Wineskins Contributor・04/11/22

One of the first questions that comes up when talking about discipleship and making disciples is how to find someone to disciple. Where do you find people to teach and walk alongside in their walk with the Lord?

The answer is found Jesus! We look to Jesus' example on this in Luke 6:12-13

"One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles..."

Jesus started with prayer. We start with prayer. Ask God who you have in your life (or not yet in your life) who he is calling you to study and share time with.

Next, begin writing down names that come to mind. Make a note if this person is a Christian or not a Christian. That will determine where you start with someone in your studies.

Third, pray over the growing list of names and ask God to make it clear who you are to ask first. You will notice that as you pray certain names will continue to stand out while other names have your attention pass over them again and again without as much notice or focus.

As you begin to get a more solid sense of who God is calling you to invite, through your prayerful discernment, you are going to to invite each of them into a discipleship group study. We will talk more about what that study looks like in a future article this month.

Before we invite anyone into discipleship, we need to follow Jesus' example and spend a lot of time in prayer. Pray for open hearts and minds. Pray for receptivity. Ask God to block the way of anyone He doesn't want in the group this time around.

Pray until it is clear. Then invite them!

Generally speaking the people you invite will be:

1 - Interested

2 - Available

3 - Willing to commit

4 - They are a person of peace (more on that this month!)

During your time of prayer God may open up new connections and relationships that you didn't see coming. This prayer process continues until you have a group of no more than 4 other people who will commit to walking together and deepening each other's faith.