Growing in Christ

The foundation of the life of a Christian is his or her relationship with Christ.  Building that doesn't require a seminary or Bible school degree, but the patient discipline of meeting daily with God.  There are no shortcuts to a deep walk with God but to diligently seek Him out every day, learning a little bit more of Who He is and allowing His likeness to transform us a little bit more as we travel through our day.  Just like it takes years of spending regular time with your friend to know him or her well, so it is with building our relationship with God.

Illustrations help disciples quickly grasp and retain spiritual concepts. They are then able to turn around and share them with still others. We liken prayer to the five fingers of a hand, which represent five phases of a complete prayer or five different kinds of prayer. In the setting of a Quiet Time, we would normally move through all five phases of prayer. But in a typical day, we might pause at any time for only one or two of these kinds of prayer.

Veteran Navigator missionary, Roy Robertson was trained early on to keep a set of prayer lists in order to keep things manageable and stay faithful in prayer.  He called these lists the Temporary Prayer List, Permanent Prayer List and Daily Prayer List.  A set of blank lists is available for download, if you find them useful.

Contrary to natural instincts, the goal of our Quiet Time is not to understand every word we read (as in Intensive Reading), but rather to get a good handle on one new truth (or a reminder of something we need to keep working on) for that day.  We can safely skip over the things we don't understand for two reasons:  1) As we keep reading, all things the Lord wants us to understand will come up again, even only if it's our next time through the Bible; and 2) God's Word is a progressive revelation in several senses, but the most important for us in this discussion is in the sense that deeper truths depend on shallower truths.

You cannot read very far in God's word before He says something that really throws you for a loop.  We know full well what He is saying, but Heaven help us if we have to do it!  That shouldn't surprise us:  God's thoughts are not ours, neither are our ways His ways (Isaiah 55:8)!  His goal is that we be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29), and if we're honest, we know we're pretty far from the target (Romans 3:10-18).  But He's given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-11), not the least of which are His Spirit dwelling in us and the literacy that allows us to read His Word for ourselves!

You'll remember we've been working our way through and around the Wheel Illustration of a growing Christian life.  The final spoke of that illustration, and one that can provide impetus in unique ways, is Witnessing.  The founder of Training Evangelistic Leadership, Roy Robertson, was taught—and passed on to those he discipled—that we witness in two ways:  By life and by lip.

I often ask my discipleship students why they think God left us on earth once our salvation was settled.  Why couldn't we be caught up to Heaven as soon as we trusted in Christ?  Why do we have to keep slogging through this sin-damaged world?

God did not create us to cast us into Hell, but to fellowship with us forever.  But God's perfect righteousness demands that those who dwell with Him must also be sinlessly perfect.  The first man sinned, and all his descendants after him have also sinned in his likeness.  We all deserve God's condemnation, but God doesn't want to condemn us.  His justice demands it, but in His mercy He devised the only way out for us that would both preserve His righteousness and redeem our souls.

I explained the Great News of God's Salvation in my last post, and previously provided the context that makes that news so great.  But just as leaving someone with only the bad news is bad, so it is tragic to offer someone a solution without showing them how to make use of it.  In this final email on the Bridge Illustration, we'll clear that up.

Looking carefully at Ephesians 4:11-16, we see what needs to follow our fruitful evangelistic efforts:  The Bible calls it discipleship.  The initial phase of discipleship, helping a new Christian clarify their standing before God and become established in their new life in Christ, we label follow-up.  Follow-up refers to the early steps of stabilizing a new Believer's decision to trust in Christ, which also lays a foundation for a lifetime of discipleship.