What you are about to read grew out of the journey of Disciples Church.

Over the years, we have wrestled with a question that sits at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus together: how do people truly change? We have seen that information alone cannot transform a life. Programs can give us helpful structure, spiritual disciplines can establish healthy rhythms, and good teaching can deepen our understanding. Yet lasting change must reach deeper. It must reach the heart.

That conviction has shaped our life together as a church. We want to be a people who know Jesus, enjoy Jesus and increasingly become like Jesus. We want the gospel to reach into the ordinary places where discipleship is actually lived: our relationships, anxieties, ambitions, disappointments, habits, suffering and sin. We want to follow Christ together, trusting the Holy Spirit to transform us from the inside out.

Along the way, God has used many faithful writers to deepen our understanding of this kind of discipleship. Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp’s How People Change helped us see that genuine transformation involves more than managing behaviour. Jeff Vanderstelt’s Gospel Fluency encouraged us to speak the truths of Jesus into the everyday circumstances of life. Jonathan K. Dodson’s Gospel-Centered Discipleship helped us understand discipleship as a shared life continually shaped by the good news of Christ. In many ways, this book has been formed in conversation with works such as these. We are deeply grateful for the pastors, theologians and authors whose labour has helped the church understand how the gospel transforms people.

Readers will also notice that Timothy Keller is referenced frequently throughout these pages. This is not because he was the only voice worth hearing, nor because every insight began with him. It is because  when it comes to matters of the heart and a relationship with Jesus, Keller stood within a much older stream of Christian reflection. Augustine wrote of hearts restless until they find their rest in God. Jonathan Edwards explored the way the beauty of God awakens the affections and changes the soul. And in his own generation, Keller brought these truths forward with remarkable clarity and applied them to the fears, desires and rival loves of the human heart. For many of our generation, Keller revolutionised the way we understood a relationship with Jesus. He helped us see that Christianity is more than believing the right doctrines or displaying the right behaviour. It is life with Christ: seeing his beauty, receiving his grace and having our hearts reordered by his presence. His influence can be felt throughout this book because he repeatedly directed our attention beyond religious performance to the glory of Jesus and the transforming power of the gospel.

However, the greatest influence for The Heart of Discipleship is not a pastor or theologian, but the very Word of God itself - especially 2 Corinthians 3:18:

“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.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

That verse gives us a beautiful vision of what it means to follow Jesus. When we behold Christ, the Spirit changes us. In other words, the real and long lasting transformation available to followers of Jesus is the effect of being with Jesus. This changes how we approach discipleship. We do not become like Christ through sheer determination. We cannot force spiritual fruit into existence or renovate our hearts through willpower. The Spirit transforms us as the truth and beauty of Jesus capture our hearts. We learn to see him as he has revealed himself in Scripture. We remember what he has accomplished through his life, death and resurrection. We receive our identity in him, walk with his people and allow his gospel to speak into every part of life.

This transformation also happens together. Paul writes that we all behold the glory of the Lord. Discipleship was never intended to be a solitary pursuit. We need other Christians who will open the Scriptures with us, pray with us, remind us of grace, lovingly expose our blind spots and point us back to Jesus. This is the kind of community we long for Disciples Church to be, and it is the kind of community we hope this book will help cultivate.

As you read, remember that this book is a companion for the journey, rather than a program to complete. Its questions will take you into God’s heart, the finished work of Christ, your new identity, the life of his church and the Spirit’s ongoing work of transformation. Ultimately, however, every chapter is pointing in the same direction.

Look to Jesus.

Behold his holiness and compassion. See his authority and gentleness. Remember the cross, where his love for sinners shines most clearly. Rejoice in his resurrection and the new life you have received in him. Stay close to him through his Word, depend upon his Spirit and follow him alongside his people.
As you behold the glory of Christ, may your heart be captivated by his beauty. And as you walk with him, may the Holy Spirit transform you into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another.

