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

by Rich Villodas

You can see the metaphor: sooner or later the issues on life’s lower decks, though we remain oblivious, will nevertheless rise to the top.

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

The iceberg brings to mind the goal of spiritual formation in Christ—namely, that Jesus wants to form his life in us. Significantly, about 90 percent of an iceberg remains unseen beneath the surface.2 And Jesus wants to transform our entire beings, not just the 10 percent that shows.

“Rich, you have a gift for reading the dustcover of a book and being able to give a thirty-minute presentation on it. But you also have a curse. 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. One is transformed by saying yes again and again to Christ’s self-giving, poured-out, redemptive love. We receive it and are to be formed by it. This was Paul’s fixation. He later in this same letter described his concern for his “little children” by saying, “I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (4:19).

Instead of being deeply formed, we settle for being shallowly shaped.

I have discovered repeatedly that faithful Christian witness requires us to hold on to the beautiful and diverse manifestations of God’s action among his people, stretching ourselves to be more faithful than ever to Jesus and his kingdom in the age in which we live.

and studied redwood trees further, I came to the realization that a redwood tree is the core metaphor for Christian spiritual formation that we need in our day. 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.

A deeply formed life is a life marked by integration, intersection, intertwining, and interweaving, holding together multiple layers of spiritual formation. This kind of life calls us to be people who cultivate lives with God in prayer, move toward reconciliation, work for justice, have healthy inner lives, and see our bodies and sexuality as gifts to steward.

A deeply formed life is marked by integration, holding together multiple layers of spiritual formation.

Although this might sound like an impossible standard, I believe that by God’s grace, the presence of the Spirit, and the support of the body of Christ, we can all intentionally and incrementally move to a more comprehensive view and practice of life in Christ. What I propose as the goal of this book is not a quick-fix strategy to solve all our problems but rather a long-term vision to help us have greater depth and maturity as we engage our problems.

1. Contemplative rhythms for an exhausted life. Most of us live at a nonstop outward pace, which leaves no time to be with God and actually does violence against our souls. As one who has been shaped by the ancient desert and monastic traditions, I see the riches and resources available to root us in a way of life that is slow, vibrant, and transformative. I will offer a vision for a life that isn’t consumed by the hurried and harried ways of the world.

2. Racial reconciliation for a divided world. Because the church I pastor has people from at least seventy-five nations, the hostility of our world has often come right into our community. We have journeyed more than three decades together, offering a way forward as a prophetic community in a deeply partisan and ideologically segregated culture. I will present a pathway of reconciliation for us to take together.

3. Interior examination for a world living on the surface. Many of us lack the tools to effectively navigate our interior worlds. Our unawareness cripples us with anxiety, and we miss opportunities to grow into mature people who love well. I will serve as a tour guide for helping us explore the notoriously uncharted waters of our inner worlds.

4. Sexual wholeness for a culture that splits bodies from souls. We often don’t know what a healthy integration of our spiritual lives and our bodies looks like. We will explore the process of loving God with our whole selves and seeing our bodies as gifts to steward for the flourishing of our own lives and relationships.

5. Missional presence for a distracted and disengaged people. What does it mean to make space in our lives for others? How do we engage the troubling realities of injustice, poverty, and spiritually struggling people? Studying this theme will help us move out into the world to be a presence of healing and hope for others.

First, the practices don’t save us or make God love us more.

The practices have personal and communal elements to them.

The practices are meant to complement and enliven such core spiritual practices as Sunday worship, receiving the sacraments, hearing the gospel preached, and gathering with others for prayer and friendship. Practices are not just about what we do; they’re also a means of reframing how we think and see.

The deeply formed life is not simply for people who have the benefit of environments conducive to silence and solitude. From personal experience, I can assure you that it’s for people of all walks of life who long to be shaped by God’s gracious love. My hope is that in these pages, God will invite you into a profound encounter of that same love.

What would it look like to live at a different pace? What if there were a rhythm of life that could instead enable us to deeply connect with God, a lifestyle not dominated by hurry and exhaustion but by margin and joy? As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be. We desperately need a spirituality that roots us in a different way. As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be.

N. T. Wright similarly affirmed, “It is only when we slow down our lives that we can catch up to God.”4 This is the paradox of contemplative rhythms.

