Vine: Spiritual Growth

Question 1

Why are people hungering from deeper spiritual realities?

Answer 1

Because of a loss of meaning induced by our post-modern consumer society. Our lives have become fragmented and meaningless.

People are hungering for deeper realities through which their fragmented lives can achieve some measure of wholeness and integrity

They are looking for deeper experiences with God through which their troubled lives can find meaning, value, purpose, and identity.

Question 2

Is spiritual Growth a static possession?

Answer 2

No, it is a dynamic and ever-developing growth toward wholeness in the image of Christ

Question 3

What happens when we view spiritual growth as a Static possession

Answer 3

It results in an endless quest for techniques, methods, programs, by which we hope to “achieve” spiritual fulfillment because the acquisition of knowledge is seen as the way towards achieving this spiritual “end” state.

Question 4

What is the hidden assumption behind seeing spiritual growth as a static possession?

Answer 4

That we alone are in control of our spiritual growth, and that we are in control of our relationship with God.

Question 5

In contrast to the view of ‘static possession, what is the appropriate way to view spiritual growth?

Answer 5

A Continuous Journey

Spiritual growth is a pilgrimage of deepening responsiveness to God’s control of our life and being.

Question 6

What is spiritual formation?

Answer 6

The process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others

Question 7

What happens when we rebel against God’s work of spiritual formation?

Answer 7

Rebellion against God’s gracious work moves us into destructive and dehumanizing emptiness, into increasingly dysfunctional lives that are self-destructive and treat others as objects to be manipulated and used for our own purposes.

Question 8

Why is does spiritual formation as a process move against the grain of our society?

Answer 8

We live in an acquisitive society with a culture of instant gratification and possessiveness.

We see spirituality as a possession that can be immediately acquired (like buying a reiki attunement or attending a yoga teacher training workshop )

Question 9

Why does spiritual formation as being formed move against the grain of our society?

Answer 9

Because we live in a do-it-yourself culture, which means that self-reliance is deeply ingrained in us and we have a powerful need to be in control of our existence.

To allow someone else to control our life is seen as a weakness to be avoided at all cost

This is why do-it-yourself spirituality like yoga and most of the new age is so popular.

Question 10

What does it mean when we say that spiritual formation is the process of being formed?

Answer 10

that God is the initiator of our growth toward wholeness and we are to be pliable clay in God’s hand.

This is necessary because only God can bring:

Life to our deadness
Healing to our brokeness
Cleanse our uncleanliness

Question 11

What is the image of human wholeness

Answer 11

Scripture reveals from the very beginning that human wholeness is associated with the image of God. We are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). The New Testament parallel to this is that we are to become the likeness of Christ (2 Cor 3:18), who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col1:15).

Question 12

How does spiritual formation in the image of Christ move against the grain of our culture?

Answer 12

It moves against the grain of our self-actualizing culture that desires to form God in our image.

In the modern sense, God is seen as a state of consciousness within ourselves that can be realized (Christ consciousness, etc) or we project onto and anthropomorphize elements in nature (pagan deities)

Being formed into the image of Christ requires sanctification, which is the opposite of self-actualization, as it requires a dying to and moving away from the self

Question 13

How does spiritual formation “for the sake of others” move against the grain of society?

Answer 13

Because our society promotes privatized and individualized spirituality. There is a deep-seated belief that spiritual life is a matter between the individual and God.

Question 14

Why are we being formed for the benefit of others

Answer 14

There can be no wholeness in the image of Christ which is not incarnate in our relationships with others, both in the body of Christ and in the world.

Question 15

Is spiritual formation optional?

Answer 15

No

Everyone is in a process of spiritual formation! Every thought we hold, every decision we make, every action we take, every emotion we allow to shape our behavior, every response we make to the world around us, every relationship we enter into, every reaction we have toward the things that surround us and impinge upon our lives—all of these things, little by little, are shaping us into some kind of being.

We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of Christ or a horribly destructive caricature of that image, destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we inflict our brokenness upon them.

We become either agents of God’s healing and liberating grace or carriers of the sickness of the world.

Spiritual formation is not an option! The inescapable conclusion is that life itself is a process of spiritual development. The only choice we have is whether that growth moves us toward wholeness in Christ or toward an increasingly dehumanized and destructive mode of being.

Question 16

When does the process of spiritual formation end?

