Three Conclusions That Will Change How You Make Disciples

If Jesus never used His “God Card” - if everything He did was accomplished through dependence on the Father, not through divine power - then what does that mean for ordinary believers like us? It means everything.

In this post, we are drawing out three conclusions from the full humanity of Jesus that Spader presents in 4 Chair Discipling. Each one is a door that opens onto a different room of disciple-making. And each one is immediately practical for anyone willing to walk through it.

Conclusion 1: Jesus Did Not Use His Deity to Live Out His Humanity

This is the foundation. Jesus lived as a true human being - the second Adam, succeeding where the first Adam failed. His obedience, all the way to death on the cross, was accomplished not by reaching into His divine nature but by depending entirely on His Father.

Why does this matter? Because as long as you believe Jesus did what He did because He was God, you will always have an excuse. “I’m not God. I can’t do what He did.” That sounds humble. But it is actually a way of dodging the call.

Ian Thomas, the founder of Torchbearers International, captured it in a single sentence: “Jesus was man as God intended man to be.” Jesus showed us what a fully human life looks like when it is lived in total dependence on God. He did not show us what a superhero life looks like. He showed us what our life can look like.

This shifts the question we ask. Instead of “What Would Jesus Do?” - a question that can be answered with imagination - we should ask “What DID Jesus Do?” Look at the Gospel accounts. Watch how He depended on the Father. Notice what resources He used. Then follow in those steps.

A young believer in a remote village in Central Java does not need to imagine what Jesus would do in her situation. She can open the Gospels and see what Jesus actually did - how He prayed before major decisions (Luke 6:12-13), how He studied and quoted Scripture (Luke 24:27), how He leaned on the Spirit (Luke 4:1, 14), how He built a community of brothers (John 15:15). Then she can do the same. The pattern is not complicated. It is deliberately simple, so that fishermen and farmers and homemakers can follow it.

Conclusion 2: Jesus’s Resources Are Our Resources Too

Here is where the foundation becomes a launching pad. If Jesus lived His human life without using His divine nature, then what did He use? Four resources. And every single one of them is available to every believer right now.

The Holy Spirit. Every aspect of Jesus’s life was saturated with the Spirit. He was conceived by the Spirit (Luke 1:35), anointed by the Spirit (Luke 4:18), filled with the Spirit (Luke 4:1), led by the Spirit (Luke 4:1), and performed miracles by the Spirit’s power (Matthew 12:28). If the living Son of God, in all His greatness, chose not to live without the constant help of the Spirit for even one moment, how can we do any less? The same Spirit who anointed Jesus dwells in every believer.

Prayer. More than 45 times Scripture tells us that Jesus withdrew to pray. Before choosing the Twelve, He prayed all night (Luke 6:12). Before the cross, He prayed until His sweat was like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). His ministry began in prayer and ended in prayer. And six times in the upper room, on the night before He died, Jesus told His disciples to “Ask!” (John 14:13, 14, 16; 15:16; 16:23, 24). He was not making a suggestion. He was giving a command with a promise.

The Word of God. Jesus quoted the Old Testament over 90 times. On the Emmaus road, He explained the entire Bible to two disciples, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27). He did not just read Scripture; He knew it, studied it, and allowed it to shape every decision.

Supportive community. Jesus had family. He had close friends - Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. He had the Twelve, who moved from followers, to servants, to friends, to brothers (John 15:15; John 20:17). Hebrews 2:11 says He is not ashamed to call us His brothers.

Now picture that church-planter in the remote village again. No theological library. No smartphone. No senior pastor. But he has the Holy Spirit. He can pray. He has a Bible (even if only the New Testament). And he has a few fellow believers in that village or the next one over. That is everything Jesus relied on. It is enough to turn the world upside down.

Conclusion 3: We Underestimate What God Wants to Do Through Us

This may be the most sobering of the three conclusions. Seven times Jesus rebuked His disciples for lack of faith (Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 13:58; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20; Mark 16:14). In Matthew 17, when His disciples could not cast out a demon, Jesus said with evident grief: “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you?” (Matthew 17:17). Then He added: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed… nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

Spader makes a striking observation: the greatest grief we bring to the heart of Jesus is not our great sins. It is our lack of faith in what He wants to do in and through us. We underestimate God. We play small. We assume our limitations are His limitations.

Think about what this means for a workshop of ten young leaders preparing to plant churches in remote areas of Central Java. They will face real limitations - language barriers, hostile neighbors, financial scarcity, isolation. The temptation will be to think, “What can I really accomplish?” But Jesus’s response to that thought is always the same: Ask. Six times in one evening He said it. Ask the Father. Trust the Spirit. Open the Word. Lean on your brothers. And watch what God does.

These three conclusions are not just ideas to agree with. They are a new way of seeing Jesus - and a new way of seeing yourself. Jesus was fully human. He depended on resources that are available to you right now. And He believes that, through those same resources, God can do more through you than you have yet imagined.

The only question left is: will you ask?