Dallas Willard famously said, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”

In the face of this crisis of speed, distraction, and superficial spirituality, there is a way that has been tried and tested through the centuries. It’s a way that has marked my life from the time I became a Christian as a young adult. It’s the way of the monastic, contemplative life. We live in a time when we must learn from the monastery. We desperately need a way of thinking and living that isn’t captive to the powers of efficiency, speed, and performance. We need a way of living according to a different understanding of time and space. We need the treasures of monastic imagination.

As pastor Ken Shigematsu stated, “Every one of us has a monk or nun ‘embryo’ inside of us.”6 Deep in our souls, we crave space with God that is defined by silence, stillness, and solitude.

What I’ve learned has reinforced the truth that 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.

Monastic spirituality means slowing our lives down to be with God. In a world that operates at a frenetic pace and with the addiction of achievement, slowing down brings us to a place of centeredness and stillness before God. It gives us the opportunity to be present to God throughout the day.

The Practice of the Presence of God. The concept of the book is straightforward. In every activity in which you are engaged, remember that God is present and offer your heart to him in prayer.

The songs he wrote and music he played flowed from a context of monastic rhythm. David wrote psalms about quieting his soul (see 131:2), making his soul “wait in silence” (62:5), and being still and knowing that God is God (see 46:10).

Mary: a young woman formed by contemplative pondering and deep reflection. When the angel Gabriel offered her good news from God, Mary “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Mary was one who beheld the Lord in stillness and solitude. She listened to the Word of God carefully and intently, allowing herself to be formed by it. She entered into meditation, pondering the sheer absurdity of the angel’s message and marveling at the astonishing invitation therein. She was one given to depth of thought, opening her entire being—physically and spiritually—to the God who graciously came.

John the Baptist: a solitary prophet who spent much of his life in the wilderness. He was a man given to prayer, solitude, and silence (and some strange eating habits). John cultivated life with God in the wilderness, and it was out of that place that he offered prophetic and powerful words of God’s heart to prepare the way of the Lord for a people who had gone astray.

Jesus: Son of God, Son of Man—he cannot be truthfully understood apart from his deep commitment to a monastic kind of life. Jesus was regularly active in preaching, healing, casting out demons, and far more, but his life would be self-contradicting apar...

The early desert fathers and mothers were people who felt a strong call to prayer, solitude, silence, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines.

For many Christians, a different kind of crisis of faith surfaced. González further wrote, “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 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.

The deeply formed life is one that takes seriously the call of renunciation. We are regularly being formed by the pace, noise, and values of the surrounding world. Yet to be deeply formed is to regularly come back to a different rhythm—a rhythm marked by communion, reflection, and a life-giving pace that enables us to offer our presence to the present moment. 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.

Thomas Merton once wrote, “Solitude is to be preserved, not as a luxury but as a necessity: not for ‘perfection’ so much as for simple ‘survival’ in the life God has given you.”9 Contemplative rhythms enable us to leave the world in order to not only survive but thrive in it. Let me show you how this has been working out in my own life.

The purpose of this time was not to get anything out of it but simply to be still—to do nothing, say nothing, and just be in God’s presence. As I closed my eyes, I began to think about the impact of my ministry, as well as the identity that I have built before others. I saw the ways that I insidiously live according to the value system of the world. The world says, “Show yourself. Prove your worth. Make a name. Build a platform.” I began to think, Who am I apart from the retweets and likes? Why am I so enamored and preoccupied with the quantity of voices approving and affirming me? How can I say that my identity is grounded in God’s love when I give most of my attention to approval of people I’ve never even met?

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.

The speed we live at does violence against our souls. The inner and outer distractions minimize the capacity for us to see God’s activity around and within us.

God is committed to our transformation. He is not in the business of simply improving our lives; he wants to infuse them with his life. Every day, he moves toward us in love, reaching, seeking, and pleading with us to pay attention. This is the essence of contemplative rhythms—the goal of monastic life. We have to open ourselves to God’s way of being; that is, we have to leave but enter back in through another way.

“live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit” (Galatians 5:16,

These four contemplative practices are silent prayer, Sabbath keeping, the slow reading of Scripture, and the commitment to stability.

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

Contemplative, silent prayer causes us to lay down our preoccupations, for a moment, to tend to the presence and invitation of Jesus, yet this is often a challenging practice.

Here are four ways forward to cultivate a life of silent prayer.

Focus on Relationship, no...

Whenever I hear of people being recognized spiritual masters, or masters of prayer, I don’t think of them as people who have some kind of secret sauce that makes their prayer life extraordinary; I think of them as people who have determined day in and day out to return to the simple act of being with God.