The Follower of Christ Pathway
"I feel really close to Christ and depend on Him daily for guidance."
If you
sense you are living in this stage of your journey, here are some suggestions
and options you might be interested in trying as you seek to make the most of
our intentional spiritual journey to Christlikeness.
Let the journey begin!
The call to follow Christ is also a call to be transformed into His image. Thus, kingdom living begins when we accept Jesus’ invitation to keep company with him…that we might become like him (Mark 3:14; Mark 1:17; John 15; John 17:3; Galatians 4:9; Colossians 3:1-17). In other words, we become like Christ by interaction with Christ himself. Taking on the character of Christ then, being spiritually formed, flows from an ongoing interaction with Christ, through the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, to receive from God the life we cannot birth in ourselves.
The fact is we can’t change our own hearts. We can’t control, manage, or dictate spiritual reality in our lives. The active agent in the transformation process is the Holy Spirit, who regenerates, enlightens, motivates, and empowers believers in their inner being by his presence to grow us in our likeness to Christ. On the other hand, it is unlikely that we will deepen our relationship with God in a random or unintentional way.
Although we cannot by direct effort change our heart, we are invited to participate with God in our transformation. We do this by a purposeful pattern of life…of intentionally placing ourselves in environments where we create the conditions in our lives so as to train our hearts to recognize and surrender to the already ongoing, maturing and healing presence of the Holy Spirit, who is shaping us to be like Jesus and bringing about God’s Kingdom purposes and mission.
For example, if you were asked to list people, places or events that were instrumental in your spiritual development, what are some of those things you would list? More than likely it would look something like this: a friend who took you “under wing” as a spiritual mentor, a retreat place or summer camp, a book, a missions trip, Scripture, an altar experience, cancer, fasting, a pastor, serving in a soup kitchen, etc. All of these “environments” provided the opportunity for you to open your heart to the transforming presence and work of the Holy Spirit in your life.
If you would like to know
more, you may listen to the sermon called The Intentional Journey.
The good news is there are some natural “places” of transformation already embedded in our lives and our church that become opportunities to encounter Jesus’ transforming presence. All of the people, places, and/or events you listed earlier can be organized into five environments that provide opportunities to encounter Jesus: personal, relational, intellectual, missional, and experiential. These five environments can be identified by the acrostic P.R.I.M.E. Click on the links below to read more about each environment.
The intentional practice of a spiritual discipline such as scripture reading, prayer, solitude, or fasting are environments where we train our hearts to remain open and surrendered to the fresh, ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. They are not “spiritual principles” or “moral guidelines” we perform as a way to go about improving our condition. They are not a formula we follow so we can harness divine favor or look godly.
They are indispensable to a life of faith, but only to the degree that they allow us to “keep company” or connect with God. Often it is through a spiritual discipline we make space in our lives for God to birth in us what we can’t do ourselves. Transformation is entirely by grace (the work of the Spirit), but it requires our active, intentional participation through regular spiritual practices.
For more information on personal discipleship,
listen to or read the sermon entitled Personal Discipleship.Listen to the sermon entitled Keeping in Step with the Spirit.
Watch this video entitled Spiritual Practices - How to Meet God in the Everyday.To respond appropriately to God’s Word, we must study it but we also have to engage our hearts. This means discovering how to meet God through study, memorization and prayerful engagement with Scripture, and it will take your love for God to a deeper and more intimate level.
We have resources available to help you study the Bible. Click here to visit our Bible Reading Resource page. Follow the links on the sidebar to learn how to read the Bible transformationally and study the Bible using the deductive, inductive, and reading an entire book methods.
Follow a daily
Bible reading plan and devotional. We have provided a number of resources that provide a
chance to pause during your day and re-center your thoughts back on God. There
are many different ways to approach a devotion time and the computer may not be
the best way for you - maybe a short walk away from your desk while you reflect
on a Bible verse would be the most helpful. But for those who are looking for a
way to be spiritually refreshed right in the midst of a busy day, we give you
these links in the hopes that they will be a redemptive use of
technology. Some of them are a brief reflection and some require more time to
move through. We hope you find one that brings you back into the presence of
God.
Read Rediscover Prayer - Deepening our Intimacy with God (link coming soon). This will help you grow in love for God by expanding your conversation with God to intentionally include various types of prayer and aids to converse with God, including praying scripture, confession, prayer of Examen, intercession, and ultimately learning to listen to God.
Read Praying When You Don't Feel Like It.
Take a sacred pathways assessment from the LifeQuest website at this link.
Read Encountering God in Silence and Solitude (link coming soon).Or watch these short videos:
Watch this video on silent prayer, a wordless way of resting in the presence of God with a spirit of openness, contrition, and longing.Watch this video on practicing a daily prayer of surrender.Watch these videos to learn about and practice journaling.Discover your spiritual gifts. Take this online survey to help you understand that God has blessed you with unique gifts, passions, and talents. You will also discover these were designed for you to serve others, fulfill your purposes in God's kingdom, and play an important part in your spiritual growth.