Discipleship is a familiar, yet foggy word. Familiar in that we have seen it displayed on book covers, websites, and even coffee mugs. We know it has something to do with following Jesus, and yet it feels foggy because it is hard to pin down what exactly it is. Is it about belonging to a Bible study or accountability group? Is it about mastering a set of spiritual disciplines? Surely it has something to do with maintaining a certain moral standard? Whatever we think discipleship is, we must remember that at the heart of biblical discipleship is not religious piety or a twelve step program, but a person - Jesus.
We can become disciples of all kinds of people and pursuits - a teacher, a philosophy, a trade or a craft. In each case, the goal is usually mastery: learn the ideas, imitate the methods and become skilled in the field. But being a disciple of Jesus is less like becoming a guru and more like becoming a butterfly. A caterpillar does not emerge from its cocoon as a more informed, disciplined or impressive caterpillar. It becomes something new. Its form, its capacities and its whole way of life change.

This is the kind of change discipleship with Jesus brings. When we follow him, our desires are reordered, our identity is remade, our purpose is redirected and our vision of the world is transformed. Discipleship with Jesus is not about information, but transformation.

For many people, discipleship also means following the rules: discipline, self-control and obedience. This sounds noble and religious, but it often leaves us worn out by the pressure to perform. Following the rules was, in Jesus’ time, an important part of discipleship. Under the guidance of a Rabbi, first century Jewish pupils followed the Law with great precision. They studied, memorised, and obeyed their rabbi’s teachings with intense dedication.

Then Jesus came and turned everything upside down. Instead of saying, “Follow the Law,” he said, “Follow me.” (Mark 1:17). That was revolutionary then and honestly, it still is today. The call to follow Jesus is not a call to master the rules, but a call into something far more enjoyable, deeper, and personal:

Discipleship is a call into a relationship with Jesus.

Jesus made you, knows you and loves you, and discipleship is his invitation to find life in him. This changes everything because discipleship is no longer simply about doing, but about being with Jesus

“And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him…” (Mark 3:14).

According to Jesus, discipleship is fundamentally relational. Every relationship is shaped by the heart - by what we love, trust, desire and believe. Discipleship, then, is transformational, relational and a matter of the heart.

We may be more confused about the heart than just about any other part of ourselves. The heart can be warm or cold, tender or hard, light or heavy - and sometimes all before breakfast. It can break, sink, flutter, race, skip a beat, and even get stolen by someone we find attractive. You can wear it on your sleeve, cross it and hope to die, or swear you gave it away last Christmas. We are even told to follow our heart - despite being able to have a change of heart or lose heart altogether.

The heart seems to be a paradox with a pulse. How can it be so fragile and fierce? So sentimental and stubborn? Yet all these expressions point towards something we instinctively know: the heart has enormous influence over the way we live. The heart matters.

In Luke 6, Jesus explains why the heart matters with a vivid image - a fruit tree.

He says that your life is like a tree and your heart is the root system. What you believe and love at the root of your heart, will eventually appear in the fruit of your behaviour. Jesus brings the picture home, “Each tree is known by its own fruit… for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:44–45).

The rest of Scripture tells the same story as it describes the heart like ‘air traffic control’ for your entire being. It is the epicentre of our inner life, encompassing far more than emotion (Proverbs 4:23). It is where we treasure what matters most, where love is cultivated and where decisions are formed (Deuteronomy 6:5; Proverbs 16:9; Matthew 6:21). The heart holds our deepest desires, reveals our truest self and overflows into everything we say, do and become (Proverbs 27:19; Matthew 12:34; James 1:14). In fact, our hearts are so central (and vulnerable!), that whatever it is captivated by - whatever it loves - we become! As G. K. Beale puts it,

“What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.”

Love power, and you become a work-a-holic. Love comfort, and you become apathetic. Love control, and you become anxious. Love approval, and you become a people-pleaser. But love Jesus? When your heart is captivated by Christ - when your affections are stirred by who He is and what He has done - then you’ll become more like Him (2 Corinthians 3:18)!

That’s why the heart of discipleship is… the heart.

Understanding the centrality of the heart brings clarity to following Jesus, because many things carry the label of discipleship. Therefore, a few common misconceptions need to be cleared away.

