Lantana Community Church
"The Christian journey, therefore, is an intentional and continual commitment to a lifelong process of growth toward wholeness in Christ. It is a process of "growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (Eph 4:15), until we "attain to mature personhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:13). It is for this purpose that God is present and active in every moment of our lives" (Robert Mulholland).
How are you running the race?
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 NIV
Spiritual Formation - The Process of being conformed into the image of Christ for the sake of others.
Imago Dei — Image of Christ
Experience is the basis of relationship
To experience someone or something is to come to know that person or thing. The more experience you accumulate with a person, the more you will know them.
1. The Quest for Wholeness
The process of spiritual formation happens over time as we increasingly respond faithfully to God. In this way, we are liberated from the bondage of our previous journey by the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit who meets us at each turn along our new journey.
2. The Reality of Process
All of life is spiritual formation. Cooperation with God moves us toward this wholeness in Christ. Rebellion against God moves us toward a destructive and dehumanizing emptiness. The Christian journey is a day-by-day process.
3. Option or Necessity?
Once we realize that genuine spiritual growth is a continuous and sometimes difficult process, we might begin to think it's an option we can take or leave. The process of spiritual shaping is a primal reality of the human existence. Everyone is in the process of spiritual formation. Every thought, every decision, every action, every emotion, every response, every relationship are little by little shaping us in to some kind of being. We are either being shaped in to the image of Christ, or a horrible caricature of that image.
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.
- C.S. Lewis