Jesus did, the disciples watched.
Jesus did a lot, the disciples did a little.
Jesus did a little, the disciples did a lot.
Jesus watched, the disciples did.
Discipleship is a spiritual journey of learning, growing and following Jesus Christ. It’s a process of becoming more like Jesus through faith and action, with Jesus as mentor.
A disciple’s opportunity is to be able to bring heaven to those on earth. We are like the sample-servers at Costco. People walk around, checking out the samples to see what’s good, tasty.
The disciple of Christ shares Jesus so people can taste and see what they are missing, creating a hunger and thirst for God— a hunger and thirst that only God can satisfy.
This is what my wife Debbie and I are about every day, starting at sunrise out behind our home on Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Nebraska. After my stroke, a life-changing event all its own, we decided to fight back and reclaim our health. I focused on physical health while Debbie focused on what I’ve come to call spatial health: the air, light and environment we live in. She also made it part of her mission to help me recover good health.
Back in 2022, I (Debbie) started to hear and read a lot about circadian rhythm and how sunrise was important to getting your body off to the right start for the day. For months, I pondered over the information I was learning. One Sunday morning at 5 am in May of 2022, I woke up and decided I would try going out at sunrise. It changed my life in more ways than I can count! I was hooked and have barely missed a sunrise since.
After a few weeks of doing this, I began to meet different people walking around the lake most days and became friends with them. When Marty retired, he began to walk with me and soon we got to know dozens of people.
I (Marty) walked mostly to see if I could build up vascular strength and keep up with Debbie. And it was extra special to spend the morning time with her since the previous 40 years left us little time together at the start of each day.
For close to three years now, we have walked at sunrise around Holmes Lake on a trail that is almost three miles long. It has changed us in the following ways: improving our physical health, spiritual health, relational health and emotional health all at the same time.
Underneath all this health recovery was a feeling of purpose, of realizing what we are here for, at this time in our lives and in this place. As we met and talked with more and more people around the lake, we started thinking about setting up a group on Facebook for them.
Once we got going, we invited all the regular walkers to join our group. We have mental health professionals, journalists, communication specialists, college professors, students, physical health specialists and more — quite a mix of people. There are nearly 85 members in our group now and about 15 post regularly.
We have no formal rules for the group. There are simply two things that seem to bind us together: the peace of a place we call Holmes Lake and how walking there affects our mood and health; and the pleasure we take in getting to know such diverse people. On the Facebook page we encourage pictures more than words and that seems to be fine. We add a few quotes or thoughts about nature, life and sometimes God, but mostly it’s a pictorial group.
Perhaps there is an unidentified area of health here called “sharing God.” Our Holmes Lake Walkabout group affords us another way to care for our new friends out behind our house. We carry the smile of God and the song of Jesus everywhere we go.
And that’s not easy these days. There is a lot of ugliness out there in the world. This makes it all the more important that we start off each day with a word from God and take Him along as we walkabout and walk among His people, the sheep of another pasture.
That sounds pretty healthy and wise and fun to me. If it does to you as well, perhaps you will enjoy some walkabout discipling.
Marty Thurber is a retired pastor and chaplain who says, “After 40 years of ministry I only have one thing to say: You can never go wrong by following Jesus.”
continues to write for OUTLOOK magazine.
Read the full story at outlookmag.org/walkabout-discipleship
