Welcome to the Authentic Joy Spiritual Growth Foundation Course!

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ and you feel stuck or stagnant or you just hunger for more of God, then this course is your starting place for accelerated growth in Christ! We use the phrase Authentic Joy to describe that place of deep intimacy with God, fully formed character, and kingdom purpose. All of us are somewhere along our journey toward Authentic Joy.

This course is an introduction to Spiritual Growth or Spiritual Formation. It explores ways in which traditional paradigms of maturity and how we mature as Christians have been ineffective in producing mature saints and introduces more effective approaches to our spiritual maturity. The course provides a framework for understanding the journey that we all take as believers from immaturity to maturity and how we can identify where we are along that journey. Students will come away with the ability to identify the season that they are in and how to intentionally partner with God in that season.

Students will understand from scripture how God defines maturity and how He intends for us to attain it. The course is centred around these three scriptures:

Ephesians 4:13-16 (NKJV):

…till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV):

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

James 1:2-4 (ESV):

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

The instructor draws from these scriptures to define the processes of growing in intimacy, identity, responsibility, wholeness, and resilience and how we progress along these aspects of our growth journey from immaturity to maturity. Students will understand how spiritual maturation practically takes place in our lives as God takes us toward Christlikeness.

Students will be provided with practical habits that once implemented in their lives will undoubtedly lead to accelerated growth!