Discipling When You Need to Be Discipled

[Ed. Note: For more articles like this one, check out the latest 9Marks Journal on Discipling in the Church.]

I was not sure what discipling was supposed to look like, but I was certain it did not look like what I was doing.

“I must have it all backwards,” I thought as I closed the door behind the poor sister who had given up an hour of her life to come and be discipled.

“I am a mess. I have no idea what I’m doing here. There certainly wasn’t any ‘teaching’ going on with my crazy hooligan children and my heart in a bad place toward my husband. I shouldn’t be teaching anyone. I’m the one who needs discipling! God, what would you have me do?”

I mumbled all this half aloud as I walked back into the kitchen to finish making dinner.

FINDING STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

Little did I know how God would use this situation, along with many other similar ones, to teach me a great deal about his purposes in my life. Little did I know how God would turn my weaknesses into strength. During this season my husband and I, both in our thirties, found ourselves thrust into the category of “older people” in our church. I searched for a woman who might be able to encourage me spiritually as we muddled through some challenging times, but God had other plans.

Instead of granting this desire, he grew my passion for discipling. Gradually I learned that it was less about me doing the right thing and more about me obeying God’s command to “teach the younger women” (Tit. 2:4). I found God frequently brought women into my life who were younger in either age or spiritual maturity and who were desperate for someone to help them learn how to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:4-9).    Continue at Erin Wheeler

Loving Fellow Strugglers

Remember, not all counseling is specifically sin-related in a personal sense, but some certainly is. The love-motivated efforts of brothers and sisters in Christ to help one another overcome sin is the focus of this post.

While some of these sin-related counseling situations are initiated by counselees when they finally recognize they are trapped and cannot get out of sin’s bondage without help, other counseling relationships are initiated by biblical counselors as a result of observing foolish choices or sinful life patterns in brothers or sisters in Christ. Whether or not the ensnared brothers or sisters see that they are in bondage is not the issue. Love initiates the restoration of strugglers to a place of fellowship and blessing. William Goode, long-time pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Lafayette, Indiana and founder of Faith Baptist Counseling Ministry, compellingly writes that “to consider counseling an optional ministry is to withhold biblical love at the time it is needed most in the believer’s life—when he or she is in trouble … we must be about the business of restoring rather than ignoring such Christians … Believers will never become like Christ if they are not winning the battle against sin in their lives and investing themselves in the lives of others. And there can be no discipling if there is no plan to help the disciple who gets into trouble.”

Galatians 6:1–5 provides such a plan. Take some time to meditate on this passage of Scripture and its implications for loving one-another ministry. If you are part of a small group then dedicate one of your meeting times to discussing this Scripture and its implications for Christian community.  Continue at Paul Tautges