Discipleship
If we have the humility to believe we can learn from our brothers and sisters and the understanding that some have gone further into the Divine Center than others, then we can see the necessity of spiritual direction. Richard Foster
Gregg’s Reflection:
My 25 year career in the family business began with little responsibility or stress, and as I rose in the ranks, both continuously increased. By the last five years, I was spending 50+ hours a week at work, and my mind focused on work for most of my waking hours. After selling the business, I realized how much our culture values and promotes workaholism. But for me, the business left no share of mind for true discipleship.
I have been involved in small groups of various sorts for thirty years. They have been wonderful experiences, some of them in mixed gender groups with my wife, and some in groups with other men. These groups have been affirming, inspiring, and places of deep community where we could share life’s challenges and know friends would walk with us and pray for us. These groups create settings where we can be inspired by the faith journeys of friends and mentors.
Yet, despite the wonderful good that came from these groups, the friendships, the support during tough times, the learning and wisdom gained, I found one thing lacking. The groups were very low in accountability. Very warm and inviting, but rarely challenging. As I learned in this 3DM workshop on Discipleship and Mission, Jesus always brought a mix of invitation and challenge. First He shows he loves us, then He challenges us to grow up.
The Learning Circle is a tool of accountability that can make the difference between small group and discipleship group. The Learning Circle is designed to help us understand two basic questions: What is God saying to me? What am I going to do about it?
The first half of the Learning Circle calls us to Observe the moment in which God speaks. After observing or hearing something from God, the circle asks us to stop and reflect. My spiritual director suggests journaling when we have a moment like this to help in reflecting upon what it might mean. After we observe and reflect, we are to discuss our observations and reflections with a trusted circle of truth-tellers to help us find deeper meaning. Often Spirit speaks to us through those who know and love us. This step completes the first half of the learning circle, opening us up to turn back towards God in deeper ways.
After discussing a Kairos moment with our small group, we are tasked to make a plan. Sharing our plans with the small group brings accountability to respond to God’s nudging with action. In Jesus’ time, the word believe was inherently defined by a change in behavior, not just a new way of thinking. So, as this slide illustrates, we are called to an inflection point, where we decide what we will stop doing, and what we will start doing.
As we plan, share that plan with accountability partners, and then act, we complete the Learning Circle of Repent and Believe. Each trip around the Learning Circle following a Kairos moment provides a small course correction as we are seeking and following God’s Faint Path. May you, too, find that accountability is a blessing in your Christian walk.
When we think about what effect Invitation and Challenge look like in churches, this illustration is helpful:
Hear a short audio introduction:
Journaling Prompts:
What does discipleship look like in your life? Where have you encountered invitation and challenge? Pastors, have you moved from only loving people to challenging them to grow up as Jesus did? What would that look like?
Scripture
Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.
Richard Foster, RENOVARE Bible notes on 1 Samuel 6.
Committed study of scripture can bring about much more than merely head knowledge. You can bring God himself into all the recesses of our being, for “the word of God is living and active,” Hebrews 4:12. In studying Scripture, and living it, we take on the heart and mind of God.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Ezra 6
Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name. You are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Psalm 86:11,15
Those who put Jesus’ teaching into practice will become wise and live lives that rest on solid foundations. This sermon places wisdom at the center of Christian faith and practice. Growth in wisdom is a pillar of Christian discipleship.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Wisdom of Solomon, p. 229
The disciplines of the spiritual life seek to overcome the blindness of denial and the deafness of despair.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Ezekiel OT p. 1177
Through prayer and study, worship and service, we regularly digest God’s word into the core of our being, where it feeds and transforms us.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Ezekiel 3:1
Blessed be the name of God from age to age, for wisdom and power are his. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.
Daniel 2:20-22
Then he said to them: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
Luke 9:23-24
If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
John 8:31-32
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
John 15:16
You stand only by faith. So, do not become proud, but stand in awe.
Romans 11:20
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1
If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
Galatians 5:25
It is Christ who is growing in us, rather than we who are growing in Christ. Christ is formed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we respond to his ever-present grace in our lives. This occurs in daily, ordinary life as we “practice the presence of God” in our work, our play, our relationships, and all of life.
RENOVARE Bible Notes on Galatians, NT, p. 324
He destined us for adoption as his children, according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:5-6
If we have the humility to believe we can learn from our brothers and sisters and the understanding that some have gone further into the Divine Center than others, then we can see the necessity of spiritual direction.
Richard Foster, RENOVARE Bible notes on Ephesians 4.
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body. And, be thankful.
Colossians 2:12-15
If you cannot listen to your brother, you cannot listen to the Holy Spirit.
Virgil Vogt. From the RENOVARE Life with God Bible profile of Timothy.
For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, Who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
1 Timothy 4:10
Who are our mentors and examples of the faith? The Christian faith is too difficult to be done alone; we must have worthy models. Are we living a life that might be an example to others? Can others find in our spiritual disciplines and practices healthy congruence between the way we talk in the way we walk?
