:: Spiritual Formation

In my Christian existence I have found real spiritual meat in seasons where I have pursued spiritual formation through spiritual disciplines. Most of those seasons has been as I have crossed paths with someone who was into that or when reading on my own on the subject. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster was one of the primary places that I learned more about spiritual disciplines.

Lately I have been going through Tony Jones new book: Soul Shaper. Soul Shaper is a primer on exploring spirituality and contemplative practices in youth ministry. I believe there is a deeper life of relationship with God that can be found through spiritual disciplines.

Today I ran across an article on the ooze by Richard Foster. Here is a quote:

You can probably detect that I am not overwhelmingly encouraged by the popular expressions of Spiritual Formation today. I'm not; too much is too faddish and too formulaic for me to be optimistic. And yet, we stand at a moment of great opportunity. Human need today is so obvious and so great that no honest person can deny it. People stagger under the burden of human wickedness. Evil is an open, oozing sore. Therefore superficial, half-answers will not do. Not anymore. Today, there is a great new fact in the contemporary interest in Spiritual Formation. And I view it as a source for enormous hope. This great new fact is the widespread belief that we can no longer bypass authentic, pervasive, thorough transformation of the inner life of the human being.

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