We all want to live and love like Jesus. We want to serve as his hands, feet and voice in the world around us. We want increasingly to live a life of true discipleship. Yet we often fall short. Taking a close look at our own walk of discipleship is a difficult thing to do.
Let me make clear that I don’t believe our spiritual journey is something we can quantify and score. Any attempts will necessarily be flawed. Yet that doesn’t mean we should not periodically engage in some self-assessment and gather feedback from others. There are behavioral indicators that– like a compass– can tell us when we are pointed in the right direction and when we are not.
Receiving assessment results, especially in an area as personal as one’s discipleship, can be difficult. Sometimes we may be surprised at certain result areas. In other cases we may feel that the results align well with what we expected, but that can still be hard to accept.
Yet working through assessment results in the area of our discipleship can yield some important insights and feedback. We can use what we discover as a tool that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, can guide us further on the path of discipleship.
In tomorrow’s blog entry, we’ll take a look at the new Dimensions of Discipleship Assessment that I’ve developed in conjunction with Chuck Ridley and Dave DeVries.