William Willimon, RENOVARE introduction to 2 Timothy
The Christian faith is contagious. If we are to endure as Christians, it must be through apprenticeship-observing more experienced and well-formed Christians, following their moves, taking up their way of life, inculcating their virtues. Through such observation and imitation, we take up the practices of faith and come to embody those practices for ourselves. The church must look for ample opportunities for its members to be observed by and to observe one another as we mature in the faith.
From the Renovare Study Bible notes to 2 Timothy 3:10
Many Christians seek to cultivate those disciplines and practices that enable them to live the Christian life more faithfully. Scripture reminds us that the Christian faith is not only something we believe, but something we practice. Our beliefs are meant to be embodied in our lives. The world is quite right in assuming that if the way of Christ is true and life-giving, it ought to be able to look at our lives and see that way personified in what we do and say.
William Willimon, RENOVARE Bible introduction to Titus
They profess to know God but deny Him by their actions.
Titus 1:16.
Spiritual progress is the result of deliberate and discerning choices.
RENOVARE Bible notes on Hebrews
Make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.
2 Peter 1:5-7. As we grow in holiness, godliness, love and self-control, we become both more human and more like God. RENOVARE Bible Notes on this verse.
Apprenticeship to Jesus in the fellowship of his people is the only assured path of life under God. On that path we move from faith to more faith, from grace to more grace, and are able to walk increasingly in holiness and power.
RENOVARE Bible Notes NT p. 481
If sin is allowed to fester in the community without loving, firm discipline, it hinders the work of spiritual formation and brings disrepute upon the entire Christian community.
RENOVARE Bible notes on People of God in Community, NT p. 258
Apprenticeship to Jesus, under the direction of the revealed Word of God, and the administration of the Holy Spirit, is the single most powerful and beneficial transformational process known to humankind. Moving forward in Christlikeness is highly time sensitive. Apprenticeship to Jesus in the fellowship of his people is the only assured path of life under God. On that path we move from faith to more faith, from grace to more grace, and are able to walk increasingly in holiness and power. Character is costly, and only choice and experience through time can produce it.
From the Renovare Study Bible notes to Revelation.
Ancient Writings
The soul that loves God has its rest in God and in God alone. In all the paths that men walk in, in the world, they do not attain peace until they draw nigh to hope in God.
St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 56, 89
In all things that you find in the Holy Scriptures, seek out the purpose of the words, that you may enter into the depth of the thoughts of the saints and understand them with greater exactness. Do not approach the reading of the Divine Scriptures without prayer and asking the help of God. Consider prayer to be the key to the true understanding of that which is said in the Holy Scriptures.
St. Isaac the Syrian, Sermon 1.85
The acquisition of holiness is not the exclusive business of monks, as certain people think. People with families are also called to holiness, as are those in all kinds of professions, who live in the world, since the commandment about holiness is given not only to monks, but to all people.
Hieromartyr Onuphry Gagaluk
When you begin to read or listen to the Holy Scriptures, pray to God thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, open the ears and eyes of my heart so that I may hear Thy words and understand them, and may fulfill Thy will." Always pray to God like this, that He might illumine your mind and open to you the power of His words. Many, having trusted in their own reason, have turned away into deception.
St. Ephraim the Syrian
Modern Writings
Compunction is the awareness of God working in us, in which He awakens us to our true condition before Him through a shock, sting, a puncture wound, a sensation of being poked. It is often thought of as 'godly sorrow' but not just simply sorrow for sin, but a simultaneous awareness of the love and grace of God.
This work of the Holy Spirit operates in a kind of cycle as compunction leads to humility, humility to mercy, mercy to forgiveness. We are drawn closer to God, our desire for Him is enlarged; our self knowledge is increased and there is planted in us a deeper longing to experience more of His love and grace and less of our apathy and compromise.
Whenever we fall again and lose our peace through guilt or shame, we find the same cycle begins anew as through God-given compunction leading to repentance, we find again. self awareness of who we are before Him. Then with humility we discover afresh His loving mercy and forgiveness, and regain our desire for him alone. This wisdom is not taught from books, but from the daily experience of life being lived in seeking after God.
Celtic Daily Prayer, Book Two, p. 1164
'Stand Still'-keep the posture of an upright man, ready for action, expecting further orders, cheerfully and patiently awaiting the directing voice; and it will not be long ere God shall say to you, as distinctly as Moses said it to the people of Israel, 'Go Forward.' If the Lord makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord's people have always been a waiting people.
Charles Spurgeon, Sermon: The Waiting Soul’s Expectation
Growth enables us to perceive ourselves as becoming. We are neither defined nor held captive by our past. The discipline of growth liberates us from the crushing impact of failures and misdeeds. We can live in the present and prepare to move into the future with readiness and a fresh spirit for encountering life and God.
