Welcome to a relational discipleship journey that promises a time of accelerated spiritual growth. This intimate, highly invested experience brings together three ingredients that the Holy Spirit will use to form Christ in you: vulnerability, truth and accountability. Vulnerability happens when you open your life in a self-revealing way to other believers, giving permission for the Spirit to work in you. The more honest and transparent you are with others, the more you are entrusting your life to the Lord. The truth of Scripture serves as the cutting edge for growth. Since the material in this study is laid out in a sequential and systematic way, you will enjoy seeing the truth take shape before your eyes. Finally, accountability involves entering into a mutual covenant with others in which you are giving each other authority to hold one another to your commitments. The combination of these three elements serves as the mold that God uses to give his shape to your life.
Making disciples is the theme of chapter one. Solid foundations will be laid in your life, and a part of spiritual maturity is the desire to pass on that faith to others. May God so take hold of you that you are equipped to invest in others and to make it a commitment for life.
Being a disciple (chapter two) is serious business. The only way to be molded into the person God wants you to be is to abandon self in obedience to Christ.
Chapters three through six introduce the āspiritual disciplinesāāpractices God uses in our life to keep us rooted in Christ. Chapters three to six focus on the disciplines of faith, what God uses in our lives to help us grow up into Christlikeness. The word discipline sometimes carries with it a certain heaviness or weightiness, but the idea of discipline in this book is thought of in the way Richard Foster speaks of it in his Celebration of Discipline. He says that spiritual disciplines are those practices that put us in the presence of God where we can have an intimate relationship with him.
Quiet time, the subject of chapter three, introduces the practice of a daily routine of meeting with the Lord. A quiet time can become a safe place where you experience the Lord as your fortress and protector as well as your closest friend. It can be the place in your day where you freely pour out your heart in an unedited fashion and where God can speak back to you through his Word and Spirit.
Bible study is a key ingredient in a quiet time. This book teaches the inductive method, an investigative study where you discover the meaning of a biblical text through a series of discovery questions. This method is used throughout these studies to guide the unearthing of Godās truth. Prayer is another key ingredient of a quiet time. A simple guide for prayer is provided in chapter five to give structure to the dialogue of prayer.
Finally, in chapter six we focus on worship. Whether private or public, worship is the activity that will characterize our eternity in heaven, and we can experience a bit of that awe and wonder even now.
PREPARING FOR THE TASK AHEAD
The best way to prepare for your discipling session is to take a little time each day to work through the material. It is much better to spend twenty minutes each day than to do it all in one evening. Discipline takes practice to incorporate into our daily routine. It has been shown that new habits take approximately three weeks to become comfortable and another three weeks to become a part of oneās way of doing things. Pray that these disciplines will become second nature to your life and your partnersā.
You have a wonderful, painful, delightful, challenging adventure ahead. God bless you as you grow up into him.
