Renovare Essentials

Looking back over two years in the Renovare (reh-no-VAHR-eh) Spiritual Institute, I have changed my mind about several things in my walk with Jesus.  The new thoughts and ideas were only the beginning, but still an important beginning.  The best part of my learning was the discovery that these ideas are not new at all, but pillars of of thought and experience that reach back hundreds of years.  Renovare reintroduced me to these new/old ideas and showed me how they worked in real life.

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.

Discipleship Inside-Out

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.  Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:45-47)

First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.  (Matthew 23:26)

Spiritual formation and spiritual disciplines are words being thrown around with greater frequency these days.   It is easy to share what I feel about these subjects before I adequately define what I am talking about.  Most of these shared thoughts and feelings would come from the people I’ve run into (in person or through some media) who use these words, for good or ill.

One popular (at least on internet searches) notion is that these terms signal “New Age” views and practices brought up under a different name.  They are seen as efforts to add to the gospel and draw people into confusion or legalism.  Paul identifies such dangers in Galatians 1:6-9.  The fear is that spiritual formation adds to the “gospel of grace” so freely given by Paul.  Not only that, but the additions are seen as unbiblical or even pagan in nature.

No doubt such spiritual formation can be found.  If a person looks for a “spiritual director or guide,” there are many varieties to be found.  Even if one adds the word “Christian” to their search, some of the notions of spirituality have little to do with Christ.  Searching in this area is full of potential danger.

However, just because a term is misused, it does not make it unusable or the user wrong.  As with so many other abused terms and ideas, spiritual formation has been the baby thrown out with the bathwater by some groups and individuals.  I feel compelled to rescue this term.  Others have done a better job than I have, such as Eugene Peterson and Dallas Willard.  Such rescues occur frequently in the Church, such as the rescue of “grace” by Bonheoffer in The Cost of Discipleship.  He did not throw out grace, but gave some clarifiers to explain it: “costly” grace and “cheap” grace.

I would like to frame spiritual formation in terms of discipleship.  Spiritual formation is discipleship inside-out.  First, I like the use of inside-out because it reverses something that many people are familiar with, making it seem strange.  Like pants or a shirt worn inside-out, spiritual formation looks at the seams and pockets of discipleship from an angle where they can be worked on.  Rather than the usual mode of discipleship (“God is good. You stink.  Do better.”), spiritual formation starts with the unseemly (pun intended) aspects of my life rather than merely prescribing good behavior.

Unseemly parts of my life are ugly sins, bad habits, and careless words.  They also are day-to-day work, family life, and mundane tasks.  Spiritual formation begins here because these are the things closest to my heart, closest to my insides.  This is where the work begins.  Rather than sewing “letters” on jackets, brandishing special “designer” labels, or showing off my best qualities with the right cuts and shapes, spiritual formation focuses on cleaning stains, ripping out bad seams, and sewing up torn places in my life.

Secondly, inside-out points to the priority of the spirit (or heart) in the life of a person.  Spiritual formation is not about performing certain actions, but having new attitudes.  Spiritual formation is not about what to do, but about how I do it.  Spiritual formation is not about getting what I want, nor is it about doing good, but about wanting to do good.  Human change always comes from the inside out, and spiritual formation takes this seriously.

Putting “Christian” on the front of spiritual formation may help a little bit, but often the view of Christians is all too low both inside and outside of the Church.  It gives some meaning, but not a lot.  I prefer “Christ-centered.”  Spiritual formation (really spiritual re-formation) cannot occur without Christ at the center.  Spiritual formation without Christ at the center  makes as much sense as performing open-heart surgery on yourself, or trying to determine what is real from what is fantasy for a paranoid schizophrenic (like in A Beautiful Mind.)  No, this activity must be instigated, supervised, and completed with Christ or it will end in catastrophe.  Christ-centered spiritual formation is discipleship to Christ inside-out.

What is truly beautiful about spiritual formation is that the tools are right at hand.  Christ is available to everyone through his Spirit.  He comes to everyone who longs for such change.  Such a longing and a seeking for his influence is what Jesus meant with his invitation, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  Learning what this means takes a lifetime. . . and longer.  However, it takes only a moment to begin.  And it goes from moment to moment.

His Spirit has also provided the testimony and teaching from lives dedicated to spiritual formation of people from ages past.  These words and stories are the teaching tools of his Spirit, opening our lives to his instruction, healing, and power.  The Bible, read honestly and openly, searches our hearts and minds and lays us open for a new life with God.  That is the result of Christ- centered spiritual formation: Life with God.   That life is being constantly renewed, constantly deepened, and constantly nurtured.  That life is worth every sacrifice.