Can You Handle a Person of Peace?

How do you know if you’re ready to find a person of peace?

“Person of peace” is a loaded term in the DMM community. In this week’s mini blog based on the latest episode of the CDM Podcast, we’re going to look at common misconceptions about persons of peace, as well as what it takes to be the kind of disciple maker who is ready to connect with one. So let’s hit the afterburner and launch right in!

DM and Dogfighting

For many disciple makers, particularly those of us just starting out, it can be so easy to fixate on the concept of the person of peace, thinking they will be our golden ticket to Disciple Making Movement.

However, most disciple makers are no more ready to be entrusted with a person of peace than an aspiring pilot fresh out of Officer Candidate School is ready to fly a sixty-five-million-dollar F/A-18 Super Hornet off a moving aircraft carrier.

[Cue shameless plug for “Top Gun: Maverick.”]

If you haven’t seen “Top Gun: Maverick,” finish reading this blog and then go see it. It’s the perfect summer blockbuster with an exciting story, epic aerial cinematography, and none of the woke culture nonsense that has made so much of modern entertainment hot garbage. I’ve seen it three times in theaters and would be down to go again, so hit me up. I’ll buy the popcorn.

I’m also going to use it as today’s object lesson. Top Gun, I mean…not popcorn.

A New Kind of Hard

For an aspiring fighter pilot, it takes hundreds and thousands of hours of classes, simulations and sorties to acquire the skills and understanding they need to man a regular flying aluminum can, let alone a supersonic one with guns on it. The same goes for disciple-makers and persons of peace.

Like the pilot who just wants to skip training and jump straight to flying Mach-2 with their hair on fire, we often want to jump right into finding a person of peace without considering whether we have put in the time it takes to become a disciple worth multiplying who would attract a person of peace or even know how to be entrusted with one.

That’s one misconception we have.

The other misconception is thinking that once we find a person of peace our work is done, or at least the hard work anyway. We imagine there may be a little effort to put in, but it should mostly be smooth sailing accompanied by an endless streak of incredible breakthroughs and the fruition of our wildest disciple-making dreams.

Unfortunately, such is not the case. A person of peace is not some Mary Sue, golden goose, or deus ex machina that will make all the blood, sweat and tears of disciple-making simply vanish. The work begins again all the same and the only difference is that it’s a new sort of challenge.

For a pilot, learning how to fly a fighter jet and take off of an aircraft carrier is just the beginning. The real challenge starts once they’ve launched off of the carrier and have to contend with enemy aircraft and fortified ground targets.

The same is true for us if we find a person of peace. It doesn’t get easy, it’s just a new kind of hard.

Waiting for the Big Assignment

Throughout the Bible we find the principle of God giving important tasks to people He can trust. They have the character and obedience to be entrusted with great and greater responsibilities. In his book, Experiencing God, Henry T. Blackaby hits this on the head when writes:

“Many people want God to call them to a big assignment. However, they try to bypass the love relationship [when] the love relationship is why God created you. That is far more important to Him than what you do. When the love relationship is right, God will be free to begin giving you assignments at his initiative. Whenever you do not seem to be receiving assignments from God, focus on the love relationship and stay there until the assignment comes.” — Henry T. Blackaby

We can become so obsessed with “the big assignment” and so dissatisfied with anything less that we fail to examine whether we’re even the type of person who can handle that assignment.

We may look at our disciple making and see the couple Discovery Bible Studies we’ve started that haven’t multiplied, or the DMC that puttered out and stalled, or the spontaneous one-shot engagements with lost people that don’t really seem to be leading anywhere and we can get frustrated.

In vexation we may ask God, “Why haven’t you just given me a person of peace yet?”

The question we should really be asking is, “How are we preparing ourselves to become people who can handle a person of peace?”

No flight instructor is going to give her student a seat flying a ruinously expensive fighter jet when he can’t even manage the basics of a training aircraft. If God hasn’t given us that huge role we’re waiting for, it’s probably because we aren’t ready for it.

Be Faithful with the Little

It’s going to takes us being consistent and faithful with the little, ordinary and mundane assignments of our day-to-day lives before God is going to consider giving us more.

It’s going to take us becoming people who are like Jesus. As we obey God, become more and more like Christ, and spend significant time among the lost, God will divinely appoint lost people to cross our paths who will be attracted to that. They will see Jesus in us and will want to know Him.

Persons of peace aren’t going to be drawn to people who are merely living lives of obnoxious religiosity trying to impress people with how spiritual and good they look. Persons of peace are going to be drawn to people who have a genuine relationship with God and live a life of good works. So, if we are not actively living lives that reflect Christ and show real love for others, we may be missing out on opportunities to meet them.

What are the good works that God is calling you to be obedient with where you are right now? Perhaps there are some things you’ve turned your nose up at or neglected for being too small or ordinary when those are the very things that God has entrusted to you.

I know I do this. I get tired of doing the same little things over and over, but the truth is that God is inviting us to lean into the average, the mundane, the ordinary hum-drum of our daily lives and be consistently obedient so that He can grow us little by little into the kinds of disciples He can trust with bigger tasks.

Starting today, let’s ask God to help us want to want to honor Him in the little things. Let’s ask Him to make us disciples worth multiplying and bring persons of peace into our lives if and when we’re ready, and if and when it pleases Him to do so.

Learn More

If you’d like to learn practical tips about becoming a disciple worth multiplying who is ready for a person of peace, you can do so by listening to this episode of the CDM Podcast! Paul Watson and Rebecca Ewing break down three areas of growth that are essential for every disciple and how those areas affect our relationships with persons of peace. If you found this blog helpful or interesting, you won’t want to miss the podcast. Thanks so much for reading!