LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Spiritual Formation and Discipleship Assignment
Submitted to Dr. Gary Waller,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500 – B08
Discipleship Ministries
by
Edwin Malave Vazquez
September 05, 2021
Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1
Three Directions for Spiritual Formation ...................................................................................1
Love God ............................................................................................................................2
Love One Another ...............................................................................................................3
Love Your Neighbor ............................................................................................................3
Walking in and Under the Control of the Holy Spirit ...............................................................4
Personal Growth Assessment........................................................................................................4
Personal Growth Plan....................................................................................................................5
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................6
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
In Matthew 28, Jesus left a commission, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations”
(Mt. 28:19).1 This assignment that Jesus assigned encourages his followers to prepare in different
areas of their lives to be able to fulfill this mission. To disciple others it is imperative to be
disciples first. However, it is also necessary to have a spiritual formation to become more like
Jesus. Dave Earley suggests that spiritual formation is “an ongoing, gradual process of glorious
transformation into the image of Jesus by the Spirit of God that is available to every believer as a
result of honestly and intentionally seeking the face of God.”2 At the same time, Joanne Jung J.,
explains that this glorious transformation is a process that “requires the individual’s cooperation
and effort, but it is also intended to be accomplished in community with God and others.”3
This work will show an overview of the primary commands of Jesus on the spiritual
formation: love God, love one another, love your neighbor. In addition, it will be discussed how
walking in the Spirit of God impacts the spiritual development of the believer. On the other hand,
the author's personal spiritual growth will be analyzed, based on the spiritual growth assessment
of Dave Earley's book. Finally, the author will create and discuss his personal growth plan based
on the areas that he needs to improve in order to have growth in his spiritual formation.
Three Directions for Spiritual Formation
As mentioned earlier in this work, spiritual formation is an ongoing process in the life of
the believer. During this process, spiritual formation is enabled by the Holy Spirit,4 but it is
1 Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced employ the English Standard Version (Wheaton,
IL: Crossway, 2008).
2 Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey, Spiritual Formation is … How to Grow in Jesus with Passion and
Confidence (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2018), 4.
3 Joanne J. Jung, The Lost Discipline of Conversation: Surprising Lessons in Spiritual Formation Drawn
from the English Puritans (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 26.
4 Earley and Dempsey, Spirtual Formation Is, Ch. 1.
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developed by the believer. Dave Earley explains that as followers of Jesus Christ one must be
disciplined to measure the spiritual growth of the believer. In short, it must be remembered that
the purpose of growing spiritually is not focused on believers or their personal benefit, on the
contrary, it is focused on Christ and being able to fulfill the eternal purpose of God that everyone
knows about Jesus. Petit says: “God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven;
rather, he is creating a people among whom he can live and who in their life together will
reproduce God's life and character.”5
To measure spiritual progress, Earley identifies some spiritual disciplines that help
transform the follower of Jesus more into His image. He classifies these spiritual disciplines into
three areas, love God, love one another and love your neighbor.
Love God
As a primary focus, believers have to create a connection to Heaven through Jesus. You
cannot know the heart of God, if you do not spend time alone with Him. Love is the basis of the
good news, and if you do not respond to God's love by loving Him with all your might, you will
not be able to love others and show them the love of God in the same way that God has loved
them. In order to love others as God has loved them, you have to know God's love first-hand.
The relationship with God has to be based on a personal experience with Him and not on what
has been heard from other people. The only way to know more about Jesus is through prayer and
his word. Earley said “we are to respond to God’s love by intentionally spending time hearing,
reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on his Word, so we can actively love him back.”6
Love One Another
5 Paul Petit, Foundation of Spiritual Formation: A Community Approach to Becoming Like Christ (USA:
Kregel Academic and Professional), 46.
6 Earley and Dempsey, Spirtual Formation Is, 101.
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Multiple verses can be found in Scripture that speak of the importance of loving one
another. One of them is found in John 13 when Jesus told his disciples, “by this all people will
know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The community
of followers of Christ plays a fundamental role in the spiritual formation of believers. God
created the human being to live in community. Petit said that “independence is not what Jesus
Christ is seeking to develop.”7 God's intention has always been to create a church that functions
as a body, as a whole. Individualism is not a practice that the believer should practice when
developing his spiritual formation. On the contrary, an obstacle for the Christian community is
that it is more prone to individualism and disconnecting from the community.8
The importance of loving one another is that it allows us to know our brothers and sisters
in the Faith better. God has blessed the believer with spiritual gifts to put them in the service of
the church. The body of Christ is blessed when all believers use the gifts received by God. This
brings unity to the body of Christ, as well as allows each believer to grow in love, faith, and
service. Loving God, and loving other believers, enables human beings to be able to love their
neighbor.
