| Issues: Seeing an example, observing the need, achieving success-all this can motivate us in the work of helping others grow as disciples. But better motivations are: •the love of God filling our heart •our own desire to grow •God’s word embraced in our mind •our longing to see God glorified.  Looking back on my days of child-rearing, I can see that some things I designed to motivate my children had exactly the opposite effect. Our attempts to motivate others in the Christian life can be just as ineffective. We can teach and train them, but only the Holy Spirit can truly motivate them to a lifetime of discipleship and disciplemaking. We need this motivation. It is too easy to sit in our offices and homes doing everything we can in life except the hard work of disciplemaking. But once we have it, this motivation can be lost. Many people who were motivated early in life to be disciplemakers are not motivated now. A man who led the campus ministry I was involved in as a university student impressed me as one of the most spiritual men I ever met. But years later he told me he was convinced nothing was important in his life except television and sex. One of the other men who was on the same disciplemaking team is now a university teacher in a foreign country, where he leads the communist party on his campus. Paul wrote near the end of his life that his disciple Demas had deserted him “because he loved this world�?( 2 Timothy 4:10 ). And Jesus said that in the last times, “most people’s love will grow cold�?( Matthew 24:12 ). You are probably motivated to be an instrument in God’s hands in the lives of others, but from Jesus�?words we see that the world is a deepfreeze to numb that desire. All of Satan’s schemes are designed to keep you and me from carrying out a lifetime of disciplemaking. What will motivate us to continue? An example-seeing someone else make disciples-is one motivation. Albert Schweitzer said setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, but the only means. I wouldn’t say it quite that strongly, but it is a powerful means. I remember hearing Billy Graham at a meeting in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1953. I had just attended a week-long conference where we heard Dawson Trotman speak throughout the week. I had been greatly touched by Daws’s love for people. After Billy Graham concluded his message and gave the invitation for people to come forward, I spotted Daws down on the field in a white cowboy outfit. He was like a field general, confidently directing the people to the counselors ready to help them. I was sitting on the fifty-yard line, about sixty rows up, watching him work. Then I saw him glance at the sidelines where an elderly lady was sitting in a wheelchair, apparently waiting on someone. Daws called for an assistant to take over his job, and he went over to her, took her hand, then reached in his pocket and pulled out a New Testament. He knelt beside her, read a few verses of Scripture, and prayed with her. Then he got up, patted her on the hand, and returned to the field to resume his job. That example has stayed with me ever since to remind me what it means to have a heart for people. When I was a high school senior, a university student who had preached at our church called me up from his university, which was hundreds of miles from my home. He asked me to come with him on a weekend ministry trip to a church just an hour north of his university. I asked how I would get there, and he said he would come get me. So after his Friday afternoon classes he drove to my home�?and got there after midnight. Early the next morning we left on the drive to the church, and all weekend I watched him minister to people. He drove me back home Sunday night, arriving about one o’clock in the morning. I was sleeping on the way so I could get up and go to school the next morning. He drove the rest of the night to get back to the university in time for his classes. He drove a total of eighteen hours that weekend, instead of only two, just so he could spend time with me in the car traveling, and let me watch him minister to people. I’ll never forget that. Examples really do motivate. A second thing that motivates us in disciplemaking is seeing needs. Years ago a man old enough to be my father came up to me and said he wanted to know how to get some discipleship help in his life. I hemmed and hawed, because in our ministry we were working only with college students, and I didn’t know anyone else who could help him. But he was persistent, and I saw the tremendous hunger and desire he had. So for about six months I got up at 4:30 every Monday morning and drove about an hour to his house to spend time with him and another man. I did it simply because of his hunger, the need he expressed in his life. Success will also motivate us. For twelve years my wife and I had as many as seven young men and women at a time living in our home to receive training from us. My main ministry was simply giving myself to them. These men and women have gone on to serve ministries not only in the United States but also in Austria, Canada, Argentina, Korea, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Nigeria. It is so exciting for my wife and I to think how it really does pay to share your life and home with others. Seeing an example, seeing the needs, and seeing success-these can all motivate us. But I believe none of these is adequate. All of them can fail us. If they are our only motivation, the white heat of devotion to disciplemaking will wane. The most important motivation for a lifetime of disciplemaking is having our hearts flooded with God’s love. Paul wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all�?( 2 Corinthians 5:14 ). It has been said that no one can love another until he first has been loved himself. If each of us knew how much God really loves us, we would be enraptured with joy and would never know another insecure moment. We would be truly free to love others. Our problem is that, on our own, we don’t have that overwhelming sense of how much God loves us. But God has done something about this, as we see in Romans 5:3-5 �?