Gregory Ellison II, Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman, p. 170
Thurman asserts that seeking is not only what humans do to address their deep hunger for God; seeking is what God does in response to God’s deep hunger for us.
Gregory Ellison II, Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman, p.173
Seek one thing alone: to purify your love of God more and more, to abandon yourself more and more perfectly to His will and to love Him more exclusively and more completely, but also more simply and more peacefully and with more total and uncompromising trust.
Thomas Merton, What is Contemplation, p. 55-65
It is the Spirit of God that must teach us Who Christ is and form Christ in us and transform us into other Christs. After all, transformation into Christ is not just an individual affair: there is only one Christ, not many.
He is not divided. And for me to become Christ is to enter into the Life of the Whole Christ, the Mystical Body made up of the Head and the members, Christ and all who are incorporated in Him by His Spirit.
Christ forms Himself by grace and faith in the souls of all who love Him, and at the same time He draws them all together in Himself to make them One in Him.
And the Holy Ghost, Who is the life of this One Body dwells in the whole Body and in every one of the members so that the whole Christ is Christ and each individual is Christ.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 156-157
Anyone who is resolved to meet the Lord daily knows how challenging it is to keep such a resolution. In fact, such resolutions don’t usually work. We have to take a stand and make a declaration: I am a person who meets the Lord each day as a friend and disciple, sitting at his feet to receive a word of life.
Basil Pennington, Lectio Divina, p. 81
In true community we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives. Thus the discipline of community is a true discipline of prayer. It makes us alert to the presence of the Spirit who cries out “Abba,” Father, among us and thus prays from the center of our common life. Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply “Where does God lead me as an individual person who tried to do his will?” More basic and more significant is the question “Where does God lead us as a people?”
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 5/23/20
The great conversion in our life is to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions in our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us for his return.
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 7/10/22
For the Christian, spiritual formation refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.
Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ
While we are individually called to follow Jesus, our discipleship is not an individual affair. Jesus called disciples into a community where we serve one another, encourage each other and become accountable to our brothers and sisters in Christ. In solidarity, this community is called not to face inward, but outward. It exists to serve the world. It is there as an agent of transformation, a signpost to the coming kingdom of God.
Charles Ringman, Celtic Daily Prayer, Book Two, September 14
The wanderer longs for two things: deep fulfillment (truly belonging in this world), and the ability to provide a genuine, soul-infused service to the more-than-human community. These two things-fulfillment and service-cannot be obtained separately. True fulfillment arises out of service. He must first discover the essence of his soul's desires, make a commitment to those desires, and then acquire the skills to embody them to the world. He must cultivate the attitude, spirit, and temperament of service-the mindset that will make his life a gift, a giveaway.
Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 286
The vulnerable person has every reason to keep growing through everything that happens to them. The overly guarded and self-protected person is scratched and dented by all “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” whereas the malleable, bendable, flexible, woundable person is indestructible. Their wounds are their teachers instead of their defeat.
Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, p. 185
Did you ever notice that Jesus is seldom upset with sinners? Jesus is upset only with people who do not think they are sinners.
Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 92
Stories of man with tragic flaws, backtracking, blind spots, denials, and betrayals fill the Scriptures; in fact, they are the norm. Yet They were used by God, each in his own way part of the divine plan. Furthermore, none of us lives half the truth we do know. Still, we know it’s the truth, and it keeps urging us forward with holy discontent. It keeps inviting us through the unbelievably patient voice of God. You do not need to get to the north star to be totally guided by it.
Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 360
For Jesus, “discipleship” is about being in an intimate, loving, and challenging relationship, much like that between parent and child. To be disciples of Jesus, we have to let ourselves be loved as he did. It is in receiving that love that we find our strength and power. First, we must learn how to be God’s children, allowing ourselves to receive love, to be loved, to be cared for, and believed in, so that we can be entrusted to go about our “Father’s business” as Jesus did (see Luke 2:49).
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 3/15/20
In the gospels, all the people who encountered Jesus only by hearsay, by what somebody else believed about him, by what they’d been told, by what they hoped to get out of him: all those people left. They still leave today. The ones that remained-and still remain-are the ones who have met him in the moment: in the instantaneous, mutual recognition of hearts and in the ultimate energy that is always pouring forth from this encounter. It is indeed the wellspring.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Jesus, p.12
Obedience. The Latin root of the word actually means to “listen deeply” or “listen from the depths,” “with the ear of the heart,” as St Benedict puts it. That listening itself is a doing, a submission to what the heart has heard.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p.113
Having tasted divinity, how do we find the path to abide there? We study the mystics.
James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere: A Search for God through Awareness of the True Self
If the individual put at the disposal of the spirit has the needed dedication and discipline, he can live effectively in the chaos of the present high destiny of a son of God.
Howard Thurman, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 206
