LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Discipleship/ Growing as a Disciple of Christ
Submitted to Dr. Phillip Stevens
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
THEO 109-D01
Theology Survey III
by
Tameasha Spruill
2
My friend Dave came to know Christ as his personal Savior last week at Bible Study at
our local church. I had been praying for quite a while that he would accept salvation. And he
finally did. I was filled with so much joy for him. As we were talking, I begin to tell him about
the 5 essential principles to grow as a disciple of Christ, the importance of the local church, and
spiritual disciplines. In this paper, I will address these issues. I told Dave that a disciple is one
who responds in faith and obedience to the gracious call to follow Jesus Christ and the being a
disciple is a lifelong process of dying to self while allowing Christ to come alive in us, you must
deny yourself, take up your cross, and lose your life for my sake(Mark 8:34).1
I shared with Dave the 6 essential principles to grow as a disciple of Christ. First, we are
to make disciples-a learner, a disciple of Jesus is one who learns, and lives from the teachings of
Jesus himself and those whom Jesus taught, the apostles. In order words, a disciple continues in
the Word of, loves others, bears fruit, and puts Christ first. Jesus tells us “Therefore go and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you
always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20). We are to share the message of the kingdom or
gospel with others so that they might find salvation in Christ Jesus. God told his disciple to “ Go
rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach this message: “The kingdom
of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10:6-7). Second, is baptism- the complete submerging of the
believer in water. It is a sign of one’s salvation. Jesus was baptized by John and we are to follow
His steps (Matt. 3:16). Jesus commanded that people(born again people) be baptized in this age
(Matt. 28:19) and the early church gave an important place to baptism (Acts 2:38, 41;8:12-13).
1. Ogden, Greg. Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ. Westmont:
InterVarsity Press, 2019. Accessed December 3, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
3
They never conceived of a believer remaining unbaptized. Immersionist relates baptism of
Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection on the ground of the fact that the believer is said to have
been baptized into His death, burial, and resurrection according to Romans 6:1-10.2 Third, quiet
time- a daily routine of meeting with the Lord. It is a private meeting each day between a
disciple and the Lord Jesus Christ, a time we set aside in advance for the sole purpose of a
personal meeting with our Savior and Lord. It consists of three components: reading the Bible
with the intent not just to study but to meet Christ through the written Word, meditating on what
we have read so that biblical truth begins to saturate our minds, emotions, and wills, praying to
commune with God- praising, thanking and adoring him as well as confessing our sins, asking
him to supply our needs and interceding for others. These things please God-says for us to
continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, “the fruit of lips that confess his name (Heb.
13:15). In quiet time we receive benefits of encouragement at times we get discouraged,
information-we learn about Christ and his truths when we spend time with Him and His Word,
we receive power even when we know what we should be and do we lack the strength to be that
kind of person and do those kinds of works. Christ is our source of power and meeting with Him
is essential to our receiving it; pleasure-when we spend time with Jesus, we experience a joy
unavailable anywhere else. Jesus would get up early in the morning to go to a solitary place to
pray (Mark 1:35) so if Jesus found it necessary to meet with his Father privately(quiet time),
surely his example gives us good reason to do likewise.3 Fourth, we are to worship-is the humble
response of regenerate men to the self-disclosure of the Most High God. It is expressed by the
lips in praise and by the life in service. We worship God through the handling of and faithfulness
2. Willmington, Harold L. Willmington’s Guide to the Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House
Publishers Inc., 2011) 649-650.
3. Ogden, Greg. Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ. Westmont:
InterVarsity Press, 2019. Accessed December 3, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
4
to the Word of God, through prayers (Acts 4:24), through singing (Eph. 5:19), and through the
offering up of sacrifices (Rom. 12:1, Heb. 13:15-16, Phil. 4:18).4 Fifth, prayer- a relationship
with the One who has already declared us his beloved children and who want to be close to us, it
is conservation with God in which we address him and in quiet are addressed by him. It consists
of four types of prayer: adoration-appreciating God for who he is apart from what he has done
for us, confession- acknowledging to God our specific sin and seeking his pardon, thanksgiving-
appreciating God for his benefit to us, supplication-interceding for ourselves or others according
to God’s will. It means to ask with intensity, earnestness and perseverance, to ask and keep on
asking. Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door
will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). Six, we must have daily bible study-an an investigative
study where you discover the meaning of a biblical text through a series of discovery questions;
it guides the unearthing of God’s truth. A portion each day should be set aside to read, study, and
meditate on God’s Word. The Bible is to the spirit what food is to the body. It is a key ingredient
to a quiet time.
Then I began teaching him the importance of the local church. It is to be a visible
manifestation, an outward expression of the inward character of Christ’s body, manifesting its
recognition of His headship and our unity.5 It is to soul-winning and soul building station (Acts
20:28,32), a place for indoctrination-feed them (Jn. 21:15-17; Acts 20:28), the Word of God is
preached (2 Tim. 4:2) and bringing the unsaved to salvation. The local church brings God’s
kingdom to the world through prayer, support, and partnership.
4. Willmington, Harold L. Willmington’s Guide to the Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., 2011) 640, 642.
5. Willmington, Harold L. Willmington’s Guide to the Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., 2011) 606.
5
I told Dave that spiritual discipline is prominent. Spiritual discipline is the practices
found in scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It
is to maintain the standards of the church before a watching world (Matt. 5:13-16), to keep the
sin from spreading throughout the church (1Cor. 5:6-7), to escape God’s twofold judgment of
habitually sinning saints (1Cor. 11:30a, 1Cor. 11:30b-31), to help the guilty person find his way
back to God (2 Cor. 2:6-8), to restore, heal, and build up sinning believers (Matt 18:15), and to
silence false teachers and their influence in the church (Titus 1:10-11).6 Spiritual disciplines are
those personal and interpersonal activities given by God in the bible as the sufficient means
believers in Christ are to use in the Spirit-filled, gospel-driven pursuit of godliness, that is,
closeness to Christ and conformity to Christ.7
In closing, to grow as a disciple of Christ one must lose his/her old life and find his/her
new life in Jesus. Christ instructed the disciples, “And whoever does not take up his cross and
follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life
because of me will find it” (Matt. 10:38-39). In other words, a disciple must be willing to die to
the old life and live a new life that God has for him. We must look to the future reward reserved
in heaven. The disciples of Jesus were given this promise before going out with God’s message
into a difficult situation, “Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a
prophet’s reward, Whoever receives a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will
receive a righteous person’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these
6. Willmington, Harold L. Willmington’s Guide to the Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House
Publishers Inc., 2011) 634-635.
7.https://www.google.com/books/edition/Spiritual_Disciplines_for_the_Christian/3jTAgAAQBA
J/hl=en&gbpv-1&dq=spiritual+disciplines&printsec=frontcover.
6
little ones in the of a disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward” (Matt. 10:41-
42).8
Bibliography
8. https://bible-org/seriespages/lesson-11-principles-and-practice-disciplemaking.
7
https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-11-principles-and-practice-disciplemaking.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Spiritual_Disciplines_for_the_Christian/3jTAgAAQBAJ/
hl=en&gbpv-1&dq=spiritual+disciplines&printsec=frontcover.
Ogden, Greg. Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ. (Westmont:
InterVarsity Press, 2019. Accessed on December 3, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Willmington, Harold L. Willmington’s Guide to the Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House of
Publishers, Inc., 2011) 606, 634-635, 640, 642, 649-650.
