I have five roots of discipleship. The first root is the foundational root from which everything else stems.
Root #1: Prayer
Author Paul Miller describes in his books “A Praying Life” and the “J-Curve,” that prayer should cause us to follow a “J-Curve” of Christian living. The J-Curve is a life process that leads us to die to ourselves in our situation so that we can be raised up to join God and His love and story for our life and situation.
Just as Jesus took up His cross, died, and rose again 3 days later, so must we take up our cross and die to self so we can be raised to join the Father and His story for our lives. Most of us utilize prayer in a way that wants to skip the dying-to-self response and join God and His presence. But we will never experience God’s presence, love, and story for our lives unless we die to ourselves (see Galatians 2:20).
Several types of prayers help us accomplish this, depending on our situation. I encourage you to read Paul Miller’s book “A Praying Life,” as he does a fantastic job (in my opinion) of simply walking through this.
Root #2: Worship
According to the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:1, worship is giving our bodies to the Lord so He can use us for His purposes.
In 2013, my wife and I joined my dad on a trip to Israel. The trip was not traditional; we visited active archaeological sites, some of which had been made public, while most had not. Our guide was an archaeologist, Eli Shukron. One of those sites was Ancient Shiloh. This site is incredible. It was not open to the public when we visited it, but now it is.
On this site, you can see the rocks around the tabernacle’s fences’ posts. The altar of sacrifice still stands, and you can see where the burnt offerings were offered and where the Holy of Holies stood.
Remember, Shiloh is where the Israelites came to worship God when they crossed the Jordan and began conquering the land. Shiloh was where the Tabernacle stood for almost 500 years before David prepared and Solomon built the Temple. Our group was led that day to the top of the sacrificial altar, where our devotion was given. The devotion offered began by pointing out the significance of where we stood. The altar of sacrifice was the first stop for the Israelites as they came to worship God. Where the Holy of holies stood was the next thing pointed out, and explained that this is where the Presence of God dwelt.
The whole point of the devotion was that if we genuinely wanted to enter and experience God’s presence, we must first stop at the sacrificial altar and make a living sacrifice.
Root #3: Right Doctrine
Right doctrine is simply the triune God as He has revealed Himself to be and His revealed Covenant Gospel for mankind. He has revealed Himself throughout the history of the world, and we have written accounts of how He has revealed Himself in the Bible.
He also reveals Himself to us through our salvation in Jesus, the fruit and giftings of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit as we experience life and position ourselves to experience Him in prayer and worship (see above).
We are called to help establish one another in sound doctrine (see Ephesians 4). We do this through knowing how God has revealed Himself and our experiential understanding of an active relationship through His Covenant Gospel of salvation, sanctification, and glorification. This foundation leads to the next one.
Root #4: Right Living
Right living is defined as simple obedience to the right doctrine. The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 1:15–17 that God’s revealed plan is the Great Commission of preaching Christ among the nations as the Holy Spirit, not man lead him. This is right living. This leads to the last root.
Root #5: Great Commandment Experience
I said it earlier, and I will say it again here: We will not fulfill the Great Commission without first connecting to and experiencing the Great Commandment of loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
If you recall, a religious lawyer asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which teaches us that the proper question in the Great Commandment is, “Who can I be neighborly to?”
People around us who are far from God will experience God for themselves when we act as a conduit of God’s love for them. God’s love meets our spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical needs. There is a lot involved in these, and we can determine the spiritual and physical needs.
The emotional needs involve observing outward behaviors and exploring the deeper emotional wounds that lead to these actions. What pain have they endured? How can we guide them to grieve and mourn their hurt so they can find comfort? How can we assist them in replacing their fears with God’s love? How can we aid them in transforming guilt and condemnation into God’s grace and forgiveness, allowing them to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit in their lives?
Relational needs are discussed in books like “Love Languages.” How does someone else feel loved? Through security, respect, affirmation, acceptance, encouragement, gifts, quality time, and so on. These are the four areas of human need that we must meet in others through God’s love, and it is in these four areas that God meets us with His love. We cannot offer this to others if we have not first received it from the Lord.
When we connect to the Holy Spirit in these five Roots of Discipleship, the Holy Spirit can lead, nourish, and empower us to join Him in the ministry He establishes for the church body and individual disciples of Jesus.
I’ve mentioned it in several areas, but the two main ways we join the Holy Spirit are His fruit and giftings and simple obedience. We accomplish this as a church when we unite as a body of believers and allow Him to shape us in our differing gifts to cooperate with His ministry and purposes. We do this by recognizing that our weakness is someone else’s strength and allowing the Holy Spirit to unify us in His work. We also accomplish this by actively putting the Armor of God together.
This process is a Supernatural process and accomplishment. We tend to manipulate and try to make things happen in our flesh. We must always be on the alert for the deeds of our flesh and combat them through the armor of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, which is dying to self to be raised to God’s story and love for our life and situations.
It all starts with dying to yourself. The Holy Spirit must direct and empower all ministry if we genuinely seek to accomplish God’s kingdom work. Galatians 6:7–8 (NASB) gives us this warning:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh, will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit, will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
What do you want to reap in your church?
I want to reap eternal life in Jesus Christ, and I’m sure you do too. As pastors and leaders of the church that God has called us to, let us shift our focus from the work of the Holy Spirit to the calling that the Lord has given us: connecting our congregation to the Roots of Discipleship through prayer, worship, sound doctrine, righteous living, and the Great Commandment Experience. This way, we can be nourished by, join, and be empowered by the Holy Spirit for His ministry in this world.
