Developing a Fresh Perspective on Spiritual Formation

Do You Have a Guiding Purpose Statement (GPS)?

My Guiding Purpose Statement (GPS)

“Seeking to be a disciple of Christ, I am committed to becoming a disciple-making pastor.”

My GPS Relationship with God and a Specific Person

How This GPS Help My Relationship with God and Others

This guiding purpose statement will help my relationship with God through the knowledge, understanding, and growth that will be gained from his dear son, Jesus, in the discipleship life lived.[1] Not that I would personally become exactly like Christ, for there will be no individual becoming exactly like Christ, but instead becoming Christ-like in my own personality as all people who become Christ-like will be Christ-like in their own individuality and personality, meaning that everyone is different and will not be exactly the same (2 Cor. 3:18 King James Version).[2] By honoring the Son, individuals honor the Father, and the relationship between the disciple and the Father is magnified through the Son of God (Jn. 5:23-26). For me, there is nothing greater under the sun of this temporal life than to draw near to God by learning of his dear son whom he sent to our world (Jn. 3:16; Phil. 2; Jn. 1: 1-5; Heb. 1: 1-6). Besides, Jesus is the express image of the Father, and if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father, and the way a person can behold Jesus today is by abiding in the word, not that the word in and of itself can change an individual’s heart but spiritual growth which is by the spirit through spiritual discipline have abiding in the word will change the heart by the holy spirit’s work (Phil. 2:13; Jn. 14:9; Heb. 1:3). An individual cannot change their selves, for we live in the real world in this reality, but by abiding in the word and believing in the inerrancy of the word, Christ himself will do the hard work of heart transformation within the individual (Ezek. 11:19, 36:26; 2 Cor. 5:17).[3] There is the cooperation, an individual effort, of circumcision of the heart of the individual, which subdues and softens one’s position for the receiving of the truth and its growth from within (Rom. 2:25-29; Col. 2:11). With this being stated, just seeking to be a disciple of Christ will enhance the relationship between the individual, in this case, myself, and the sovereign God of the universe, who is both transcendent and imminent according to his will (Isa. 7:14, 66:1; Matt. 1:23).

How will my GPS help my relationship with a specific person?

As a disciple of Christ, an individual can develop better coping skills, including the fruits that are of Christ, which will enhance relationships within family and community. To be a disciple-making pastor would be exercising Christ’s likeness by showing empathy and sympathy for the church members as a pastoral counselor, but more importantly, my guiding purpose statement will specifically aid me in my relationship with my wife as I learn, grow, and understand Jesus and his relationship with the bride as the church (Eph. 5:25). One primary example of this concept is to love your wife as Christ loved the church, suggesting that even when the church did not love him, his love never failed. Of course, there is the other side of the equation: balance and the wife honoring the husband as a willing participant in the partnership, abiding by her husband (1 Cor. 7:11-16).

A Research-Based Definition for Growing in Favor of God and Others, and Explanation of How Terms are Used

I would like to share a research-based concept for growing in favor with God, which is spiritual formation, in that this favor would not be based on rote ideas or concepts in an event or events but through a process of learning, listening for God’s gentle promptings and leadings, gaining understanding, and applying the truth of God’s word to one’s personal life of the immaterial and not material existence.[4] Spiritual discipline is not the same as spiritual growth, but the function of spiritual discipline will help in leading a person into spiritual growth, which will only come from God through the Holy Spirit, indicating spiritual growth is a dynamic process and not a static event.[5] A person will solidify and live spiritual growth dynamically throughout the individual’s temporal and mortal life, i.e., solidify the dynamic growth of the individual, e.g., making one’s life cumulatively stable by the Spirit of God in a spiritual continuum.[6] This process is not an individual’s will, effort, or experience but of the Spirit of God, according to God’s will and good pleasure, but does not negate the process of individual involvement of spiritual growth (Rom. 12:2). With all of this being stated here, to grow spiritually is to grow favorably with God; therefore, these findings define what it means to grow favorably with God and with others. As a person grows spiritually, they take on spiritual attributes that are then applied to the individual’s life and profoundly affect all emotional and relational statuses, both intrapersonal and interpersonal (Gal. 5:22-23). In summary, spiritual growth would be a deepened relationship with God.

Pastor Houston Taylor

Obtaining Inward Light Ministries

Lakeview Seventh Day Baptist Church

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[1] Vanesa Pizzuto, “The Infamous Fleece of Wool: The 5 Worst Reasons to Ask God for Signs,” Adventist Today (Sandy, OR: Adventist Today Foundation, 2011): 23; Paul Pettit, Foundations of Spiritual Formation: A Community Approach to Becoming Like Christ (Kregel Academic & Professional, 2008), 42-44.

[2] Pamela E. King, “The Reciprocating Self: Trinitarian and Christological Anthropologies of Being and Becoming,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 35, no. 3 (2016): 220-221.

[3] Pettit, Foundations of Spiritual Formation, 47-48; John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 138-139.

[4] Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be, 189.

[5] Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be, 51; Pettit, Foundations of Spiritual Formation, 252.

[6] Pettit, Foundations of Spiritual Formation, 20–21.