Disciples who DO!

Have you ever had those moments when God has just lifted a veil from your eyes and you see something in a totally different way?  It usually comes after I've been questioning or searching for truth.  I may have read that scripture dozens of times but suddenly, it comes alive!  I see from a completely new paradigm.

That happened to me this morning.  There are so many sick people around me.  People I desire to see healed--completely.  And I've been praying and asking.  And I began to wonder when we became learners instead of doers.  I mean...Jesus modeled healing others.  And then he called twelve disciples and sent them out with power and authority to cast out demons and heal the sick.  (Matthew 10:1)  What is a disciple anyway?  Dictionary.com says it's a personal follower of Christ...someone who is taught or trained.  And Jesus did both.  He taught His disciples as He was modeling what they were to do.

When did we just become learners--students who sit in Bible classes?  Did it start with Paul's letters?  But if you stop and think about it, Paul was writing letters to people who were doing.  They'd seen and learned how to be a disciple.  Paul was mainly correcting the way they were doing ministry.  In fact, in Acts 15:12, it says Paul & Barnabas rehearsed what signs and wonders God had performed through them among the Gentiles.  James 5:14-16 tells us how to anoint and pray for the sick.  I think the church has adopted the misguided notion that teaching the Word is all we need to be doing with our disciples.  But we never show them how to step into using what we've learned--except to perpetuate the teaching process.  Or we just believe those gifts stopped.

Before Jesus went to heaven, his last act with his 11 disciples was to tell them to go and make disciples of all the nations.  (Matthew 28:18-20)  WE are those disciples.  Have we become what Jesus intended?  Why are we content to sit and learn...over and over and over...and never DO?