The Saints: Jesus Shaped Formation
How to align your discipleship for the fruit Jesus actually expects
Return
G’day Everyone and welcome back to The Holy Go!
Some exciting personal news… Over the weekend I was inducted as the Senior Minister at Mildura and Red Cliffs Churches of Christ! I’m very excited to start ministering alongside the great group of people here. Please keep us in your prayers.
This week we continue with “The Saints” series about Spiritual Formation and Making Disciples. Today we’ll look at three aspects to formation that Jesus calls us to. I hope it is helpful!
Equip
Adapting Training
At the end of my most recent Hyrox race I was disappointed with my time.
I had committed myself to a busy training schedule,
I had made sacrifices along the way to ensure I stuck to it,
and I remained disciplined throughout the build.
But for some reason, my result didn’t go the way I had planned.
So I looked back and reflected.
What worked?
What didn’t work?
What could I have dine differently?
As I did this I realised there were some gaps in my training. I think I didn’t:
Spend enough time running on fatigued legs
Spend long enough amounts of time on specific exercises
Nail a recovery routine
And I could go on…
I am now taking this information and adapting my training. Why? Because I want my training to produce a certain outcome.
We need to look at discipleship the same way.
Jesus Shaped Formation
When we look at Jesus we see that He was clear about the outcomes He expected of His disciples:
They would know God.
They would be known for their love.
They would bear fruit.
But if you’ve been around Church for a while you would know that people can do all the right things and still not be transformed into love. They can
Attend Church services,
Listen to great to sermons,
Complete courses and Bible Studies
and still not produce the fruit Jesus expects. If this is the case, then we need to adapt what we are doing.
Luckily for us, Jesus was clear about what the formation process looks like.
In Mark 1:15-20 Jesus shows us three key ways to respond to the gospel. These are:
Repent - Literally means change your mind. This is a posture of surrendering to what has been revealed to us. We can call this aspect: Awakening to love.
Believe - To trust and agree with God. This is a posture of participating in what God is revealing and doing. We can call this aspect: Abiding in love.
Follow - To follow Jesus is to be sent like He was sent, to love others like He loves us. This is a posture of sharing. We can call this aspect: Abounding in love.
Because this framework is relational, these three aspects are never “once and done.” Rather they are a continuous rhythm of life.
Lopsided Discipleship
When I looked at my Hyrox training I realised I had some gaps in my plan that stopped me from achieving success.
In a similar way, if we don’t include all three discipleship aspects, our discipleship will have gaps that limit our ability to produce the fruit Jesus has for us.
The table below highlights the importance of having all three aspects present in our Spiritual Formation. For example,
If we only ever repent, but don’t believe or follow, we’ll be stuck in a pity party always aware of our sin but not of God’s life and grace.
Or if we only believe but never repent or follow, then our faith will be a comfortable self-centred religion.
Therefore, if we want to produce disciples who:
Know God intimately,
are known for their love, and
produce good fruit…
Then we must ensure we incorporate
Repent,
Believe and
Follow
in our Discipleship plans.
We must create spaces and practices to allow people to
Awaken to Love,
Abide in Love and
Abound in Love.
Join me next week as we continue to unpack this further.
Activate
This weeks activation is to spend some time looking at the above table and reflecting on your own spiritual formation.
Which of the three aspects comes easiest to you?
Which of the three aspects is most difficult?
Which Disciple Type describes you best?
What can you do to address any gaps?
What does this teach you about how to make disciples?
Let’s Go!