But then what lessons did you learn there? When were you tempted to give up? How did the promises relate to that?

Yeah, and this is where we talked about last week, listening to the Holy Spirit and interpreting what the Spirit says through the Word.

We really felt like God was saying, I will fill your living room, it will multiply, and you will see my hand.

And now that is not scripture, but it's scriptural all.

I can't say that word.

So it's based on scripture.

There you go.

How do we avoid that as we trust in the promises of God?

Let's walk alongside him as we do that.

yeah i think that's so important that's one of the reasons why i ask the question how are you doing i'm i'm looking for the spirit's work in that person's life and then what are you getting out of the word i used to ask what is god telling you and i found that 99.9 of the time a person would say something God was telling them.

And then I would ask them, what are you getting out of the word? Oh, I haven't read in two weeks.

And I'm like, hey, bro, the Holy Spirit and the word of God go together.

You don't disconnect them because, you know, what spirit are you listening to? uh if you have the word of god involved it authenticates what the spirit is saying what he is reminding you to do we spend a lot of time i i think i'm preaching now but we spend a lot of time talking about how to interpret Scripture, we need to spend just as much time on how to interpret what the Spirit is saying, because I think we might get that wrong more often than the Word.

And so, training disciples to understand both the word and the spirit together and they never contradict each other so that's a very important thing and if the spirits Primary role, one of the primary roles is to remind us we want to hear him clearly.

But first, you get to tell me, how can I avoid doing that? How do I avoid chasing the shiny new object instead of just sticking with what God's told me through his word, through study, through prayer? How do we avoid chasing the new thing?

Yeah, you and I have this problem, but there probably is other half of the population that is like, why do you change so much? Man, just stick to the script.

Anything that I missed there?

Yeah, I think about Jesus serving people.

He was not a doormat.

In fact, one time somebody came to him and said, hey, make my brother give me my share of the inheritance.

Jesus says, who made me your arbitrator, you know? He said no to the guy.

And I develop this little saying, serve within the context of your calling.

Make sure you know what God wants you to do first and then that will inform how you serve people.

But why is that just an important concept and word to understand as we look at this concept of serving and in the New Testament?

So that's just a friend of mine that I would say I really saw that in.

i would have to say the guy that i came to christ i was six months old in the lord so i was a baby believer and this guy moved me into his home and i stayed with his family i lived in the basement but i stayed with his family for three years and i was thoroughly discipled and i thank god for cecil being that you know, paid the price to have a young knucklehead like me living in his house, you know, and even with his family every night, you know, I was part of the family.

So, but later on in life, you know jeff sundell and steve smith are younger than me but i would count them as kind of spiritual fathers because they introduced me to some new ways of doing ministry that i was desperately seeking so i was very dependent on them for a season of my life i followed jeff sundell I tried to follow Jeff Sundell around for three years.

The guy just energizer bunny.

I couldn't keep up.

So, but he allowed me to jump in whenever I could.

And that was so important to me.

Yeah.

But we would love to hear what you've seen be effective to take the principle of time with people from Scripture and apply it into our context.

Yeah, this is such an important question because the ultimate goal of discipleship, the disciple becomes like the teacher.

And we're not trying to make disciples of us.

We're trying to make disciples of Jesus.

Well, now you've just thrown a monkey wrench into the system because Jesus wasn't married.

He didn't have a job.

He wandered through all of Galilee and Judea.

How do you continue to prioritize time with even if you feel like you don't have anything more to bring to that conversation?

So my question is, who is the second generation anyway?

Okay.

So this, this is where I preach, you know, we get a generational concept of, Primarily from 2 Timothy 2.2, that's where we hang our hat and the things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust of faithful men who will teach others also.

And so we say there's four generations in that passage, Paul, Timothy, faithful men, and others.

And for some reason, what's kind of crept into the movement world is this whole idea of Gen Zero.

