For years I have been mentoring/discipling men. One of my great blessing in life was to come to faith in a discipleship culture. Not only was discipleship expected but it was codified. By that I mean that my mentors were very practical in their thinking about how to make disciples and helping leaders practically disciple others. We were practitioners not theorists.
One of my favorite exercises was trying to identify what the top 10 most important things to teach a new believer to establish them in their faith. The list is endless of books and studies and illustrations and disciplines and techniques to focus on. And I might enumerate those in future posts- but what is the most important one?
I have found myself saying this a lot over the last 30 years, “if you will only do one thing that I suggest in your spiritual development- I advise you to have a daily quiet time with the Lord.”
“If you will only do one thing that I suggest in your spiritual development- I advise you to have a daily quiet time with the Lord.”
My thought has been that if I could get a young believer before the Lord, in the Word and communicating with God, that God could direct him into the right path. And then any other training would be supplemental to that core practice. And that works!!
Today in my quiet time, I was reading through a passage in Luke 10 about Mary and Martha and I discovered that Jesus agrees with me about the most important thing for a Christ-follower to do. Check this out.
38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” (NASB)
One thing is necessary. Let that soak in for a moment. Jesus is saying that sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to what He has to say is the most important thing in the world.
We would do well to listen to this timeless piece of advice and not be shocked that the preparations, worries and anxieties of the day attempt to compete with the NECESSARY.
If you will only do one thing that I suggest in your spiritual development- I advise you to have a daily quiet time with the Lord.
***The Harry Anderson painting above hangs in my office to remind me that listening to Jesus in the morning is the most important thing I do every day!!
Life and times of the howitzers 