Ask Jesus your questions

5. Will I be alone if I follow?

• Absolutely not! Jesus was not in the business of developing solo performers. He was in the initial stages of building a church. And the church would provide an alternative to a dominant culture marked by cruelty and injustice, exploitation and greed, and more death. There was a new community to be established; the original twelve were the prototype.
• We ae not talking disciple (singular); we’re talking disciples (plural). A community has a way of life, ethics and morals, disciplines, and goals. And a community, whether it realizes it or not, has something of a covenant: how it will pursue relationships in harmony and encourage the best from one another.
• Rugged individualism would not work here. These men were never sent to do anything alone. They learned to work in pairs, in teams, in groups. Interdependence was encouraged; mercy and grace in times of failure and conflict were the order of the day. By the time the Master was through with them, these 12 individuals were a community, ready to offer leadership in the shaping of a considerably larger community. Their performance in Acts proves it.

A modern disciple must ask: Am I prepared to get along with folks who are considerably different from me? Am I ready to receive appreciation, encouragement, rebuke, and correction? Will I be open to learn how to forgive, how to repent, how to submit? Will I be a welcomer of strangers of people who are different than me. People from different cultural backgrounds with different worldviews. It may be that we are not prepared for discipleship if we are not prepared to learn the lessons and disciplines of community.

There are no solo disciples in the life of the Lord. Genuine discipleship is confirmed by the way a man or woman knows how to connect with brothers and sisters. Only then does the world “know that you are [Christ’s] disciples” (Jn. 13:35).

Without such a community, a disciple just isn’t a complete disciple.

6. What happens when I fall flat on my face? Will You reject me?

• Looking at the many times the original disciples fell short of reasonable expectations will quickly remind any would-be disciple that the process of development includes disappointment.
• If Jesus ever grew discouraged over the twelve, we don’t hear about it. It sounds as if there was some occasional anger but not impatience. He recognized what we often do not: that the way to Christian maturity is paved with a thousand mistakes. We tend to write one another off and continue on our self-righteous way. Not our Lord. He never gave up!

It might be smart to take this self-examination: Am I prepared to be stretched to the point of inadequacy? To play with pain? To seem the fool? To get in over my head? But from such experiences come champions of the kingdom variety. Tough, conditioned, wise champions.

Without the humility learned through failure and errors, a disciple isn’t really a complete disciple.

7. Where will I find the power to be and do what You ask of me?

Of all the things Jesus did in the company of the twelve, this seems the most incredible: He took a group of men who showed relatively little promise and delegated to them the mission of world evangelization.

• “Jesus, do something!” One sees them scrambling to the back of the boat in the midst of a storm they were supposed to handle (at least some of them). “Do something!” is their cry to the Lord.
• “Jesus, do something!” You see them wringing their hands because they are unable to rebuke a demon in the life of a small boy. Again: “Do something!”
• But at the other end of the discipleship journey, Jesus would say, “You do something!” (Like:
  “disciple the nations”!).
• With that challenge (and this is the answer to the question) comes the promise of the energy of His Spirit. In this case the spirit is the Holy Spirit, and if this Spirit were upon the disciples (a storm-stilling, demon-rebuking, life-changing Spirit), then preaching to crowds on Pentecost, healing the sick, bringing the church to the nations would not be an impossibility.
• Would-be disciples of modern times need to be reminded that education, talent, and charisma have relatively little value in the kingdom. These qualities are indeed helpful to possess, but without the inner dynamic energy of the Spirit of Jesus, they are useless when it comes to doing work with an eternal purpose.
• Without the inner work of the Holy Spirit, a disciple is not a complete disciple.

8. What are the risks of following You?

• Jesus didn’t tell the twelve everything at once. The deeper teaching on Christ-like growth, the implications of a worldwide mission, and ultimate martyrdom were presented in direct proportion to the maturity of the disciples.
• He put no greater burden on them than they were prepared to bear. If He’d told them everything right at the start, my sense is that most of them would have bailed out. It took some time to go from “Follow me” to “When you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (Jn. 21:18). Words like these wait until a person has done some growing up at the soul level.

But the answer to the question was always there for those who wanted to face it: How risky? You will die for Me.

It sounds like disciples are dying in Christ’s name almost every day around the world. If “dying” is enlarged to include careers lost, high incomes because of other priorities, friends lost, and security seemingly uncertain, then maybe the dying has started here and there already.

Of this we can be sure, apart from the willingness to follow Him into death, a disciple isn’t a complete disciple!