It is important that when you disciple someone you develop healthy norms. A norm is a usual practice or procedure (Merriam Online Dictionary). Below is one norm to consider:
Make sure your well is deep
We are all very busy people; sometimes we are discipling people and we can find ourselves not experiencing Christ in our personal walks. We begin to feel the pressure of training and developing others while we watch our personal walks dwindle. The result is we begin to disciple others based on what we have learned in the past and not out of a healthy vibrant relationship with Christ.
A key indicator of such an attitude is if you find yourself always cramming before you meet with the person you are discipling or before you meet with your discipler. Some of us might operate well in that manner, but usually people who run and try to learn an hour or fifteen minutes before a meeting goes into the meeting not with joy but with the mindset of duty and task management. I have fallen into this rut many times. I would go into meetings to train people knowing that I was not thriving in Christ. I would hope the Lord would eventually allow my walk to catch up to my performance. Do you see the problem with that way of thinking? I secretly wanted God to operate redemptively in my life but I did not want to operate redemptively in my own life. I was not confessing sin to Christ, I was not confessing to the person I was discipling; there was no model of vulnerability or repentance.
The key to freedom in this area is to acknowledge that not walking with God is not an oops, it is sin and it needs to be dealt with. Whenever I find myself in that rhythm, no matter how frequent it comes I need to confess it to Jesus and whomever else is being affected by that sin and I need to repent. Whenever I come clean like that to the person I am discipling or the person who is discipling me the Lord is now allowing our relationship to operate in a norm that is redemptive. We can start anew, desiring to make our meeting times a delight and not a duty. We must fight the lie that Satan tries to place in us that it doesn’t matter what is really happening in your life it only matters what people perceive. We need to confess the fakeness that we all easily fall into, get real with each other and most important, stay real and true to our Savior. He is the only one we should seek to please.
Let’s be discipled and disciple out of health.
