Day Twenty Two – Lenten Devotionals 2010

God’s Word: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35)

Inspiration: The name Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, will forever be associated with discipleship, because discipling others became the passion of his life. It happened like this. One day early in his ministry Dawson was driving along and he saw a young man walking down the street on his way to caddy at the golf course. Trotman often picked up hitchhikers, for it gave him a chance to witness.

The hitchhiker on this day swore as he got into the car; Dawson reached into his pocket for a gospel tract and handed it to him. The man glanced at the tract, then looked at Dawson and said, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Dawson looked at him closely. As it turned out, the two men had met on the same road the previous year. Dawson had witnessed to him, led him to Christ, and had “sped on my merry way” confident that another soul had entered the kingdom.

But now, a year later, there was no more evidence of the new birth in this young man than if he had never heard the gospel.

“After I met this boy the second time on the way to the golf course, I began to go back and find some of my ‘converts.’ I want to tell you, I was sick at heart.”

Motivated by that experience, Dawson Trotman began working on follow-up, on developing ways of mentoring those whom he was winning to Christ.

“Before I had forgotten to follow up on the people God had reached through me,” he later said. “But from then on I began to spend time helping them.… You can lead a soul to Christ in anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple of hours. But it takes from twenty weeks to a couple of years to get him on the road to maturity.” Dawson Trotman

Quote: The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian—especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the kingdom of God.—Dallas Willard