Deep and Desirable Change
is Possible:
A Vision for Spiritual Formation

Before we delve into the content for tonight, I'd like us to take a brief moment to reflect on where we are at. This is just for you—I’m not asking you to share it. Your responses will serve as a baseline to track your progress over the 12 weeks.

Your “Two Lists”

List #1 Make a list of the main pressures and stresses of your everyday life (especially work), including the powerful and sometimes negative emotions you feel.

List #2 Make a list of the practical help you are receiving from sermons, scripture reading, and Christian books that are helping you deal with list #1

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “Spiritual Formation”?

Is engaging with spiritual formation ideas and practices helping with list #1?

Jesus’ Vision of the “Good Life”

Imagine a life without lack, content and confident in God, ravished by God's greatness, goodness, and beauty…A life where you can say, “It’s been good to be me—who I am, where I came from, and the work I’ve been given.”

Imagine a life without self-rejection, outbursts of anger, without the need to attack and withdraw…

Imagine a life without resentment and contempt, free from lust and fantasy, free from dishonesty and performing for the approval of others…. a life without material lust and anxiety over money… a life where you don’t have to get your way…

Imagine a life where you are the kind of person on the inside who WANTS to love, forgive, and do good—even to your enemies…

All I’m doing is describing the Kingdom life in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which ends with “those who hear and act on my words will be like a person who built their house on the rock.” It must be possible to act on Jesus’ words, or he’s playing a cruel joke on us.

This is not a matter of feeling guilty. That’s useless. It’s a matter of visualizing and cultivating a desire for a better life, an “easier yoke.”

What if you could have a life with friends who shared your passion for Christ and were safe, who knew you and your story? What if these people were not hard to make time for because you’re so energized and empowered by being with them?

How are you reacting to this vision of spiritual formation?

“The Christian spiritual journey is a journey we take with others.
Each of us must take
our own journey,
and for each of us,
that journey will be unique.
But God intends no one
to make that journey alone.”

—David Benner, Sacred Companions

Some Ground Rules

Our discussions together are not about giving advice and “fixing” each other. We are trying to create a safe space to be honest and process. No one should be put on the spot. This is not about forcing “accountability.”

Scriptures:

• Matthew 11:28-30; cf. 1 John 5:3

• Matthew 7:24-28; 28:20

A Reading from Dallas Willard:

We live from our hearts (Proverbs 4:23).
The part of us that drives and organizes our lives is not the physical. You have a spirit within you and it has been formed. It has taken on a specific character. This is true of everyone.

The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being, and it takes on whichever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past. That is what it means for it to be “formed.”

Our lives are, almost totally, a simple result of what we have become in the depths of our being—in our spirits, will, or hearts. From there we see our world and interpret reality. From there we make our choices, break forth into action, try to change our world. We live from our depths—most of which we do not understand.

The situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them.

Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have is a renovation of our hearts.

Jesus brings a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through an ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations.

On the conscious surface of our world within lie some of our thoughts, feelings, intentions, and plans. But the thoughts, feelings, and intentions we are aware of are, after all, only a small part of the ones that are really there in our depths.

We usually know very little about the things that move in our own souls, the deepest level of our lives, or what is driving us. Our “within” is astonishingly complex and subtle—even devious. Only God knows our depths, who we are, and what we would do.

Thus, the psalmist cried out for God’s help in dealing with—himself! “Search me, O God” (Psalm 139:23).

Spiritual formation, without regard to any specifically religious context or tradition, is the process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite “form” or character. It is a process that happens to everyone. The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. Their spirits or hearts have been formed. Period.

Christian spiritual formation is focused entirely on Jesus, the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.

Its goal is an obedience or conformity to Christ that arises out of an inner transformation accomplished through purposive interaction with the grace of God in Christ. Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation (John 13:34-35; 14:21).

External manifestation of “Christlikeness” is not, however, the focus of the process; and when it is made the main emphasis, the process will certainly be defeated, falling into deadening legalisms and pointless narrow-mindedness.

The “outward” interpretation of spiritual formation, emphasizing specific acts as it does, will merely increase “the ‘righteousness’ of the scribe and Pharisee.” We must, “go beyond it” (Matthew 5:20) to achieve genuine transformation of who I am through and through.

Well-informed human effort certainly is indispensable, for spiritual formation is no passive process. But Christlikeness of the inner being is not a human attainment. It is, finally, a gift of grace.

Spiritual formation is, in practice, the way of rest for the weary and overloaded, of the easy yoke and the light burden (Matthew 11:28-30). And it is the path along which God’s commandments are found to be not “heavy,” not “burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love. It will make us angry and hopeless. But taking love itself—God’s kind of love—into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first. And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselves and others.

(Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ - 20th Anniversary Edition, 9,12, 15-18, Kindle Edition)

“God’s work is you.”

Suggestion: Listen to Dallas Willard Podcast #37 How Our Lives Are Broken & the Promise of Healing

Did anything in the reading stand out to you? (whether helpful or bothersome)

What is your reaction to the last paragraph? “Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love…”

What have you been exposed to in terms of spiritual formation and/or “discipleship” training, programs, or mentoring? What was good? What didn’t work?

Engaging in a Spiritual Practice

Three times daily for two weeks, meditatively work through the 23rd Psalm for about ten minutes. Don’t study it or look up what commentaries say. Enjoy it, visualize it, and mull it over. Be honest with God about the parts you find hard to believe and ask why.

Suggestion: Purchase a journal (rather than digital) and record your reactions to the content we’re looking at each week, asking God to draw your attention to what he’s doing in your life. What are you led to pray over? Are you experiencing any resistance?

Before Session #2 on September 28, please read this section from Fredrick Buechner.