Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19-20 NIV
When I was a child, I was surrounded by the best of the best people. I was challenged by their lives to live like Jesus, so everything they told me carried weight. A young man was paralyzed, becoming a life-time paraplegic when he was 16, old enough to be my hero for many reasons. My father was very faithful to visit him in his long hospital stays, and Larry became a deeply devoted follower of Jesus. Dad “discipled him,” and while I didn’t understand everything it meant, I could see the same as anyone else that Larry became a different person. By the time I was in fifth grade he was discipling me in several ways, one very specifically. Dad had taught him the value of memorizing Scripture, and he told me I should start. He introduced me to the Navigator’s system. I was fascinated by Dawson Trotman, the man who was behind it. He was a great discipler of people and died while saving another man. His story was fascinating, and he discipled me as well despite his death. His key phrase was that we are “born to reproduce,” and this was the title of his biography. I owe much of my life to the discipling of those three men who set in motion things for me: my father, Dawson Trotman, and Larry Rossiter. All in heaven today, cheering me on.
In God's Kingdom, spiritual life is inherently designed to reproduce. Just as in the beginning, recorded in Genesis, God told us to "be fruitful and multiply," the spiritual mandate given by Jesus is for every follower to reproduce their faith in the lives of others. We can never simply be consumers of God’s grace or passive spectators in the community. We are born again into God’s family, and our spiritual DNA is to be healthy and passed down to others. True spiritual health is not measured by the volume of knowledge we gather, but by our capacity and willingness to pour into another person, helping them walk with Jesus until they, too, can disciple someone and reproduce faith.
Fulfilling this purpose requires a major perspective change. We must stop thinking retention, simply keeping the faith, to thinking reproduction. When a body of believers or an individual follower focuses on preservation, unity quickly becomes very fragile, because differences feel like a threat to who we are. However, when the focus is on making disciples, our differences become beautiful pathways to reach a broken world. We realize that we are not called to preserve ourselves and create clones who look and think exactly like us. Instead, we are called to raise up Jesus followers who carry His love into their own unique spheres of influence.
- God, I know You created me to reproduce. Help me grow healthy and active. As I work with You, I will see Your family and Kingdom grow!