80: The Heart of Discipleship

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Season one, episode 80. Today we are asking the question, what is heart focused discipleship?

Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:33] Stephanie: Good to be with you.

[00:34] Marcus: Yeah, always.

[00:37] Stephanie: I have an icebreaker to start us off. Are you ready for this?

[00:41] Marcus: I’m ready for an icebreaker. Let’s do it.

[00:43] Stephanie: All right. Would you rather go ice skating or sledding?

[00:50] Marcus: At my age, ice skating. I’m a little afraid the sledding might jostle things that shouldn’t be jostled.

[00:59] Stephanie: Have you seen that commercial of the older women who order the seat cushions and they go down the hill?

[01:07] Marcus: Very true. Very true. Years ago when I was a kid, we used to flood part of a field and play hockey on it. So I did grow up doing some ice skating and hockey playing. I was never in an organized hockey league, but we used to kind of just do that as neighborhood kids.

[01:27] Stephanie: That’s fun. Honestly, I feel like I’ve probably had pretty equal experience with sledding and ice skating. I haven’t done a lot of either. I like the idea of sledding, but then the trudge back up the hill to do it again. I’m like, it depends on who you’re with and what kind of a day it is, and what kind of hill it is. So I think I would lean toward ice skating because it’s just constant. You can just glide around or you can practice some skills and you can do it with people. Very fun. Well, today we are talking about heart focused discipleship. You coined this term and it is the core of our mission at Deeper Walk. And we want to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. I thought we should look at this.

[02:20] Marcus: Exactly.

[02:21] Stephanie: Do you want to explain where the heart focused discipleship term came from and then we can look at heart?

[02:27] Marcus: Yeah. So there’s really kind of two routes to the term heart focused discipleship. One, is that throughout the Bible we have this idea that the heart is the unseen part of us that is hidden from others, but that references our internal life. The heart is basically parallel to what is your internal life like. And so discipleship that doesn’t focus on the heart is going to focus on the outward part that makes us look good to other people. There’s too much discipleship that makes us look good on the outside, but isn’t really addressing all the stuff going on on the inside.

[03:05] Stephanie: We don’t want to be whitewashed.

[03:07] Marcus: We don’t want to be whitewashed sepulchers, hiding the evil that’s going on inside. So we have to engage in a discipleship that transforms the heart. The second thing, and somewhat more practically I suppose, was that the Deeper Walk board actually asked me to come up with another term. Because we called the training The Institute for Biblical Counseling. And we kind of wanted to get away from the word “counseling” because people had sort of put that in a different category than discipleship. And because counseling had ramifications for some people, especially the term Biblical counseling meant something to some people that we weren’t trying to communicate.

[03:50] Stephanie: And let’s back up from there because a lot of listeners might not actually know ICBC. We don’t have to spend a lot of time on that history.

[03:56] Marcus: From 1988 to 2006, the ministry was called ICBC, which originally stood for The International Center for Biblical Counseling. But the challenge there was that there were other groups that called themselves Biblical Counseling that had a very different worldview, and a very different perspective on how to help people than we did. And so it got confusing for some people. And then just the idea of counseling itself made it sound like all we do is help people with their emotional issues.

And really what we were trying to do was integrate what is classically or traditionally counseling issues into the discipleship process. And so heart focused discipleship, I kind of coined that phrase as an attempt to try to describe the integration there. We want a discipleship process that is dealing with heart level issues that maybe traditionally we would outsource to a counselor.  But we’re saying, really, this is pretty core to what needs to be happening in discipleship for everyone. So those are kind of the two foundations that led to that term specifically.

[04:58] Stephanie: Nice. So can you dig more into heart specifically, and the Biblical foundations for heart?

[05:05] Marcus: Yeah, there’s a couple of core passages that have always stuck with me since I was a kid. One of them is Proverbs 4:23 which says, “Above all else, guard your heart.” And there are some people who hear that and think, yeah, don’t let your heart ever experience pain, guard your heart. Put up walls, keep people from hurting you. That’s not what that verse is saying. So when it talks about guarding your heart, it’s the idea of keeping it pure. It’s like, don’t let it get poisoned. Don’t let it get infested with things that are going to darken your heart, that are going to divide your heart, that harden your heart. You got to guard your heart to keep it trusting, to keep it trusting God.

And so what I found is that one of the first core principles we see in a wounded heart is they lose the ability to trust. And so when I find that I don’t trust God, that’s a heart level issue. I don’t trust him. That’s my heart reacting. And so what causes me to not trust God? I can trust him in some areas, but when I get into those wounded places in my heart that are unhealed, trust becomes impossible. Until that healing happens, until I get to a certain level, it certainly becomes next to impossible. Those two things are very closely related. So Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart because it’s the wellspring of life.” So all of that flows out of it.

And that also inspired the idea of using the well illustration to describe what heart focused discipleship is all about. The idea that we have to unclog the well, we’ve got to build the proper foundation in the well, we have to let the spirit flow into the well, and we do this all in community and for community. And so that picture was also inspired by Proverbs 4:23, that our heart is the wellspring of life. In the New Testament there’s a couple of passages that kind of stuck with me.

