The Spiritual Growth Path
A Journey to a Deeper Relationship with God…Grounded in Five Steps
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Everyone desires “life to the full”—a full life, a meaningful life, a productive life, a happy life. However we understand and define these words, they are what our hearts desire.
Jesus of Nazareth defined himself as being both the fullness of life and the way to experience it. “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” His reason for coming into the world was that we might “have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10; 14:6).
The five steps below—five words of response, five choices—are essential to follow Jesus Christ. They are the loadbearing elements in a whole and integral Christian life. They structure the total gift of ourselves in love.
To Be a Christian
To believe fully – and practically – in Jesus as our Savior, it is not enough just to make an act of faith in Jesus as the one who saved us by dying for our sins. Jesus is not just a lifeguard who pulls us to shore when we are drowning, to whom we will be eternally grateful, but whom we do not need anymore. To really believe in Jesus as Savior means to believe that we need him to save us from day to day, to save our lives here on this earth from veering off to destructiveness, distortion, mediocrity, and meaninglessness. This requires constant, ongoing interaction with him. It requires a deep, abiding friendship with Christ.
What will you do to develop a close friendship with Jesus Christ? How will you involve him in all areas of your life? How will you keep yourself interacting with him all day long, every day?
To Be a Disciple
To be a Disciple is to be a student of Christ, to live a life characterized by reflection on the message of Jesus. It means deciding seriously that we want to learn everything we can from him and to keep learning all of our lives.
To do this, we need to make a concrete commitment to reading, prayer, and interaction with others in a community of faith. This commitment becomes real when we commit some time to it. Even a few minutes a day is enough to start, provided we intend to persevere. Discipleship is measured, not just by the time we spend on it, but by the persistence of our preoccupation with learning and living God’s word in all we do.
If you want to be a disciple, a student of Jesus, what will you study? When will you read Scripture? When will you pray? How? For how long?
To Be a Prophet
To be a Prophet is to decide to make everything in our lives and lifestyles bear witness to the values of Christ. To be a Prophet is to commit ourselves to a life of continual conversion. To be a Prophet is to determine never to ask again just whether something is right or wrong, but rather how it bears witness to the values of Christ.
What reminder can you use to help remind you to ask, “Will this choice glorify God and bear witness to Christ?”
To Be a Priest
To be a Priest is to mediate the life of God to others through the ministry of love. This ministry consists, not in doing good human things for other people, but in expressing to others the truth and love we have found in Christ. Every day we see around us people who are unaware of the great love God has for them, people who to a greater or lesser degree, in one way or another, feel helpless and hopeless; people who may know and love God, but whom we could help and encourage to know and love more deeply by expressing to them the truth of God, the love of God in our hearts. To do this, to give physical expression to the truth and love that are in us by grace, is what it means to mediate, to communicate, God’s life to people. It is to die constantly to ourselves by giving life constantly to others.
To whom will you minister? How can you express God’s love and yours to them? How will you begin?
To Be a Steward of the Kingship of God
At Baptism, we were consecrated kings; not kings of our own, little, temporal kingdoms, but stewards of Christ’s eternal kingship. To be stewards of his kingship, we must accept responsibility for the state of his kingdom. If we want conditions to improve, we have to take action. We cannot sit idly by and assign blame to others. We are responsible.
It is easy to look at the world around us with despair. We have war and famine. Our environment is polluted. We kill innocent babies and guilty criminals alike because we don’t recognize the value of every human life. We oppress majorities in other cultures and minorities in our own culture. We idolize wealth and power. We have problems too many to number.
We also have people too many to number who are working to solve the problems of our world; seeking solutions to end and prevent wars; donating their time and money to feed the hungry, to free the oppressed, to give the whole world healthcare, education, clean air and water.
What do you see around you that you can do something about? What will you take responsibility for? What corner of the kingdom will you work on? How will you begin?
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