Quotes About Spiritual Formation

#1. Spiritual formation for the Christian basically 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.

Dallas Willard

#2. One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs.

Henri Nouwen

#3. Neurologists tell us a startling truth that has major implications for spiritual formation: Our choices and experience shape our brain, both literally and physiologically. What we choose cognitively helps make us into who we are.

Gary L. Thomas

#4. My moral and spiritual formation does not allow me to be a dictator ... If I were a dictator, You can be sure that many things have happened.

Augusto Pinochet

#5. In Spiritual formation we are aiming at a character and life that is so shaped that the deeds of Christ routinely and easily come from what is inside.

Dallas Willard

#6. If a church is good at making disciples it will be good at making leaders because in the end, a good spiritual formation plan will lead to an accelerated spiritual multiplication.

Gary Rohrmayer

#7. Spiritual formation in a Christian tradition answers a specific human question: 'What kind of person am I going to be?' It is the process of establishing the character of Christ in the person. That's all it is.

Dallas Willard

#8. This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings.

John Ortberg

#9. Books have formed the soul of me. I know that spiritual formation is of God, but I also know - mainly because I learned it from books - that there are other kinds of formation, too, everyday gifts, and that God uses the things of this earth to teach us and shape us, and to help us find truth

Karen Swallow Prior

#10. For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can.

Henri Nouwen

#11. Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his.

Dallas Willard

#12. Spiritual formation cannot, in the nature of the case, be a 'private' thing, because it is a matter of whole-life transformation. You need to seek out others in your community who are pursuing the renovation of the heart.

Dallas Willard

#13. This philosophy of spiritual formation through the consumption of external experiences creates worship junkies - Christians who leap from one mountaintop to another, one spiritual high to another, in search of a glory that does not fade.

Skye Jethani

#14. But taking love itself - God's kind of love - into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.

Dallas Willard

#15. Discipleship and spiritual formation are less about erecting an edifice of knowledge than they are a matter of developing a Christian know-how that intuitively understands the world in light of the Gospel.

James K.A. Smith

#16. Any counseling that does not pursue spiritual formation through an intimate relationship with Jesus by faith as one of its chief goals is not worthy to be called BIBLICAL counseling.

James MacDonald

#17. The question isn't if someone will sign up for spiritual formation; it's just who and what our spirits will be formed by.

John Ortberg

#18. Spiritual formation is not about steps or stages on the way to perfection. It's about the movements from the mind to the heart through prayer in its many forms that reunite us with God, each other, and our truest selves.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

#19. Remembering God's work in the past has a sustaining and renewing effect during times of spiritual drought. Memory and worship are thus keys to a long life of spiritual formation. Try

Richard J. Foster

#20. Anna's spiritual formation was relegated to cultural expressions of faith: the Christmas Baby Jesus and his gifts, the Easter risen Christ and his chocolate bunnies, and a copy of The Thorn Birds pulled from her mother's bookshelf.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#21. Spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.

Dallas Willard

#22. Many Christians were suddenly prepared to look at traditional methods of spiritual formation. They could not help but see that spiritual growth and vitality stem from what we actually do with our lives, from the habits we form, and from the character that results.

Dallas Willard

#23. The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from ... Circumcision of the heart.

Dallas Willard

#24. A Christian school should be a place where young men and young women go through a period of spiritual formation and development so that they come out incredibly more proficient at living out their calling than they would have been had they not gone to school.

Tony Campolo

#25. I hate how spiritual formation gets positioned as an optional pursuit for a small special interest group within the church.

John Ortberg

#26. It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines.

Henri Nouwen

#27. A healthy Christian life cannot be stitched together from a series of disjointed mountain-top experiences. We need a Christian spirituality that endures the shadowy, low-lying valleys and the rocky slopes in between all those glorious summits.

Andrew Byers

#28. The journey of a human is not only to expand its illusory personality of his mind, in the external world, but to realize himself beyond the identity of the mind and see the truth behind the formation of life within.

Roshan Sharma

#29. Be holy men and women! Do not forget that the fruits of the apostolate depend on the depth of the spiritual life, on the intensity of prayer, of continual formation and sincere adhesion to the directives of the Church.

Pope John Paul II

#30. The secret to extraordinary faith is fully engaging our MINDS, as well as our hearts, because DYNAMIC FAITH REQUIRES A HEALTHY BALANCE OF BOTH.

Patty Houser

#31. We become either agents of God's healing and liberating grace or carriers of the sickness of the world.

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

#32. There is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like truth at all because it carries responsibility.

Donald Miller

#33. Up until I was thirty years old I was your standard issue Christian- the kind christian schools and churches in our town pounded out year after year like spiritual Model-T's, mostly in one color-beige. We were covenant children, so we figured we came with a cradle-to-grave, salvational warrantee.

Clare De Graaf

#34. Knowing what we believe and why we believe it is not an option for the Christian, because as believers, OUR BELIEFS ARE THE VERY HEART OF WHO WE ARE.

Patty Houser