Parallel Faith: Being a Disciple of JesusSample

Day 5 | Looking Like Jesus

Have you ever misprogrammed a navigation system, thinking it would take you where you need to go, but then you ended up somewhere completely different? Here’s the thing: If you input the wrong coordinates, you will always end up at the wrong destination. Your inputs are always more powerful than your intentions. And this is never truer than when it comes to the direction of our discipleship.

When the rubber hits the road, we often default to our actual programming over our intended purpose.

So where does our religious programming usually take us? Based on what we observe in the average church, we might assume that the proper goal of our spiritual formation is to get people to attend more of our religious services. We are, by default or design, working really hard to make attendees rather than disciples. Nobody wants to get out of bed in the morning and be driven by the purpose of doing more religious stuff. Jesus’ vision was so much bigger than helping people get better at doing “churchy” activities.

Being a disciple was always about following Jesus until we become like him. Christlikeness is the destination of our discipleship.

As we begin to navigate toward God’s way, we will:

• Recalculate our minds until we think more like our Savior.
• Reroute our attitudes until we behave more like him.
• Recalibrate our speech until we sound more like Christ.
• Redirect our actions until we live more like Jesus.

This is what authentic spiritual formation looks like through the fuel of God’s spirit. These are the coordinates we should program into our spiritual navigation system. Spiritual formation is the ongoing process of growing more in Christlike love, joy, and peace. It is allowing God to patiently form his kindness, goodness, and gentleness in us. The incredible thing is that as you focus on your own pursuit of becoming more like Jesus, it inevitably rubs off on others.

Your own formation can form others.

• Those who love like Jesus will find themselves among the last, the least, and the lost.
• Those who live in peace will stick out like a sore thumb in an anxiety-ridden world.
• Those who find joy in all circumstances will bless those who haven’t yet found hope.
• Those who are not formed by the culture can form the culture itself.

If we really want people to live for Jesus, learn with Jesus, love like Jesus, and in doing so look like him, then everything else has to take a back seat.