When you actually start the process of integrating your life with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit you will see things begin to change. Practical benefits for your daily life begin to show up. You will experience newfound guidance, purpose, peace in all situations, and new and improved relationships.
However, do not be misled by me, your own expectations, or anybody else. Even though the changes will happen if you stay after the end result, they aren’t likely to manifest instantly.
In my personal experience, the older you’ve become without actually depending on God wholeheartedly, the more time and effort it requires. After all, we’ve devoted a lot of life to depending on self-will.
But I can assure you that no matter where you think you are in your spiritual walk today: If you aren’t deep into the following disciplines, you aren’t even close to the life in Christ that’s available to you.
On the other hand, if you start to develop the disciplines of Word study, building a real prayer life, and fellowship with other believers, you will soon be in a place spiritually that you can’t now imagine.
The Journey to Spiritual Transformation
Spiritual transformation—giving yourself up to God—is like growing a garden or a house plant. It takes your continuing and consistent attention, effort, patience, and time. In fact, it comes from devoting your life to following Jesus, not the world.
Presuming that you’re truly after a much deeper and more reliable relationship with God, building a stable foundation is absolutely necessary. The core of this foundation must be built entirely around these three non-negotiable spiritual disciplines: diligent Bible reading and study, consistent and regular prayer, and genuine fellowship with other believers.
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
(2 Peter 3:18)
Growth in your relationship with Jesus Christ doesn’t happen by accident. It requires deliberate action in specific areas. These three disciplines create the structure that supports everything else in your spiritual life.
The Three Pillars
These three disciplines are the pillars of any Godly walk. They keep you from being vulnerable to false doctrines and unstable in your walk. Pursuing the best relationship you personally can possibly have with God makes these an absolute in your life.
These three disciplines are where you start to allow Holy Spirit to transform you—your mind, your thoughts, your behavior, and your life. They align your will with God’s and promote true growth.
Without them, you’re building on sand instead of rock.
What Happens When You Commit to Discipline?
- Daily Bible reading gives you direct access to God’s voice.
- Consistent prayer develops real conversation with Jesus Christ.
- Fellowship with other believers provides accountability and encouragement when your own strength fails.
Each discipline reinforces the others. Scripture teaches you what to pray about. Prayer drives you back to Scripture for understanding. Fellowship helps you stay consistent when you’d rather quit.
The transformation you’re seeking won’t come from emotional experiences or single moments of spiritual intensity. It comes from showing up every day to these three practices, even when you don’t feel like it, until they become the foundation everything else in your life is built on.
You Can’t Have Jesus Without the Bible
When you truly start alining your journey up with God, you’ll quickly see that most of the “Christian” content flooding social media is just empty noise—or worse, junk that can genuinely lead you astray. And without personal bible study and regular prayer you can’t know if you’re being fed the same junk at your church.
With even a little thought and Godly discernment, you’ll realize a lot of people are pushing stuff that doesn’t line up with GOD’S WORD at all. They take a tiny fragment of a truth, mix it with what’s trending, and essentially try to run their lives (and yours) using lies straight from Satan.
You Can’t Know God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit Without the Word of God
Surface-level knowledge of the Bible creates surface-level relationship with God. When your understanding of Scripture stays shallow, your experience of God’s presence stays shallow. You end up building a relationship with your own ideas about God instead of knowing God Himself.
The path to authentic relationship with Jesus Christ runs directly through the written Word of God. This isn’t optional or one of many possible routes. God reveals Himself through Scripture because that’s how He chose to make Himself known.
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
Scripture does what nothing else can do. It divides truth from deception in your own thinking. It separates what you imagine about God from what God actually reveals about Himself. Without this foundation, you’re building on guesses and cultural assumptions.
Check the Source Before You Follow
You need extreme caution when choosing who guides you into deeper biblical understanding. A title doesn’t validate anyone’s teaching. “Pastor” or “preacher” on a business card means nothing if their fruit shows disconnect from Scripture.
Test everything against the written Word. When someone teaches you about God, open your Bible and verify their claims. Check whether their life demonstrates what they’re teaching. Look for evidence that they surrender to Scripture rather than bending Scripture to fit their preferences.
The stakes are too high to trust blindly. Your eternal relationship with Jesus Christ depends on knowing the real Jesus—the One revealed in God’s Word, not the version constructed from popular opinion or emotional experiences.
Where This Takes You
Start reading Scripture with one specific request: “God, show me who You really are.” That simple prayer, combined with consistent time in the Bible, creates the foundation for authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. Everything else you learn about walking with God builds on that base.
The more your very being is integrated with The Word of God:
- The sharper your Godly discernment will become.
- The clearer it will be that the only way to know God and find direction for your life is straight and only from THE WORD OF GOD.
- The more profound and real your entire walk will become.
- The easier it will be to be led by God into the life He has for you.
The Only Way to Relate to God is Through Prayer
Prayer connects you to a real Person, not a concept. When you pray to Jesus Christ, you’re communicating with someone who lived as a human being, died a physical death, rose from the dead, and now exists as both fully God and fully human. This matters because vague spirituality produces vague results.
Many people who call themselves Christians treat prayer like sending messages into empty space. They direct words toward an abstract force or a distant idea of God. This approach fails because it misses the entire point of what Jesus accomplished through His death and resurrection.
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
(1 Timothy 2:5-6)
Jesus serves as the specific mediator between you and God. He’s not one of several options or a symbolic representation. He’s the actual, singular path to relationship with your Creator. His blood sacrifice made direct access to God possible for you.
Scripture Introduces You to a Real Person
Daily Bible reading shows you who Jesus actually is. The words on the page describe a man who got tired, felt emotions, asked questions, and experienced physical pain. They also reveal His divine nature—His power over death, His authority to forgive sin, His ability to know your thoughts.
