To be sure there is much in the way of spiritualism happening in our world today, especially with new age and eastern thought penetrating our society.  Yet perversions of truth don’t discount the truth.  For example we don’t throw out prayer just because we see Sunni’s bloodying their backs in their annual pilgrimage of prayer and fasting.

The history of the church is replete with biblical examples and injunctions to enter into certain kinds of disciplines in our relationship with Christ.  We don’t earn anything through them, but by them the Holy Spirit cultivates the Christ life within us.  Most of these in fact we see in the life and example of Christ – especially those such as meditation, solitude, silence.

We can gain a Christian understanding of meditation (which is used to FILL our minds with the things of Christ as opposed to eastern meditation which calls people to EMPTY their minds of everything) in passages such as GE 24:63, Josh 1:8, Ps 77:12 and 1:Tim 4:15 KJV.  We see Christ practicing solitude on numerous occasions as those times when he would steal away to a “lonely place” where He enjoyed intimacy with the Father (Matt 14:23, Mark 1:45, Luke 5:16).  And the practice of silence (which involves our closed mouths more than anything since much of the noise we find in our lives comes from our own tongues) is very much a common call of God to His people.  I love the words from Isaiah 30:15 – “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”  This is akin to the command to “be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10).  The Lord was all the time quieting things – whether winds or demons.  One gets the idea that silence creates a good environment for the “still small voice” of God to penetrate a noisy creation and noisy hearts.  Hence it is invaluable to our walk.

So what are your questions?

For starters, let me lay out the biblical basis for my understanding of spiritual formation and how it shapes that part of our ministry here at Fellowship.  In doing so, I’d like to offer a few different perspectives and definitions of Spiritual Formation which are given in my class on Spiritual Disciplines.  

Spiritual formation is based on the reality that when we come into a justifying relationship with Jesus Christ (justification) our lives still require the daily abiding presence of Christ in our lives to become transformed into His likeness (sanctification).  Being born again, we are like babies in Christ at first, and in the course of our time on earth He seeks to change those things in us that are more likely to resembled the world, flesh or demonic rather than Himself.  This is the process of growing us up into Him (Eph 4:15).  Both the process and its end result glorifies God through our lives…as we become transformed, conformed, shaped, and molded in the process.  This is spiritual formation.

Scripture gives us images of clay and pottery to help us see how God is actually working on and in our lives for His purposes.  In fact the terminology of ‘formation’ is largely taken from this stream of thought in scripture.  When we are saved, it’s like God puts us on the potter’s wheel and begins creating a piece of pottery for noble purposes (Romans 9:21…but see also Is. 64:8, Jer. 18:1-6, 2 Cor. 4:7).  To do so he must form our inner being into the kind of person He created us to be.  The lump of clay cannot stay the same and become pottery for noble purposes.  

Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we become transformed…slowly over time…where we begin to understand and embrace all of life from a new covenant perspective, realizing we are on a pilgrimage (Ps 84:5-7), continually being transformed and growing in our ability to perceive God and God’s glory in such a way it continually etches deeper into our spirit and affects the core of our life.  This is truly an amazing work of the Holy Spirit. (2 Cor 3:18) 

Additionally, we see the same idea in one of Paul’s great instructions to the Roman church when he says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  (Ro. 12:2)

We see another aspect of spiritual formation in Phil 2:12-13 where right alongside the exhortation to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” we also see the truth that “it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”  There is something that is changing us, shaping us, transforming us and preparing us to increasingly walk by faith and to walk in the Spirit.  This whole operation is what I mean by spiritual formation.

We even see spiritual formation happening corporately upon the body of Christ as well.  “In Christ we who are many form one body” (Ro 12:5) and “the body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” (1 Cor 12:12)

So hopefully this provides important clarification of what we mean in reference to spiritual formation.

There was a second part to the question regarding Spiritual Disciplines…but I’ll leave that for another entry on another day.

Great question!

Over the coming weeks, months, years we hope to build the case for why this spiritually nerdy term was our pick to describe what God IS already doing in your life if you are a Christ follower. We’d love to hear your thoughts, reflections, perceptions and definitions of what your think and feel is meant by Spiritual Formation.

This should be fun.