Answer 16

until we “attain to… mature personhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

Question 17

Why should we not become discouraged during ‘dry’ periods, where nothing is seemingly happening

Answer 17

To us, it might seem like nothing is happening, but God is always working (Philippians 1:6, John 5:17, Psalm 68:19) behind our consciousness. He hides his work under an unnoticeable sequence of events, that prepares us for what appears like a quantum leap forward

Philippians 1:6

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

John 5:17 [NIV].

17 “But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now [He has never ceased working], and I too am working.”

Psalm 68:19

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, The God who is our salvation. Selah.”

Question 18

What is the most crucial difference between trying to form ourselves and being formed?

Answer 18

Control

We struggle with giving up control.

We don’t mind spiritual formation, as long as we can be in control of it, as long as we can set limits on its pace and direction, we have no problem with it.

Question 19

How does Christ’s first temptation relate to the issue of control

Answer 19

it was a temptation to reverse the roles of being and doing, to use the empowerment of the spirit to do something that will authenticate God’s call.

Question 20

How do we evaluate our own meaning, value, and purpose, as well as that of others?

Answer 20

by what we do and how effectively we do it, instead of by the quality of our being.

Question 21

What is the temptation for performance-orientated people, and how does spiritual formation reverse this

Answer 21

to turn spiritual disciplines into works of righteousness

Spiritual formation reverses this by moving us from acting to bring about the desired results in our lives to being acted upon by God and responding in ways that allow God to bring about God’s purposes

Question 22

What happens when we operate from the perspective that our doing determines our being?

Answer 22

we expect immediate returns on our investment of time and resources—observable results that prove that we have performed well and are therefore persons of value and worth.

If we fail to receive such instant feedback, we presume we have failed and begin to struggle with a perceived loss of self-image, value, purpose, and even identity.

Question 23

How do our expectations shift when we move from a place of doingness ot beingness

Answer 23

They shift from a habitual expectation for instant results and closure to patient , open-ended yieldedness, as we wait patiently for Gods’ timing, trusting God to bring the needed transformation in God’s time, not ours

Question 24

What is one of the primary disciplines in helping us give up control and yield to god

Answer 24

The practice of silence. Patiently waiting in open-ended yieldedness

“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation” Psalm 62:1

Question 25

Does being formed into the image of Christ mean that we will all be made into clones?

Answer 25

No, we find our unique individuality only as far as we are fully formed in Christ.

The world wants to turn us into clones by making us conform to the worldly image of success

We become compassionate persons in an infinite variety of models

Question 26

Is the image of Christ something alien that is added onto us?

Answer 26

No, it is a fulfillment of the deepest hunger of the human heart for wholeness

The greatest thirst for our being is for the fulfillment of the Christ Image

Question 27

How does the image of Christ change us?

Answer 27

The image of Christ brings cleansing, healing, restoration, renewal, transformation and wholeness into the unclean, diseased, broken, imprisoned, dead incompleteness of our lives. It brings compassion in place of indifference, forgiveness in place of resentment, kindness in place of coldness, openness in place of protective defensiveness or manipulation, a life lived for God and not self.

Question 28

In which places in our lives does God start transforming us into the image of Christ

Answer 28

If indeed the work of God’s formation in us is the process of forming us in the image of Christ, obviously it’s going to take place at the points where we are not yet formed in that image. T

his means that one of the first dynamics of holistic spiritual formation will be a confrontation.

Through some channel—the Scripture, worship, a word of proclamation, the agency of a brother or sister in Christ, even the agency of an unbeliever—the Spirit of God may probe some area in which we are not formed in the image of Christ. That probing will probably always be confrontational, and it will always be a challenge and a call to us in our brokenness to come out of the brokenness into wholeness in Christ. But it will also be a costly call, because that brokenness is who we are.

Question 29

What is our cross?

Answer 29

Our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised by God into wholeness of life in the image of Christ right there at that point. So the process of being formed in the image of Christ takes place at the points of our unlikeness to Christ, and the first step is confrontation.

Question 30

Does God force transformation on us?

Answer 30

We must give God permission to do the work God wants to do with us right there, because transformation will not be forced on us.

Question 31

What is consecration?

Answer 31

a release of ourselves to God at each point of our unlikeness to Christ, so that we may be formed into His image.

Question 32

What are spiritual disciplines and what role do they play in consecration?

Answer 32

Spiritual disciplines are the act of releasing ourselves in a consistent manner to God, opening those doors in a regular way to allow God’s transforming work in our lives.