The Renovare Essentials Conference overviews some of these ideas about Christian spiritual formation. Dawn and I attended one of these conferences a couple of years ago. We wanted to understand Renovare's goals and foundations better before investing ourselves into the Spiritual Institute as well as starting this education together as much as possible. We drove to Phoenix to spend some time in learning, praying, and talking about all this calling from God.
The most pronounced theme of the Essentials conference was God's grace. Dawn and I found this relieving. Renovare has a lot of material about spiritual "disciplines" and we both are aware of the tendency to take these exercises and make them into competitions and divisions in churches, so grace was a great place to start.
What I needed to learn is that God's grace is not so much about fixing my past or securing my future as living in the present. The forgiveness of my sins is essential, but it is not everything. The open door to heaven is my hope, but it is not all that there is. God's grace is provision for my life, rather than for my death. If God's grace is God acting in my life, it is not an "over-and-done" thing as much as the living hand of a living God. The question in my life has moved from "How can I or anyone else get saved by grace?" to "How can I or anyone else live by God's grace from moment to moment?"
Dallas Willard says,"God's grace is opposed to earning, not opposed to effort." This expresses another idea I learned at the Essentials Conference. The proper response of my will to God's grace is more about training that trying. Because of God's mercy, he is not opposed to my trying, but also because of his mercy he tells me that trying will not accomplish what he wants in my life. Jesus makes this plain when he speaks about following him: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:38) The grace of Jesus calls for great effort. The point of this grace is Christ-likeness.
In areas of importance, training is required. People do not speak of medical trying, but medical training. The same is true for the military, musical performance, and pastoral work. People do not trust someone who has merely tried the field, but someone who has trained in the field. The orientation of the will is different when a person trains for something as opposed to when they try something. Because of the importance of following Jesus, discipleship requires the intention of training and not merely trying.
With grace as the motivation and hope and with training as my intention, I found myself asking about the actual means of Christian spiritual formation. This is where spiritual exercises enter. The means of producing spiritual change in my life is very rarely direct. I cannot become humble, patient, or joyful by just practicing being humble, patient, of joyful. This is the fast track to burnout and frustration. Instead of focusing on the direct practice of being joyful, I learned that I needed to indirectly exercise in order to obtain joy or patience or humility.
Lifting weights is an example of and indirect exercise. Most people do not lift weights to get better at lifting weights, but in order to enhance their ability elsewhere. Exercise indirectly prepares a person for practice. Without adequate strength poor performance and injury result. Similarly, solitude, silence, fasting, and prayer can be exercise that prepare me for practicing a life with God.
Without spiritual exercise, spiritual practice is powered by my own abilities and costs me dearly. I cannot make myself grow, but I can be prepared for the spiritual growth and change that God's grace brings. Spiritual exercises are the means of effort that work God's grace into my life and train me for my work with God in my life.
For Christian spiritual formation, God's action in my life - his grace - is the most essential. This grace, by its very nature, calls out a response beyond trying: training. In this training, spiritual exercises are a primary means by which the Spirit forms me into Christ-likeness. The Renovare Essentials Conference will examine and teach these ideas and the ways to work them into everyday human life.
