3 Crucial Habits to Strengthen Your Faith Journey
Flexing your faith muscles
When someone breaks an arm and that arm is put in a cast it doesn’t get used until it fully heals. That arm atrophies because it doesn’t get used and a muscle that doesn’t get used gets weaker and smaller. What doesn’t get used, withers. And that’s true for our faith muscle as well.
If we don’t “flex” and train our faith muscle by diving into the Word, getting together with fellow believers in church or in small groups, or by sharing the Gospel with others, our faith suffers because we lose touch with God when we’re not in a relationship with Him to our fullest.
We have found that teaching the 3 Crucial Habits is an important piece in our discipleship efforts. They are simple truths (notice we didn’t say easy) that are profoundly powerful.
The 3 Crucial Habits all Christians need to know to grow spiritually are as follows:
- Dealing with Convictions so they may grow spiritually – when being convicted it comes from the Holy Spirit – how we are dealing with that conviction – when you are doing something that is not pleasing to God
- Training other believers, iron sharpens iron – getting in the habit of discipling others
- Sharing our testimony or the Gospel with those who don’t know Christ
Part of the challenge for any would-be disciple is understanding what life looks like once he or she has accepted Christ as his or her personal savior. We address this challenge by breaking it into thirds focusing on helping self to grow in their walk with Christ, being able to lift up others in being disciple makers, and then going out and actively sharing the Gospel.
These 3 crucial habits will help mature and equip men and women of God to fulfill God’s calling on their lives. This is how we build our relationship with God, how we grow. When we are applying what God is teaching us to do. What we are doing isn’t anything new. We are modeling what the early church did – we are modeling Christ, discipling others, putting leaders in place, and then moving on to start another church.
As time passed we have learned that, as much as those who we disciple to benefit from learning them, these habits are a lifeline of sorts in equipping and encouraging participants, as well as our volunteers, in the 3Thirds Discipleship Study. Remember, there is no “graduation from God Academy”. We are always in growth mode and we’re all in a different stage of our walk with Christ and our maturity as believers.
A 3Thirds Group is a collection of believers who divide their meeting into three parts so that they can fellowship with other believers, worship God, hear His Word, and obey His commands.
We teach the importance of understanding the 3 Crucial Habits in our 3Thirds Discipleship Study in an effort to lift up, encourage, and strengthen other believers in their walk but to also deal with convictions and better equip them to share God’s Word.
The 3Thirds Discipleship Study is called 3Thirds because time spent together is split into three equal parts: looking back, looking up, and looking forward. 3Thirds teaches believers how to Hear God’s Word, Obey God’s Word, Share God’s Word, and Train others to do the same. We use the acronym H.O.S.T. to help us easily remember this powerful disciple-making tool that will equip you to be a disciple who makes disciples who make disciples.
The first third is spent “looking back” at the commitments made at the previous meeting and checking up on the care of each person in the meeting. The middle third of the group’s time is spent “looking up” for God’s wisdom and direction through prayer, the reading of scripture, and open discussion. The final third of the group’s time is spent “looking forward” to how each person can apply and obey what they’ve learned.
By instilling these crucial habits in our training we have noticed more confident, less apprehensive participants and volunteers. Everyone feels prepared and supported in their efforts because they don’t feel like they are “flying blind” or are unsure what is expected of them or that they are not good enough to call themselves a disciple maker because they feel they’re lacking a skill or information.
We’ve also found that a prepared participant or volunteer feels more confident to share stumbling points or ask for help if they encountered a situation they hadn’t faced before. Everyone feels they are in a safe space to share and not be made to feel they are failing.
As a result, participants and volunteers were more likely to put themselves in positions to flex their faith muscles and participation retention improved. Both participants and our volunteers were happier to boot!
If you’d like to be part of our 3Thirds Group and build up your faith muscle, just click on this link:
