{"id":66832,"date":"2025-05-29T16:04:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T08:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/?p=66832"},"modified":"2025-06-06T03:31:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T19:31:01","slug":"dmm-devotional-thoughts-modelling-the-change-we-want-to-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/dmm-devotional-thoughts-modelling-the-change-we-want-to-see\/","title":{"rendered":"DMM Devotional Thoughts: Modelling the Change We Want to See"},"content":{"rendered":"
DMM Devotional Thoughts, 29 May 2025 \u201cModelling the Change We Want to See\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Proverbs 25:19 <\/span>\u201cBy mere words a servant is not disciplined, <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0for though he understands, he will not respond.\u201d\ud83e\uddcf\ud83c\udffb<\/span><\/h5>\n

Dear Disciple Making Friends,<\/strong> <\/span>This morning as I was reading my Proverbs chapter for the day\ud83d\udcd6, I was struck by how much we can learn about disciple making from this book. The topic of \u201cdiscipline\u201d (of children by parents and servants by masters) comes up frequently. Being a disciple-maker in a New Testament sense corresponds to the Proverbs ideal of imparting \u201cdiscipline\u201d to others. The word \u201cdisciple\u201d itself, is related to the word “discipline\u201d, both in English and in the original Greek. It points to the truths that a \u201cdisciple\u201d is more than just a student \ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffb\u200d\ud83c\udf93 who is receiving head knowledge, and \u201cdisciple-making\u201d is more than just communicating facts. Biblical disciple-making results in a disciple whose lifestyle has been \u201cdisciplined\u201d to look like the lifestyle of the disciple maker. To become a disciple is not only about changing the way you think, it\u2019s about changing the way you walk\ud83d\udc63. Proverbs 25:19 points out that communicating merely by words, by transfer of ideas, is not sufficient to change someone\u2019s behavior. This begs the question: if persuasive words alone are not sufficient, how do we foster the adoption of the lifestyle changes we want to see?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span> The disciple making teachings of Jesus and Paul both shed light\ud83d\udca1on the answer to this question. Jesus said in John 15:9-10, \u201cAs the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.\u201d\u2764\ufe0f Paul complements our Lord’s teaching in Philippians 4:9: \u201cWhat you have learned and received and heard and seen in me\u2014practice these things\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Verses like these point us to a way of disciple-making that goes beyond mere words. With Jesus\u2019 own love, we must model a lifestyle of obedience to the truth for those we disciple. Discovery Bible Study is core to our DMM strategy, and rightly so. However, we must take care that a DBS does not devolve into a mere academic exchange of ideas.\ud83d\udcda Within the context of caring relationship, we should be ready to model how we are obeying the truth in our real world life so that our disciples can imitate our model in their real world lives.<\/strong> This must often be done as a complement to leading a disciple into making clear obedience statements during the DBS time. Especially if we are dealing with someone from a totally non-church background, we might find that that disciple struggles to articulate a clear obedience statement regarding a certain truth because they have never seen someone actually practice that truth. Imagining what that might look like can feel completely foreign.\ud83e\udd2f\u00a0<\/span> To make this very practical, let’s take the topic of prayer as an example. If we want a disciple to pray\ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffb, it is not enough that we discuss with that disciple the need for prayer. We must create spaces where we actually demonstrate for them what prayer looks like in our life and invite them to reproduce that model in their own life.\u00a0 Goals can be set with follow-up sessions scheduled where encouragement, correction and further instruction can be offered.\ud83d\udeb6\ud83c\udffb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f\ud83d\udeb6\ud83c\udffb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f\ud83d\udeb6\ud83c\udffb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f May God help us to follow the model of Jesus and Paul in disciple-making. May God give us all wisdom, insight and power to faithfully model an obedient Christian lifestyle so that our disciples can reproduce it in their own lives and pass it on to others.\u271d\ufe0f\ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffb<\/strong><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word \u201cdisciple\u201d itself, is related to the word “discipline\u201d, both in English and in the original Greek. It points to the truths that a \u201cdisciple\u201d is more than just a student \ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffb\u200d\ud83c\udf93 who is receiving head knowledge, and \u201cdisciple-making\u201d is more than just communicating facts. Biblical disciple-making results in a disciple whose lifestyle has been \u201cdisciplined\u201d to look like the lifestyle of the disciple maker. To become a disciple is not only about changing the way you think, it\u2019s about changing the way you walk\ud83d\udc63.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-66832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts","tag-dmm-devotional-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66832"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66911,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66832\/revisions\/66911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citydisciple.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}