Discipleship: God's Plan for Reaching the WorldSample

Discipleship Is Intentional Formation

Our souls, much like our physical bodies, are in a perpetual state of formation.

Food and exercise determine how our bodies are formed. We will put on weight if we consume more calories than we burn. If we burn more calories than we consume, we lose weight. This process is happening whether we like it or not, are conscious of it or not, or if we are intentional about the process or not. It is the nature of the human body.

In many ways, the same principle applies to our souls. Our souls are in a perpetual state of formation. However, instead of food and exercise, our souls are fed by the various environments, spiritual practices, and cultural forces we expose to them. God is at work in our lives. Our response to the gospel and the work of the Spirit has a marked impact on the formation of our souls. We cannot make it rain, but we can faithfully tend our fields so we will produce a harvest when it does rain.

As Solomon warns us in Proverbs 4:23, ‘Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.’ What we allow to form our souls curates our desires and actions, slowly fashioning us into different people.

We are constantly being formed. This process is happening if we like it or not, are conscious of it or not, or if we are intentional about the process or not. It is the nature of the human soul.

However, much like when we choose to exercise our bodies, when we embark on the journey of discipleship, we are making an intentional choice to form our souls. When we accept the call to follow Jesus, become his disciples and follow his ways, we choose to move from a state of unintentional formation to intentional formation. Our wilderness places become cultivated fields.

In Mark 1:17, when Jesus called Simon and Andrew to follow him, he promised to make them into fishers of men. When we accept the invitation to discipleship, we are intentionally accepting the call to become transformed into someone else.

Paul writes and says that God has predestined believers to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). Jesus calls believers to become his disciples because disciples embark on a transformative journey of becoming like him and thus fulfill their God-given calling. By following in the way of Jesus, we position ourselves to be remade into his image and become the person God predestined us to become.

In Jeremiah 18:1-6, we read:

The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, 'Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.' So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. Then the Lord gave me this message: 'O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.’

The imagery of clay in a potter’s hand is a helpful metaphor to describe the journey of discipleship. The clay is pliable in the hands of the potter, so we as disciples need to be malleable in the hands of the Father, allowing Him to shape us into the image of his Son. We become pliable by intentionally following Jesus, his teachings, and his way of life.

The key to transformation is intentionality.

Dallas Willard once wrote:

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heart-breaking needs, is whether those who [. . .] are identified as 'Christians' will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of heaven into every corner of human existence.

Today, that choice sets before you. Will you choose the path of intentional discipleship in the way of Jesus, or will you allow yourself to be unintentionally molded in the ways of this world?

Application

Before you begin today’s Bible reading, take a moment to ask the Holy Spirit to bring awareness of the ways the world around you is unintentionally forming you.

Make a list of things that come to mind. What intentional decisions do you need to make so you do not continue to be formed by these forces?