Category: Formational Theology

There are still quite a few Evangelicals who are unsure about whether or not spiritual formation is a biblicallly sound approach to the Christian life. Their concerns come in several forms. Steve Porter is a professor at Biola University who has been studying spiritual growth and development for a...

Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is more necessary....

A man far ahead of his time, Lewis understood the difference between Christian lifestyle and Spiritual Formation. “After a man has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails … he discovers his bankruptcy. Now, once again, what God cares about is not...

Christians often express gratitude for their salvation in terms such as, “I am so grateful that God saved me even though I did not deserve it.” I get what they mean, and I understand that they are truly grateful for God’s salvation. I might even wonder about them if...

In the Introduction to The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard makes a rather startling observation about the gospel as it was preached and received in the first century after Christ. The basic idea here is that prior to the Incarnation of Jesus, Greek philosophers (and others before them) had been...

The following is from the Preface in J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Letters to Young Churches. “The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was a real experience. We are apt...

If we have been set free from sin as Paul says, then why do we still sin? See more here....

(All of the following is from Dallas Willard, The Great Omission) If your neighbor is having trouble with his automobile, you might think he just got a lemon. And you might be right. But if you found out that he was supplementing his gasoline with a quart of water...

In the early days of computer software development, nearly everything was proprietary. Everyone kept their methods and internal structures secret, and rejected most of what anyone else was doing. If we needed something we did not have, we designed it and wrote it. There was no way we were...

One of the most persistent problems that keep Christians from experiencing the abundant life is that of a distorted sense of identity. If we do not know who we are in Christ, then it is highly unlikely that we will be able to live in a manner consistent with...