“In spiritual relationships we do not grow step by step, we are either there or we are not. God does not cleanse us more and more from sin, but when we are in the light, walking in the light, we are cleansed from all sin. It is a question of obedience, and instantly the relationship is perfected.” Oswald Chambers[1]
Chamber’s statement could make the practice of spiritual formation a moot point. He warns of becoming “wise and prudent” by “philosophy or thinking.” Since this quote came from his devotional, a daily reading of information, I do not think Chambers is saying, “put down the books and do not learn or study.” If he were beckoning us to put down his devotional, stop thinking or philosophizing and act, he would not have written the next day’s devotional. There needs to be some form of taking in and contemplating information. What I take from his October 10th devotion is that he is imploring us to act in obedience, and in doing so, the treasures of heaven will glow even brighter.
Obedience
If obedience is the keyword, we must discern the focus of our obedience and what obedience means. The word “obey” in Scripture can portray two ideas; one idea is to listen, and the other idea is to do.[2] The question with spiritual formation is this: are we doing those things that help us listen so that we can then act in obedience, or do we do something without knowing what or from whom we are to do? Where is our information coming from, which informs us as to the focus of our obedience?
As I stated in part one and two of The Process of Change articles, we can change behavior, cognition, and affect using language, reflection, and action. Remember, the design of marketing campaigns is to change our desires and purchasing behaviors. According to advertisers, we are malleable creatures. By focusing our awareness on a particular direction of change, harnessing malleability, the result is obedience to that direction’s object.
Specifically, we become obedient by many forces. For example, our childhoods are the roots of many of our beliefs, which direct our obedience—influences we are exposed to inform us about the world, ourselves, and how we relate. For the first few years of our lives, we are at the mercy of those caring for us. We learn fundamental aspects of life, which we use to engage with ourselves and others as we grow older. The point here is that we learn what we believe. If some of those beliefs are lacking, we can do things to change or modify our convictions. Note though, merely stating a conviction is not necessarily believing the conviction. But it is a start.
Dr. Michael Heiser in his podcast The Naked Bible Podcast #350, expands on what he presented in his book The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, the idea of obedience. Heiser states that obedience is a result of a “believing loyalty.” Others frame this central idea in terms of faith and belief, “… faith is obedience, unbelief is disobedience.”[3] How do we “get” faith or believing loyalty? Big question.
Beliefs
If our beliefs began developing in childhood, they did so in relation to others and to self. Retrofitting those beliefs then requires being in relation to someone or something else. We must leave our mother and father and join with someone else. We must become loyal to another family’s relational posture towards us.
I’m not saying we must leave our family and join a cult. Many people were reared in a God-fearing house. However, even those people have accumulated beliefs that negatively affect their relationship with Christ. I’m saying we need to think of ourselves as someone different than what our family says we are. I will speak to this idea further in a later article.
Side note: To receive a license as a Virginia counselor, the applicant must fulfill a 4000-hour supervision requirement. In one of my supervision sessions, I asked my supervisor, whom I highly respect, “What do people do when their family of origins is so very dysfunctional?” His succinct response, “Find another one.” I chuckled and have been thinking about his response since.
As to following Christ, we need to break from attachments here on earth that keep the work of God from flourishing in our lives. To do that, we must align with another set of beliefs about who we are.[4] The question then becomes, “Where do I find another set of beliefs?” This is where spiritual formation comes into view.
