Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation

by Peter Scazzero

As a result, they accept without question a faith that promises freedom and abundance in Jesus, and yet they never seem to notice how they remain imprisoned, especially in unbiblical ways of relating to themselves and others.

other words, if those around us consistently experience us as unapproachable, cold, unsafe, defensive, rigid, or judgmental, Scripture declares us spiritually immature.

What Jesus taught and modeled was that our love for God was measured by the degree to which we love others.

Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God . . . Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. . . . However, we often turn a deaf ear—through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. . . . In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God.

She is engaged in a slowed-down spirituality that prioritizes being with Jesus over doing for Jesus.

had been taught early on about the importance of quiet time or devotions to nurture my personal relationship with Christ, but it simply was not enough to overcome another message I had been taught—that I must be actively serving Jesus with my gifts, and doing a lot for him.

With the little time left to invest in the messy work of discipleship, we do the next best thing. We standardize discipleship and make it scalable. Our approach resembles more of a conveyor belt in a manufacturing plant than the kind of relational discipleship Jesus modeled for us. We like standardization. Jesus preferred customization.

These three statements summarize this be-before-you-do approach to ministry: 1. You cannot give what you do not possess. 2. What you do is important, but who you are is even more important. 3. The state you are in is the state you give to others.

We come to God in prayer not to get something from him, such as a word of encouragement

or guidance, but simply to be with him. Being silent in God’s presence is prayer.

Within the church, to Americanize Jesus is to follow him because he makes my life better and more enjoyable.

Peter has a high view of Jesus as the Messiah. He is captivated by him as the miracle working, triumphant Savior. Peter truly wants to follow Jesus—in fact, he’s left everything to follow him. But he wants to follow a Jesus who avoids, not embraces, the cross.

It’s one thing to affirm that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, but it’s another to lead out of a discipleship deeply informed by the crucified Jesus, and by the reality that the cross is not only the most important event in world history, but also the lens through which we follow him.

Jesus refused to act in ways to be admired or liked.

It is important to note that Jesus doesn’t criticize the fundamental human desire to be popular, but he does redirect it. He wants us to shift our desire from focusing on people to focusing on the Father. At the end of our earthly journey, he wants to be able to say to each of us, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). This is the only affirmation that will ever truly satisfy our desire for recognition. The longing to be popular—to be loved, enjoyed, and accepted—is God-given, but it is also unquenchable this side of heaven. Jesus wants us to know that God alone is the only deeply satisfying source of recognition. He knows that if the praise and notice of the whole world were given to us, we would still say, “It is too little.”

Success is becoming the person God calls you to become, and doing what God calls you to do—in his way, and according to his timetable.

Peter simply could not reconcile his understanding of success with the crucifixion—with failures, rejections, and defeats; with mustard seeds and a few loaves and fishes. Despite three years of being with Jesus, he remained so infected with success-ism that, at Jesus’s arrest, he could justify resorting to violence to protect it. With success as a supreme value, he didn’t think twice about drawing a sword and cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Matthew 26:51).

When who we are—our identity as a loved daughter or son of God—becomes inseparable from our leadership role, we are especially vulnerable to one of the most subtle and treacherous temptations from the Evil One: to equate our worth with our success in ministry and leadership.

Suffering and failure have always been God’s means to transform us from willful to willing, from swimming upstream against the current of God’s love to floating downstream, trusting in him to take care of us. It is also the primary way he teaches us to be patient.

Even as thousands turn back, Jesus relaxes, grounded in a deep sense of the Father’s sovereignty and plan. He understands that, ultimately, it is the Father who draws disciples, and the Father who keeps them there. Regardless of the outcome, Jesus trusts that the Father is responsible for his mission and will send the right people to him. He models a steady contentment in doing God’s will, in God’s way, according to God’s timetable.

relate to this particular incident more than I care to admit. I spent many years leading for Jesus but not listening to him. Peter didn’t think he was doing anything other than following his best thoughts. So did I. The problem was that his best thoughts were leading him and others astray. The same thing happens when we follow our best ideas without listening first—we hurt ourselves and those we lead.

Discretion is the practice of waiting with prayerful expectation to see what unfolds. It has the humility and patience to discern when to leave things alone, knowing when our interference will only complicate things. Flowing from a space of silence and stillness, discretion gives us, as the apostle Paul wrote, the keen ability to distinguish between good and evil spirits (1 Corinthians 12:10). Moreover, it enables us to exercise self-control, and to wait.

And perhaps most importantly, limits are places we encounter God in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

The problem is that most of us resent limits—in ourselves and in others. We expect far too much from ourselves and often live frustrated, disappointed, or even angry lives as a result. In fact, much of burnout is a result of giving what we do not possess.

My desire for people to like me was so great that I avoided conflicts, especially honest discussions of people’s job performance.

Western culture as a whole devalues loss and grief because it places such a high value on control and continued ascent through life.

Our society has trained us well to pay attention to success but not to loss and pain.

What we fail to realize in all this is that a refusal to embrace our sorrows and to grieve them fully condemns us, and our churches, to a shallow spirituality that blocks the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

As far as I was concerned, grief was a problem to be solved, and my role as a pastor was to solve problems!

Sitting with what we do not understand is hard and heartrending, but necessary.

Scripture describes three biblical phases to process grief and sorrow: pay attention to pain, wait in the confusing in-between, and allow the old to birth the new.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures invite us to integrate seasons of grief and sadness as a central aspect of the spiritual life.

Half to two-thirds of the 150 psalms are classified as laments. They were gifted to God’s people in order to teach us how to pray our emotions and struggles back to God.

When Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle with the Philistines, David didn’t just move on and step into God’s plan for his life as the new king. Instead, he set aside time to grieve.

Until we are willing to learn to feel our emotions, the great revelation and treasure found in God’s way of processing grief will be lost to us.

Loss and grief force us to stop, to wait, to change our plans. That can be especially hard for those of us who live in a culture that esteems busyness, productivity, and predictability. For this reason, learning to wait is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons we learn as followers of Jesus.

My focus and aim was to make disciples and to grow the church. To do that, I needed people to respond, to participate, to join. There was something I needed them to do in order to get Christ’s mission done more successfully.

It is impossible to help people break free from their past apart from understanding the families in which they grew up.

The great news of the gospel is that your family of origin does not determine your future.

Here’s another way to think about it: Jesus may live in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones. In other words, those who precede us in the family tree—our “grandpas”—cast a long shadow, even generations after they are gone.

In a similar way, we have been shaped by forces other than our status as children of God. Yes, God has rescued us by grace—that is our salvation and deliverance. But make no mistake—the hard work of discipleship is necessary in order to let go of unbiblical ways of living and requires surrendering to the slow journey of being formed in new ways by Jesus.