Sharing the Wheel

Illustration 1—The Wheel
Jesus, the Center
What is the purpose for the wheel illustration? This ideology will drive your teaching and application of the principles found therein. Do you believe the wheel teaches what Christians should do? Does it exemplify the basics of Christian living? Or does it merely illustrate what everyone ought already to know? For me, the Wheel is the foundation upon which one-on-one discipleship is built. If my goal in sharing it is not to engage the hearer in a life-long cooperative relationship whereby we make Christ the center of our lives, then there is no point to it beyond education.
John writes, “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands… This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did” (1Jhn2:3-6). If you want to follow Jesus, then the first step is to fall in step with His walk. In basic training one of the first tasks taught to a soldier is marching in formation to a cadence that establishes a unified pace. We conform to the will of our leader by marching in step with our comrades in formation. Paul writes, “Join with others in following my example... and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you” (Phil 3:17). Remember that a disciple is someone training to become like his Teacher (Luk 6:40). If you want to make disciples, you must be willing to set the example, sing out His cadence, and asks others to, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”
Remember that the Wheel is the catalyst from which all other illustrations are birthed, so though you may feel like expounding upon Jesus as Savior and Lord, resist knowing that you have the weeks ahead to invest in this person’s life. For now, the goal is to convince them to carry their cross and follow you as you follow Him.

Jesus, the Word
If discipleship is about training, then investing in the Word ought to be our first lesson. But what if they don’t believe this Bible is God’s word? “You must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2Pt 1:20, 21). We know the Bible is God’s word because the Spirit who wrote it through people lives also in the people to whom it is written (1Cor 2:11-14). Typically, the people we find interested in Bible study do not, however, struggle with believing Scripture is God’s word. Instead, they don’t live as though their belief is true.
“The Word was God… the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (Jhn 1:1,14). If the Bible truly is God’s word and if the Word is Jesus, then how can we say we know Jesus if we do not know His word? Using Luke 6:40, ask, “Who are you a disciple of?” If we must be trained to become like Jesus and if the Word is useful for training then what are you doing that would be considered training in His word? This sets us up for plenty of follow-on illustrations to be shared in the weeks to come including the Training Plan, the Cornerstone Reading Plan, and the Parable of the Sower, but for now, our goal is to get them involved in our ministry. If you are not already actively involved in an inductive Bible study that seeks to train disciples to become explicators of Scripture rather than interpreters of it, then stop here. The rest won’t do you much good.

Jesus, the Word two
Hebrews 5:11-14 tells us that teachers eat solid food, Scripture studied first-hand, but the immature drink milk, “you need someone else to teach you.” Discipleship is about training others to obey everything He has commanded us by ingesting His word for ourselves. It’s at this point that I remind the Christian that he or she has a choice; you can participate in a “Bible Study” where studying the Bible is optional or you can study His word and teach us what you’ve learned. Because of this, I lose far more than I keep.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Navigators’ Design For Discipleship series of Bible studies, let me tell you why I use them for this training process. The first six books are a deductive study with a gradually increasing difficulty level in subject and time consumption. The last book is an inductive verse by verse study of 1Thessalonians. I tell them that the goal is to work from answering man-made questions to asking God questions! Once they complete book seven, there’s no need for Bible study books any more. They are trained to study the word of God.
But they have the choice: either attend a “Bible study” where one person has actually studied the word, you listen to what they say, and then you and your fellow hearers provide 5 minutes of feedback and 30 minutes of hanging out or you can study the Bible and teach us what the Lord has taught you. If you want to train them to know God’s word then you got to train them to study God’s word and not man’s word about God’s word.

Talk to Jesus
God tells us that there are only two commands a person must obey in order to fulfill the requirements of Scripture; love God and love people (Mt 22:37-40). The vertical spokes train us to love God while the horizontal are about loving people. Prayer is the top vertical spoke pointing upwards to God because it is our primary means of communicating with God. Prayer can be silent or audible; done while walking, sitting, kneeling, cooking, driving, eating, sleeping (?), with others or alone. Because of its ethereal nature, prayer is difficult to order into a training plan. Therefore, our primary concern here is not how they pray or even when they pray but rather, what God wants from their prayers.
“If you remain in me and my word remains in you, ask whatever you wish” (John 15:7). There are conditions to prayer, the first of which concerns God’s desire for me to know His heart just as prayer is our way of sharing our hearts. A person who studies a book to learn life’s lessons will not be thought crazy, but a person who talks heavenward to a Being they believe exists despite the objections of others, is either loony or certain their voice will be heard. But just as surely as we want God to hear us, He wants us to hear Him.
“When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen” (Zech 7:13, 14).







Sharing Jesus (with the Lost)
This spoke is also known as “Witnessing” or “Evangelism” and presents the second great command, “Love your neighbor,” as it refers to those outside the family of God. Jesus told His disciples, “Follow Me… and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). This simple command is quite convicting when shared as a challenge: If I follow Jesus then I will…? (fish for people) And if I do not fish for people then am I a follower of Jesus?
Though there are varying methods for evangelism ranging from confrontational to service to invitational, the one which is most like Jesus’ methodology is the simple offer from a disciple to a lost soul, “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1Cor 11:1). If your ministry is already about personal discipleship, then the person you are sharing the Wheel with was likely invited personally, one-on-one, by either you or someone else in your group. They followed that person to this fellowship gathering and are now one step closer to becoming disciples themselves. All they need is someone to show them the way more excellently. Witnessing is about fishing for lost souls, and there are plenty of follow-on illustrations for this (I’ll share a couple), but once you catch them they aren’t fish anymore. Instead, our goal is to train them to become what we are; fishers of men (and women).