Discipleship is NOT:

• A beginner’s course - We never outgrow or graduate from the need to follow Jesus.
• Only about learning more information - Truth must reach the heart and take shape in the way we live.
• A solo journey - Authentic discipleship happens in community.
• Reserved for the super-spiritual - Jesus called ordinary fishermen, tax collectors and regular people.
• The pursuit of perfection - It is a life of transformation.

So what does biblical discipleship look like? Biblical discipleship is:

1. Jesus-centred

• Revealed - Knowing Jesus as He is revealed through His Word, not as we imagine Him to be (John 5:39-40).
• Relational - Following Jesus is not about rules or religion, but a relationship with God through the person of Jesus. (Philippians 3:8)

2. Heart-focused

• Worshipful - It seeks to not only know about Jesus with our heads, but to have our hearts captivated by His glory, leading us to worship Him not just with our songs, but with our lives (Romans 12:1).
• Transformational - As we behold Jesus, the Holy Spirit transforms us to become more like him (Proverbs 4:23, 2 Corinthians 3:18).

3. Gospel-driven

• Power for the Everyday - We never graduate from the gospel. The life, death, resurrection and reign of Jesus, applied to us by the Holy Spirit, sustain and shape every part of ordinary life.
• Good News - The gospel is too good to keep to ourselves. We proclaim Jesus with both our words and our lives (Matthew 28:19-20, 2 Timothy 2:2).

Discipleship is a lifelong journey of following Jesus together and being transformed by His grace in the context of a Christ-centred community. It is our prayer is that this biblical vision of discipleship will bring the light of “the glory of Christ” into even the most ordinary moments of your life (2 Corinthians 4:4-6).

Whether discipleship is new to you, you have been discipled before or you have led others, this book is not a step-by-step program from which you graduate. We never graduate from following Jesus. This is a biblical discipleship tool, designed to deepen your walk with Christ and equip you to help others do the same.

Our journey is organised around a series of questions:

INTRODUCTION

• Chapter 1. WHAT IS DISCIPLESHIP?

GOD'S HEART

• Chapter 2. WHO IS GOD?
• Chapter 3. WHAT HAS HE DONE?

OUR HEART

• Chapter 4. WHO AM I?
• Chapter 5. WHO ARE WE?
• Chapter 6. WHAT REMAINS OF MY OLD SELF?
• Chapter 7. WHAT FLOWS FROM MY NEW HEART?

THE BEGINNING

• Chapter 8. DISCIPLE MAKING

The questions in these chapters are not intended as a once-off exercise. They will return throughout a lifetime of discipleship. As you reflect on them, they can help you engage deeply with God’s Word, expose lies you have believed, uncover misplaced loves and realign your heart with the truth.

Remember, this resource is only the menu. The main course is found in tasting and seeing that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), as you walk with Jesus and enjoy him for yourself. Discipleship is slow and personal, full of wonderful detours, difficult days and unexpected delight. It is deeply worthwhile because Jesus is worth it.

You may be wondering what all this will achieve. Will discipleship make me a better person? Will it help me overcome entrenched struggles? Will it bring greater joy?

By God’s grace, yes and amen. But transformation is not the goal of discipleship; it is the effect. The power for transformation comes from being with Jesus. Following him from a distance changes very little, but as we purposefully “draw near to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), everything begins to change. Being with Christ transforms us.

The invitation into deeper discipleship is therefore an invitation into deeper intimacy with Christ. And here is the good news: you do not have to earn that nearness. If you are already in Christ, nothing in all creation can separate you from your gracious Saviour (Romans 8:38–39). Discipleship invites you to live from that reality - to be with him, to walk in step with the Spirit and to inhabit more fully the new identity you have received in Christ.

Our prayer is that, as you follow Jesus more closely, you will grow in joy, patience and holiness; that you will sin less, love more and live differently. This change will not come through a burst of determined effort. It will grow as the Spirit realigns your heart, reorders your loves and redirects your worship, until you are so captivated by Jesus that transformation becomes the natural overflow of being with him.
This is the invitation of discipleship: to enjoy Jesus, walk with him and be changed by him. So step in. Be open. And trust that through discipleship, Jesus is ready to do more in you than you ever imagined (Ephesians 3:20–21).

