What on earth is Spiritual Formation?

What is taught as 'spiritual formation' is a process of applying 'spiritual discipline' to train the 'flesh' or the 'natural man' to submit to a particular spiritual ideal.

These disciplines include some practices found in the Bible, such as praying to God and studying the Bible. For a believer, these things are not meant to be a discipline, but a delight. If they are not, then there are deeper issues to be addressed.

Spiritual disciplines are not in themselves 'christian', they are also taught in Buddhism, Hinduism, new age and muslim religions.

The idea of spiritual discipline is found in the Bible in the practices of the Pharisees. In their attempt to control their natural inclination to sin and disobey God's clear, straightforward laws, they devised 'fence laws', with the intent that if you would break any laws, it would be better to break one of these fence laws instead of one of God's laws.

Over time, the focus came off God's simple and straightforward teaching on how to live, from a heart humbled before Him, and the focus came onto obeying the fence laws as 'Law', equivalent to God's Law. This is what Jesus refuted in Matthew 23, when He told the religious leaders that their laws had 'nullified' God's Law.

They had set up these spiritual disciplines as the way to become acceptable to God. But there is NO amount of spiritual discipline that will make you acceptable to God. What pleases God is what comes from a 'broken and contrite heart', a heart fully aware that all our acts of spiritual discipline (our acts of 'righteousness') are like the filthy rags of Isaiah 64.

What is pleasing and acceptable to Him are not 'methods' or 'techniques' of religion, but acts gladly done from a heart that eagerly obeys GOD'S ways.

All the spiritual disciplines in the world won't make you right with God in the way He wants. They are deceiving in that they can make us feel 'spiritual' if we practice them, and in that state, we are less likely to see ourselves as we really are...utterly helpless and in need of God's constant protection.

We can never walk in human religious ways and please God, we must walk in His ways. True transformation does not happen through our efforts, it happens as the Spirit of God guides us, through the yielding of our will to God's, in obedience to His instruction (the Bible), in every situation and relationship of our lives.