As another year comes to a close, I often find myself thinking the same thought: another year gone.

And with that thought usually comes reflection, on family, work, church, community, our nation, and the world at large. Looking back can be both beautiful and painful at the same time. For many of us, this year carried real weight: strained relationships, difficult diagnoses, unexpected loss, grief that still feels fresh.

I was sitting alone in my small office at the church, trying to write something before Christmas, when I found myself stuck. I kept thinking, What could I possibly write about that hasn’t already been written about? The truth is, I can’t. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. What could I say that hasn’t already been said, and likely said far better than I could ever say it?

This guide is not intended to be a one-size-fits-all formula for discipleship, nor is it presented as the definitive model. Rather, it reflects a framework that I have found faithful, fruitful, and effective through personal experience, both in being discipled and in discipling others. Discipleship is one of those essential callings of the Christian life that is often unintentionally neglected, in part because it is easily reduced to mere relationship. While relationship is certainly a vital component of discipleship, discipleship itself requires intentionality, direction, and purposeful formation around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Simply spending time together, though meaningful, does not automatically lead to spiritual growth.

In 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood on the deck of a ship returning from America to Germany, knowing full well that he was sailing back into the jaws of a rising tyranny. Friends in the United States had pleaded with him to stay. Remaining in safety would have been logical, even strategic. Yet Bonhoeffer felt a deeper call within him, a conviction that discipleship to Jesus was not a matter of convenience but of costly obedience….

George Müller is remembered not merely as a man who prayed, but as a man who built his entire life on prayer. In the 1800s, Müller oversaw large orphanages in Bristol, England feeding, clothing, educating, and sheltering thousands of children. Yet he famously refused to ask anyone for financial support. Instead, he resolved that God alone would be his provider, and prayer would be his daily means of dependence…

In 1956, Elisabeth Elliot received the kind of news that shatters a human life. Her husband, Jim Elliot, along with four other missionaries, had been speared to death while attempting to bring the gospel to the Huaorani people of Ecuador. Elisabeth was left a widow at twenty-nine, with a ten-month-old daughter and a future suddenly cloaked in grief.

Augustine was a man who knew what it meant to live with a divided and disordered heart. Before his conversion, he chased every passion he believed would quiet the ache inside him, pleasure, intellect, status, relationships, and philosophical systems that promised enlightenment but delivered only deeper confusion. His life was crowded with noise, desire, and inner turmoil. Yet none of it brought rest…