Our Duty to Disciple

After I became a Christian, I wasn’t really sure of what to do next. I was 17 years old and in high school. No one told me that I needed to read the Bible. No one told me that I should pray. No one told me that I should go to church. No one gave me any materials to read, much less a Bible.

So for a few days, I was in sort of a spiritual no-man’s-land. I didn’t really feel comfortable with my old friends that I had been hanging around with, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the Christians either. One reason was that I could hardly understand what they were talking about as they spoke to each other in their cryptic, Christianese type of language.

Thankfully, a young man named Mark took me under his wing. He invited me to come to church with him and began to help me grow spiritually. He taught me how to read the Bible, and he prayed with me. He was the first actual Christian I knew who modeled for me what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. He wasn’t a Bible scholar, but he was a real believer. He made an impact on my life and put me on the path of spiritual growth. In short, what Mark did was disciple me.

What he did for me is what we need to do for others—to not only seek to win men and women to Jesus Christ, but also to disciple them. Anything less than this is falling short of the Great Commission.