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

by Rich Villodas

We are always beginners. There are instances when I spend time with God in silence and can sense his love and mercy, but then there are occasions when I feel that it was time wasted. But like with most of our closest relationships, even in the ordinary moments, our shared presence is a gift.

Normalize Boredom

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.

Reframe Distractions

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.”

the issue with Martha is not her busyness but her lack of inner attentiveness. As West African theologian Robert Sarah wrote, 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.

Our distractions, whether in the moment of silent prayer or in the moment of steady demands, do not need to ruin our lives with God. Our distractions become invitations to return, ever so silently, back to the center of God’s heart.

Remember That God Is Always Waiting with Open Arms

Minister Marjorie Thompson captured this well: “Our twisted inner logic, often unconscious, can convince us that we are too bad even for God to forgive! To hold God’s mercy hostage to a determination to punish ourselves is truly a human sickness of spirit.”

The beauty of Christian spirituality is that the God we are in relationship with is for us in Christ. 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.

The fatigue we experience is multilayered. There is the fatigue of the body. We don’t get as much sleep as we need. We push our bodies to the limit and live off cups of coffee and Red Bull. There is also the fatigue of the mind. In a given day, we are bombarded with ceaseless information that we have no time to absorb or process. And ultimately, there is the fatigue of the soul. We are people who have little margin to be with God and foster a life-giving rhythm for the long haul.

Sabbath is an invitation to a life that isn’t dominated and distorted by overwork.

Our story echoes that of the people of Israel. The command of Sabbath keeping was first stated in the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20), and there are two important things to know right off the top. First, the Ten Commandments were given not as a means of salvation but as the result of salvation. In other words, God never intended them to be the means by which people enter into relationship with him. He first rescued his people out of Egypt and then gave them the commandments. He didn’t give them commandments to live out perfectly as a condition leading to their rescue, like for most other religions, which are often based on human performance.

The story of Scripture is not really about human performance so much as it is about how God has performed over and over for his people. This is good news for all of us. God’s care and love for you is not based on how well you perform and live. His love always comes first and is unconditional. The reason the Ten Commandments are given is because they would become a way of life that describes what redeemed people look and live like.

Amen

Work was established before sin entered the world. But one of the major problems we all face is overwork. In our fallen state, work very easily becomes a powerful force that crowds out any kind of connection with God (which is arguably at the heart of the original sin: independence from God).

My point is, whether by obsession or oppression, we live a destructive way of life. The kind of destruction I’m talking about is against our bodies and souls and, consequently, against others.

In the midst of the exhausting, busy, and frantic lives we live, God gives us the gift of the Sabbath. And the brilliance of Sabbath keeping is that it’s not so much about our keeping the Sabbath as it is the Sabbath keeping us.

The Sabbath reminds us of the gospel of grace. In actuality, Sabbath keeping might be the greatest sign of grace because it’s while we are intentionally accomplishing nothing that God loves us.

Sabbath Is Not a Reward Earned for Hard Work

As with God’s grace, rest is never a reward; it’s a gift.

Sabbath Is a Reminder That Our Work Remains Incomplete

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.

Sabbath Is a Day That Moves Us from Production to Presence

We are often so used to producing that we forget to be present. The Sabbath, then, is a day of presence—a day of being present to God, present to others, present to creation, and present to ourselves. It is certainly true that keeping Sabbath might make us more productive. 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. It’s a day of noticing, a day of simple joyful presence, which is why community and eating together are such good Sabbath practices. It’s a day of presence.

Sabbath creates a space for a holy unawareness in a world of technological omniscience. Sabbath forms us to be present in one place amid the desire to be omnipresent. Sabbath shapes us to enjoy the li...

Sabbath Points Us to the Deeper ...

More than anything else, the Sabbath reminds us about the true rest we need: soul rest. We live our entire lives trying to make a name for ourselves, trying to become something, working hard to be noticed, or proving that we matter.

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.

This consumption culture has profoundly influenced the way we engage (or don’t engage) holy Scripture. Instead of slowly ingesting the truth of God’s written Word, we live on the surface of the text, rarely settled enough to hear God’s particular word to us in the particular season of our lives. This is why Psalm 1 serves as a much-needed corrective word to us.

This becomes a powerful metaphor for shaping the way we approach Scripture. Meditation, then, is the practice of slowly chewing on God’s Word until it penetrates our hearts.

It’s called lectio divina. It simply means sacred reading, and it’s a practice of slowing down and chewing on Scripture through four movements: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio; that is, reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.

In lectio, we approach holy Scripture not as an object but as a subject. It’s more than ancient words on a page. Scripture is not to be approached as an object of our inquiry but as an animating force setting its gaze on us. As we read Scripture, we come to understand that God is reading us. In this first movement, then, we ask the Lord to help us locate a word or phrase in a short passage of Scripture as we read it two or three times. As we read, we ask, “Lord, what does it say?”

Meditatio: Meditation The second movement is meditatio, which means meditation. In this movement, we are particularly focused on the word or phrase that one believes has been identified by the Spirit for this moment.

The word or phrase energized by the Spirit begins to form our hearts and wills. In this moment, we are essentially asking, “Lord, what are you saying to me?”

