Discipleship is often reduced to acquiring new information, embracing certain disciplines, or adopting certain behaviors [behavior modification], but this is not the heart of discipleship. You can know information, live a disciplined life, and behave properly yet not be discipled. At its foundation, discipleship is a process that produces transformation as a people corporately behold the beauty of God in the person of Jesus. If discipleship begins in any other place, it may accomplish some valuable things, but it has lost sight of its biblical framework.
The purpose of our lives in this age is to become more like Jesus, but we cannot become like someone we do not know.... Beholding [God's beauty] produces fascination, and fascination is the best way to transform a person... Fascination produces imitation... We "see" Someone who is beautiful. We become fascinated by Him... Fascination with [God] produces imitation because part of loving that person is enjoying what that person enjoys. [Our delight in Him changes our appetite and lifestyle.] And then we joyfully and gladly reorient our lives to behold more of that Person and desire to be part of His people... If we are not beholding Him we will not become like Him.
Samuel Whitefield in his book, Discipleship Begins With Beholding
We are discipling people to behold the beauty, power and glory of God. This growing fascination with Him who is the greatest treasure and pleasure in all that exists, will displace the illegitimate loves (the idols of the heart) in our lives.
Below is the basic process in which we behold in order to position ourselves and allow God to transform us. Think of this process as the foundational basis that needs to permeate the various spiritual practices we do, even with their own unique approaches. Spiritual disciplines are practices that better position us to behold God, grow in our experiential knowledge of Him, delight in Him, and over time, become more like Him.
Life Transformation
happens gradually, over time, when we continually...
BEHOLD > REMEMBER & MEDITATE > APPLY > BECOME
1. BEHOLD the beauty, power, and glory of God
Each encounter with God, whether powerful or even from the mundane everyday life, has the potential to reveal to you more of who God is (His nature) from what He does (how He operates), if you make room to discover this. Each encounter brings with it revelation for the taking for those who linger in it and pull out its treasures.
"One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple." Psalm 27:4 NASB2020
"I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory." - Psalm 63:2 NIV
"Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth." - Psalm 46:8 ESV
"My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you." - Job 42:5 NIV
"Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." - Psalm 119:18 NIV
"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV
2. REMEMBER & MEDITATE on His revelation-truth
We get to steward this revelation received from our encounter with God and let it do what it was meant to do in us, through remembering and meditating on this revelation-truth. We have a helper in this area, and it is the Holy Spirit.
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." - John 14:26 ESV
"Blessed is the man [whose]... delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." - Psalm 1:1-3 ESV
"Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful." - Joshua 1:8 NIV
"But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do." - James 1:22-26 NIV
"I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you... With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth." - Psalm 119:11,13 NIV
"I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds." - Psalm 77:11-12 ESV
"And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." - Deuteronomy 6:6-9 ESV
"You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you..." - Deuteronomy 6:17-18a ESV
3. APPLY His truth to your life
Finally, it is in consistently applying the implications of this truth to all of life, that it can become a part of our thinking and character (our inside life) and of what we say and do (our outside life).
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do." - James 1:22-26 NIV
"Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful." - Joshua 1:8 NIV
"Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long."Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. - Deuteronomy 6:1-3 ESV
"You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you..." - Deuteronomy 6:17-18a ESV
"And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day." - Deuteronomy 6:24 ESV
3. BECOME more like Christ
We become what we behold.
One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to BEHOLD the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple." - Psalm 27:4
"And we all, who with unveiled faces CONTEMPLATE the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:18
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified." - Romans 8:28-30
"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you." - Galatians 4:19
"But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." - Colossians 3:8-10
"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure." - 1 John 3:2-3
"But we all, with unveiled face, BEHOLDING as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." - 2nd Corinthians 3:18 NKJV
"Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is." - 1 John 3:2 NLT
No Transformation
In contrast to the above process of beholding, the opposite is a life that becomes more and more dull and calloused to the activity of God in our lives. Such a life gives way into an inability to recognize His presence even in the most obvious works of God in our midst. God could be very present and very much working in lives and yet that person will feel like there is no God-activity happening.
When we don't notice or value the beauty, power and glory of God, when no effort is made to remember and ponder what He has done and who He is, we are setting ourselves to eventually replace Him with other fleshly idols. We will not change for the better but rather we will become more darkened in our minds and lives!
"But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and FORGET what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t FORGET what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it." - James 1:22-25 NLT
Romans 1:18-25 & 28-32
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who SUPPRESS the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They EXCHANGED the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen...
28 Furthermore, just as they did NOT think it worthwhile to RETAIN the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.