Use the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun (available at amazon.com).
Jesus’ transformative presence is rooted in relationship with God and one another. Therefore, being formed in Christlikeness for Kingdom purposes is always lived out and made complete in community. Communities of grace define who we are and how we live in trust, love, grace, humility, dignity, and justice. Biblical truths and messages are hammered out on the anvil of faithful community living…in an environment of ongoing nurture through relationships of trust, vulnerability, modeling, and accountability.
We cannot grow fully into Christ’s image apart from regular, sometimes difficult and messy, engagement with other Christ followers in which our jealousies, irritations and resentments are confronted and the virtues of patience, love and forgiveness are given regular opportunities to be practiced.
For more information on how we encounter Jesus in community, listen to or read the sermon entitled Relational Discipleship.
Lead a life group. Training is provided as well as ongoing, weekly, and quarterly leadership training. For more information, contact Pastor Gail.
Develop a spiritual friendship. These are relationships in which we experience being deeply known and loved through regular and intentional authenticity, confession, accountability, encouragement, and prayer with another person. A spiritual friendship is a relationship with a fellow disciple that purposefully includes mutual intimacy, guidance, and accountability. Contact Pastor Gail for more information.
Join The City - our primary networking tool for keeping connected at Faith and keeping up-to-date on current events. To respond appropriately to God’s Word, we must study it, but we also have to engage our hearts. We must strike a delicate balance between historical-critical engagement with scripture and opening oneself to the Word's life-transforming potential. There should always be room for serious study that does not bypass critical scholarship, yet the goal of scripture reading is to internalize and personalize the Scripture so that its truth can affect how we think, our attitudes, and how we live, our actions.
When we approach scripture as the living word of God it invites us to pay attention to how God may be speaking to us in a fresh way and it becomes a place of encounter with Jesus.
For more information on intellectual discipleship,
listen to or read the sermon entitled Intellectual Discipleship.Suggested reading (some of these titles are available at the Resource Center at the church): - Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard
- The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard
- Cure for the Common Life by Max Lucado
- Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
- Living in the Spirit by George Wood
- Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland, Jr.
- Sacred Romance by John Eldridge
- Generous Justice by Tim Keller
- Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
- The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
- Abundant Simplicity by Jan Johnson
- Thirsting for God by Gary L. Thomas
- Waking the Dead by John Eldridge
- Life With God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation by Richard Foster
- Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
Our faith must become an embodied faith, where our witness to the world is based more on the weight of our actions than the strength of our arguments. We are not elected for privilege, but for service; to live not as exclusive beneficiaries of God’s saving work, but as bearers of this grace to the rest of the world.
For more information on missional discipleship,
listen to or read the sermon entitled Missional Discipleship.Attend the Management and Leadership life group to learn more about becoming a servant-leader.
Use your gifts and talents to serve in leadership on a ministry team.
Go on a short-term missions trip.
Read Your Flourishing is for the Nations.
Give generously. Giving is one of the ways we support the mission of Faith. Practicing tithing is a place to start. Tithing is giving a portion (10%) of our income and testifies to the reality that all we have comes from God. It serves as an expression that all our resources, time, talents, and treasures, are at God's disposal. Read What the Bible Says About Tithing to learn ten reasons you should tithe and the various ways you can give at Faith.
Listen to a sermon on tithing.
Serve faithfully. Making a regular commitment to serve is a crucial part of the development of a Christ-like heart and life. Our many ministries at Faith provide a spring board for involvement at any level. Whether you want to welcome guests, serve on a missions trip, work with kids, or simply pray for someone, you can find a place to serve with radical hospitality. Log on to The City to see our service opportunities.
Support Faith's missions efforts financially. The biblical understanding of offerings is viewed as giving above the tithe. Both tithing and giving offerings are aspects of the larger call to stewardship and they are one of God's most important training exercises for shaping our hearts and participating in the work of the kingdom.
Participate in ShareFest, a city-wide service day to our community. Volunteer at one of the many community service agencies in the Tri-Cities.
E - Experiential Environments: We are transformed through encounters with Jesus that mark us forever (Colossians 1:27)
For more information on experiential discipleship,
listen to or read the sermon entitled Experiential Discipleship.
Attend a quarterly Awaken Worship Night for an evening of worship, baptism, and communion.
Celebrate communion, also called The Lord's Supper. It is offered once a month in our morning service.Pray for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Read Receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.Join in the daily prayer time at Faith at 5:00 AM and 9:00 AM
in the multipurpose room.
If you are facing a challenge in your life or need someone to talk to, please give us your contact info and we will connect you with someone at Faith.