The Deeply Formed Life Quotes

“Sabbath is not a reward for hard work. Sabbath is a gift that precedes work and enables us to work. (…) As with God’s Grace, rest is never a reward; it’s a gift.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“Adam and Eve hid behind a tree, naked and con­quered by shame. But Jesus hung on a tree, naked, and conquered shame. In Jesus, shame doesn’t have the last word.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“Isn’t this what you yearn for? Aren’t you tired of living at a pace that blurs out beauty, peace, or joy? Don’t you want to be at home?”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“Isn’t this what you yearn for? Aren’t you tired of living at a pace that blurs out beauty, peace, or joy? Don’t you want to be 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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“In our work of reconciliation, prayer is a steadfast refusal to give ourselves over to either resignation or self-reliance.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“When I get to the portion that says, "Lead us not into temptation," That (...) doesn't mean that God leads us into temptation; rather, (...) It's us essentially saying, "Lord, (...) I'm vulnerable. Don't put me to the test," (...) "It is a vote of no confidence in our own abilities.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“When the essence of the gospel is stripped down to the afterlife or to a glorious but strictly individual personal decision of faith, it’s not what Jesus described as the good news about his kingdom come. And predictably, there’s no real urgency to see our lives oriented toward a more loving and just way of being in the world. (…) At the core of the gospel, then, is the “making right” of all things through Jesus.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“To be an incarnational follower of Christ, there must be a relinquishing of control, a reversal of social order. According to the natural perceptions of this world, it’s an upside-down kingdom. But it’s a kingdom of God-saturated imagination. It’s the way of the Cross.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“I’m reminded of the words of poet and essayist Dorothy Sayers, who wrote that “the very first demand that [a carpenter’s] religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“Seeing All Work as Holy This simple theological conviction that all work is holy is a necessary correction to a worldview that splits work into two categories: sacred and secular. According to many, the “holy” work is supposed to be exclusively that which relates to God, the church, missions, or humanitarian endeavors. And, of course, this work is holy. But it’s not the only holy work. The work of artists, builders, teachers, parents, entrepreneurs, and bus drivers is on the same level. We collectively join to make the world a better place, each of us doing our part. To see all work as holy is a spiritual practice that pushes back on a spiritual elitism that obscures God’s good vision for all creation.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“We are called to be active contemplatives or contemplative activists, holding together the invitation to be and to do.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“We should again return to Jesus as our example. Jesus, being fully God and fully human, understood the need for a social bonding. Jesus experienced intimacy, connection, and vulnerability throughout his life. He gathered disciples around him, feasted at parties, received love, confessed his weakness, revealed intimate details about himself, and gave and received tender physical touch. No one could say there was anything lacking in Jesus’s humanity, even if he didn’t experience genital sexuality. When I mention practicing social bonding, I’m referring to the need to live connected to others in life-giving relationship. This is not exclusively for married people; this applies to singles as well. And this is needed in our day to fight the rampant force of loneliness.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“A deeply formed sexual life is one marked by sobriety. By sobriety, I’m not referring to abstinence and willpower; I’m referring to honesty.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“The sexual desires we possess, when ordered rightly, bring us to union with God and communion with each other. The love of God doesn’t remove our desires; it reorders them.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“The man who rings the bell at the brothel, unconsciously does so seeking God.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“C. S. Lewis aptly explained this: Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. [Humans] feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“Our souls are split from our bodies in a similar but different way from the starvation diet. In the starvation diet, the soul is exalted to the point of denying the body. In the fast-food diet, the body is exalted to the point of denying the soul and the soul-numbing pain we’ve experienced.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“In other words, we have often had our understanding of sexuality formed by sexual repression or sexual flippancy, and in the process we have missed the larger feast before us.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“I am convinced that, if the Church could provide more thorough affection and care for persons, many would be less likely to turn falsely to genital sexual expression for the social support they need.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“The prodigal son doesn’t return with a renewed love for his father; he comes back simply to survive. And his father is perfectly fine with that. God just wants us home.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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).”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“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.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus

“I thank God that for more than twenty years, I’ve spent time in a variety of Christian traditions that seek him and offer great gifts to the world. Yet I’ve also witnessed a kind of dichotomizing of faith where the emphasis is on the outward at the expense of the inward. For instance: In some conservative traditions, transformation is about getting the right theology in one’s head while overlooking the inner work God wants to do. In some progressive traditions, transformation is about right action and engagement within the world but often at the expense of personal humility and mercy. In some Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions, transformation is about getting the right experience but without the deeper work of loving well and exploring our inner worlds.”
― Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus