Today's Discipleship Weekly is the 100th! We hope you've found it encouraging listening to everyday stories, wrestling with tricky questions, reflecting on Core Values, and exploring pop culture. We'd love to hear and share your alongsider story! Let us know what God is doing on the ground where you are.

If you've found Discipleship Weekly helpful, is there someone you could forward this on to, so that they can be encouraged in this journey too? 

Susan, who joined the Navs movement when it first came to the UK, describes the fruit she’s seen across nearly 70 years of alongsiding

I became a Christian in 1954, at the age of 19, at a Billy Graham rally in London. But it wasn’t until four years later, when Roy Rimmer (later to become my husband!) introduced me to Navigators Joyce Turner and Elizabeth Ann Horsford, that I learned to walk with Jesus every day.

After completing my nursing training, I spent eight months at the home of Doug and Leila Sparks (European Navigator leaders). When I returned, I joined the Navigator team who lived together in a London flat, to learn more about how to be an alongsider.

I discovered so much about how to live life with Jesus by watching the lives of these two sets of people. Through them I caught the vision of discipling someone and helping that person to do the same. This vision captured my heart and has shaped my life ever since.

I was shown simple aids that have been life changing and which I still use today. Scripture memory has particularly helped me. The wonderful thing about God’s word is that it does what God intends for it to do; it always bears fruit. In Isaiah 55:11, the Lord says:

'[My word] will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.'

So, as we get alongside others, whether they know Jesus or not, we can offer them his words. The secret is to prayerfully and humbly share what Jesus means to us, share a favourite scripture, help them understand it and encourage them to learnt it.

I love picturing Jesus on the road to Emmaus, coming alongside three bewildered men and opening the scriptures to them (Luke 24:13-35). That’s what being an alongsider looks like.

That’s what I have done and continue to do today among my family, neighbours and local friends. And I see the spiritual fruit it’s produced – generational fruit. I see this in friends, who are still walking with Jesus and have helped others do the same, but also in my three children and 12 grandchildren, who are all walking with Jesus, holding his words in their hearts.

Only our sovereign Lord can do this! He just asks us to follow and he will take care of the rest. ‘Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”' (Mark 1:17 NLT).