Discipleship: The Middle Man

When I first created this blog a few months ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve never even attempted to take the ways God speaks to me in prayer and formulate actual sentences. If you’re anything like me, your personal prayer is probably far from the most beautiful and eloquent conversations you’ve ever had. That’s the beauty of God and His willingness to have a personal relationship with each of us. He doesn’t expect every prayer you offer up to be presented perfectly. He wants honesty. He wants you in your most raw and tangible form.

This brought up a lot of questions for me when I created this blog. Why would God place this desire on me when I rarely knew what to say in private to Him? How could I possibly translate my nonsensical conversation with Him into a way to glorify His kingdom publicly? I've spent many nights pondering this since my last blog post. During this time, I was reflecting on the URL I choose: venisancte-spiritus. It translates from Latin as “Come, Holy Spirit”. During my reflection, I learned that this name choice was no accident. God was very clearly telling me that this blog is not about how I can glorify His kingdom, but how He can use me to glorify His kingdom.

Mark Hart, the executive vice-president of Life Teen International, tweeted, “I need to quit trying to be the painter...and just rejoice that I get to be a brush.” From the first time I read this quote, I fell in love with it. How true is it? For those of us who have boldly announced Christ as our Savior and are living each day for Him, we’re also on mission for Him. Once you know Christ’s love, you want everyone to experience it. That’s great. But if you’re anything like me, you often get in your own way. Even worse, you get in God’s way. Growing up, society tells us that if we want to get anything done, we have to do it ourselves. That do-it-yourself mentality can hinder our ability to be on mission for Christ. We’re exclaiming our love for the Lord, but we fail to bring Him with us when we evangelize. Instead, we focus on our strengths versus our weaknesses and the areas we need to improve, without welcoming Him into that area.

In some respect, I like to think of myself as the middle man when it comes to discipleship. Yes, I’m the one engaging in conversations with others, but it’s God who’s really doing the work. As Mark said, I shouldn't try to be the painter. I should rejoice that I get to be a brush because I've given Him my yes.

I want to challenge all of us to do three things: First, welcome Christ into your evangelization process. Allow Him to mold you and shape you as you enter into the lives of new people who need to see His love in your actions and your words. Second, get out of God’s way. Instead of focusing on doing it all yourself, remember that you’re not the painter. With that, don’t think you can do it all and don’t put pressure on yourself to do it all. Finally, pray. Your conversations with Christ may seem like gibberish to you sometimes. That’s okay. If you’re giving Him your time, He will help you grow and He will tell you the ways you can become a better disciple.

You will all be in my prayers as you learn to grow in your discipleship. Please also keep me in yours. As followers of Christ, we’re all in this together. None of us has it all figured out which makes praying with and for each other so vitally important.

Praying for you as you pray for me.