1. 2P8225 Spiritual Formation Session 6 Big Idea #5
Fostering Spiritual Transformation

2. Fostering Spiritual Transformation
Through structured spontaneity…
- We can look at life as a spiritual improvisation - Structure and practice are still key.
“Tipping points” come to those who have furnished their soul, who have made it ready to receive Christ.
As A.W. Tozer said, “God gives us the dignity of causality.”
- We need to put order in place, put knowledge and principles to work, and we need to practice.

3. Fostering Spiritual Transformation
Through relational connections
Sharing our stories is an important way to harmonize head knowledge with gut knowledge.
Furnishing the soul requires bringing together the two ways of knowing –
That happens partly as we check the truthfulness of the data we are processing.
It also happens as we share our stories, share our experiences in life.

4. Our relational connection with God
Is expressed through our storying with God
Is expressed through the spiritual disciplines
God’s Word, prayer, etc.
Spiritual disciplines ARE the order, the knowledge, the principles and the practice that will facilitate not just the connection, but personal transformation.

5. Our relational connection with others
Is expressed through community (storying with others)
Spiritual community tells the larger story of God.
Spiritual community is an enactment of the kingdom of God.
Spiritual community bridges the back-and-forth process of knowing/experiencing.

6. Secure attachment filter
REVIEW
Secure attachment filter
Consciously acknowledge emotional distress
Tend to solve problems actively and effectively

7. Distant (preoccupied) attachment filter
Preoccupied with unresolved emotional pain
Have easy access to their own painful emotions
But have difficulty regulating them
Will disclose indiscriminately, often to anyone available
With God, tend toward “clingy” forms of prayer

8. Distant (dismissing) attachment filter
Comfort themselves without relationships
Distance themselves from distress
Are self-reliant
Are less aware of their emotions
Tend to engage in prayers that minimize closeness with God

9. Anxious (Fearful) attachment filter
A combination of preoccupied and dismissing
Also experience cascading undifferentiated painful emotions (like preoccupied)
But they don’t disclose to others (like dismissing)
Afraid to be alone, afraid to be close to others
Also avoid close contact with God

10. Tipping Points in Spiritual Formation
Tend to be contagious
Small changes have big effects
Change is unpredictable and irregular
Gut level code is complex

11. Furnishing the Soul for Transformation
Life as a spiritual improvisation…
Is not as spontaneous as it looks
Imagine a baseball, basketball or hockey player practicing different drills over and over again. Those practiced skills will allow him to make a “spontaneous” play during the game. But without the skills and practice, the play would fail.
Spiritual transformation, like sports skills and their hours of practice, is “structured spontaneity”

12. A related quote from Dr. Todd Hall…

13. - excerpted from “The Connected Life Workbook” (11), Dr
- excerpted from “The Connected Life Workbook” (11), Dr. Todd Hall, 2011.

14. You may not be able to directly control your spiritual transformation…
But you can influence the structure that guides spontaneity
Tipping points (breakthroughs) come to those who furnish their minds and hearts with the components required to produce breakthroughs

15. YOU HAVE CONTROL over and ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR furnishing your soul
Luke 18:1-6
The widow’s input became the raw material for a breakthrough
Prayer can also be input
Particularly the prayer of examen
Psalm 139:23-24…
Don’t just send God on a search – meet him at the spot where he wants to do some work!

16. STORYING
Telling our stories about our experiences in relationships is the closest we can come to verbally communicating the emotional meanings of our attachment filters
Sharing our stories brings our filters into contact with God and others