In this article this month, I am excited to share with what I call the Five Streams of Discipleship. Ultimately the Great Commission is going into the entire world and MAKING disciples. Jesus called His followers to a radical lifestyle that would transform them into sources of living water for the world to drink from (John 4:13-14 & John 7:37-39) a progression from a person who drinks from the well of living water to a person who is providing living water for others to drink from. Notice that Jesus announced that from them would flow RIVERS – plural not a river – singular.
The life of a disciple of Jesus Christ is a person through whom the Rivers of the Holy Spirit would flow. And from Gospels, we can identify five streams that flowed from the life of Jesus, which is made available to the disciples of Jesus.
The first stream is intimacy with the Father. Richard Foster points out: Nothing is more striking in Jesus’s life than His intimacy with the Father. “The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (John 5: 19). We cannot deny that when we examine the intimacy of Christ, it stirs up a longing in us to be that close and intimate with our Father.
The second stream is the life of purity and holiness. There was a holiness ingrained in the life of Christ that made him attractive to even the worse of sinners. His holiness calls out to us to live a more obedient, fruitful, and consistent life. The third stream is a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. From the moment he rose out of the waters of baptism to the arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus moved in the power of the Holy Spirit. He offers this life to all those who follow Him. (Mark 16:17-18)
The fourth stream is the stream of compassionate involvement. (Matthew 9:36-38) Disciples must learn to grow in compassion for the world around them and get involved in their healing.
The fifth and last stream is the stream of living on mission. Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost. He came to heal all those who were oppressed by the devil. He came to do the work of the Father. The disciples we make must understand that they are disciples for others. Jesus made disciples for others and commissioned them to make disciples for others. We, too, must go and do the same.
~ Tony Foster