The Nature of Spiritual Formation
Jeffrey Greenman defines spiritual formation as “…our continuing response to the reality of God’s grace shaping us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, in the community of faith, for the sake of the world.”[5] He continues and states it is “…an ongoing process…”[6] Some people think spiritual formation is a form of naval gazing. Greenman clarifies this confusion in stating,
“The process of spiritual formation is not defined by someone’s search within themselves for spiritual health, but rather by a ‘continuing response to the reality of God’s grace.’ By using the term response I want to emphasize that spiritual formation is not self-generated. It is not our attempt to cultivate inwardness for its own sake. Spiritual formation in its best sense cannot be reduced to the results of human techniques or personal willpower, but is primarily a matter of God’s own initiative and God’s vital action. This definition leaves no room for the sort of well-intended semipelagianism that is so prevalent, namely, the mistaken idea that we have the ability to seek God apart from God’s prior movement of grace.”[7]
There is an importance in understanding the nature of spiritual formation. While the practices or disciplines may be active, the process of transformation is experienced as passive. Gangel and Wilhoit, in their article in The Christian Educator’s Handbook on Spiritual Formation, states,
“Information alone will not make the difference. The person who has taken in the information has been reshaped, remolded, and significantly altered by the active transformation of the data into meaning for oneself. God is remaking Christians; our very central core of being is transformed into something quite different. It is not just an outward change but a metamorphosis from one form to another new and better one. We are being changed from the “old” to the new who is “in Christ,” being conformed to His image.”[8]
Taking the understanding of spiritual formation a step further, neither information nor experience alone will make the difference. Howard in his article in Christianity Today, warned of the idea of spiritual formation as merely an experience,
“Christian spiritual formation is not simply fostering the experience of the Spirit but rather a radical formation, a shaping and molding of the believer into conformity with Christ through the Spirit. Christian spiritual formation is intentional about moving from the experience of Christ’s invitation to the concrete actions of personal transformation. This is hard work at times—not works righteousness but hard work nonetheless. Obedience is like that, too: it is inspired and empowered by grace, but grace is still tough. … While powerful experiences of God contribute significantly to our continuing formation, conformity with Christ comes ultimately only through a lifetime of obedience and the grace of the Spirit: Christian spiritual formation.”[9]
Howard informs his readers that obedience is a consequential topic in the discussion of spiritual formation. As with others, he also states that it is hard work.
It’s Work
When I experience words used that seem to aggregate many forms of action into a single verb, I tend to define what that word means in context. Someone can be hard at work building a house. I get that. But to say something is emotionally hard work—that is a little harder to conceptualize. I found an excellent definition in one of my 30-year-old Introduction to Electric Circuits textbook by Herbert Jackson, “Work is the accomplishment of motion against the action of a force which tends to oppose the motion.[10]”
What we are doing in discipleship or spiritual formation is moving away from and towards something else. These are forces that pull or attract us in specific directions. It’s work that, by definition, requires discipline in the act of listening and doing.
Oswald Chambers is correct in that we are there. Our sins have been washed, and our position before God is clear. He is also valid in writing his next day’s devotion; we are in a process that requires diligence to a daily reminding of who we are and how we got here. When we fully grasp this concept, we can see the grace given to us and then act in obedience in having grace for others.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer states,
“…that grace never can be possessed by or in human experiences in a way, that I could say: I am secure, because I have grace. Grace every moment must be believed anew, because it is never static, objective, “gegenständlich,” but ever acting, judging and forgiving, “persönlich” [11] and only in these acts actual; it is always in opposition to man, therefore it always must be believed anew.”[11]
[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
[2] W. Adams Brown, “OBEDIENCE, OBEY,” ed. James Hastings et al., A Dictionary of the Bible: Dealing with Its Language, Literature, and Contents Including the Biblical Theology (New York; Edinburgh: Charles Scribner’s Sons; T. & T. Clark, 1911–1912), 581.
[3] Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge: Embracing Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology and Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Biography from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908–1914), 212.
[4] The question of leaving father and mother deserves further exploration beyond the scope of this article. I will address this further in a latter article.
[5] Jeffrey P. Greenman, “Spiritual Formation in Theological Perspective: Classic Issues, Contemporary Challenges,” in Life in the Spirit, Spiritual Formation in Theological Perspective, eds. Jeffrey P. Greenman and George Kalantzis (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 24.
[6] Ibid., 24
[7] Ibid., 24.
[8] Kenneth O. Gangel and Jim Wilhoit, The Christian Educator’s Handbook on Spiritual Formation (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1994), 15.
[9] Evan Howard, “Three Temptations of Spiritual Formation,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 2002), 49.
[10] Herbert W. Jackson, “Introduction to Electronic Circuit” 5th ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1981 p5.
[11] [“Personal” in the sense of an encountering word, not a static object.—CG]
[11] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, ed. Clifford J. Green et al., trans. Douglas W. Stott, vol. 10, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 450.