Discipleship Letters 37-38

Discipleship Letter 37                                                April 12, 2009

Spiritual growth is not natural. We won’t grow and become like Christ automatically. It’s intentional. It involves commitment. It requires determination. “A person must want to grow, decide to grow, and make an effort to grow. Discipleship begins with a decision.” The disciples simply express “a desire to follow him.” [Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Growth without Compromising your Message and Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), pp. 332-333.] Spiritual growth begins with a decision. Without such a simple expression of faith, there won’t be any spiritual growth.

How do we grow in Christ? How do we help others grow toward maturity in Christ? These two questions must be addressed in our lives. And your lives must become intentional. Otherwise, you merely talk the talk!

Jesus said, “Make disciples of all nations.” Paul said, “To present everyone mature in Christ,” or “To prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” The book of Hebrews said, “Let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity…”

“Without a commitment to grow, any growth that occurs will be circumstantial, rather than intentional. Spiritual growth is too important to be left to circumstance.” (p. 333)

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Discipleship Letter 38                                                April 19, 2009

“The gospel is an invitation to abundant life in the kingdom of God. The gospel is not simply the good news that begins the Christian life, but it should also provide a pattern for our living.” [James Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), p. 101.] The gospel is not something that we believe; the gospel is something that we live. Gospel-centric people must have a gospel-pattern living. Many Christians want the gospel benefits, but they don’t want to be confined within the gospel boundary.

If we fail to let the gospel provide a pattern for our living, we need to revisit how much we are convicted by the gospel. If the gospel pattern “works” only when we are convenient, if the gospel pattern “means” something to us when we want something, if the gospel pattern “means a lot” to us when we have a lot to say to others, then we live in the dangers of “Pseudo-Transformation”:

“As Christian we’re called to ‘come out and be separate,’ that our faith and spiritual commitment should make us different somehow. But if we are not marked by greater and greater amounts of love and joy, we’ll inevitably look for substitute ways of distinguishing ourselves from those who are not Christians. This deep pattern is almost inescapable for religious people; if we do not become changed from the inside-out…we will be tempted to find external methods to satisfy our need to feel that we’re different from those outside the faith. If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.” [John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People. Expanded ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 30-31.]