Session 5 - How Do People Change?

I want to begin with a question...well 2 questions really.

Do you believe that people can change?

Do you believe that you can change?

I'm tempted to say, and we often think that the goal of Christian spiritual formation is spiritual transformation, but that's not quite right. The goal of Christian spiritual formation, the goal of our whole lives really, is intimate, loving connection and relationship with the Trinity. But one of the really beautiful outcomes of that friendship is in fact transformation. So on your outline there...

The goal of Christian spiritual formation—the goal of our lives—is intimate, loving CONNECTION and RELATIONSHIP with the TRINITY. One of the outcomes of this friendship is TRANSFORMATION.

I will try to explain what I mean.

In his earthly ministry, Jesus seemed to specialize in helping his friends change and grow, often transforming facets of their characters from liabilities into gifts. I love the fact that Jesus chose the salty Apostle Peter, a guy whose big mouth got him into all kinds of trouble, as the cornerstone of his Church. Jesus was confident that His tactics of grace would transform Peter's tendency to blurt things out into a great gift for proclaiming the truth.

And it wasn't just Peter. Think of the woman at the well and the way that in just one encounter with Jesus, she changed from a social outcast, drowning in shame, to the greatest evangelist in her community.

Think of Zacchaeus and his transformation from corrupt thief to generous benefactor. Or consider James and John, two of Jesus' more rough and tumble disciples, brothers known as the “Sons of Thunder.” Early on they were restless youths eager to be first in the kingdom, ready to reign down fire from heaven on those who wouldn't receive Jesus. Later in their lives, James had the unspeakably holy honor of becoming the first martyred disciple, and John became known as the Apostle of Love.

Q: What happened? what was the catalyst for all of these transformations?

A: Friendship with Jesus.

Today, Jesus still helps his friends change and grow. And this is good news, because all of us have cracks in our characters and our personalities, parts of ourselves that need healing and deliverance. Jesus offers us hope and freedom.

"If the Son sets you free," he says in John 8:36, "you will be free indeed."

Christian spiritual formation takes that promise of freedom seriously. It dares to dream that we can become people who know how to love and live well.

Richard Foster said, BTW I am going to quote him a LOT today.

"I dream of a day when spiritual formation has so saturated all who follow hard after Jesus that they become known to all as experts in how to live well. How to love a spouse well. How to raise children well. How to study well, how to face adversity well. How to run business and financial institutions well. How to form community life well. How to reach out to those on the margins well. And even how to die well."

- Richard Foster

The journey towards this capacity to live and die well is a journey of progressive healing and wholeness in Jesus. It begins with the hope-giving conviction that transformation is actually possible. People really can change and you can be living proof.

So How, you might logically ask, Does the change actually take place?

Well,

The process is both utterly practical and deeply mystical.

In one sense, it's as simple as just saying “yes” to Jesus' offer of friendship. On the other hand, it's an incredibly complex undertaking of cooperating with the Holy Spirit to detect and then gradually reform a countless number of ingrained ways of thinking and behaving and relating.

Sometimes, transformation will happen in a holy flash of supernatural healing. Much more commonly though, we will undergo change at a tentative dance of two steps forward, one step back, ever so slowly learning to trust the deep love and patient work of God.

Your transformation journey will be different from mine because we've each had our own unique formation and because God is much more of an artist than He is a factory foreman. He is endlessly creative and the ways He woos and stretches us will be unique to each of us. But all of that does not mean we are only passive observers in our own transformation. We've been invited to cooperate with God in His desire to heal us and make us whole.

And so, in the spiritual formation conversation, we give special attention to the things we can do on our part to open ourselves up to what God has for us.

The process of human transformation was an area of intense interest for Dallas Willard. He applied his personal experience, his deep knowledge of scripture, and his keen mind for philosophy and psychology to come up with a model he called “The Golden Triangle of Spiritual Growth.”

He argued that though each person's journey is unique, we find some common transformational elements at play in the lives of people who are growing in Jesus. In the middle of his triangle of transformation, Dallas wrote the words "Centered in the mind of Christ."

As a philosopher, he was convinced that we live at the mercy of our ideas, and so he felt that the renewing of our minds in Jesus was critically important. The work we've been doing in this course to look at the way we think about God, about ourselves, and about the gospel has all been a movement towards centering our mind in the mind of Christ.

A movement toward learning to see things the way that Jesus does. At the apex of his triangle of transformation, Dallas placed "The work of the Holy Spirit," emphasizing that it is God's power that actually changes us. On the bottom left point of his triangle, Dallas placed the "Ordinary events of daily life," especially the hard stuff, to suggest that God tends to shape us through the nitty gritty circumstances and relationships of our actual lives. On the right point of the triangle, Dallas placed "Planned discipline to put on a new heart," pointing to the transformation that can take place when we make use of a variety of spiritual disciplines as intentional ways of connecting with God and opening ourselves up to His grace.

It's interesting to look at the ways others have continued to work with Willard's Triangle and tweak the model. Notice Trevor Hudson's version on the far right there. In the center of his triangle, Hudson has placed "Divine friendship with the Trinity," believing that an intimate, loving connection with God is the real engine of transformation. At the apex of the triangle, Trevor has put "Our picture of God," agreeing with William Temple that if our picture of God is off, spiritual formation cannot take us anywhere good.

