The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

by Rich Villodas

We won’t take time to go deep down within because we have often been discipled into superficiality.

Christianity in the Western world is often marginalized as a life accessory rather than the means of powerful life transformation.

Something you add onto your life rather than something that completely forms and transforms your life. God cannot be an “in addition to.” He is the sum of all things. He completes all things. He is the Creator of all things.

we need to be regularly called back to the essence of our lives in God. That essence is one of ongoing transformation; that is, Christ being formed in us.

Back to the basics, that’s not really basic at all. It’s foundational, it’s crucial to my life and my livelihood.

The curse is, you will be tempted to believe that you can live your life off your gifts and not do the deep work of character formation. Your gifts can take you only so far. But there are no such limits when it comes to a life marked by deep character.”

We are not transformed from the outside in; we are transformed from the inside out.

God longs for us to be fully alive, soaring into the sky and bearing witness to God’s good life that is available to us. But if we hope to be shaped and changed in this way of life, we must have a root system powerful enough to hold us together.

Our world continues on, faster and busier, and we are reminded that our souls were not created for the kind of speed to which we have grown accustomed. Thus, we are a people who are out of rhythm, a people with too much to do and not enough time to do it.

Am I out of rhythm? What is a healthy rhythm look like for me? How does that change based on life changes ?

Educator and activist Parker Palmer makes a compelling case that burnout typically does not come about because we’ve given so much of ourselves that we have nothing left. He tells us, “It merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.”2

This makes more sense! Because if I was giving from a place of fullness and rest then there would be no lack.

Dr. Koyama was trying to convey that if we want to connect with God, we’d be wise to travel at God’s speed. God has all the time in the world, and as a result he is not in a rush.

Deep in our souls, we crave space with God that is defined by silence, stillness, and solitude.

unless we live with an intentional commitment to slow down, we have no hope for a quality of life that allows Jesus to form us into his image.

Christians were people on the edges of society, proclaiming the radical message of the kingdom of God, serving the poor, healing the sick, and subverting the way of the empire.

“The narrow gate of which Jesus had spoken had become so wide that countless multitudes were hurrying through it—many seeming to do so only in pursuit of privilege and position, without caring to delve too deeply into the meaning of Christian baptism and life under the cross.”8 In other words, Christianity had experienced a drastic cultural shift whereby people purported to enter into life with God and the church not by renunciation of the ways of the world system but by appropriating it through political and cultural power.

It was in this context that men and women decided to take up their cross and go into the desert. No longer was there a significant price to pay to follow Jesus. No longer was there a clear and powerful delineation between Christianity and conformity to the political ways of the world. In order to resist the temptations of worldly power, men and women went into the desert to maintain a cross-shaped life that would be marked by prayer, renunciation, and formative spiritual practices.

the way of worldly power, values, and priorities can easily take precedence in our lives, with Christianity being either complicit in the perpetuation of the world system or irrelevant in the social landscape.

Complicit or irrelevant. What’s the middle ground? The true way of Christianity interacting with the world?

The desert fathers, mothers, and later monastics remind us that the way of following Jesus requires a steadfast refusal to get caught up in the pace, power, and priorities of the world around us. We are called to have our lives shaped by a different kind of power, pace, and priorities, offered to us by God.

But living at this pace means we need to leave the world. This is the paradox of following Jesus. It’s only when we leave the world that we can truly be at home in it.

In a very real sense, I was leaving the world and the grip it had on me. But I was not leaving for good. For a disciple, to leave the world is to enter back into it from another door: the door of God’s love and acceptance, the door of God’s way of being. This is how, in the leaving, I found myself arriving at home.

We leave to come back another way, God’s way. Do we keep leaving? Lol

At the core of silent prayer is the commitment to establish relationship with God based on friendship rather than demands.

In basic terms, silent prayer is the practice of focusing our attention upon God through the simplicity of shared presence. It’s a surrender of our words to be present with the Word (with Jesus).

The object of mindfulness is often better psychological and physical health (very important things), but the object of silent prayer is communion with God.

One of my favorite stories about this kind of communion comes from the life of Mother Teresa. During an interview, she was asked what she says to God when she prays. Her answer was, “I don’t talk. I simply listen.” Believing he understood what she had just said, the interviewer next asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you when you pray?” Mother Teresa replied, “He also doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”

Think of boredom during silent prayer as an act of purification. In this uneventful moment, God purifies us of the false god of good feelings. While good feelings are gifts, they can easily become ends in themselves. We can move from worshipping the living God to worshipping our spiritual experiences. This is a fine line we must be mindful of. The ever-urgent need for people growing in relationship with God is the willingness to endure moments that are far from inspirational.

distraction in prayer is a sign that I’m a human being. It is impossible to engage in silent prayer without the ongoing wrestling match of the outer and inner voices that besiege us. Distraction, then, becomes a means of reunion with God.

