Created For Formation

On Formation

Welcome to September! This is a season of change. You can feel fall in the crisp air, the arrival of the harvest, the changing of the leaves. Fall is a season of transformation all around us.

Here at Faith Baptist this season I want to encourage you, or challenge you, or both – to also make this a season of formation for you. Formation fall I’m calling it!

This theme of formation rests on the belief that you are not meant to stay the same, a stagnant person stuck as you are. And you are also not simply at the mercy of your circumstances, being changed by each good or bad thing that happens to you. Instead I believe that Bible tells us that not only did God create us, but He seeks to continually shape and form us.

I quoted last week from the book of Isaiah: “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand.”

We’re not finished, fired, and glazed, we’re still clay able to be formed according to God’s good will for us. But it sure helps if we’re willing for God to shape us. If we’re not, other things will shape use instead, or even deform us.

Let’s recognize the challenge we face in this process of formation today. We live in a world that is quite hostile to the kinds of things that encourage Godly formation.

Formation requires attention. The world serves up constant distraction and noise.

Formation requires community and connection. And our society is slipping into greater and great isolation.

Formation is fueled in part by a sense of meaning and purpose. But our culture cares mainly about what we consume, not what matters at the level of the soul.

Every day we live in this world and breath in its values and immerse ourselves in its beliefs, and this has an effect on us. We can easily be carried along by the currents of our culture and before long faith becomes this small and fairly unimportant add-on to our lives.

People stop paying attention to God, to the faith that used to matter, and then it stops making much difference in their life. And that  gets used as proof that there was no need to pay much attention to faith in the first place, and this cycle leads to lapsed Christians, to discouraged Christians, to Christians who feel a sense of shame at having drifted away, or Christians who don’t even realize that they’ve replaced faith with politics or entertainment or something else.

God will form us, or the world will deform us.

I have been feeling God’s leading to focus on formation this season, and I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that you really can’t go wrong with placing a greater emphasis on pillars of faith like prayer and scripture – who’s going to complain that we shouldn’t put those things high on the list?

But I’m also driven partially by a sense of conviction. I don’t think I’ve been doing enough to teach and model and encourage these things. Our services are too one-way – mostly me talking and you listening until we meet again the next week to do it all over again. There should be more connection, participation, and ongoing practices that tie back in to what happens on Sunday.

And there’s also a sense of more personal conviction. I need to do more of these things my own self. It’s easy for pastors to mainly read the scripture they need to preach on that week and pray the prayers on everyone’s behalf in services and meetings and devote the bulk of their time to pressing issues of management and administration and visitation and whatever else arises in a given week. But that leads to stagnation, fatigue, shallowness, and sometimes to worse things that make the news.

This week I attended a retreat day put on by Acadia Divinity College. They offer it every year as the school year is starting, but in my fifteen years pastoring I’ve never gone because the first week of September is just too busy to fit in a whole day for worship and prayer and reflection.

I didn’t have time this year either, but I went anyway! And, after doing several spiritual formation exercises, the final task was to try to come up with a take-away for the day in just three words. Not an easy thing to do, but three words found me this year: relationship above responsibilities.

Those aren’t necessarily good words for everybody, but they were the right ones for me, because I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. If anything goes wrong that I could have possibly done anything about something inside me causes me to think that it’s all my fault and the answer is to try to be more on top of everything.

If any of you are familiar with the Enneagram system of personality types I am very much a type 1! I get very task-oriented, and relationships can fall by the wayside. I can be preoccupied with my family, and I can neglect my relationship with God even as I think that I’m serving Him faithfully by trying to handle lots of things diligently.

So my words for this season were relationship above responsibilities. Not that I’m going to stop caring about all my responsibilities! But along the way I will be trying to be a lot more mindful that the never-ending to-do list for church and home is no excuse to neglect time with God and His word, or to fail to focus on my family with joy and affection when I am with them.

So those are my three words. Maybe God has some words for you this fall if you are ready to invite Him to form you, to help you grow in a real way as part of this community of faith.

Would you like this to be a season of growth? Would you like something to feel different a few months from now than it does today? This is your invitation to choose to pursue formation this fall in a new or renewed way.

On Genesis

One way to be formed, to be more like Jesus, is to immerse ourselves more and more in the Bible. As I introduced during the children’s story, this was one of Jesus’ key practices. His divine status didn’t mean that the Bible came pre-downloaded into Jesus’ mind. He studied hard and memorized much of the Jewish scriptures and the words of those scriptures were on his tongue all the time. Let’s get more scripture into our lives this season, church!

