Siku Kasongo, who serves with Navigators Zambia, tells an alongsider story that shows why faithfulness is less about perfection and more about simply keeping on showing up.

Paul describes faithfulness as part of the fruit produced by the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. The Greek word pistis (carries ideas of faith, trustworthiness and reliability, qualities that grow slowly through a life of steady dependence on .

When I first started discipling Ngambo on campus, this kind of faithfulness was not on my mind. If I’m honest, I was focused on discipling ‘properly’, the way I thought ‘a good Navigator’ should. We studied Scripture, prayed, worked through foundational and practical discipleship topics and so on. We covered anything and everything I could think of!

The fruit that grows slowly

Then discipleship took on a completely different face.

When Ngambo graduated, she joined the Navigators Zambia as a trainee. During that season, she came to live with our family. I soon learned that discipleship cannot be contained in a programme. The real test of faithfulness would come as life changed – and changed again – and we had to learn what it meant to keep walking together through all of it.

Faithfulness sounds wonderfully uncomplicated until life gets complicated.

And life certainly did.

There were weddings, babies, illness, ministry responsibilities and eventually living in different towns. There were times when I was exhausted, unwell or simply overwhelmed by competing demands.

Sometimes faithfulness looked deeply spiritual.

Sometimes it looked like sending a message saying, “Sorry, can’t make it today.”

And sometimes it looked like showing up anyway.

Over the years, I have realised that faithfulness isn’t the absence of interruptions, but the decision to keep returning – to God, to one another, to the calling – even when circumstances change.

From appointments to a life shared

I didn’t yet understand how much discipleship could be woven into the whole of life. As our lives changed, our discipleship changed too. We celebrated joys, mourned losses and learned how to stay connected through different seasons.

Now we live in different towns, so we have had to become creative: a phone call or text, coffee when I’m in her city, or a long conversation when one of us needs to process something.

Sometimes the contact is less frequent than either of us would like. But the relationship remains. That, I think, is the beauty of lifelong discipleship. The form changes, but faithfulness keeps finding a way.

When faithfulness is beyond me

I haven’t always been available when Ngambo needed me. Distance, illness and my own limitations sometimes left me unable to help in the ways I wished I could.

Sometimes all I could do was pray.

So I prayed Scripture over her, listened to the Spirit’s promptings and trusted God to provide what I could not.

Faithfulness, I realised, is sometimes simply paying attention to what another requires. It is recognising that the fruit of the Spirit is not something we manufacture through determination. We participate, we obey, we show up – but the growth itself belongs to God.

I thought I was discipling her. I was being discipled too.

Ngambo has probably taught me as much about faithfulness as I have taught her. She has remained fiercely loyal to me and my family. She remembers birthdays, loves my children, takes the initiative to speak into my life and prays for me. She is hardworking, shows up ready to engage, is committed and observant.

Ngambo says one of the most impactful things for her was seeing me prioritise my time with God and live out the conviction that family is my first ministry. That humbled me, because discipleship is not only what we say across a table with a Bible open between us. It is what the other person sees us do when we are not teaching.

She has also challenged me, especially in my financial stewardship and willingness to rely on the Holy Spirit. She has shown me what it looks like to continue loving people through adversity and to trust God one day at a time.

Somewhere along the way, ‘leader and disciple’ became something deeper. We became sisters.

The long view

Looking back now, I can see fruit that wasn’t obvious at the beginning.

I see faithfulness in Ngambo’s devotion to Christ, her family and her calling. I see it in her desire to serve God even through difficult circumstances. And I see God growing faithfulness in me too. I still haven’t mastered it – far from it. But perhaps that’s part of the point.

Fruit grows.

Slowly.

Sometimes imperceptibly.

Often through ordinary days.

I began by thinking I needed to properly prepare Ngambo for ministry. God, in his wisdom, was preparing both of us for something much bigger – a relationship in which discipleship would become woven into the ordinary fabric of life.

Lifelong.

For the whole of life.

So, my job is simply to ask: Who has God placed in my life that I can faithfully walk alongside?

Then show up.

Keep showing up.

And when life changes – as it inevitably will – don’t assume the relationship has to end. Ask instead: What does faithfulness look like in this new season?

Because discipleship isn’t an appointment we eventually complete.

It is a life we share.

And sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer another is the quiet, Spirit-enabled assurance:

‘I’m still here. Let’s keep walking.’