Qualified – Feb 2018
“You’ve got the wrong person,” I thought.
My knees shook as I sat in the principal’s office. My nerves would tell you that I was in major trouble, and my sweaty palms would tell you that I was waiting on my punishment. The reality of my shaky self was that I wasn’t even in high school anymore. I was just there for a meeting, but no matter what age you are…who wants to sit in the principal’s office?
I was a college student sitting in front of a principal asking for permission to bring Young Life to her school. I had been serving as a Young Life leader for a year and a half, and the area director had recently approached me about taking on a leadership role—to bring Young Life to a school that didn’t have it.
“You’ve got the wrong person,” I thought.
I’m quiet. I’m awkward. These high school kids see right through me, and so will my peers. I can’t lead—I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not cut out for discipleship or for leadership.
We all have an excuse.
As we look at Scripture, we find example after example of the most unqualified, unlikely disciple-makers. God used the tax collectors and the fishermen, the plain and the simple. It wasn’t a large following or a high accomplishment that qualified His closest friends for ministry; it was their relationship with the Savior of the world. They betrayed Jesus, denied Him, doubted Him, questioned Him, and still He called them friends (John 15:15).
The enemy would love for you to believe that you’re not qualified to share Jesus with someone else. He would love for you to believe that your past is all people can see, that your gifts aren’t good enough, that you haven’t learned enough, that you’re not loud enough.
But God is too good to keep to ourselves.
There is no degree, no title, no pay grade necessary to share God with other people. You’re qualified for making disciples because of your relationship with your Creator. It’s not your job to change people, but it is your job to tell them about the greatest news that’s ever been told.
It was the way other people had poured into my life and walked alongside me as I grew in my relationship with God that made all the difference when I began to intentionally disciple high school students and step into leadership roles. I didn’t even know I was capable of leading until someone told me I was. As I sat in that principal’s office, it was their reminders of truth about who God created me to be and what He called me to that made me stay seated. Was I any less nervous to be there? Absolutely not. But I knew it was what God had asked me to do.
Making disciples of all nations begins with you telling just one person about who God is and what He’s done in your life. You are more than qualified.
“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” Matthew 28:16-20
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Written by Katy Boatman, Discipleship Director