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Sep 30, 2024 18:00pm

Parents, Discipleship Isn’t All That Hard

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A Stand Firm Parents Article

First off, the title says ‘discipleship isn’t all that hard’, but I’m sure you’re like me you have heard the Biblical call to make disciples as you’re reading the Bible or through a sermon and the mission seems overwhelming. Honestly, it seems like something only the “elite Christians” can do—only professional missionaries or pastors. I have spent most of my Christian life feeling that way and, promise you won’t tell anyone, but I’ve felt like that deep down for much of my pastoral ministry. Obviously, the Great Commission commands us to be disciple-makers but the task is daunting— an impossible mountain to climb. I still have days when I get overwhelmed with the task, but over the last few years the Lord has been helping me see the possibility that discipleship isn’t as hard as we’ve made it. If this is the first Stand Firm Parents article you’ve read then you might be wondering why a parenting blog is talking about discipleship—well, that’s because, as I wrote in an earlier article, parents are disciple-makers. We’re called to disciple our children. That is what raising our children in the Lord is—it’s discipleship.

I have found it helpful to define Christian parenting as discipling—it gives a clearer purpose. Though it may help us define our parenting objective—the struggle becomes the questions such as what should we teach them, how do we teach them, when do we, how do we help them live it out, and are we even capable or worthy to do such a thing? All of these questions can make being a disciple-making parent a daring task, but as I find myself saying often in my podcast, we’re already discipling our children whether we’ve labeled what we do as such or are intentionally doing so. Our children are picking up our brand of Christianity— they’re seeing what Jesus means to us and how worthy we portray Him with our lives.

We’re role modeling what it means to follow Jesus to them.

Again, if you’re like me, I’m not happy with what I’m portraying which sometimes is due to me hitting autopilot in life and not trying and there are other times when I’m trying too hard.

If we’re already discipling then it becomes not about learning how to disciple, but a need to assess what we’re projecting from our following of Jesus to them.

A recent guest on my podcast, Daphne Kirk of Generation 2 Generation which is located in the UK, said that we disciple our kids into our passions. She recounted a conference in Brazil where she said this,

We were in Brazil, and I’d been asked to speak on a section in a conference called Disciple Your Children. So, before we started and when we got there…I said, ‘Okay, how many of you like football?‘

Now before you get carried away with this football thing—I mean British football…all these hands went up.

Yeah. They love football and Brazil loves football. So, then I said, ‘How many have children who love football?’ And they’re all shouting. ‘Yes.’ And the hands are up and they’re standing up. Then I said, ‘How many of you have children who support the same football team?’ And again, they’re all shouting out football teams and since Andrew [my son] was there, I shouted out, ‘Manchester United!’ The place was in sort of organized chaos.

When it calmed down, I said to them, ‘All right, now, why have you asked me to talk about disciplining our children? Because you all know how to do it. You did it with football.’ And the place went very, very quiet. I then said to them, ‘Well, how did you do it with football? You didn’t go to class, you didn’t need a book. You didn’t need anybody to tell you how to do it. How did you do it? You love football with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, which is passion. And when you’re passionate about something, you talk about it. When you walk along the road, you’ll have the posters on the wall, you’ll have the hats on, the T-shirts on.’

‘And so, you were living out Deuteronomy 6 with what you have done with football. You’re passionate about football, but you’re told in Scripture to love the Lord your God with all your heart always, and all your strength, which is passion. You then would talk about Him when you walk on the road. So, the end of that little example to me is you will disciple your children by what you’re passionate about.‘

And I have never met a parent who is passionately in love with Jesus, who is not discipling their children.

Parents, discipleship isn’t hard, it’s just being truly passionate about Jesus and letting your children in on it.
This is a Stand Firm Parents article from Stand Firm Ministries and first appeared on www.standfirmministries.com.