This dual nature of Jesus as fully human and fully God changes how you relate to Him. You’re not trying to connect with distant divinity alone. You’re building relationship with someone who understands human experience from the inside while possessing complete divine authority.
Prayer Becomes Conversation
When you grasp that Jesus is a real Person who knows you completely, prayer shifts from religious obligation to actual conversation. You’re talking with the Lord of your life who also functions as your most trustworthy friend. You share your struggles with someone who faced temptation. You express gratitude to someone who actively listens and responds.
This kind of prayer happens throughout your day, not just during designated religious moments. You talk to Jesus while you work, while you drive, while you face decisions. The conversation stays open because the relationship is real.
But it starts with and depends on a specific time in each day that’s set apart for prayer.
The Discipline Required
Building consistent prayer habits takes deliberate effort. Distractions will constantly pull your attention away from God. Spiritual resistance will make you want to skip prayer entirely. This is why prayer is called a discipline—it requires intentional practice, not just emotional feeling.
The effort produces something irreplaceable: genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. Every conversation deepens your knowledge of Him. Every honest prayer strengthens your trust in His involvement in your life. The reward of knowing God personally makes the discipline worth maintaining.
Genuine Fellowship with Other Believers: The Essential Forge for Growth
Bible study provides the map. Prayer establishes the communication. Fellowship with other believers creates the spiritual environment where growth becomes practical and sustainable.
Building robust faith in isolation is nearly impossible. God designed you to live in community. As a believer, you’re redesigned to be part of “The Church” first and part of “a church” second. Both function as a body made of many parts.
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
(1 Corinthians 12:12)
Your physical body needs each part working together to function correctly. Your spiritual body operates the same way. You need other believers, and other believers need you. This isn’t optional or just recommended—it’s how God structured spiritual growth to work.
What True Fellowship Actually Is
True fellowship goes far beyond casual socializing or attending a weekly service. It involves the intentional sharing of life, struggles, and faith journeys. You let other believers see your weaknesses. You carry their burdens when they struggle. You speak truth to each other even when it’s uncomfortable.
This discipline deepens your walk with Christ in specific ways that nothing else can replace.
Accountability and Encouragement
Believers in community hold each other accountable to living in God’s Word. When your strength fails, the group provides support. When you’re tempted to compromise, other believers remind you of truth. When you succeed in obedience, they celebrate with you.
However, simply presenting yourself in church doesn’t guarantee you’re a believer or a follower of Christ. Church attendance alone produces nothing. Genuine growth requires all three disciplines working together—Bible study, prayer, and real fellowship.
Real-World Application of Love
Scripture commands you to love others, forgive others, and serve others. A church community gives you constant opportunities to practice all of these in messy, real-life relationships. You can’t learn genuine love from a book. You learn it by loving actual people who sometimes irritate you, disappoint you, or challenge you.
This is where theory becomes practice. The biblical principles you study get tested in relationships with imperfect people. You discover whether your claimed beliefs actually control your behavior.
Collective Wisdom and Strength
The Holy Spirit moves powerfully when two or more gather in the name of Jesus. Corporate worship, shared study, and group prayer access spiritual strength that individual practice can’t replicate.
But recognize this truth: You can be a regular church attender without actually being there in the name of Jesus. In fact, you can attend faithfully without even being a believer. Don’t assume everyone sitting beside you in church is pursuing real Christian growth. Some are there from habit, social pressure, or family obligation.
The Cost of Real Fellowship
Embracing this discipline requires humility and vulnerability. You must let others see your imperfections. You must admit when you’re struggling. You must ask for help when you need it.
This pushes you past convenience into commitment. It’s easier to keep your faith private and your struggles hidden. Real fellowship demands that you show up consistently, engage honestly, and invest in relationships that sometimes require difficult conversations.
Yet within this supportive community, transformation accelerates. Other believers speak truth you need to hear. They notice patterns you can’t see in yourself. They pray for you when you can’t find words. They demonstrate what obedience looks like in situations you haven’t faced yet.
The forge of genuine fellowship shapes you in ways isolated faith never could. Iron sharpens iron, but only when the iron actually makes contact.
These three disciplines—Bible study, prayer, and fellowship—aren’t suggestions for people who want to be “super Christians.” They’re the minimum foundation for anyone serious about knowing God. Without them, you’re guessing about spiritual growth instead of experiencing it.
The transformation won’t happen overnight. You’ll face resistance. You’ll have days when you don’t feel like opening your Bible, praying, or showing up to fellowship. Do it anyway. The disciplines work whether you feel spiritual or not.
Start today with what’s in front of you. Open your Bible and read one chapter. Pray for five minutes. Reach out to one believer and ask how you can pray for them. Then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.
The life in Christ that’s available to you is far beyond where you are right now. These three disciplines are the path to get there. Everything else you want in your relationship with God grows from this foundation. Nothing replaces it.
Conclusion:
These three disciplines—Bible study, prayer, and fellowship—aren’t suggestions for people who want to be “super Christians.” They’re the minimum foundation for anyone serious about knowing God. Without them, you’re guessing about spiritual growth instead of experiencing it.
The transformation won’t happen overnight. You’ll face resistance. You’ll have days when you don’t feel like opening your Bible, praying, or showing up to fellowship. Do it anyway. The disciplines work whether you feel spiritual or not.
Start today with what’s in front of you. Open your Bible and read one chapter. Pray for five minutes. Reach out to one believer and ask how you can pray for them. Then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.
The life in Christ that’s available to you is far beyond where you are right now. These three disciplines are the path to get there. Everything else you want in your relationship with God grows from this foundation. Nothing replaces it.