/DIV> We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us-they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it, until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady. Then we are able to hold our heads high no matter what happens, and know that all is well. For we know how dearly God loves us, and we feel this warm love everywhere within us because God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (from The Living Bible) The Holy Spirit must reveal to us how much God loves us. Then our insecurities will begin fading, and we can freely let our lives overflow to other people. A second thing that should motivate us in disciplemaking is the desire to grow ourselves. Paul wrote to the Romans, I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong-that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. ( Romans 1:11-12 ) Paul longed to be personally involved in building them up as disciples, but this would also be for his own growth an encouragement. I doubt that the person who thinks he has everything packaged for establishing and equipping disciples will ever continue in a lifetime of disciplemaking. But someone who wants to grow knows he must listen and learn. A third thing that should motivate us is God’s word burning in our hearts. Sooner or later all of us will go through tough times. Jeremiah was going through such a time as recorded in Jeremiah 20:7-9 , and he responded this way: I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,�?his word is in my heart like a burning fire�? The word of God burning in our hearts will keep us going. I know a man named Hubert Mitchell who several years ago completed memorizing the entire New Testament. As a former missionary in his sixties, he spent his days in downtown Chicago, going from office building to office building. Inside he would ask secretaries if he could have five minutes with their boss to talk about a personal matter. Frequently he would be ushered into the boss’s office, and he would say, “I only have five minutes, but I want to ask you, did you read your Bible before you came to work this morning?�?/DIV> The boss would look at him as if he were crazy, and say, “No.�?/DIV> Hubert would smile and answer, “Sir, you sure missed a blessing, didn’t you? I’d just like to share with you what God spoke about to me in the Bible this morning.�?He would open a New Testament and hand it to the boss, and say, “Let’s start right here.�?Then Hubert would sit back and start quoting it word-for-word. The boss would listen, amazed. After five minutes, Hubert would say, “My time’s up and I’ve got to go. Wasn’t that a blessing?�?On most occasions the boss would ask him to stay longer, and they would talk. Hubert Mitchell led men to Christ all over downtown Chicago that way, because God’s word was burning in his heart. A fourth thing that should motivate us, a very important thing, is the desire to see God glorified. This can be tricky because, as one Christian leader told me several years ago, there is so much in Christian leadership that caters to personality needs in the leader’s life that it’s hard for him to know what his motives are. We can get into all kinds of introspection and psychological confusion by spending too much time wondering about our motives. But at some point early in the game we need to settle the matter: “God, I’m going to do this for your glory as best I know how. If I ever start doing it for my glory, will you tap me on the shoulder before I go too far?�?/DIV> When others are looking to you for leadership, if you’re not careful you can begin to let that meet a security need in your life. If you’re building disciples who will lean on Christ and not on you, then you know your motive is God’s glory—though there may be a time when they must lean on you to a certain degree. A few years ago, in a press conference following a ceremony in which Corrie Ten Boom was given an honorary degree, one of the reporters asked her if it was difficult remaining humble while hearing so much acclaim. She replied immediately, “Young man, when Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, and everyone was waving palm branches and throwing garments in the road and singing praises, do you think that for one moment it ever entered the head of that donkey that any of that was for him?�?/DIV> She continued, “If I can be the donkey on which Jesus Christ rides in his glory, I give him all the praise and all the honor.�?/DIV> Our hearts should be clear about doing what we do because we want Christ to be glorified. These are the right motivations that will keep us in disciplemaking over the years: God’s love, the desire in our own hearts to keep growing, God’s word burning within us, and a sincere desire to see God glorified. What can take away our motivation? One thing that will is becoming system-centered rather than God-centered. There’s a fine line here. I believe a lot of people are not making disciples because they don’t have a system and they don’t know what to do. But if you take structure too far, God gets pushed out of the picture. That’s what happened to the Pharisees. They memorized the Scriptures, but there was no passion coming from their lives, and the disciples they made were disciples of a system rather than disciples of God. Jesus said, “They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men�?( Mark 7:7 ). Presbyterian pastor and author Richard Halverson was asked what he would say if he could give only one piece of advice to someone going into the Christian ministry. He answered, “Don’t get professional. There is no vocation in the world where it’s easier to become a stuffed shirt than the Christian ministry.�?/DIV> Jesus warned us about another crippler of our motivation in Mark 4:19 —“the worries of this life�?that come in and choke God’s word and make it unfruitful. This anxiety means we’re self-conscious rather than God-conscious or others-conscious. I’ve found as my responsibilities increased over the years that one of the greatest temptations keeping me from giving myself to other people at opportune moments is my preoccupation with a decision I need to make or a problem I need to solve. But God’s word tells us to cast our anxieties on him. Jesus also said the “deceitfulness of wealth�?will choke the word. The leader of a large mission agency said they were appalled at how prominently the issues of salary and benefits and retirement plans are mentioned in inquiries from young applicants coming out of Bible schools and seminaries. Lust will also derail us. Before I moved to Africa in 1967, a man came up to me at a conference with lines in his face disclosing years of physical and emotional hardship. He said he had been around Dawson Trotman and other in the war years, but then began running out on his wife and giving himself to money and possessions. He later lost his wife and his health. He said his last twenty years had been hell. His lust had knocked him out of a life of disciplemaking. I’ll never forgetthe look on his face. Don’t let something like that happen to you. Ask God to let his Holy Spirit flood your heart with his love, to show you how much he loves you so you can turn to others and love them. And make this vow to him: ‘Lord, I know I’m human and I’ll break this vow before tomorrow morning without your grace. But to the best of my ability for the rest of my life, I will do what I can for your glory.�?/DIV> Ask the Lord also to help you respond in faith to his word, with excitement and obedience. And finally, ask God to send someone or some experience to get your attention whenever you begin to veer off course, so you can correct yourself before it’s too late. I can’t think of a better prayer than this: “Lord, on the day you return or on the day you take me home, may there never have been a day in my life when I loved you more or was obeying you more quickly than on that last day.�?/DIV>
About the Author Jim White oversees Navigator ministries in the western United States.
On Your Own At this point in your life, what gives you the strongest motivation to help others become disciples of Christ? Illustration by Cathy Morrison |
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