Church you think are applicable, and forget the rest. "We like the deacon idea, but not the house church location. We like the idea of feeding widows, but we really don't like the idea of everyone bringing their possessions in to be shared with the rest." This hybrid approach can be either justified through careful study, or it can be a lazy attachment of only those verses that appear to reinforce foregone conclusions.

View 4: Copy what the First Century Church focused on, but have freedom on how it should get done in a given context. Replicate their goals and priorities, and even take notice of their techniques and strategies, but be fixed on the former and flexible on the latter.

View 4 is where I want to spend my time. Having deacons or not, how money is collected and used, where you meet - those are all how questions, not what questions. The "what" of the First Century Church was to proclaim and demonstrate that the Kingdom of God is present and available through Christ. They were focused on making disciples and were seeing people's lives radically changed as they began to follow Christ, forsaking their loyalty to the world's system. This must be replicated, but the methods change with the context.

So much of the church literature is focused on the how question - how to grow a church, how to lead Bible studies, how to run a children's ministry. These are not bad things to consider. But there is a growing set of literature that focuses on the what question, sometimes even refusing to address the how (which can frustrate readers who just want a "how-to" manual). The first kind of literature compares your church to other modern churches. The second kind of literature compares your church to the First Century Church, but not in technique - just in priorities and commitments.

The question is really this: How well does your church stick to proclaiming and demonstrating the reign of Christ by focusing on personal disciplemaking? Are you seeing the kinds of activities (not necessarily methods) in your church that are written about in the Book of Acts? Are lives being radically changed, or are people merely being pleased with well-run programs?

It's those places where we see a disconnect between our church and the First Century Church's priorities that tell us where to put our energy. Rather than be discouraged by the differences and how we "come up short," be encouraged by seeing clearly how to best improve your church in the most important ways! It doesn't matter if your church is different than the bigger, slicker, better funded church that's serving a totally different context. It does matter if what happened in the First Century Church is rarely happening in your own.

If you're a church leader, it's a simple as "you really do already know what you should do" but as complex as "there's a ton of reading and dialoging you need to do with those further down the road than you."

If you're not a church leader and you don't have leadership pull in your church, the next step is actually pretty simple. Within the church structure you already have, work with likeminded folks to create a pocket of intentional disciplemaking. Start as yeast - you don't need to start a new program, get a logo, design a website, or have a slogan. Just clear your calendar and start making disciples in a small context. Don't worry about big - let big happen.

If you don't know where to start, I'd be happy to talk and suggest some ideas.

Forge KC Cohort

Last week I joined a "cohort." Forge KC and KCSentral have combined efforts to create a cohort for pastors and other church leaders in the KC Metro area to collaborate on the twin tasks of learning and doing, specifically for the goal of leading our churches to live life "on mission." The leaders of the cohort, Brad Brisco and Lance Ford, are also the authors of the workbook a few groups at Grace have been studying, Missional Essentials.

The cohort will read a stack of books and articles together, wrestle with the ideas, work on implementation personally and in our churches, and participate in one-on-one mentoring. We will meet as a group once a month for nine months, but I'm sure friendships and working relationships will last for years to come.

The first meeting was simply introductions - we each had a turn at telling a bit of our stories, especially as they relate to how we got to the point of joining the cohort and what we hoped to gain from it. The stories were rich and the night went quite a bit longer than we had scheduled, just because we didn't want to miss anything about anyone's story.

We also had an assignment that night - to bring some artifacts that represent our contexts. Since we're coming from different parts of the area, from outlying to the 'burbs to the city, we will have different challenges, opportunities, and approaches. I brought two items, which I also used in last Sunday's message. Our context is primarily the 'burbs (although we do have some closer in toward the city and some further out in the open spaces), and the 'burb life provides unique challenges to living missionally. I brought a garage door opener (because we drive into our garages, close the garage, and never have to interact with our neighbors), and a slat from a wooden privacy fence (a guardian of privacy, creator of personal space, and barrier to casual interaction with our neighbors). I didn't have to say what I said - they all knew what I was going to say as soon as I showed those two artifacts.

Most of the members of the cohort had the same kind of story. They had been in church ministry for a while, and by the church culture metrics, they were "successful." But they looked at the New Testament and what was happening in those churches, and then looked at their own "successful" churches, and realized that they weren't making disciples like they read about in Scripture. They were doing good things, but they weren't truly making disciples, and they weren't seeing God move in the lives of their people like we should expect.

And so, one by one, they began a journey that had lead them eventually to this cohort, where we are all asking the question, "How do we best make disciples? And how do we build our churches around this idea?" Some are church planters who want to craft their churches as disciplemakers from the ground up, and others are in present church contexts trying to figure out how to guide a living, moving organism with its own strong momentum more and more towards disciplemaking.

And every single one said something like, "Once I latched onto the idea that our churches should major in disciplemaking, I can never go back."