Sharing Jesus (with Christians)
“Fellowship” is a generic term that has been universally applied to varying “Christian” activities ranging from Bible study to basket weaving to television watching to praying. When Christians gather, we call it “fellowship,” religifying it into something “holy” and therefore fulfilling His command to love one another. Ask your listener if fellowship is about what you do or who you are? If two atheists study the Bible, is that fellowship? If two Christians talk about science, is that fellowship?
If fellowship is about who you are rather than what you do, then who are we (or better said, who are we becoming like)? As disciples our goal is to become like Jesus and Jesus’ only new command given to His eleven disciples was to “love one another… as I have loved you” (1John 13:34). In what way did Jesus love His disciples that differed from how He loved everyone else? He discipled them! This just happens to coincide with His great commission, “Go and make disciples… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19). What did He command them to do? Discipleship is not only our ministry, it’s His command.
From this spoke comes not only other supportive illustrations to include One-on-one and the Temple, but also the practicality of our ministry. That is, you will be demonstrating personal, one-on-one discipleship as you teach him or her about it. But first, they must be convinced to obey.

Loving Jesus
Can you earn God’s love? Christians who first hear you share this illustration will inevitably tell you “No, God loves everyone no matter what.” Non-Christians might tell you that if the Christian God was real, then He would have no need of our love. Our job is to explain the complexity of truth.
“If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commands and remain in His love” (John 15:10). Our Father loved us enough to send His Son to die for our sins. Praise God, but listen to the rest of the Gospel story, “And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again” (2Cor 5:15). If we claim to live in Jesus then we ought to walk like He did and He tells us that obedience was required in order to remain in God’s love. I love my three girls regardless of their shenanigans, and when they disobey me, my love for them does not alter, but people’s perception of my fathering ability will. Not only outsiders, but even my own children will think they can live without my rules and yet remain within my loving grace. When we disobey God, we shame His name before others, but when we obey Him, we show Him our love. Ask your hearer; do you love God? Then prove it by obeying His command to make disciples.

The completion of the Wheel ought to end with the preceding challenge and the ever important promise to follow up. “Thank you for your time, and if you want to learn more, then I’d love to sit down and share with you another discipleship illustration.”

Humble Thyself...

HUMBLE THYSELF IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD
Whether He Saves…
“And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace”* has been shared as the Gospel message for years before the “God loves you so accept Him” version appeared. The Bible tells us, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:10,11). We Christians know that those who do not confess our God now will one day depart to a place where teeth are gnashed with much weeping, but does our knowledge ignite unbelievers’ fearful trepidations? If they are anything like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it won’t. Their reply to such a challenge was this; “We have no need to answer you… our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand*.” But their faithfulness to their God did not depend only upon salvation, “But if not, be it known to you… that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image*.”

I have great respect for those willing to believe their “god” will rescue them from the fiery furnace we Christians call “Hell,” but I wonder if their faith will stand even when their gods (or lack thereof) do not save. Can they say, “We will not serve your God or worship Him?” According to His word, they will worship whether He saves them or not. Is my faith in God strong enough that I can say the same? “Lord I will serve you whether you save me from my troubles or not. I will serve you whether the flames singe my flesh or not.”

“When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned… for I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isa 43:3).

* Dan 3:6, 16-18

I am Nothing…
Can you believe that these words, “How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” (Dan 4:3) were spoken by the king of Babylon? Nebuchadnezzar looked at all he had accomplished and said, “I.” This was the same for Job who boasted that if he had an audience with God he would, “give an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach Him” (Job 31:37). Nebby was dispatched from the world of men until his nails were like bird’s claws and he ate grass like it was a salad bar. Then when his reason returned he praised God in the heavens and said, “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing… for all His works are right and His ways just; and those who walk in pride He is able to humble” (Dan 4:35, 37). Job’s answer to God was far more self-reflexive, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5,6).

I told my friend the other day that to trust in God, you must lose your trust in man. Because I know that I often fail myself, I also realize that everyone else in this world will fail me as well. No one cares for me as much as I do for myself, apart from One who was willing to sacrifice all for my pitiful soul. Those who truly came face to face with God, experiencing His power personally and not merely hearing about Him second-hand, inevitably look at themselves and think, “I am nothing, but my God is everything.” Our Jesus walked through the fires of Hell whether we wanted saving or not in order to free our souls from torment. Like Nebby and Job, I look at that kind of love and despise myself, knowing that God alone loves me enough to go through Hell to save me.

Found Wanting…
Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar, witnessed the writing on the wall as he drank from the Lord’s sacred vessels, and “his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together” (Dan 5:6). Calling Daniel in for an interpretation, he received an accepted rebuke, “But when his [Nebby’s] heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was brought down from his kingly throne… And you his son… have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this” (Dan 5:20,22). Part of the writing read, “You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.” Belshazzar was murdered that very night knowing his life was found wanting in the sight of God.

“But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isa 66:2). We all know that humility is the one attitude adjustment God demands more than any other. That’s why God sent His son, not merely as a sacrifice for our sins, but as an example of humility. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who being in very nature God… made Himself nothing… humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil 2:5-8). No matter what you or I do, we will be found wanting, we will be singed by the fire, and we will be nothing compared to God. We have only one option; humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. We do this by obedience, by trusting God rather than man, and by walking just as He walked.