When Paul said to the Galatians, “I am in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”  he was speaking of Spiritual Formation.  When he told the Romans, “Those whom God forknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son,”  he was speaking of Spiritual Formation.  When he reminded the Corinthians that “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image” he was speaking of Spiritual Formation (Galatians 4:19, Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18).  So what is Spiritual Formation? 

Spiritual Formation is the continuing process of life and experience through which we are progressively formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

- Richard Foster

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Dr. Frank C. Laubach (September 2, 1884—June 11, 1970) was a Christian Evangelical missionary and mystic known as “The Apostle to the Illiterates.” In 1935, while working at a remote location in the Philippines, he developed the “Each One Teach One” literacy program, which has been used to teach about 60 million people to read in their own language. He was deeply concerned about poverty, injustice and illiteracy, and considered them a barrier to peace in the world.

One of his most widely influential devotional works was a pamphlet entitled “The Game with Minutes.” In it, Laubach urged Christians to attempt keeping God in mind for at least one second of every minute of the day. In this way Christians can attempt the attitude of constant prayer spoken of in the book of Colossians. The pamphlet extolled the virtues of a life lived with unceasing focus on God.  Laubach tried to call the attention of Christians to this fact. Any one of us can spend his day in Christ’s presence, he observed. And yet we do not. He urged us to think to Christ instead of thinking to ourselves. And he suggested turning to Christ constantly for advice on what to do next 

 If you are weary of some sleepy form of devotion, probably God is as weary of it as you are. 

All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are the moments when our minds ask: ‘What next?’ In these chinks of time, ask Him: ‘Lord, think Thy thoughts in my mind. What is on Thy mind for me to do now?’ When we ask Christ, ‘What next?’ we tune in and give Him a chance to pour His ideas through our enkindled imagination. If we persist, it becomes a habit.

The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says “Amen” and runs away before God has a chance to reply.  Listening to God is far more important than giving Him your ideas.  

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Richard J. Foster is a Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition. His writings speak to a broad Christian audience. He has been a professor at Friends University and pastor of Evangelical Friends churches. Foster resides in Denver, Colorado.Foster is best known for his 1978 book Celebration of Discipline (ISBN 0-06-062839-1), which examines the inward disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It has sold over one million copies. It was named by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the twentieth century.   

We are working with God to determine the future!  Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.  We are to change the world by prayers

 In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of a Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered people.  All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this life the life and power of the kingdom of God.  It has happened before.  It can happen again…

 “So how do we pray in Jesus’ name, that is, in conformity to his nature?  Jesus himself says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).  This “abide in me” is the all-inclusive condition for effective intercession.  It is the key for prayer in the name of Jesus.  We learn to become like the branch, which receives its life from the vine: “Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me” (John 15:4).  Nothing is more important to a life of prayer than learning how to become a branch.”      

 Nothing is more crucial to our lives or more central to the heart of God than the transformation of the human personality.  Paul, that great advocate of human transformation, once spoke of being “in travail until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).  And in another letter he says, “Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29)

 “Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”                                                            

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http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Where_Love_is%2C_There_God_is_Also

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Amy Beatrice (a.k.a. Wilson) Carmichael (December 16, 1867–January 18, 1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for fifty-five years without furlough and authored many books about the missionary work there.Amy Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle in Northern Ireland to David and Catherine Carmichael. Her parents were devout Presbyterians; she was the oldest of seven children. She was adopted and tutored by Robert Wilson, cofounder of the Keswick Convention. Her father died when she was eighteen. In many ways she was an unlikely candidate for missionary work. She suffered neuralgia, a disease of the nerves that made her whole body weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. It was at the Keswick Convention of 1887 that she heard Hudson Taylor speak about missionary life. Soon afterward, she became convinced of her calling to missionary work.  

Your path, with its unexplained…turmoil, and mine with its pain…they are His paths, on which He will show himself faithful.

 Our Lord Jesus spent much time in healing sick people, and in the natural course of events it happened that the last thing He did with His kind hands was to heal a bad cut.  (I wonder how they could have the heart to bind His hands after that.)  In this, as in everything, He left us an example that we should follow in His steps.  Do the thing that this next minute, this next hour, bring you, faithfully and lovingly and patiently; and then the last thing you do, before power to do is taken from you (if that should be), will be only the continuation of all that went before.”       

Prayer of Abandonment to God:  Father, I abandon myself into Your hands. Do with me what you will.  Whatever You do, I will thank You.  I am ready for all.  I accept all.  Let only Your will be done in me, as in all Your creatures, And I’ll ask nothing else, my Lord.  Into your hands I commend my spirit;  I give it to You with all the love of my heart,  For I love You, Lord, And so need to give myself, to surrender myself into Your hands  With a trust beyond all measure, Because You are my Father. From prayer that asks that I should be Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee.
from fearing when I should aspire, From faltering when I should climb higher, From silk and self, O captain, free Thy soldier who would follow Thee.  From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings…Not thus are spirits fortified, Not this way went the Crucified…From all that dims Thy Calvary O lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me a love that leads the way, The faith that nothing can dismay, The hope no disappointments tire, The passion that will burn like fire.  Let me not sink to be a clod.  Make me Thy fuel, O Flame of God.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Exiled_to_Siberia

Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 – December 10, 1968) (pronounced “bart”) a Swiss Reformed theologian, was one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20^th Century, Barth spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffman, a talented violinist. They would have four sons and a daughter. Later he was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921–1925), Münster (1925–1930) and Bonn (1930–1935) (Germany). While serving at Göttingen he first met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who became his long time secretary. He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel (1935–1962).Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Hermann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt and Søren Kierkegaard, and the impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck.  