As I heard it said by Thomas Keating, if your mind gets distracted ten thousand times in twenty minutes of prayer, it’s “ten thousand opportunities to return to God.”

Perhaps the issue with Martha is not her busyness but her lack of inner attentiveness. As

Jesus rebukes Martha, not for being busy in the kitchen—after all she did have to prepare the meal—but for her inattentive interior attitude, betrayed by her annoyance with her sister…. Christ tenderly invites her to stop so as to return to her heart, the place of true welcome and the dwelling place of God’s silent tenderness, from which she had been led away by the activity to which she was devoting herself so noisily.1

Returning to my heart. What does it look like to return to my heart? What does it look and feel like to be distant from my own heart? When I’m distant I feel disconnected, tired, and irritable. I am out of touch with myself and others. I don’t know what I want or how I feel in a given moment. I feel like I’m just riding a wave that won’t let me off and I have no control of the direction I’m going in. I treat people differently. I am not as in tune with their needs because I’m neglecting mines as well.

Like the father in the prodigal son story, God is waiting with his eyes looking for us in the distance. He is waiting to embrace us. This image might take some getting used to, but it’s one we need to remind ourselves of constantly. God just wants us home.

Sabbath is not a reward for hard work. Sabbath is a gift that precedes work and enables us to work.

In the practice of Sabbath keeping, we live out the truth that one day we will leave all things unfinished as we rest in the arms of Jesus.

But we keep Sabbath not because it makes us more productive at work but to resist the idol of productivity. We are more than what we produce.

Sabbath is not just rest from making things. It’s rest from the need to make something of ourselves.

Sabbath keeping is not just about a practice; it’s about a person. More than anything else, the Sabbath reminds us about the true rest we need: soul rest.

The way to experiencing this kind of rest is not found in something we do; it’s found in something God has done. Jesus Christ underwent the biggest kind of rest imaginable: he rested in a tomb after being crucified. But as he rested, the world was being renewed; as he rested, the world was being restored; and as he rested, the world was about to see resurrection. And here’s the promise: when we place our faith in Jesus, we exchange our exhaustion for his rest.

As we read, we ask, “Lord, what does it say?”

In this moment, we are essentially asking, “Lord, what are you saying to me?”

In this moment, we ask ourselves, “What do I want to say to God?”

Now we are called to simply rest in God’s abiding love. No more questions are required.

You see, God is not simply in the business of dry cleaning our souls; he is in the business of tearing down walls and creating a new family, a new way of belonging together.

listening requires three movements of the heart.5 1. Leave your world. Let go of the familiar, take the risk, and step out (especially with regard to race and culture). 2. Enter into someone else’s world. Practice active, humble, and curious listening. 3. Allow yourself to be formed by others. Open up to their worldviews while holding on to yourself.

Many of our days are strategically and subconsciously constructed to avoid looking beneath the surface. We often belong to church communities that reinforce a lack of introspection. We use God to run from God, and we use God to run from ourselves.

For centuries, people have extolled the virtue of self-examination. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Saint Augustine wrote, “O God, let me know myself; let me know you.” Ice Cube said, “You better check yo self before you wreck yo self.”3 Like I said: for centuries.

Others refuse to go in this way because looking within might lead to despair. In the same way that we don’t want to go to the doctor to examine strange lumps on our bodies, some people are too emotionally distressed to investigate their interior lives. What might we discover? Will the news be too much to handle?

Our faith is one marked by the interplay of crucifixion and resurrection. What often seems like the end is just preparation for a new beginning.

Many avoid the path of self-knowledge because they are afraid of being swallowed up in their own abysses. But Christians have confidence that Christ has lived through all the abysses of human life and that he goes with us when we dare to engage in sincere confrontation with ourselves. Because God loves us unconditionally—along with our dark sides—we don’t need to dodge ourselves. In the light of this love the pain of self-knowledge can be at the same time the beginning of our healing.5

He made time for interior examination, he was integrated enough to surrender his inner world to God, and he had the courage to face himself. In short, his life was deep enough to confront busyness and compartmentalization—trouble spots for most of us.

Limited reflection usually leads to dangerous reaction. When there’s no space to process our inner worlds, we find ourselves mindlessly and instinctually reacting to the world around us.

Christian spirituality involves acknowledging all our part-selves, exposing them to God’s love, and letting him weave them into the new person he is making.

The act of holding all our parts together before God requires that we grow in awareness of ourselves. It’s impossible to hold together what we don’t even know exists. The deeply formed life cannot flourish without a commitment to interior examination.

developmental trauma occurs when “emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held.”