Spiritual Formation

Spiritual Formation

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.

Ezekiel 36:26

In his wonderful book Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard points out that spiritual formation happens to everyone, whether or not they know it. Even atheists undergo a process of formation whereby their spirits are formed in a particular direction, making them who they are. He also points out two important truths: first, that all of us are more ruined than we think, and second, that all of us have more potential for goodness and glory than we think.

“Sin,” he explains, “does not make [the soul] worthless, but only lost. And in its lostness it is still capable of great strength, dignity, and heartbreaking beauty and goodness—enough so to hide from the unenlightened, or those who do not wish to understand, the horror it has become and is becoming.”^a

The trajectory of ruin is this: “In the ruined soul, the mind becomes a fearful wilderness and a wild intermixture of thought and feeling, manifested in willful stupidities, blatant inconsistencies, and confusions, often to the point of obsession, madness, or possession.”^b

But the trajectory of redemption is transformation into Christ’s image. This way leads, as Willard points out, to “a fuller and ever fuller restoration of radical goodness to the soul. It accesses incredible, supernatural strength for life.”^c The well-ordered soul, he says, is capable of responding to life in ways that are right and good. No more lashing out in anger, no more saying one thing and doing another because everything within us will be wholly directed toward God. This describes the soul that is filled with shalom.

Is such a life possible? Yes, if we can learn to prefer God’s will to ours—not just sometimes, but always. As God’s Spirit fills and guides us, each day will take us closer to this goal, healing the divide inside so we can become the women God created us to be.

Father, I want to be like your Son in every way. I pray you will so fill me with your Spirit that I will be able to lay down my life and take on yours. Make me, Lord, a woman with a well-ordered soul, able to respond in ways that are always good and right.

^a Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 46.

^b Ibid., 33.

^c Ibid., 75.