Love Your Neighbor
The greatest evidence of love for God and other believers is loving your neighbor. Loving
your neighbor is often the most difficult part of the spiritual formation process to develop. Many
times the believer is so focused on loving God and loving his brothers that they forget to love the
needy, the one who does not know Christ, the one who thinks differently from him, or lives a life
totally opposite to their beliefs, moral or religious. Jesus was the ultimate expression of love for
7 Petit, Foundation of Spiritual Formation, 13.
8 Ibid., 73.
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humanity. Jesus loved and served the sinner, the one discriminated by society, until he reached
the cross to demonstrate his love for all.
Walking in and Under the Control of the Holy Spirit
Walking in the spirit is a decision of every believer. There are many people who want to
remove all responsibility for walking in the spirit to delegate it to the Lord. So when there is no
growth in their life it is easy to blame God. It is true that when you receive Christ as your
personal Savior, you experience a spiritual birth, your sins are forgiven, and you are filled with
the spirit of God. However, it is when attention is paid to Him and one walks in faith that the
power that is in Him enables the believer to overcome all work of the flesh. Earley and Dempsey
states, the Spirit-dominated life is available in Christ,9 but you have to make the decision to let
yourself be guided by the spirit of God. When he walks in the spirit, the believer begins to
understand the revelation in the scriptures that guides him to spiritual formation. Keith Johnson
states, “the grace of Christ is manifested in the words of Scripture that testify to him and the
Spirit who helps us hear them rightly.”10
Personal Growth Assessment
The results of this assessment are very difficult for the author to manage. There are times
that as a Christian you think that you are working well, that you are doing what needs to be done,
but then an assessments like this reveals that there is so much to go through and improve in the
spiritual formation of the believer. After evaluating the result, the author identified Love Your
Neighbor like the weakest area, following by Love God. The author lacks a prayer list for people
who do not know Jesus, does not seek to make friends with non-believers to present the plan of
9 Earley and Dempsey, Spirtual Formation Is, 77.
10 Keith L. Johnson, Theology as Discipleship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 107.
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salvation, among others. For a person with so many years in the gospel who seeks to become a
Chaplain of the Armed Forces, this score is very low.
Rather, the author identified Love One Another as the strongest area. The author is very
involved in serving others within the Christian community. He regularly serves in his local
church, as well as training other believers in different areas related to the life of the church.
However, there is always a lot of room for improvement in this area as well.
Personal Growth Plan
Planning is necessary to achieve more concrete and faster objectives. Strategic planning
should contribute to the long-term accomplishment of the overriding objectives and values.11
Having so much room to improve his spiritual formation using as a basis the three areas
mentioned above, the author will begin his personal growth plan by working on his Love for His
Neighbor. This was the lowest area that the author identified in his spiritual formation. Before the
end of this month, the author will write a short testimony of how he was conquered by the love
of God, when he was going through such difficult times. This wording will be one that the author
will use to take the message to people who do not know the Lord. In addition, the author will
work on his timidity, to be able to get closer to more people who need to hear the good news of
salvation. For this, the author will begin to set aside time to talk with people who are related to
him in his work. Finally, the author will include in his daily prayer time people who do not know
the love of God.
The plan continues to focus on Love God, which was the second lower score in the
assessment. The author will increase his daily prayer time. He will divide his prayer time into
three sections of 10 minutes each (morning, evening and night). In these sections he will focus
11 Kühn R. Grünig R., Strategies, Strategic Planning and Success Potentials. In: The Strategy Planning
Process (Springer, Berlin: Heidelberg, 2015), 10.
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on different areas of prayer. The morning section will be offering prayer of thanksgiving, the
afternoon will be to pray for the brothers in the faith and the night will be to pray for people who
do not know Jesus.
Conclusion
As explained in this paper, spiritual formation is a crucial process in the life of a disciple.
Just as everything in life involves a process, the life of the Christian and his spiritual formation
involve one. Paul himself told the Corinthian church that they would be transformed from Glory
to Glory, referring to the fact that the life of the believer is a process. In this process, the Holy
Spirit of God is the one that enables the transformation to occur in the follower of Jesus, but it is
each believer who has the responsibility to mature, renew his understanding and ensure his
spiritual growth.
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Bibliography
Earley, Dave and Rod Dempsey. Disciple Making Is ... : How to Live the Great Commission with
Passion and Confidence. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013.
Grünig R. Kühn R. Strategies, Strategic Planning and Success Potentials. In: The Strategy
Planning Process. Springer, Berlin: Heidelberg, 2015.
Johnson, Keith L. Theology as Discipleship. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015.
Jung, Joanne J. The Lost Discipline of Conversation: Surprising Lessons in Spiritual Formation
Drawn from the English Puritans. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018.
Petit, Paul, ed. Foundations of Spiritual Formation: A Community Approach to Becoming Like
Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publication, 2008.
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