Further thoughts on discipleship:
You might feel uncomfortable with the suggestion that we make disciples of us, because we are conditioned to believe that Jesus is the person we should follow. But that is to misunderstand the discipler-disciple relationship. Rabbis do not ask their disciples to worship them; neither do we ask our disciples to worship us: rather, the purpose of the rabbi is to point his or her disciples to God.
You can influence an almost unlimited number of people, given the right media; but you can only disciple a few people at any one time, because it requires that you are sharing your life with them.
Never set out to follow someone who doesn’t know where they are going. They will probably dress it up as being like Abram, setting out for the Promised Land (Genesis 12); but Abram was following God, who knew the way; and to set out not knowing where you are going is to follow in the footsteps of Abram’s father, Terah, who died in Harran (Genesis 11), or Abram’s cousin, Lot, who chose Sodom and ran into difficulties there (Genesis 13, 14). And never set out to lead others in a direction you have never gone ahead in before. Instead, be like Joshua and Caleb, who scouted-out the land extensively (Numbers 13; Joshua 2) before leading the people across the Jordan to take possession of it (Joshua).
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