In general terms, service is a willing, working, and doing in which a person acts not according to his own purposes or plans but with a view to the purpose of another person and according to the need, disposition, and direction of others.  It is an act whose freedom is limited and determined by the other’s freedom, an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other…It is ministerium Verbi divini, which means, literally, “a servant’s attendance” may call to mind the fact that the New Testament concept of Diakmos originally meant “a waiter”.  We must wait upon the high majesty of the divine Word, which is God himself as he speaks in his action.

 Look once again to Jesus Christ in his death upon the cross.  Look and try to understand that what he did and suffered he did and suffered for you, for me, for us all.  He carried our sin, our captivity and our suffering, and did not carry it in vain.  He carried it away.  He acted as the captain of us all.  He broke through the ranks of our enemies.  He has already won the battle, our battle.  All we have to do is to follow him, to be victorious with him.  Through him, in him we are saved.  Our sin no longer has any power over us.  Our prison door is open…when he, the Son of God, sets us free, we are truly free.

 The Gospel falls upon man as God’s own mighty Word, questioning him down to the bottom of his being, uprooting him from his securities and satisfactions

Not man’s word about God, but God’s word about man.

We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.                                                                                                                       

Saint Francis of Assisi (September 26, 1181 – October 3, 1226) was a Roman Catholic friar and the founder of the Order of Friars Minor, more commonly known as the Franciscans.He is known as the patron saint of animals, birds, and the environment, and it is customary for Catholic churches to hold ceremonies honoring animals around his feast day of October 4   

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing you have received, fading symbols of honor, trappings of power, but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace!  Where there is hatred…let me sow love.  Where there is injury…pardon.  Where there is doubt…faith.  Where there is despair…hope.  Where there is darkness…light.  Where there is sadness…joy.  O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek-to be consoled…as to console.  To be understood…as to understand.  To be loved…as to love;  For it is in giving…that we receive; It is in pardoning…that we are pardoned; It is in dying…that we are born to eternal life.

Francis’s rejection of the body and the pleasure of the flesh is extreme, yet his indulgence of the flesh had been extreme, too, and fleshly temptations tormented him all his life.  He had to be extreme in recognition of his sins and his repentance, or he could easily have slipped back into the old ways.  

Overcoming his deep aversion to and fear of disease, Francis kissed the hand of a leper he met outside the walls of Assisi.  At that moment, he identified himself with the poor.     

A servant of God cannot know the extent of his patience and humility so long as all goes well with him.  But when a time comes that those who should treat him well do the opposite, then he shows the true extent of his patience and humility, and no more.  Blessed is the servant who does not esteem himself as better when he is praised and promoted by men than when they look on him as vile, stupid and contemptible; for whatever a man is in the sight of God, that he is, and no more.  Blessed is the servant who accepts rebuke with courtesy, obeys respectfully, confesses humbly, and makes amends gladly.  Blessed is the servant who is not in a hurry to excuse himself, but humbly accepts shame and reproach for a fault even when he is not to blame.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.  Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation.  Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither greed nor avarice.  Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.  Where the fear of the Lord stands guard, there the enemy finds no entry.  Where there is mercy and moderation, there is neither indulgence nor harshness.

Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart, and give me a right faith, a sure hope, a perfect charity

I have done my duty now may Christ teach you yours,

You should not let a single person in the world, whatever sin that person may have committed, come before your eyes and depart without having found mercy with you.  And should that person not ask for mercy from you, then you must ask it of him.  And were that person to come to you a thousand times, continue to love them so as to lead them back to the right path.  Always have compassion, for all of us have sinned

Blaise Pascal, (June 19, 1623–August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. Pascal’s earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote powerfully in defense of the scientific method.Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he abandoned his scientific work and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées.Pascal suffered from ill-health throughout his life and died two months after his 39th birthday.   

There is a God-created vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ

 Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in him is all our virtue and all our happiness.  Apart from him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair

 Not only do we not know God save through Jesus Christ, but we do not know ourselves save through Jesus Christ.  Apart from Jesus Christ we know not what our life is, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

  The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

 The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud.  The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair…the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery.  Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair. 

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.  We feel it in a thousand things.  I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself;  and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses…it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith

 Jesus says:  Console yourself, you would not seek me, if you had not found me.

 The law required what it could not give.  Grace gives that which it requires.

Truth that does not set free is not truth.                                                                                                          

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful.  Kind words also produce their own image on men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is.  They soothe, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.     

It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure of all your miseries.  All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.  The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promise…Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God; sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have don noting but foster at least one of these maladies.  If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they mad you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature.  And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.      

Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.