One of them is in Matthew,  and Jesus talks about making the heart good and the fruit will be good.  Jesus’ focus was that you have to deal with heart level issues in order to get the fruit that you’re looking for in your life. And so if you have a discipleship process that is not dealing with heart level issues, you’re going to get counterfeit fruit. You’re going to get people trying in their flesh to produce fruit. And God’s very clear, the flesh doesn’t produce the kind of fruit.

[07:26] Stephanie: We don’t want behavior focused discipleship. We want heart focused discipleship, transformation from the inside out.

[07:33] Marcus: And that’s why they call traditional discipleship the ABC approach. A is it’s academic, B is it’s behavioral, and C is it’s church participation focused. Well, I can be academically informed. I can have a checked box on my behavior. Am I following all the proper christian behaviors? And C, I can be very active in my church and still not deal with the issues in my heart. And so what ABC does is it makes me look good on the outside. So people go, wow, that person knows their bible. Wow, they’re really active in the church. And they don’t go to movies and they don’t do this or whatever. They happen to be the behavioralist in your circles.

You check those off and you look good on the outside, and you appear more mature than you actually are, because you’re not dealing with those heart level issues. So that’s part of that. And in Luke, in his version of the parable of the soils, I found it interesting because each one of those soils is really about the heart. There’s a hard heart that doesn’t receive the gospel. There’s a shallow heart that’s full of rocks. And I think that’s a good description for a lot of us. We’ve got to do some rock removal so that our heart can absorb the truth that it needs in order to grow.

There’s a distracted heart, which is the thorns and the thistles, which are the cares, anxieties, and distractions of the world. And then it says, there is, interestingly, what’s called the good and noble heart. And the good and noble heart not only receives the gospel, but the gospel flourishes in that. So, once again, the emphasis on transformation is a heart level process, and is just core to everything in scripture. And those are three passages that really brought it home for me.

[09:20] Stephanie: So, biblical discipleship is heart-focused discipleship.

[09:24] Marcus: It is biblical. So occasionally you get people saying, heart focused discipleship sounds kind of touchy feely to me. We need something with a lot of accountability and high academics and very rigorous. And I’m like, yes and no. The ABCs don’t produce what we’re after. It’s not that they’re bad. I have nothing wrong with academics. Obviously. I’ve got three advanced degrees. I’ve got nothing wrong with behaving well. I got nothing wrong with church participation and activity. It’s just that if that is your definition of discipleship, you are going to miss the essential parts that are actually transformative.

[10:00] Stephanie: Well, very good. What are the steps of heart focused discipleship?

[10:08] Marcus: Yeah. So it’s one thing to come into term. What does it actually look like in content? Honestly, it comes from Paul and study of Paul. Looking at Romans, looking at Galatians, looking at Colossians, looking at a lot of his letters, and just asking, what themes is he emphasizing over and over again? And what I found is that Paul was routinely and regularly explaining the gospel in terms of freedom. And he would say things like, you used to be enslaved. Now you’ve been set free. Why go back there?

Or he would say, we have all been imprisoned in the prison house, and we are under sin and under law. So Christ set us free from sin, set us free from the law so that we could be set free from this prison. Now, discipleship says, the gospel sets you free. Discipleship says, now let’s learn to walk in that freedom. How do we keep from going back? We repent of things that would take us back into that bondage. We forgive people because bitterness would take us back into that bondage. We recognize lies that keep us in bondage to behaviors that keep us locked up. And so freedom was a major, central theme in Paul.

Secondly, I noticed that a major theme was that Paul would appeal to our identity as the foundation. You used to be a stranger and an alien, but now you are a fellow citizen. You are part of the community. You belong to God. You used to be a slave, but now you’re a son. And as a son, you’re now an heir. So those are identity statements. Paul was over and over again appealing to the group identity. You are elect, you are holy, you’re deeply loved. All of these are identity statements.

And so that was the foundation. And it made a lot of sense. You go to a passage like 2nd Corinthians 3 when it says, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” And I picture it this way, that Jesus Christ has created for us in the Gospel an identity foundation on which we build our lives. The third thing I saw repeatedly in Paul’s teaching was that you have the option of doing this in the flesh or doing it in the spirit. And if you try to live the Christian life in the flesh, you will always go back into bondage. It will always lead you into a counterfeit freedom.

Like, I am free to sin. I’m free to engage in immorality because I’m free in Christ. He goes, no, that’s letting your freedom become, as he says in Galatians, don’t let your freedom in Christ become a beachhead for sin, and for indulging the flesh. So he’s like, we got to walk in the spirit and if we’re walking in the spirit, we don’t need the law, it keeps us out of sin. And so we are born of the spirit to walk in the spirit was another major theme. We see it again and again in Paul’s letters.

And then the idea of community. And what you notice is that Paul rarely addresses individuals. He’s talking to the group and he’s saying, we collectively are God’s chosen people. We collectively are loved. We collectively are saints. And so because this is our collective identity, let us encourage one another to love well, to be kind to the weak, to be tender to the weak. Let those of us who are spiritual help bear the burdens of others.

