How's Your Formation Going?
There are consequences from bad and good formation. Ignoring the symptoms of bad formation keeps you enslaved to the passions and prevents you from flourishing in Christ!
Christ is Ascended!
Early on in my journey into Orthodoxy, I read “The Spirit of the Disciplines,” a book by an American philosopher named Dallas Willard.
This was my first exposure to the wisdom that how you are formed inside, how you are shaped, and what you allow to shape you profoundly affect how you act. Willard says, “Spiritual formation for the Christian refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”
This is WHY normal Orthodox practice has always insisted on the spiritual disciplines AND the power of both habit and community to shape a follower of Jesus MUST be consistent and faithful.
This is eventually the wisdom that made me hungry for a Way of living and not merely a religious philosophy.
That’s not enough.
I am actually convinced this central truth of formation is key to your ever having the stamina to do the hard work of being transformed by the Faith into a Normal Orthodox Christian. This insight changes everything if you are willing to embrace its implications!
Look at our lesson today in Acts 19:1-8:
In those days, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve of them in all. And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, arguing and pleading about the kingdom of God.
St. Luke traveled with St. Paul and recorded the events of Paul’s missionary efforts and practice. Paul comes across some followers of St. John the Baptist. These men were doing the best they could with what they knew. They weren’t doing wrong. They just didn’t have a complete formation.
What they didn’t realize was costing them, and Paul wanted to fix their formation!
So, what does Paul do? He fills these precious people in on “the rest of the story!”
Everything St. John had taught them was meant to bring them and prepare them for Jesus, but these men didn’t know that what St. John prepared them for had come. And the sign that someone had been formed and brought to the Fullness of the faith was the intimate Presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
That’s what led Paul to know these men needed better formation.
They hadn’t heard that God had fulfilled the deepest desire and need all humanity craved—an intimate and dynamic relationship and connection to God through Christ! Paul had this, and he wanted these men to have it, too. So, he finished their formation and baptized them into the Church!
Your own formation in the Faith is so very important. Is your formation “full?”
Do you have the whole story?
If not, uncertainty can feed unfaithfulness or, worse yet, a slavery to error and a deficient connection to healing wisdom. Of course, if you truly hunger for God, He won’t disappoint you. God loves you and wants to make His home in your life so that you will be truly alive and truly human like Jesus Christ.
By the way, if uncertainty IS hampering your faithfulness, take this as a symptom that your formation may be deficient, OR you are still resisting embracing the full implications of the Faith. This level of honesty about your situation is necessary to get unstuck from where you are and move deeper into the Faith that transforms you!
There is no secret to the fullness of the formation of a follower of Jesus.
It’s been going on for over twenty centuries and has happened in countless cultures, languages, and situations. This full formation has been making saints out of people for that whole time. These saints exude the Presence of the Holy Spirit and show us, by their lives, what a human looks like when God lives inside them and forms them into imitations of Jesus Christ! Of course, this is the purpose of this Orthodox Christian formation for you and me as well.
But, just like anything in our lives that is truly meaningful, it’s not going to happen by accident. You have to be in active pursuit of this relationship with God, and you have to ask God to keep on forming you and leading you to the fullness of formation so that you are free from any inner delusions that might con you into believing you’re finished when you aren’t!
St. Issakios was from ancient Syria in the 4th century. During this time, the Arian heresy was a plague in the Empire, and the Arian Emperor Valens was persecuting the Orthodox Christian monks in the Imperial city and expelling them. When Issakios heard this, he left the desert and went to Constantinople to comfort the Orthodox monastics still there. He founded the venerable monastery called the Dalmatos Monastery in Constantinople. He stood firm for the Orthodox Faith because he understood that wrong formation in theology leads to wrong living in everyday life! His faithfulness in holding to the healthy doctrine of the Orthodox ensured that more lives would be formed by this wisdom and flourish in the spiritual life!
So, today, how was the Faith formed inside you? To be sure, we all struggle to embrace the fullness of the Christian wisdom for our whole lives. But there is a time-tested and proven path to spiritual formation that makes you a Normal Orthodox Christian, and that’s what this life is all about!
P.S. The image of God was faithfully preserved in you, O Father. For you took up the Cross and followed Christ. By your actions, you taught us to look beyond the flesh for it passes, rather to be concerned about the soul, which is immortal. Wherefore, O Holy Isaakios, your soul rejoices with the angels.
Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack. Watch the Faith Encouraged YouTube Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@FaithEncouraged
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I am SO GRATEFUL for Dallas Willard! His book, The Divine Conspiracy, turned my little Christian world upside down! I look forward to meeting him in the world to come!