Discipleship is a long, slow and tedious process, but it is one that Jesus commands us to do. Before He left earth, Jesus did not tell us to build mega-churches, to preach to thousands, evangelise to hundreds of thousands. He called us to make disciples, baptise them and teach them to obey God's commands, which if we truly followed would take longer than we would like.
If Jesus were alive today, His work probably wouldn't feature in any ministry magazine or website. Why? After three long years of non-stop travelling, teaching, healing and exhorting, Jesus didn't have what we would call a "big church."
Acts 1:15 tells us that after Jesus went up to heaven, "In those days Peter stood up among the believers – a group numbering about a hundred and twenty." One hundred and twenty believers, but out of those one hundred and twenty, many of them if not all of them had experienced the move, heart and teaching of Jesus Christ.
Too many churches today obsess over the idea of spiritual revival in the form of crowds saying the sinner's prayer, hundreds being healed, thousands being added to the church, but that's not really what God calls us to do. That's not to say that God doesn't move amongst the multitudes, but we shouldn't be swept away by a focus on big numbers.
When Jesus saw the harassed and helpless crowds, He said in Matthew 9:37, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." He wasn't just looking to the plentiful harvest but the handful of labourers because slow and quality development has always meant more to God than fast and superficial growth.
All throughout Bible history, God would always take time developing and growing people He called to serve Him. Abraham's breakthrough could have came sooner, but God made Him wait. God could have made Joseph second-in-command to all Egypt avernight, but He had to have him sold to slavery and sentenced to jail for a crime he didn't commit first. God could have saved Paul before He became a murderer, but He put Him through a slow and tedious process first.
A majority of the time, God's process has been a slow and steady process of discipleship, character development and pruning. God isn't too crazy about external change which is quick and easy, but all about heart change which is tedious and sometimes frustrating but always lasting.
1 Samuel 16:7 says, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."
