Journey of Spiritual Formation

The journey of spiritual formation – “Christ formed in you” – is a journey whereby our love for God and our love of God are worked into every fiber of our being, and is then manifested in a God-given love for our neighbors.

Jesus told his first followers that the greatest commandments are: You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' The [second commandment] is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these." (Mark 12:30-31 NLT)

The dilemma is the 'I must love the Lord and love my neighbor' but I can’t love like I’m supposed to. The only way that I can love God and others like I’m supposed to is because of the flow of the Holy Spirit in me. Jesus told the disciples: ‘The Spirit can make life. Sheer muscle and willpower don't make anything happen. Every word I've spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making.’ (John 6:63 MSG) I have to have the flow of the Holy Spirit in my life if I’m going to love like God expects me to. “Sheer muscle and willpower don’t make anything happen.”

Remember the Word is given to show us that we need the Messiah. The commandment to 'love God with all my heart' is given to show me that I can’t love God as I’m expected to. It is given to show me how desperately I need the delivering and empowering work of the Holy Spirit. That is what Paul was writing about in Romans 7 when he wrote: “I love God's law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.” (Romans 7:22-23 NLT) He saw, through the law, that His only hope for loving God and others was the work of the Holy Spirit.

But isn’t that what Jesus was talking about when he said: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5 NASB
APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING. This is ABSOLUTELY true. Apart from the flow of Jesus in my life through the Holy Spirit there is nothing that I can do that creates life.

Christ formed in you! Christ flowing in you! Christ flowing through you! That is what this journey is about.