Trevor has kept the bottom corners of his triangle essentially the same as Dallas's, pairing the ordinary events and relationships of our daily lives with intentional rhythms of spiritual practices and disciplines. But then Trevor has placed the entire triangle within a circle, to symbolize the critical role of community. Hudson argues that “All spiritual formation language, is social language. The Bible always assumes our growth and transformation will take place in an interconnected context of fellow disciples. This emphasis on community also helps us see that our closest relationships will be the litmus test of our growth. If you are practicing spiritual disciplines but you are not becoming more patient and more loving in your closest relationships, something is off.”

James Bryan Smith has a slightly different version as well. In Smith's triangle, the action of the Holy Spirit is moved to the center. At the apex of the triangle, Smith has put "Adopting the narratives of Jesus," which is another way of emphasizing the critical importance of the pictures we hold of God, ourselves, others, and the gospel.

On the left corner of Smith's triangle, he has placed "Soul-engaging exercises," which is his terminology for spiritual disciplines and practices. On the right, he has placed "Participating in community," evidently sharing Hudson's conviction that our relationships with other people, especially with fellow disciples, are a key ingredient in transformation.

I wanted to show you all three of these triangles to get your own wheels turning. How do these models of transformation map on to your own growth process? Do some of the elements resonate more than others? One thing all three have in common, is they all include spiritual disciplines or practices as one point of the triangle, so we should probably talk about those.

Followers of Jesus throughout the centuries have pointed to certain practices, sometimes called spiritual disciplines, as means to help us connect and cooperate with God. Richard Foster's modern classic, Celebration of Discipline, is a helpful catalog of 12 of these practices: meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

When I first came across this book I found it’s title confusing and maybe even a little bit irritating. Discipline didn't seem to me like something you celebrate.

In the Introduction of his book, Foster writes, "Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the ingrained habits of sin." That rang true for me. We all have those small but insidious habits in our hearts. Things like petty pride, stubborn self-reliance, almost unconscious strains of selfishness- that seem like they are hopelessly entrenched.

Foster goes on to say, "The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside.”

So, when it comes to real change, the very first thing we must acknowledge is that...

Any real change in your life will require certain DISCIPLINES

In the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul refers to righteousness as a gift from God 35 times, emphasizing repeatedly that no one can achieve a justified and rightly ordered life on his/her own.

So that is reassuring. We shouldn't expect our willpower to be sufficient. Amen. We should understand that inner transformation is purely a gift of God. Amen again. But as you read this and begin to relax, Foster’s argument takes an interesting turn.

He writes, “We do not need to be hung on the horns of the dilemma of either human works or idleness. God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving His grace. The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so He can transform us.”

Don’r miss what he says here. The disciplines, practices like prayer and meditation and worship and fasting and service, they allow us to place ourselves before God so He can transform us.

Imagine a pool at the bottom of a beautiful waterfall. That pool represents the blessings God has for you - peace and love and acceptance and wholeness and the fullness of His presence. There is no fence around the water. You can jump in anytime you want, but instead you are running distractedly around the shoreline, sweaty, parched and complaining about your need for refreshment.

Maybe the disciplines are simply ways that would calm you down enough that you could wade into the pool and stand beneath the waterfall.

Psalm 37:4 - Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

I have shared the story before but it really gets to the heart of what the Psalmist is getting at here.

When I really started getting serious about my walk with the Lord, someone had given me the devotional book “Practicing the Presence of God” written by a 17th century monk known as brother Lawrence. The idea was to include God in every moment of your day. And I had been doing this for a while, where I would just talk to God in my head, pretty much all day long.

Well one day I was having a conversation with my younger brother who told me that one of my sisters had expressed her concern for me because ever since I had “started going to church” I was no longer doing any of the things that I used to love to do, (primarily party and carry on. And her concern was how miserable I must be feeling not being allowed to do those things any more. And my brother asked, "Are you all right?”

Well it was then that I realized that I didn’t make any conscience decisions to stop doing those things. Those things were just no longer appealing to me. I wasn’t miserable at all, but God had done a work on me from the inside out.

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. But be prepared for the desires of your heart to change.

Spiritual practices are meant not to be chores or burdens, but rather invitations to dive into the waterfall. So let me ask you, is there a particular practice, a way of connecting with God and opening yourself up to His grace, that the Holy Spirit is inviting you to right now?

It could be a classic discipline from Richard's list of 12 or it could be something else- a practice of engaging your senses as you ride your mountain bike, or a season of giving your loving attention to great art as a form of listening prayer, or a ritual of drinking your morning coffee with a heightened sense of gratitude. As you talk with God about how He might be inviting you to grow, think of spiritual formation not as an exam you have to pass, but as a laboratory or even a playground, a place where you can freely and joyfully experiment with a thousand different ways to say yes to the God who loves you.

We are the ones who make our spiritual formation heavy and burdensome. Jesus wants to set us free. Question is, will you take him up on that offer? We'll explore that heart pounding question together in our final session next week where we will look at answering the question: How Do I Follow Jesus?

Bring treats for Easter Sunday Fellowship.