The Process

What if you started a small group that focused on deeply, intentionally applying these seven spiritual habits? Your circle might begin with just one other person. That’s fine. It might have three or four. Start with habit 1, then work through each of the habits together. Below is an outline of what it might look like if you did put together such a group. How exciting this would be!

A deep spiritual relationship will never grow until you dedicate time to it consistently. Begin by setting a regular time to meet. Will you gather every Monday at 6:00 a.m. before work? Will you gather once a month on a Saturday? As you start meeting regularly, take time to learn each other’s stories. How did you become a follower of Jesus? What changes have occurred in your heart and life since deciding to follow Christ? How are you growing in your pursuit of God?

Once your small group gets to know one another, a natural leader will emerge. Who seems to initiate spiritual growth? Who appears to hold the deepest trust of the group? Are the other people willing to follow his or her lead? Jesus brought his group together, and Peter naturally rose to the top. Give the natural leader permission to initiate, and keep each gathering focused on growth.

Together, jump right in with habit 1: spend the first hour of your morning alone with God. If this feels overwhelming, start with fifteen minutes, then move to thirty. Gather and discuss what you did during your time with God and what God spoke to you.

Don’t wait until you perfectly execute habit 1 before moving to habit 2. Once your small group has some traction in a habit, it’s time to introduce the next one.

In habit 2, begin by making a list of five people in your life who are far from God, and commit to pray for them every day. Then challenge one another to pick the most difficult person on each of your lists and initiate a spiritual conversation with him or her. Come back together later and discuss how things went. Move through the remaining habits over the course of a number of months. It may take years before there’s real traction among your members. That’s okay. The goal is progress, not perfection.

The day will come when your group’s spiritual growth can’t move forward until some decisive action is taken, and it’s the responsibility of the leader, along with the rest of the group, to challenge each person to act on what you discuss. For one person in the group, it might mean finally talking to his or her dad about Christ. It might mean finally being honest about that porn addiction. Each participant in the group should ask, “What do I need to do to apply what we discussed to my life?” That one question will keep any small group from feeling stale or irrelevant.

Any call to action from your group should not be manipulative or controlling, but it should be compelling, motivated by love. If a person is unwilling to act or just not ready to act, the group should be patient and supportive. But eventually, those unwilling to act will be left behind as others grow and mature. This is an area where a pastor or other leader from your local church can serve as a catalyst to challenge those who seem stuck in their spiritual growth. Stay closely connected to the leadership in your church, and God will continue to push your group to new levels of maturity.

Imagine this discipleship process playing out with you and two of your friends. You gather every Friday morning, talk about your spiritual lives, and challenge one another. At first, you learn to spend daily time with God and hear his voice. Then you begin sharing your faith. You talk about money, sexual purity, and healthy life rhythms. Everyone in the group is experiencing profound and rapid change.

This progress shows that it’s time for the next level: you have to find someone less spiritually mature than you and give away what you’ve learned. God has fashioned the human heart in such a way that information becomes revelation as it is passed on from one person to another. In other words, it’s not enough just to have your band of brothers. You must guide someone else who is new to faith into spiritual maturity.

Stretch your love by investing your best in someone else, and experience the joy of seeing that person grow. This will allow you to break the power of selfishness and celebrate the success of another.

The essence of these seven habits is not to make you a really good person. Rather, they are to give you a practical strategy to grow in love. This has been God’s strategy for spiritual growth all along. “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:16 NIV).

One last question: What are you waiting for?

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