You Wouldn't Want An Ostrich For Your Mama! Concepts in Disciple-making by Coon Carlton

Author:Coon, Carlton [Inconnu(e)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: United Pentecostal Church International
Published: 2012-02-07T01:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5:

It’s Time to Pick up the Baby

If parents bring a nine-pound newborn home from the hospital, they are thrilled with the strapping, healthy child God has given them. But if their baby still weighs nine pounds three months later, they will visit every doctor around to find out what is wrong.

Allow me a moment of facetiousness. What is the big deal with those parents? Boy, they are sure hard to please. My, my, they had a baby shower . . . and then sent out birth announcements. They had a baby–what more could they want?

You know what they want: For their infant to become a healthy toddler . . . for the toddler to be a pre-schooler . . . and then kindergarten . . . pre-adolescence . . . teens . . . college/career . . . young adulthood . . . Anything less causes deep hurt.

Real parents are not just baby-producers, nor are they perpetual child-care providers; over time with a process and some significant effort and cost, parents turn their bundle of joy into an adult. Ideally–a mature adult.

It’s nice having babies . . . it’s not nice if they stay babies forever.

Discipleship – Travail beyond Conversion

Paul desired the same thing for his spiritual offspring. He wrote, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you . . .” (Galatians 4:19). Notice four things:

1. Note his term for those he writes to: “little children”–alive but limited. These people were born again but not yet mature.

2. “I travail in birth again.” I’ve travailed once on your behalf; now I’m travailing again. Paul took this personally. I wonder what the practical reality of the second travail of Paul actually looked like. In this season what does “travail . . . until Christ be formed in you,” look like? Might it be:

o Travail of time invested. Mature believers are developed as someone takes time with them. This investment does not have to be a planned event. Great teaching moments come in casual conversation. Yes, there are the late night phone calls as a new convert is seeking God’s answer to a life question. Such times are often a sort of travail. The time could be spent on something else–taking care of your kids or spouse, doing a job around the house, evangelizing someone not yet reached with the gospel, choir practice, or fishing, but none of those are “I travail again . . .”

o Travail of energy expended. People drain energy away. Such expended energy cannot then be used elsewhere. The vigor expended on working with spiritual babies is forever gone. Working with new converts takes a lot out of you.

o Travail of money invested. How much money does a parent spend on a child from birth through college? Those who develop new converts into mature saints put money into them–it’s a meal here, a CD bought there, a Youth Camp registration . . . and . . . and the list goes on and on.

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