As we began to cover last week, our basic mandate as Christians is recorded in Matthew 28:18-20:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

“teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

          One of the tragic failures of Christianity has been the devotion to making converts in place of disciples. When the body of Christ recovers this basic mandate, it will arise and mature into all that it has been called to be. That day is now at hand.

          All Christians are called to be disciples, but only a small percentage actually are according to the Lord’s definition of a disciple. If you are reading something like this Word for the Week, you are likely to at least be heading in the right direction because you are obviously devoted to doing more to know the Lord and His purposes. That is a good beginning, but we want to thoroughly explore the Lord’s own definition of a disciple and make that the primary devotion of our life, which is basic to being His disciple.

          Those who are the most successful in any field are those who do the basics best. To be a disciple of Christ, we want the foundation to be right. If the foundation is not level and strong, the higher we go the greater the danger of collapse.

          The foundation of this discipleship is that we are called to be disciples of Christ, not other Christians. My devotion to fulfilling The Great Commission by making disciples is for them to be His disciples, not mine. There is a place for mentorship, but the true friend of the Bridegroom is to prepare the bride for the King, seeking to have her grow in her love for Him and getting closer to Him, not us.

          What good is the most glorious temple if God is not in it? If God is in His temple, it will not be the temple that gets the attention regardless of how glorious it might be. If we, the temple of the Lord, are getting the attention, then we must consider that His glory is not in us. The temple exists for the Lord, not the other way around. Our goal is to be a worthy habitation for the Lord and to so manifest Him that people do not even notice us. However, we will not become this in one step, and He knows this, which is why we are disciples, students who must learn, and then apply what we learn.

          We will endeavor to keep as our goal that when people meet us, they leave closer to the Lord than to us. If we are a pastor, a home group leader, or functioning in any ministry, our goal must be to point people to Jesus and bond them together with Him, not us. When we share the great things of God that we learn, it is to compel people to love and be in awe of Him, not our knowledge of Him.

          John the Baptist was the greatest of all transitional ministries. Jesus called him “the greatest man ever born of woman” (see Matthew 11:11) and he reflects the path to the greatest achievement we can have on this earth—to prepare the way for the Lord, to point to Him, and to be willing to decrease as He increases in the lives of those we have pointed to Him. Our goal for every disciple is for them to grow to the place where they no longer need us because they have their own relationship with Him.

          This is going to be a great year. My prayer for you is that it will be your best year yet—that this year you will get much closer to the Lord than you have ever been. That would make this the most successful year we have ever had. Let’s have a holy competition to see who will be the best student in His class, and do it in a way that infects everyone we come in contact with so that they have the same desire.