I don't know where our journey will take us. But I'm excited and enthused, perhaps like never before. I pray that little by little, our focus on disciplemaking will grow in intensity and clarity. No one is going to flip a switch and suddenly change everything we know. But we pray that everything we do will orient with ever-growing fidelity toward making disciples who make disciples.

Three Step Bible Study

This is not the "one ring to rule them all." There are plenty of great ways to study the Bible (and even more really bad ways), so I'm not about to present the one best way that all must follow or be relegated to coach class in heaven. It is one good way. A lot of folks struggle to have a regular Bible study time because they don't have a particular approach they use, so I offer this way as one of many to help us get into a regular habit. When we see success happen, then we no longer have to find motivation - it's already there!

If you've studied Bible study methods, you'll recognize many elements below, perhaps even using different labels and terms.

This approach is simple enough - just three steps. But the order is important. Your rate of success will be orders of magnitude better if you exercise just enough discipline to work on these steps in order. (If a thought jumps at you that is out of order, quickly note it and then come back to the step you were on. You'll come back to that point soon enough and be able to develop it.)

I recommend having your Bible, a notebook, and a pen (or computer) so that you keep all of your notes together. And I do recommend writing (or typing) - there's something about the physical act that helps you ponder your thoughts more thoroughly.

The three steps are Understand, Interpret, and Cultivate. Pick a passage, large or small, read it at least three times, and then begin taking notes.

1. Understand. In this step, you are concerned only with what the text says, not what it means. You're not yet concerned about how it affects you or what to do about it. The only task here is to get a grasp of what the text claims. What do the key words mean? What happened? Who did what? Can I summarize what the passage says in one sentence? What are the main ideas or events? How did people respond? You can't ask all of these questions for every passage, but these are the types of questions to ask. You know you've done a pretty good job if you can succinctly state what the author intended to say (and the author intended to say one thing!).
2. Interpret. Now we talk about meaning (but not how it applies to our lives, yet). For example, what the author said could be "God's right arm" - that's the Understand section. That's what the author said. Now for Interpret, what does this mean? Does it refer to a literal arm? In this case, no - it refers to God's power (which brings victory). Is the author being literal or figurative? Is he being sarcastic? What is the main point? Is he telling us what did happen or is he giving us an example to follow? The parable was about three guys who got some money from their boss and did different stuff with it (Understand), but what is the parable teaching us (Interpret)? You know you've interpreted well when you can succinctly state what the author meant by what he said (and the author meant one thing!).
3. Cultivate. Finally, we talk about how this text affects our lives. How is this text intended to cultivate us into a stronger followers of Jesus? We often talk about application - how the text applies to our lives, but we want to go further than application. How do I learn to obey what this passage says? What does God want me to do or say or think? How does my following Jesus deepen in response to this passage? How can I cultivate this truth into someone else's life? How is this passage like nourishment for growth? You know you've cultivated well when your life actually changes to be more like what the text teaches. I would venture that we don't truly understand a passage until our lives reflect it.

Note that the author's context must be considered to Interpret, and our context must be considered to Cultivate. We should not, for example, take an Old Testament passage about the covenant with Israel and just assume we're supposed to do the exact same thing - like sacrifice a goat!

When I study a passage for my own devotional life, I use this pattern in my notes, whether the passage is large or small. I often try to study a paragraph or a distinct unit, such as a full parable, instead of just a couple of verses or an really long section. It's perfectly OK just to list questions without answers, by the way!

My notes often look something like this brief example:

Passage: John 3:16 (NET)

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Understand

• Who is speaking? Is this a continuation of Jesus' dialog from vv. 10-15, or is this now John giving us his understanding as the author?
• "this is the way" - Some translations have "For God so loved...", but that sounds like quantity, not manner. This phrase is referring to the manner in which God loves us.
• "world" - Who is the "world"? Every person? The rebellious "world" that we're not supposed to love (1 John 2:15)?
• "perish" - What kind of perishing is included here?
• ... and so on ...

Interpret

• Note that God expresses His great love by an act of giving, and that this giving is complete. He did not withhold anything in this gift - He gave us Christ completely, as evidenced by His death on the cross.
• He gave us His Son for a specific outcome - belief that results in eternal life.
• Is this believing a pure act of will or is it the inevitable action for the elect (how Calvinistic is this passage)?
• When does this eternal life begin?
• ... and so on ...

Cultivate

• How can I love as God loves? How can I love by giving Christ to others as the Father gave us Christ?
• How can I demonstrate that love this week?!? (It's best to actually list something specific here!)
• Who do I know that will perish because they do not believe? Who of these people will I see today? This week?
• ... and so on ...

Devotional books and study guides are often very helpful, but I much prefer that we interact with the text directly on a regular basis. (It can be helpful to refer to these other materials after interacting with the text on your own.) A simple tool such as this one can be used by beginners as well as lifelong students.