Soul Change
So what is spiritual formation? What do we mean when we talk about spiritual formation? What happens to someone who has been spiritually formed? Some of those questions are a little better than others… while we are here on this earth, we will be continually spiritually formed. It is an ongoing process.
Some circles call spiritual formation, “discipleship” or they call it, “sanctification” or “transformation”. Whatever the vocabulary word that you choose to you when you and your spouse talk about deep, inside, soul change, the focus in mind is always to “be like Christ”. The goal of spiritual formation is to know him, to become like him, to truly, as Galatians 2:20 puts it, to have your sinful nature killed, then replaced by and lived by, Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me…”
Killing a False Identity
Our hearts are bent to worship just about anything but God. We’ll worship our self, our career, our possessions, our relationships, or our reputation. Other words the Bible uses when talking about worshiping false gods are, pride, lusts, the fear of man and evil desires. Spiritual formation, discipleship, sanctification, and transformation are all words that capture the spiritual change, the soul change that happens in the life of an individual who is filled with the Holy Spirit, learning obedience, living from their identity in Christ. The spiritually formed woman lives from her identity in Christ and his sufficiency, rather than from one (or many) of the identities the world creates for her (a success, a failure, beautiful, ugly, an egghead, a worker, a divorcee, a widow,, a jock, a smart kid, a loser, etc.).
Biblical Truths and the Presence of the Spirit
Spiritual formation is rooted in biblical truths and the responsiveness to the Spirit. Biblical truths are not for rote memorization, they are for transformation. The deep truths of scripture are not presented to us as facts for an exam; they are tools, skills and training that shape our deepest parts, the seat of our emotions and passions. When Joshua extended the challenge to the Israelites in Joshua 24 to choose to serve the Lord, it extends to us that we are explicitly asked to also choose to serve the Lord. This biblical truth challenges us and changes us.
As we respond willingly to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, these biblical truths shape us in order to bring glory to God in our relationships, our roles, and our responsibilities. Spiritual formation is occurring when we, our sons and daughters, our friends fully entrust themselves to God’s care, and they live from the understanding of a new identity in Christ. We learn, then live, biblical truths in everyday activities. We are increasingly more patient; we are motivated in obedience by love, not fear or guilt; we learn and live with generosity and forgiveness and reconciliation; we do this in an understanding of a loving God who is for us, who has saved us.
Worship
When confronted with our sin, our selfishness, pride, anger, desire for control, perfectionism, despair, contempt, lust, greed and willful disobedience of God, we must run. The human tendency is to try to fix the problem, to sin less, or to make the sin go away, to correct one's self and try harder to obey God. This is the equivalent of spiritual "whack-a-mole", that game when you are given a spongy hammer to smash down the little mole heads that pop up at random around you. The human desire is to smash faster or use both hands to keep up with the moles (the sins). What we need is to instead drop the hammer and run from the sin, run to Jesus, worship him, find satisfaction in him alone rather than satisfaction in smashing as many moles (sins) as possible.
In discipleship, we must run to Jesus, worshiping God the Father for his many spiritual blessings in Christ. We worship the Spirit who fills us with comfort, knowledge and wisdom to obey. A disciple would rather pull the plug on the spiritual whack-a-mole game and run to the presence of God because of Jesus' work on the cross.
