Why Discipleship is Important

Jesus’s ministry was fulfilled on earth through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit and through discipleship. The gospels are full of the miracles, signs, and wonders that were displayed and caused the masses to follow Him. But His ministry didn’t just consist of displaying miracles. It consisted heavily of multiplying Himself among a few people.

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

Matthew 9:35-37

Jesus’s Method

Multitudes of people did not come to Jesus because He was handing out free hot dogs or because He was a great speaker. The masses came to Jesus because He healed all diseases. Jesus never had a problem attracting the masses. I believe that if the Church of Jesus Christ stops relying on Facebook ads or bulletin boards and starts relying on the power of the Holy Spirit that brings about signs, wonders, and miracles, then we will also reach the masses for Jesus. 

Jesus used miracles and signs to draw people to Him. When we see this in Scripture, we aren’t just catching a glance at a method He used but at a representation of God’s goodness and love for people. God still uses miracles to love and care for people and to destroy the works of darkness.

Real ministry work is not organizing a Sunday service. It’s populating heaven, plundering hell, and doing the work that Jesus did to reach the masses.

Jesus didn’t only reach multitudes; Jesus made disciples and because of that when Christ died His ministry and agenda took off. 

Multiplying Through Discipleship

I met with our pastoral team recently and asked them all, “If we all left tomorrow, would our ministry explode or disappear within some months?” This question left us all really questioning our direction. The truth is that most of us are better at gathering crowds than building an army.

I believe the Lord wants us to do both. He wants us to have supernatural miracles that accompany the preaching of the Word, but also to have a strategic focus on multiplying ourselves in other people. That way, we are ensuring that we’re not just having a revival here and now but we are planting seeds into the revival for the next generations.

You are not maturing if you don’t multiply.

Today there is a demonic agenda of indoctrination focused specifically on perverting the younger generations. People give money to mutilate, indoctrinate, and confuse children because they know that if they have the minds of the young, they’ll have the future.

Miracles For Masses Strategy

Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures not the power of God.

Matthew 22:29

When the church loses the desire for God to move with supernatural power amongst them, a huge mistake is made.

When we look at the Church we see that it has two extremes. The first extreme is cessationism which believes that God has ended all miracles and stopped doing them. They claim that the Bible is written and complete and therefore we no longer need miracles. However, we see all around us that people are still sick and God is still powerful.

The other extreme is the “charis-maniacs” who have made the gospel into a sensation. They believe experiencing God is the only goal of existence, instead of it being a way to experience God so they can lead others to know Him also. We need a healthy balance where we combine God’s supernatural work with Jesus’s strategy to communicate the love of God to people for the purpose of salvation and making disciples. 

The Power Of Multiplication

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happens, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.

Exodus 1:10

The devil will fight every church so that they don’t desire to see the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit and instead, get used to seeing only the things that can be explained rationally. And the moment the church is seeing the move of the Holy Spirit, then the enemy will fight the church so it does not multiply and grows. We can see this in the example of Pharaoh. He was afraid of multiplication because multiplication leads to multitudes and multitudes means might. 

Adam was instructed in the beginning to “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). Something happens when the church begins to multiply; we become a force to be reckoned with. We begin to infiltrate society like salt and light and we begin to shift and change things in our communities. This is what the devil is afraid of. If he can fill us with traditional teachings that claim that we no longer need miracles, signs, and wonders, then he will make sure that we don’t see multiplication and discipleship being done. 

The devil will throw everything at you so that you don’t multiply, thus ensuring him of the future.

We must understand that whoever has disciples has the future. Whoever has our children has the future. This vision is for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. We want to spread the message of our King Jesus as far and deep as we possibly can. 

What Discipleship Means at the Core

1. Loving God means obeying His commandments. Jesus clearly stated to us that the first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul. Jesus wants us to obey His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome. The Great Commission is not a great suggestion, it is a command that He makes to all believers.
2. Loving people means having compassion for their souls. Oftentimes, in order to love somebody, we have to deny ourselves. The ultimate goal is not to just get more people into church but to love people by having compassion on their souls. We show this love by telling other people about Jesus. 
3. Winning souls and making disciples are part of spiritual growth. This is the natural process of growth: You’re Born (Hospital), You Belong (Home), You Build (School), and You Become (Adults). Growing up is hard but it is part of maturity–both natural and spiritual. 
4. Winning souls and making disciples is being faithful with what we were given. Matthew 25:16,22 says, “Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents… His Lord said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
5. We are given the power of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of conquering the world for Jesus (Acts 1:8). This is what it is all about. it’s about us living our Christian lives outside of the church and not just being good citizens for the sake of it but with the purpose of winning souls. We have the perfect opportunity to have a generation after us that will do greater things than we ever imagined. But for that to happen, we have to be intentional about disciple-making.