FORMATION

Story: Hal Ersner-Hershfield, a psychologist at New York University, wondered if young adults were not saving money for the future because they felt like they were putting it away for a stranger. So he conducted an experiment, giving some college students a real mirror and others virtual reality goggles where, with the help of special effects like those used in movies, they could see a future version of themselves at age 68 or 70. Those who saw the older version of themselves in the virtual "mirror" were willing to put more than twice as much money into their retirement accounts as the students who spent time looking at their younger selves in a real mirror. What's more, those who glimpsed their future selves were more likely to complete their studies on time, whereas those who didn't were more likely to blow off their studies. Those who saw their future selves were also more likely to act ethically in business scenarios. Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self by Ken Shigematsu

Our role is to consent to the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit. Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self by Ken Shigematsu

The least mature and most self-centered people I know are those who get everything they want. What if God’s brilliant design is to make us holy through disappointment? The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

We do not need to fear these inner urgings because the Holy Spirit never condemns us, but gently convicts us.8 Condemnation drives us from God, but conviction draws us toward God. Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self by Ken Shigematsu

For too long, we’ve been sold a vision of life promising more and more freedom the older we become: more money, more choices, more affluence, then retirement. What Jesus gives Peter—and us—is the opposite. The remainder of Peter’s life will be marked not by going where he wanted to go but where Jesus wanted him to go. He won’t even clothe himself. His future isn’t marked by more freedom but by increased faithfulness. Henri Nouwen called this “downward mobility.” The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained. Dallas Willard

Rule of Life

★ Rule of Life –– A set of communal practices (seen in the early monastic movement of the fourth century). Virtue and a life well lived doesn’t happen by accident and doesn’t sustain itself by accident. We all experience forming and deforming moments in life (even success forms us). We have this idea that people are just innately good or bad people.The most exemplary people in our community are the most intentional people in our community. It’s not by accident. We must be people who build their life in a way to counteract “that.” What in our contextual moment is misshaping us and how can we deliberately live in a way to fight that current? Andy Crouch on Practicing the Way Podcast

People tend to stay in a place of aspiration. We need aspiration AND action. Action can be the baseline practices that counteract this deformation. “Reach practices” can be practices that involve more sacrifice and are for people seeking to “go deeper.” Andy Crouch on Practicing the Way Podcast

The beauty of doing an agreed upon communal set of practices is there can be things added to this daily rhythm that you wouldn’t regularly choose. We have biased towards a preference based spiritually. When I do this in community it pushes me towards things that I don’t want to be pushed towards. Andy Crouch on Practicing the Way Podcast

Two struggles that the practicing monks wrestled with were (1) spiritual pride and (2) other monks; conflict. Andy Crouch on Practicing the Way Podcast

Forgiving Others

Overcoming Envy

Overcoming Pride

Overcoming Shame

By covering them, God warms them both physically and metaphysically. As biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says, "God does for the couple what they could not do for themselves. They cannot deal with their shame, but God can, will, and does." Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self by Ken Shigematsu

Reordering Desires

The Bible has a word for getting what we want: wrath. … Hell will be the place where humans get what they want. Heaven, on the other hand, is the place where we live at peace under everything God wants. In hell, our desires become our gods. In heaven, our every desire bends its knee before the God of desire. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

For Luther, Jesus’ nap was his way of cultivating the right desire in his disciples: a desire for him. Christopher West has called Jesus’ delay “stretching desire.”21 Why does Jesus not come immediately? For the same reason Jesus naps in the boat. The intentional delay of God accomplishes in us the cultivation of right desire that can only be fulfilled by his arrival. Delay is the birthplace of desire. And it is how God matures our desire. In the delay, our desire is being perfected, seasoned, prepared. … Delay is also a great revealer of our false gods. It’s only as Moses is delayed in coming down the mountain that Israel forms and worships their golden calf. Delay reveals our idols, and it’s usually the time when we form them. In the waiting, we get tired and start to worship something we can place our hands on.The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine describes the ordering of love: The person who lives a just and holy life is a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less, or love too little what should be loved more, or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally.1 And Augustine defines sin as “the immoderate urge towards those things at the bottom end of the scale of good [whereby] we abandon the higher and supreme goods, that is you, Lord God, and your truth and your law.” … Loving rightly reorients everything about our lives. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Nobody can love everything equally. Nor should they. As we acknowledge our limits, fleeting time, and priorities, certain desires must take the backseat. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

“By choosing one road, I am turning my back on a thousand others.” Antonin Sertillanges

As people seeking to order our love, we must accept that not everything gets to be ours. … Gil Bailie writes, “We are creatures in whom has been implanted and to whom has been entrusted a world-consuming desire, and if misdirected, it will sooner or later lay waste the world.” … One could arguably say that any kind of human-made devastation is, first and foremost, a crisis of desire. We want more than we should have and take what isn’t ours. We reject boundaries and limits. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

The point is simple but confrontive: just as an inordinate love of things or events can distract from God’s kingdom, so can the inordinate love of people. … They are reminders that the greatest obstacle to following Jesus is overly desiring good things. … What Jesus is inviting us to is one of the most difficult—and pressing—invitations of the Christian way. It is to subsume all loves (even the love of our “loved ones”) under and for a love for God. Only in loving God ultimately can we love anyone appropriately. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

The Flesh

The flesh is where Satan appeals to and influences our desires. Desire arises from two places within a person. In Paul’s thought, desire comes from either the flesh (sarx) or the Spirit (pneuma). The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War For Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Paul never claims the flesh will be silenced or annihilated by conversion and baptism. Remember, Paul is writing to Christians. He demonstrates in Galatians 5 that Christians will experience ongoing influences of the “desires of the flesh” after their spiritual awakening: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want” (Gal. 5:16–17) … Lamentably, far too many Christians fall prey to the idea that their battle against “desires of the flesh” after years of faithful discipleship and spiritual pursuit represents a failure in their Christian life. Or we interpret the ongoing presence of the flesh in our lives as a failure. But is struggling with the flesh a sign we are failing in our pursuit of God? The answer is surprising. The ongoing presence of the war of desire between the flesh and Spirit is, in reality, a sign of the Spirit’s presence. How can we say this? Because before we followed Jesus and were indwelt with the Spirit of God, there was no conflict with the flesh. We unthinkingly followed the flesh. There simply was no conflict. Now, the Spirit is giving birth to godly desires. The battle itself, ironically, is the sign that we’re walking in the Spirit. The absence of a battle is the concern. As Edward Welch wrote, “The battle is good. . . . It is a sign the Spirit is on the move.”16…Second, good news drips from this teaching. The flesh will eventually “pass away.” But not soon enough. The flesh is here for now. And there’s no discernable evidence from any New Testament writer that the flesh will go away during our earthly lifetime. One would think (or at least hope) that upon following Jesus the flesh would go away. But it doesn’t. The person regenerated by Jesus will have the flesh until resurrection. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War For Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Can God take away our unwanted desires? Sure he can. But Scripture, church history, and life suggests that this is not always guaranteed. Perhaps the longer we live with them—and find our humble confidence in God’s grace—the more we start seeing the rose attached to them. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War For Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda

Overcoming Pride / Entitlement

Arrogance demands and expects. Humility receives and enjoys. Dan Rockwell

I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame, and I choose it above all things on Earth or in Heaven. Amen. A.W. Tozer