At the end of each chapter, you will find an opportunity to “Get to the Heart”. We recommend completing this section with a discipleship group.

For this chapter, take time to tell the story of how Jesus has changed your life. The psalmist says, “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul” (Psalm 66:16). Whether you are new to the group or have walked together for years, this is an opportunity to remember God’s grace and encourage one another with the gospel.

Many of us carry around ideas about God that did not come from Scripture. Instead, they come from our feelings, frustrations, circumstances, and unmet expectations. We might think:

If God doesn’t give me a sign, He must be distant.
If He doesn’t heal me, He must be weak.
If He doesn’t fix my situation, He must not care.

We try to make sense of God by shaping him around our lives, rather than allowing the truth about God to reshape us. Surrounded by pain and chaos, sin and suffering, we begin to imagine that he must be distant, weak or uncaring. So we leave him out. We reject him. We move forward as gods of our own lives, convinced that we could do a better job. Yet the god we have rejected - the one shaped by our wounds, disappointments and desires - is not the real God. He is only a projection. Pastor Timothy Keller often expressed it this way: “Describe the God you’ve rejected. Describe the God you don’t believe in. Because the chances are - I don’t believe in that God either.” If discipleship is all about following Jesus, we need to know who he really is. So, where do we begin?

Have you ever met someone famous - someone you had seen dozens of times on a stage or screen? It is a strange experience. You recognise their voice and mannerisms, and you may even feel as though you know them. Then you meet them and discover they are vastly different from what you imagined. Perhaps they surprise you for the better, perhaps for the worse. Either way, familiarity from a distance is not the same as truly knowing someone. It is the same with God.

If we want a real relationship with God - and that is what discipleship is - we cannot begin with the God of our imagination. We must begin with God as he truly is. The good news is that we do not have to guess because God has revealed himself to us in Scripture.

When we open the Bible, we encounter God’s character again and again: he is loving, kind, holy, wise, righteous and good. Scripture often gathers the splendour of all that God is into one weighty word: glory. The Hebrew word for glory is kavod (כָּבוֹד), a word rooted in the idea of heaviness. This helps us understand that God’s glory is the weight and radiance of his character.

The apostle Paul speaks often of “the glory of the Lord”, especially in 2 Corinthians 3. God’s glory is the fullness and all-encompassing reality of “the radiance of his character, of his goodness, of who he truly is”. For the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards, God’s glory was his beauty - the compelling splendour of his divine character. Edwards writes: “God is distinguished from all other beings, and exalted far above them chiefly by his divine beauty. Not sovereignty, not wrath, not grace, not omniscience, not eternity, but beauty is what more than anything else defines God’s very divinity.”

The psalmist David saw this too when he cried out in Psalm 27:3, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” To see God truly is to see the beauty of his glory - not just intellectually, but affectionately.  As theologian Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “Spiritual understanding involves the affections of the heart, not simply the cogitations of the mind.” This is not just knowledge - but a beholding. A heart-level awe.

If you have ever spent hours climbing a mountain, you may remember the moment you finally reached the summit and took in the breathtaking view. Faced with beauty of that magnitude, you could reach for your phone and try to squeeze the scene into a tiny lens. Or, you could simply stand there and take it in for yourself.

The reason we often choose the latter (at least initially anyway!) is because a beauty of that magnitude is better experienced than explained. In a similar way, the glory and beauty of God cannot be “captured with a camera, but [is to be] enjoyed with the heart”. This is the key difference between religion and following Jesus, because “The religious person finds God useful, but the real Christian finds God beautiful. The religious is driven; the Christian is attracted.” That distinction changes everything. A follower of Jesus “doesn’t merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.” This is what happens when the heart awakens to the reality of God - or, we might say, when God happens to us.

