You Don’t Need More Bible Knowledge. You Need More Reps.
Why obedience grows through practice, not just information.
Last week I wrote that most disciples don’t have a knowledge problem. They have an obedience problem.
I got some pushback. Others asked what I meant by “reps.”
Fair enough.
A rep is a repetition. A basketball player shoots free throws until the release isn’t a thought anymore. A pianist practices the same eight bars until the hands move without hesitation. You get good at things by doing them until they become unconscious skill.
Same with following Jesus. Not a complicated idea. Just chronically under-practiced.
Maturity isn’t built by consuming information. It’s built by doing the thing, again and again (badly at first, then less badly) until confidence forms, then competence.
Most discipleship is heavy on input and light on reps. That gap is the actual problem.
The Hidden Problem Revealed
Take a typical Thursday for someone serious about their faith.
Bible app before the kids get up. Theology podcast on the drive in. Church Sunday, small group Tuesday. Conference next month. Commentary on the nightstand since January.
More Bible content in a week than most first-century disciples encountered in a year.
Meanwhile, the guy two desks over has no idea they’re a Christian.
Some Christians have read entire books on evangelism without sharing the gospel with anyone in months. Some have listened to hundreds of hours of teaching on prayer while barely praying out loud with another person. They’ve studied the Great Commission more than they’ve obeyed it.
That’s not a learning problem. That’s an obedience gap - and it’s wider than most people want to admit.
The reason it stays that way: information costs nothing. You can sit with your earbuds in on the subway and absorb content with zero risk, zero exposure, nobody pushing back. It mimics progress. It isn’t.
You can hide in learning forever.
The conference high feels like something. The podcast feels like growth. Some of it genuinely is. But none of it builds what only comes from doing it - the confidence that you can, and the competence to do it well.
Jesus didn’t train people who watched. He trained people who had to show up and try.
Next Lab: “Rhythms of a Covo Multiplier” (Wednesday, June 17th at 3PM ET). What disciples do that see traction and new disciples made.
How Jesus Actually Trained His Disciples
No prerequisites. No readiness check. Fishermen off the water, a tax collector mid-shift, a zealot mid-whatever - straight into mission while they were still confused, still inconsistent, still asking questions that showed how much they didn’t get yet.
The pattern: model it, do it with them, send, fail, debrief, go again.
Out in pairs before they were ready (Luke 10).
Five loaves, two fish, five thousand people - Jesus hands it to them and says handle it, then watches (Mark 6).
Peter out of the boat in a storm at night, going under, pulled up, turned into a lesson (Matthew 14).
Attempted deliverance, public failure, debrief on what went wrong (Mark 9).
Read that last one again. They failed in front of everybody. Jesus let it happen. Then he used it.
Mostly, that’s not how we do discipleship. We accumulate knowledge and wait. We tell people to get ready, then wait for them to feel ready, and most of them never quite do - because readiness isn’t something you feel your way into. It’s what practice produces.
You don’t learn obedience by rehearsing for it. You learn it by obeying - clumsily at first, then with something that actually starts to look like confidence and competence.
The disciples learned to follow the same way anyone learns anything. Repetition.
What Reps Actually Produce
First time you try to bring up faith with the guy you eat lunch with every Tuesday - it goes sideways. You start a sentence and don’t finish it. You say “I’ve been thinking a lot about God lately” and look at your food. The drive back to the office is mostly you replaying it.
No confidence. No competence. One rep.
Which is fine. That’s the point.
Ten reps in, when another guy says he’s not really religious, you don’t go quiet. You’ve figured out how to say “what do you mean by that?” and stay in it. Something is forming.
Fifty reps in, you’re not overthinking and analyzing every word and look. You’re just talking to somebody and genuinely interested. That ease didn’t come from a podcast. The reps built it, mostly without you noticing.
Same with praying out loud. Small group ends at 6pm, someone says their marriage is falling apart. First time you offer to pray - voice goes strange, you say “Lord” four times, can’t remember how you usually land it. Uncomfortable. A rep. Ten reps later you’ve found a cadence. Fifty reps later you’re moving towards them before you’ve decided to.
That’s not a gift that landed on you. That’s practice.