And I'm sorry, but I'm not going to call Paul Gen zero, we consider him the first generation and Timothy, the second generation.

And it's kind of demoralizing to people when you say, oh, you don't count, you're a zero.

Any stories come to your mind of that being done well or not done well?

Mm.

But it's been my life story that I had to do the hard things to see the real fruitful things in life.

Uh, you know, uh, when the dentist tells you, "Hey, you need to brush your teeth or your teeth are gonna fall out of your head," well, I don't call him a legalist, because he's saying you need the discipline of brushing your teeth.

Um, a- and so as a disciple maker, we're not legalists saying you need the discipline of prayer.

You need to carve out that time and protect it like a pit bull, and, and this is gonna be hard, but you need to do the hard things to see the benefits of this discipline.

Mm

... of them and their family.

Uh, and I, I'm praying for their kids.

Do you want to tell us what what that would be is how to do this well? And then maybe you got an example of it.

Yeah, I love to do this with college ministers because they have four years and then everything turns over.

It's a revolving door.

And my question for them is, what do you want these folks that you're discipling to look like in 30, 50 years? Not just four years, What do they look like down the trail? And we need to ask ourselves that question.

What do I want my life to amount to in 30, 40, 50 years? But that actually is a short-sighted question.

I'm gonna preach a little bit here.

The question is, what do you want people to write on your tombstone? I could care less what people write on my tombstone.

It's kind of that charge of why we need to keep doing that, even if it feels like we're a broken record.

What are some practical ways we can focus on the few as we're seeking to find the right people?

You know, I was just talking to somebody at lunch today, a disciple maker.

And I asked the question, when Jesus called the fishermen, what did he do? He kept walking.

He said, follow me and I'll make you fishers and men.

And then I asked the question, what did they do? Well, they dropped their nets and followed him immediately.

What would have happened if they didn't do that? I think Jesus would have kept walking.

He demonstrates that throughout his whole ministry.

But do you have any stories of just how offering an opportunity kind of created that focus that some either leaned in or fell away?

Does any other passages jump out or where have you seen that? How would that really apply here?

Yeah, I think all the apostles, when they're writing, maybe not James.

James comes off a little harsh to me, maybe his audience.

And this is the thing.

jesus probably sounded harsh to peter when he said get behind me satan but you know when there peter and jesus are having their discussion after resurrection and jesus says do you love me I think that question is valid, but I think Peter knew, based on this conversation, that Jesus loved him.

And Jesus calls the disciples children.

He also calls them friends.

So just, yeah, I commend that as a simple way to show love to people is just follow up on something they shared the last time you were together.

The idea of what's it gonna take to see spiritual generations, what was that moment that you realized you really wanted to formalize these thoughts and put them together? Like, what, what caused-- what was the backstory to that?

Yeah, I think, uh, sitting in, uh, sermons, teaching, watching guys draw out spiritual generations on a whiteboard and then people walking away and really trying to do this.

They're passionate about seeing disciples making more disciples that make more disciples.

And then all of a sudden they hit all these roadblocks.

And I'm a shepherd at heart, so that breaks my heart when people are so discouraged, um, trying to make disciples, and this is something Jesus commanded us to do, so why is it so hard? You know? And, uh, um, my heart goes out to the practitioner, the disciple maker that's watched everything drawn so easily on the whiteboard [laughs] and then it's, it's a battle to see this happen.

And so that's why I wanted to talk about this.

But you're just as interested, so what lights your fire on this topic?

It's like, man, how do I-- what would I write about in that? And then you shared, like I said, the draft of some of this, and I was like, "Oh, that is exactly what we're talking about." And I think this would be a great way to take that to the next step of, okay, how do we be-- how can we be a pioneer that's focused on multiplying generations and not just building our own? Um, or, uh, where we wanna go next is just what is the difference of adding followers versus multiplying generations? Like, what does that feel like, look like? Obviously, we're not gonna talk through the whole series today, but maybe give us a teaser of what that's like.