I’ve divided this fall up into three parts, and our main teaching passages will come from three books of the Bible over the next few months. One Old Testament book, One New Testament Letter, and One Gospel. Small groups and Bible studies who want to spend some time in these books at the same time will have the option of studying some additional passages from these books for some or all of the fall as well.

We’re starting with the Old Testament, going right at the beginning where a lot of Bible reading plans start, with the book of Genesis. Genesis is a big book, so I’ll only cover a few parts of it on Sundays. That’s why I’d like to challenge you to read the whole thing yourself over the next five or six weeks, or listen to it if that works better for you, there’s lots of a ways to get it on audio these day as well.

Better yet, read or listen to it a few times in that period if that’s possible in your circumstances. Read it enough to go a bit deeper than the names and places and main storylines in order start to recognize some repeating themes and begin to listen for what else God might have to say. And when you come on Sundays I and preach from it, you’ll already have a sense of the key stories and  context, and it will enrich the messages you hear.

With all of that wind-up to today’s scripture passage I’m going to try to keep the lesson and application pretty simple. Let’s pause for a moment in preparation to receive God’s Word, and then I’ll read Genes 1:26-31

Scripture Reading – Genesis 1:26-31

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

How can this help us start this fall of formation?

Well, one of the ways that I said the world is working against people who desire spiritual formation is that it doesn’t do much to offer people a sense of meaning or purpose. Many people lack a compelling story to live by – one that gives them a sense of why they might be here and what some good ways to spend their lives might be.

Christians have a wonderful inheritance from the Hebrew scriptures in the book of Genesis. The creation narrative of Genesis is remarkable in how different it is from the creation myths of so many other peoples. We’re not here as slaves to uncaring gods or as a result of some cosmic war or calamity. We’re here because there is a creator God who used his unlimited intellect and creativity and power to bring an amazing universe and beautiful world into being, and filled that world with life.

But He took it one step further by giving an amazing gift to his crowning creation – humankind. He made them – made us – in His image. There is something of God in you, and in me. He chose to make us like Him – to have certain things in common with Him.

And then He handed us this incredible world full of potential and opportunity and told us to take charge of it and make it a thriving place for all people and all creation. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Not subdue it like exploit or ruin and wreck it. Subdue it the way a gardener subdues a patch of land – enhancing the soil, choosing what to plant, watering it and protecting it from disease and pests, and reaping a harvest that blesses the gardener and many others. That’s one of the stronger images of what humanity is supposed to be here – farmers or gardeners. People who respect and even enhance the created order and provide for others in the process.

So we start here – who are we, and why are we here?

You are created in the image of God. Before you said your first world and performed any deed you were of incalculable value, worthy of dignity and respect because you are an image-bearer of God.

You don’t become worth more when your net worth increases or you complete an advanced degree or accomplish some heroic task. You are precious and matter to God because He says so. Because that’s how He made you, and made me. And that remains true no matter how often and how badly you mess things up. You are God’s image-bearer. Treat yourself accordingly, because your creator has chosen to love you fully and unconditionally.

Everyone you’ll ever meet is also made in the image of God. Treat them accordingly, because your creator has also chosen to love them fully and unconditionally.

Now, as God’s image-bearers, we can do some of the things God can do! We can have creativity to imagine and build and improve and change things. We have the ability to leave families and communities and our wider world better off than we found it. We can encourage and grow life, and protect and defend against death. That’s built into us – that’s part of how God formed us.

What is your purpose? Where should you look for meaning in your life? Well, what could you make better? What would help your family thrive? What does your community need? How could you build the Church and help it bless others? Maybe you should take up gardening! In one way or another, we’re meant to contribute to the thriving of others – those around us and maybe even people half-way around the world. Who are you helping thrive?

There’s more to this. For us to thrive and truly help the world to thrive, we have to do things God’s way instead of inventing our own way. That’s the next bit of Genesis that we’ll spend time with next week as we grapple with being fallen people in a broken world.

But today is about embracing a story of who we are. You are not a cosmic accident or a mistake. You are the beloved creation of a God who chose to imprint an aspect of Himself on to you. You matter, and you are worthy of love and dignity because God says so – because that’s how He created you to be.

And because of that, you have a valuable role in this world. You can help things and people around you thrive. You might have vital skills to share, or resources to deploy. Or you may have prayer and encouragement to offer, and that could make all the difference. You have things to give, and it is in the giving that you will find satisfaction.

That, I believe, is how the story of who we are begins, according to how the Bible begins. And to this Christians add that we must be worth this much to God if His own Son would give His life for us, to redeem us and make us His brothers and sisters and bring us into a new family – His Church. Jesus was the image of God seen more clearly  than ever before. And we can know Him, and even become more like Him – being formed by Him. That’s a good place to start, I hope. Let’s pray for this starting place and where it can lead…