Opening Scripture runs the same track. First time you pull up a passage on your phone and don’t know what to say and the quiet feels like failure. You try again the following week. Then again. Until one night a friend texts that things are bad and you write back “can I show you something?” and it doesn’t even feel like a bold move.
Reps build confidence. Reps build competence. Nobody expects to get strong by watching gym videos. But plenty of Christians are waiting for boldness to show up without ever practicing - and then wondering why it hasn’t.
Why Most Christians Avoid Reps
Mostly it comes down to comfort.
People know what they should be doing. They’ve heard it. The problem isn’t information. It’s that doing it exposes you in ways that sitting and listening never does.
Fear of rejection keeps people quiet in conversations that had somewhere to go. Three years of lunch with the same person and it’s still fantasy football and weekend plans - because going deeper feels risky and there’s always a reason to wait. The professional assumption (faith is private, work is the wrong place!) keeps the most important thing about you hidden from the people you’re around most.
And underneath it: what if I try and nothing happens?
So people attend more things. Subscribe to more things. An hour of good teaching feels like movement. But it doesn’t produce boldness. Nothing does, except practice.
The disciples weren’t bold before the reps. They were scared. What Pentecost released was acceleration: something built over three years of stumbling attempts and corrections and going back out again.
Boldness came after. Not before.
Readiness isn’t something you get before you practice. It’s what practice quietly makes.
What Reps Look Like
No platform needed. No title. No moment when you finally feel ready, which may never come.
Some reps are hidden. You feel prompted to fast and you actually do it. You sense you should pray for someone and you stop and pray right then instead of meaning to later. You’ve been avoiding a passage of Scripture and you sit with it anyway. Nobody sees these. They still count. Hidden obedience is where a lot of the early confidence gets built: in private, before you ever open your mouth in front of anyone.
Some reps build people skills. Most disciple-making conversations don’t start spiritual. They start casual: the weather, the job, the weekend. Then something gets real. Someone mentions they’re struggling. The conversation goes a level deeper. That’s meaningful.
Then, if you’ve been practicing, you recognize the moment and don’t let it pass. You ask a question. You say something honest about your own life. Sometimes it opens into something genuinely spiritual.
And occasionally, if you stay with it, you’re sitting across from someone with a Bible open between you, watching them read it for themselves for the first time.
That progression (casual, meaningful, spiritual, discovery) doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because you’ve done enough reps that you can feel when a door opens and you’ve practiced enough to walk through it.
Meeting ends at 4:30, coworker says it’s been a rough week. Instead of nodding and getting your stuff - “can I pray for you before we head out?” Awkward the first time. Less so by the fifth. Ordinary by the twentieth.
Dinner Saturday with someone you’ve known for years. The conversation gets real somewhere around dessert. You say “you know I used to have massive anxiety around finances, now I pray and God gives me peace. How do you deal with it?” Not a trap. A real question. That’s a rep.
Friend texts at 10pm, another bad fight with his wife. Don’t send emojis. “Can I show you something?” A few verses from Ephesians 4, what do you notice. That’s a rep.
One person a few years behind you in faith. Every other week - coffee, one honest question, something you’re actually working out yourself, a prayer before you go. Reps stacking into competence over months.
None of it feels significant while it’s happening.
One day you just notice the thing that used to freeze you doesn’t anymore.
Start Getting Reps
Most Christians aren’t stuck because they need more teaching.
They’re stuck because they haven’t practiced obedience long enough for confidence and competence to take hold.
More content won’t close that gap.
What closes it is this week - one hidden act of obedience you’ve been putting off, one conversation you let go a level deeper, one moment where you do the thing instead of consuming something about it.
Pray when prompted today. Actually fast if you’ve been nudged to. Text someone outside the faith and ask how they’re really doing. Let one conversation go somewhere real before Sunday.
You already know enough.
Stop preparing to obey Jesus someday.
Start getting reps this week.
Don’t pick a huge goal. Pick one rep.
Our labs are for people who are ready to stop drifting and take one clear step.
Next Lab: Rhythms of a Covo Multiplier
Wednesday, June 17th at 3PM ET
Mark, thanks for the great info. I think God would want us to learn something from the Word and obey it instead of trying to learn everything and obey nothing.
Thank you for the reminders, I needed them… it’s easy to fall back into “comfortable “…