Oratio: Prayer The third movement is oratio, which means prayer. In meditation, we are aware of God’s Word being spoken to our hearts. In oratio, we reciprocate that movement, now offering words to God from our hearts. In oratio, we speak freely to God (whether verbally or in writing), calling out the ways we have been addressed. In this movement, the emphasis is on our responses to God’s gracious initiative. In this moment, we ask ourselves, “What do I want to say to God?”

Contemplatio: Contemplation The final movement is contemplatio, which means contemplation. Much like the practice of silent prayer, contemplation in this moment is not for the purpose of further rumination and examination. God has spoken to us. We have spoken in return. Now we are called to simply rest in God’s abiding love. No more questions are required.

Unless we are immersing ourselves in Scripture for the purpose of being encountered by God (not merely observing the text), we will find our formations in Christ limited.

Let the Word read us!

In silent prayer, we are called to withstand the inner disturbances and annoyances of ourselves for the sake of union with God. In a commitment to stability, we withstand the disturbances and annoyances of others for the sake of union with God and union with each other.

The goal of contemplation is beholding, but not only a beholding of God; we also need to be beholding each other.

Upon reflection of that situation, I couldn’t help but think that something deeply spiritual had taken place on the corner in that neighborhood. I would find out later that the new Korean owners of that business were Christians. Something had compelled them to imagine a different way of being together. A new community was forming based not on suspicion, mistrust, and fear but on hospitality, trust, and goodwill.

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. One could argue that the primary fruit of the gospel is not going to heaven when you die but rather the miraculous new family that is created out of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Racial justice and reconciliation remain two of the most urgent matters of faith and public witness. In this respect, the Cross of Christ isn’t just a bridge that gets us to God; it’s a sledgehammer that breaks down walls that separate us.

In our church, we have #blacklivesmatter activists and #alllivesmatter advocates. Pro-Trump and never-Trump voters sit next to each other every Sunday (often unbeknownst to each other). We have people who see everything through the lens of a racialized society, and we have immigrants who don’t fully grasp what all the fuss is about. We have people who want every other sermon to be on dismantling racism, and we have folks who are triggered anytime race is brought up. I’ve received emails from people leaving our church because the sermons came across as too focused on race and not the gospel, and I’ve been chastised by people desiring greater focus on the current events that are dominating the racial conversation. There are moments when I step back and see the hand of Jesus forming our community. There are other moments when it seems as though evil powers are wreaking havoc among our church family. Over the years, we have learned to grow together and draw out powerful truths about the nature of the gospel in the context of racial justice and reconciliation. No one can truly understand New Life apart from this commitment that informs all we do. I’d like to offer some ways we have sought to shape our diverse community through theological clarity and spiritual formation depth.

The starting point for any Christian conversation on race must be the purpose of the gospel. The gospel we proclaim must be big enough to engage the realities of racial fragmentation. However, it’s often not seen this way. Sadly, there is often a hyperspiritual perspective held by many Christians who see racial justice and reconciliation as optional or ancillary to the gospel.

Our understanding of the gospel will be either Christ’s kingdom catalyst for racial justice and reconciliation, or a conformity to this world’s impetus for a fragmented and divided society. Surely, the gospel is good news, but good news about what? It is my conviction that the gospel at its core is not merely the good news of a soteriological transaction (a fancy way of saying “getting saved”). The gospel at its core is centrally about the story and victory of Jesus; the risen and enthroned Lord is our good news. And further, this gospel has specific purposes for the healing of our world. One of the main purposes is the creation of a new family that transcends racial and ethnic barriers.

North American theologian George Eldon Ladd, in his short but seminal book on the gospel of the kingdom, wrote, “The Gospel must not only offer a personal salvation in the future life to those who believe; it must also transform all of the relationships of life here and now and thus cause the Kingdom of God to prevail in all the world.”3

At the core of the gospel, then, is the “making right” of all things through Jesus. In Jesus’s death and resurrection, the world is set on a trajectory of renewal, but God graciously invites us to work toward this future. However, this work is not an individual enterprise; it is one orchestrated by the collected efforts of a new family in the power of the Spirit. What this means is that God is not simply in the business of saving souls; he is in the business of creating a new family. We see this new family early on in...

In the calling of his disciples, Jesus put people together who would most certainly not follow each other on Twitter. Yet in the forming of this small community, he was symbolically making a statement that in the kingdom of God, a new family was being created. A quick glance at two of the disciples brings out this truth. Consider Matthew and Simon the Zealot (see Matthew 10:3–4). Matthew worked for the government; Simon hated the government. Matthew was a tax collector; Simon was a tax protester. Matthew collected revenue for the Romans; Simon was a rebel against the Romans. Matthew was wealthy; Simon was working class. Matthew made a living taking advantage of people like Simon; Simon made a living trying to kill people like Matthew.

Reconciliation in community will always cost us something, and in Christ the barriers that separate us can come down in his name.

Beyond the original twelve, Jesus would invite women to be his disciples. He would give the disciples the charge to reach non-Jewish people. In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit led the church to see this vision realized as a new family was forged—not based on ethnic or gender identity but through the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the New Testament, familial language is used throughout. Men and women are seen as brothers and sisters. Those who belong to Jesus have God not as distant creator but as Abba (“father”). We are all given a new family inheritance. This is language of the new creation of a family, transcending ethnic, cultural, and generational differences. It’s a family marked by reconciliation.