I’m back. Try to control your excitement, you’re embarrassing yourself.  I have been in the deep dark hole of DIY home remaking and it has consumed every spare minute. This remaking theme has actually extended to other areas of my life as well. There is something afoot among the women of my church.  Best described as a harvest and I have a front row seat in the reaping.  My church-going Sisters in Christ are being revitalized in their need to experience God afresh.  Some have stories of God helping them, but those stories are years or decades old.  Dullness had permeated their insides and their relationship with Him had grown dim.  But now there is this palpable hunger for a deeper connection and a willingness to give up more of ourselves to get more of God.

So, in an effort to make this bloggy, I will share what God has been pressing on my heart.

These are not my original thoughts; I am simply not that bright.  I have been marinating in three books from David Platt- Radical, Radical Together, and Follow Me.  (They are all very “Crazy Love” for those Francis Chan fans out there.)  The thrust of Platt’s message is reclaiming Christianity from the American Dream and radically following Christ.  Not the Christ of the moral majority nation, but the Christ who says “follow Me.” The Christ who is worth saying “yes” to and leaving everything worldly behind.  He is worth the ridicule, the simplified living, the gentle answer when we want to freak out.  Those Christ followers give of themselves drastically and sacrificially because God’s glory is their singular aim. They seek not the exaltation of self, accumulation of comforts, or accolades of men.  Rather they pursue a life that is so wholly devoted to Christ that their words and prayers have power.  Morality becomes a beautiful, but secondary, byproduct of their love for Him.  And they replicate themselves.

Every healthy, living organism will naturally reproduce.  Are you reproducing yourself in others?  Disciples of Christ will.  No? Then ask yourself the difficult but necessary question. Why not?  Do not deceive yourself into thinking that true Christianity is the American Dream with Jesus’ image stamped over the top.  We must know Him, and the evidence of knowing Him is producing fruit.  That fruit will be an undeniably changed life and the pouring into others.  It is an utterly backward system. We get by giving up, we triumph through surrender, and we reproduce through dying to ourselves.

If you are walking this road on purpose, that narrow byway that Christ speaks of will always involve making disciples.  Always.  Do not bother asking God what His will is for you.  His will is for you to abide in Him and then to “go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”  (An aside, if you have children, your primary disciples are the ones who wake you up at ungodly hours of the night.)

It was seemingly religious people who said to Him, “Lord, Lord.  Did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” But Jesus will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”  Serious business that. It’s not about the external “signs,” friends.  It’s about knowing Christ.  Replication will naturally flow from that relationship.

Real discipleship only happens person to person.  As uncomfortable and downright terrifying as that can be, that is where the rubber meets the road. God can and does use programs and preaching, blogs and broadcasts. Those things are not bad.  But disciples are made one-on-one, one-by-one. By you. By me.

Jesus chose twelve.  Who has God chosen for you?  Go. Make disciples of all nations. Start at your front door.