In the blanks below write the two most significant statements in today’s reading assignment. Be prepared to discuss why the statements you chose were significant to you.
“…‘the biggest day’ of our lives… will be the day when we all stand up before Jesus Christ to give an account of our usefulness to him during this earthly pilgrimage.
“May we too be driven by a passion to delight our God, by preparing for him another generation of God-loving, Word-filled, and ministry-minded disciple-makers who can stand before him and hear ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.’”
How would you rate your spiritual progress as a disciple of Christ?
a. I must admit that I am in ‘The Rebel Broken’ stage. I still have not established self denial as a basic lifestyle for myself. I regularly fight God about many things. “60-75%”
b. I am in ‘The Disciple Trained’ stage. I really don’t resist God very much anymore. I am letting him increase my usefulness to him as he daily purges me a fleshly indulgence, chaos, and confusion. He is doing this by demanding obedience to law and submission to order. “5-15%”
c. I am in The Servant Deployed stage. God is using me as a servant-leader in the lives of others. I have much to learn, but I am excited about the spiritual influence He has given me with others. “5-10%”
Why are mission teams such good discipleship tools for the local church?
“They help the participants to stop thinking about themselves and to start giving themselves in service for Christ.”
What is a servant-leader?
“someone who leads others by their examples as they selflessly serve others (as Jesus did).”
Dearest Rachel –
As I’ve said so many times before, I’ve no idea how time flows for you on the other side of what we perceive here as reality. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that “biggest day” already, and now you’re free to go anywhere and anywhen throughout this and other dimensions of God’s creation (thereby hopefully allowing you the occasional moment to keep up with me and others in your memory of the grain of cosmic sand you once called home), or if your spirit sleeps until the moment the apostle Paul speaks of when the trumpet blows and we all rise up to face Him.
Either way, I imagine we all deal with that “biggest day” on our own, face to face with our Lord. I tend to think that He’ll say the same thing to each of us, but that the punctuation and emphasis will differ between us: “Well done!” has a vast difference in tone to “Well… [you’re] done.” For my part, I expect something closer to the latter myself.
For that matter, it would seem that you did too, in your answer regarding your spiritual progress. It’s interesting that you were instructed to check one of the three options, but were wise enough to recognize that you weren’t any one of those all the time. On the other hand, you considered yourself a rebellious child far more often than you were a trained disciple, let alone a trusted servant. I do wonder if this wasn’t a spiritual version of the Dunning-Krueger effect, where those most attuned to what God wants of us realize best as to how any efforts we make on His behalf are as miniscule as those which we effect in order to save ourselves before coming to lean on Him for our salvation.
That being said – and I don’t know how to tell you this, honey, given that you minored in math for your first couple of years at university – the ranges you give for each stage in your spiritual walk don’t add up to a hundred percent until you touch the upper limit on each of them. Not sure what that was supposed to mean, or where any extra slice of the pie would have been allocated to. I suppose if you were here to personally explain this, we could have had a good (if possibly rueful on your part) chuckle about this – especially since, like you, I don’t think I’m anywhere close to ‘having arrived’ to where I ought to be on this continuum.
It’s interesting, too, to see your brief take on missions only a couple of weeks after getting back from a trip of my own, especially after having issues with that volume we were assigned to read (although as I mentioned at the time, I started in the wrong place in the book; I wasn’t meant to examine the section I came to disagree with). Such efforts are meant to aid the people and places we go to, of course, but they’re also (if peripherally) going to change the hearts of those who go in a way that merely contributing financially couldn’t do.
And as for the description of the “servant-leader” – the polar opposite of Plato’s “philosopher-king” concept – just the title alone is enough to make one realize how far one has to go in order to be what God wants of one. Even the idea of being ‘selfless’ in these efforts sits there on the page like a challenge, like a dare… and I look at it, knowing how selfish I am, and how I don’t belong in that role that, presumably, we’re all called to be at some point in our lives or another.
It leaves me conceding that I need all the help I can get to become that person – sometimes, even just to want to become that person – and all I seem to be able to do is to ask that you nudge me in that direction as you keep your eye on me, and wish me well. I hope you – and He – can be pleased with the results, but I’m certainly not there yet.
Letters to Rachel 