There’s a lot of community focus in Paul’s letters. So you put those together and you realize that there is a gospel foundation, that all these are related to the gospel. We die with Christ. Why? To be free. We’re raised with Christ. Why? To a new identity. We’re born of the spirit, to walk in the spirit. We’re brought into a new family, to live in community. To be part of this new thing that God has created that includes Gentiles and Jews, and Barbarians and Scythians, females and males.

It brings everybody together in one and says, here we are, we are one in Christ. Let’s now live out that identity by living in unity with one another. And so the gospel becomes the foundation on which discipleship is built. Too often, we turn the gospel simply into a free ticket to heaven and don’t understand its connection to everything related to discipleship.

[14:28] Stephanie: And how we walk it out in our life.  As you were talking about Paul and community, I was just thinking how frequently we, especially as western Christians, read with a very individualistic mindset. Sometimes he is talking to an individual, but so often what we are reading, even that famous chapter on love, it’s community. It’s a community chapter. How do we love each other? How do we live together in community? And then I also wanted to commend you, you didn’t even mention that you just walked through an acrostic.

[15:13] Marcus: No, I didn’t. But it helps me remember. It’s why I come up with acrostics. It helps me remember the tracks I want to run on. But the acrostic in this case is FISH. There are four foundations laid by the gospel, and they become the foundation of discipleship and ministry. And it’s freedom, identity, spirit, and heart focused community. It’s relationship to mission and its relationship to ministry, I have also found interesting. As someone who’s been in ministry for forty years, I find a lot of us take our identity from our ministry. And so if the ministry is not going well, we’re not doing well because we can’t separate them. I remember early on God calling me up on this back when I was in my early thirties. I felt very strongly like the spirit was saying, if you never have ministry, will I be enough for you?

And being the spiritual giant that I was, my answer was no. I needed ministry because my identity was so wrapped up in that I’m a Bible teacher. I teach at college, ministry is my life. And God took it away from me for a season. Partly I think, to help me separate out, like, you cannot find your identity in ministry. You have to find your identity in me and in our walk together. And it wasn’t until I learned that lesson that he was willing to release me back into ministry, because the flesh wants to take its identity from what I do.

[16:52] Stephanie: Yeah, and you have been in ministry far longer than even just than official forty years. You were teaching Sunday school back in high school and even junior high, right?

[17:06] Marcus: Yeah, I started teaching Bible when I was 14, and I haven’t stopped.

[17:12] Stephanie: It is definitely a gift. And we have to be careful not to turn gifts into our identity, but to have our identity in Christ.

[17:20] Marcus: You get to walk through all of these, too, and that is spirit versus flesh. And where you’re getting your identity, am I in bondage or am I free? And all these things affect how we do ministry. And so the more bondage I have in my life, it’s going to sabotage what I’m trying to do in ministry. And it’s not about perfection, but it’s about continuing to press into those things that keep us in bondage and finding greater freedom.

[17:46] Stephanie: Well, I’m going to pause just for a quick announcement. Which we have already been announcing, but I’m reminding you that January 27 is our free online Freedom conference with my dear father, Marcus Warner, Dawn Whitestone, and Chris Coursey. We’re going to be talking about how to have greater freedom in your community and in various breakthrough areas. And also to strengthen your listening prayer life with God as you’re going through all of this. And then we’re going to follow up with that conference with our first ever video podcast series. That is going to be exciting. That’ll be on the 29th.

[18:33] Marcus: So what you’re saying is starting on the 29th, they can get the podcast the same way they’ve always gotten it, but they could also get it on YouTube and watch it.

[18:40] Stephanie: Yes.

[18:41] Marcus: Great.

[18:41] Stephanie: Yes. Thank you for the clarification. And then also, if you want to be on the launch team for dad’s new book called Breakthrough, check out Deeper Walk’s, social media or my Monday emails. I have a link for you to apply and we would love to have you. So, Father, closing thoughts for this episode.

[19:06] Marcus: Well, I wanted to circle back and do an overview because our mission at Deeper Walk International is making heart focused discipleship the norm for churches everywhere. Because right now traditional discipleship is the norm. And if you don’t get the traditional, the ABCs, you get what I call evangelism discipleship. And that is you lead someone to Christ who can lead someone to Christ, who can lead someone to Christ. But the discipleship process doesn’t go beyond teaching someone how to lead somebody else to Christ.

So we’re like, we need heart-focused discipleship to become the norm because we need people getting free from the stuff that has them in bondage. We need them building on their identity in Christ. We need them to learn to walk in the Spirit. We need this happening in community, in stronger, healthier communities. If we can do those four things, there will be a revival. There will be revolution in the church. There will be what most people have been looking for in Christianity but have been frustrated looking for. And I believe that heart focused discipleship is the solution to most of the problems that people are looking for in their Christian life.

[20:11] Stephanie: Huzzah! And thank you Father. Well, thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.