In the Old Testament, David had to physically go to the temple to behold God’s glory and beauty. But the New Testament book of Hebrews announces something astonishing: God’s glory has now been revealed in a person. “He [God] has spoken to us by his Son…He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:1-3). The glory and fullness of God is now found in Jesus. If we want to know who God is and behold his beauty, we simply need to look to Christ.

• We know God is loving because Jesus laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
• We know God is merciful because Jesus suffered in our place to free us from sin (Isaiah 53:5).
• We know God is powerful because Jesus conquered death and rose from the grave (1 Corinthians 15:54–55).
• We know God is generous because Jesus shares his resurrection life with us (Romans 6:4–5).

Everything we need to know about who God truly is comes into focus in Jesus. Through his life, death and resurrection, the fullness of God’s glory is revealed. Getting the person of Christ right is therefore essential for discipleship, for “it is precisely our false notions of Christ’s person that corrupt our love for him.”

What does this mean for everyday life? We may understand that our hearts shrink God down, imagining him as smaller, less powerful and less present than he truly is. We may even recognise that the answer is to remember who he has revealed himself to be in Jesus. And yet, when life is filled with pain, sorrow and chaos - when we feel trapped in sin or crushed by our circumstances - does beholding Jesus really make a difference? Paul writes: “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.” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Here is the heart of it. When we behold God for who He truly is - not who we imagine Him to be - we are transformed. We are changed, Paul says, into the image of Christ, increasingly sharing in His beauty and glory. But that transformation is not just for some future moment - it is for now. And it is not superficial, either. This kind of change is deep, internal, and lasting.

Theologians call this process sanctification. Jonathan Edwards called it beautification. But notice how this change takes place: does Paul say it is through hard work, rule-following, or trying to be better? No. It happens by beholding. True transformation does not come by striving - it comes by seeing.

Beholding Jesus is our weapon against sin and our key to transformation. Dane Ortlund expresses it clearly: “We don’t kill sin the way a soldier kills an enemy in battle, by zeroing in on the enemy himself. Killing sin is a strange battle because it happens by looking away from the sin… by looking at Jesus Christ.” Ortlund goes on to say that sin loses its appeal as we become “re-enchanted” by the beauty of Jesus, just as toy cars lose their charm when a child is invited to a real racetrack. Sin begins to wilt when our hearts are captured by something greater: the glorious gentleness and dazzling love of Christ. Ortlund concludes: “There is no special technique to mortifying sin. You simply open your Bible and let God surprise you with the wonder of his love, proven in Christ and experienced in the Spirit.”
Discipleship is not about doing more. It’s about beholding more. And as we do, God changes us from the inside out.

This is the heart of discipleship: a real and joyful relationship with Jesus in which his beauty inspires us and, over time, transforms us. That is why we must keep asking: Who are we imagining God to be?

If we believe he is angry, we will keep him at a safe distance.  
If we believe he is cold and detached, we will assume he does not care.
If we believe he is a harsh taskmaster, we will live as though his love depends on our performance.

But when we see Jesus as the glory of the Lord - when we open his Word and behold him as he truly is - our hearts are drawn towards him. We step out of hiding. We begin to desire him, trust him and love him. So hear this clearly: your first step, your second step and every step after that in following Jesus begins with beholding him. As we do, the lies our hearts have believed about God begin to unravel, and the truth of who he really is takes their place.

This is our prayer for your heart throughout the journey of discipleship:

May the gentle and powerful work of the Holy Spirit
draw you into the light of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
May he expose and untangle the lies your heart has imagined,
filling you with the truth of who God really is
and freeing you to enjoy a life transformed into his likeness,
from one degree of glory to the next.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Let his beauty captivate your soul and his truth transform your heart. For as you behold him, you will become more like him.

We often imagine God based on our feelings and experiences, but true discipleship begins by beholding God as He has revealed Himself in Jesus - full of glory, beauty, and love. When we fix our eyes on Christ, we don’t just learn about God; we are transformed by Him, from the inside out. Real change comes not through striving, but through seeing and savouring who God truly is.