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Q. What's the problem with many discipling efforts?

A. Jesus didn't tell Nicodemus that he needed to be rebuilt; he told him that he must be reborn.

A lot of us treat discipleship as if we were brought into the world with missing parts. It's as if babies are born with only their heads, and maybe six months later they'll develop necks and bodies. Two years later they'll finally have arms and legs. And by the age of five, those cute little fingers and toes begin to pop out.

But we all know it doesn't work like this. A healthy adult's two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, one nose were all there at the beginning and were nurtured to adulthood. It's the same in the spiritual journey. What we'll become is all in the DNA. The spiritual equivalent of arms and legs, heart, essential organs, and brain, is there from the beginning; it just needs to be nurtured, developed, and optimized.

The capacity to live out a radical minimum standard is within every genuine follower of Jesus Christ. If you hadn't walked in 20 years, your legs would be atrophied from their lack of use. If you spent your whole life being fed by someone else, your manual dexterity would remain underdeveloped; your ability to use your hands, both for work and for art, would be painfully limited. But the capacity and the potential would still be there.

To make disciples isn't to add a second, a third, and a fourth floor. It is to nurture what is already there and to allow it to grow naturally.

Erwin Raphael McManus pastors Mosaic, a Los Angeles congregation.

Adapted from An Unstoppable Force (Group Publishing, Box 481, Loveland, CO 80539, www.grouppublishing.com, 2001)

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, don't let me accept staying stunted; give me the desire to develop into a solid disciple.

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