D – Develop spiritually

OK, finally I can start trying to explain the acrostic of disciple that a friend gave me. Understanding the foundation that I have laid in the previous posts about the personal responsibility discipleship, today we will look at how a disciple should develop spiritually. Discipleship is a continual walk with Christ. It was always meant to be a growth process that never stops. The same as a child continues to develop until adulthood, our discipleship should be a process of continual spiritual development until we arrive in the presence of Jesus.

Moses called the nation of Israel, in Deuteronomy 5:1, to three distinctive development stages – to hear, to learn and to follow. Let me take a minute to briefly look at each of these. We’ll start with hearing. We need to understand how we hear from God today. He has given us His word and we must spend pointed, focused time in His word each day. When we spend time in His word, He will begin to speak to our hearts things that we need to influence our lives. Hearing is absorbing and accepting information about God.

Once we have heard from God, then we need to move to learning from God. Learning understands what we have heard. We need to understand the meaning of what God has spoken to us and the implications of that meaning and the way those things will impact our lives. We need to grab hold of what God has given us and study it until we fully absorb it until it is a part of us and our way of thinking.

This will lead us to following. Following is putting into action all we have learned and understood. This is simply life application of what God has given us. We need to understand that is God gives us something, we study it, understand it and we don’t live it, our mouths may profess Jesus as Lord but our lives deny Him and His teachings.

As disciples we must develop spiritually in our lives. If we don’t, we all nothing more than children in adult bodies. Until next time – keep you eyes on Jesus and remember a race is not over until we get to the finish line.