It's About Listening and Obeying

Jesus said making disciples means training people to obey all his commands. From that I extrapolate this simple idea: the central job of a disciple is to listen to Jesus and do what he says to do.

Like many pastors I have implemented complicated programs for discipleship. Many of them have never produced many disciples. One reason is I did not make obedience to Jesus the central goal. The problem wasn't the programs - many of them are excellent resources created by excellent people. The problem was ignoring obedience.

Of course, obeying Jesus is not a legalistic thing - it is a dynamic, Spirit led and Spirit empowered thing. Christ is in us and through his presence and power we are able to live the kind of life he calls us to live as we listen to him and do what he tells us to do. That's discipleship and that's the goal of disciplemaking.