Discipleship like a dog

Suko and Samson enjoy a rare moment of tranquility

I want to apologize for my abscence these past weeks, my life has been going through a lot of changes as of late and work has kept me busy as well. None the less I am excited to be writing again and share manhood with you all. One of the changes in my life is that of a new puppy; Suko is no longer the lone dog in my life and I am getting to re-live the joys and sleepless nights that come with rasing a pup.

The pup's name is Samson, he is a boxer and living up to his breed he loves to wrestle. While sitting in my kitchen one morning I watched as Suko and Samson played on the floor. Suko was laying down and Samson had climbed on top of him and was chewing on his ear. I saw this and a thought came to my head, "that awkward moment when your dog is better at discipleship than you". This thought made me chuckle but in all honesty in my time watching these two dogs interact I have learned a lot on how to lead a healthy, productive and happy relationship with the people that God will entrust me to lead into a great life of devotion towards Christ.

I am honestly proud of how great a job my giant black lab is doing in helping Samson assimilate to life in our home, and I want to share with you the lessons on discipleship that he has taught me.

1. Patience

Samson likes to wrestle, bite, shake and bark, all activities that my Suko did not particularly do much before Samson came around. It is funny to see that all though Suko is tired and annoyed he still allows Samson to use him as his chew toy. I think that it is easy for us to begin mentoring people and demand immediate results, I think that it is easy for us to start disciplining people and expect them to be exactly like us. To like the same things, to dislike the same things, to do what we do in the exact way that we do it. This I find is not correct at all, one, we need to get in our heads that our job is not to make disciples of ourselves but of Christ and two, we need to understand that people are different from us. Some like to bark and wrestle and maybe some of us like to just chill and enjoy the sun warm our fur, either way we are to allow people room to be them so we can stick around long enough to show them Christ. The only way to achieve this is by being patient forgive the things that might frustrate you and keep our eyes on the big picture, and that is bringing God's kingdom to earth.

2. Kindness

Sadly I believe that the word discipleship carries a very negative connotation, and I belive what is responsible for that is bad leadership. Imagine if suko bit Samson every time he attempted to get the ball and failed, what would Samson's thoughts be about the game of fetch? I'll tell you what they would be, absolute hatred. Although Samson has yet to grasp the concept of bringing the ball back, Suko constantly shows him how to do it. He doesn't get mad when Samson runs away with the ball, he simply walks over to samson, gets the ball and throws it again with his powerful jaws. This is the Kindness that disciple makers need. We don't need tyrants to slap our hands when we do wrong, we need men of integrity to take our hand and teach us how to play fetch.

3. Sharing

Suko no longer has any personal possessions. Samson chews on his toys, sneeks into his crate and even tries to eat his food, and to all of this Suko has replied with little to no protest. This got me thinking, the men that have had the greatest impact in my life where not the men with great Church titles but the ones that invited me to dinner, gave me a book of their personal collection, gave me one of their weekends. These men, the ones with zero personal possessions are the ones that showed me Christ in the most impact full way. Stop rationing your time with your disciples, have them over for dinner, go to their games, let them get in your personal life. By doing that they will meet a real man that follows and does as Christ does, not just a man that preaches good.

I now aim to change the way I do discipleship, I aim to be more patient and allow for differences and mistakes, because God knows I make plenty, I aim to be kind and never again scold a disciple, but simply show him the correct way of doing things, and I intend to give all I have and not care if some crazy teenager eats my last cookie or drinks the last of my coffee. This is true discipleship, this is what I aim to be, and I dont know about you, but I intend on following Suko as he follows Christ. Thank you for reading.