What practical steps can we do to develop Christlike character?

1) Know what Christ-like character is through intentional study, deep conversations, listening and watching those whose character has been transformed in the crucible of suffering.

2) Boast in suffering. Embrace the struggles as opportunities not setbacks. I know that sounds like a motivational speech from the team that loses in the finals, but it is nevertheless true. We don’t have to look for suffering, it has a way of finding us. But we have a way of avoiding it at all costs.

3) Seek out experiences which you must bear something uncomfortable, undergo something not pleasant, and/or endure something longer than you would like. Go to the spiritual gym! We can actually simulate suffering through spiritual disciplines. We don’t have to simply wait for things to occur that we must bear, undergo, or endure, we can simulate that in our lives through fasting, the practice of Sabbath, sacrificial giving, and a whole host of others disciplines which place us in conditions where we are stripped of comfort and must depend rather on God.

a.Let me say it again, go to the spiritual gym! You may want a trainer to help you. I’d love to be that help for you. Carol, is especially trained in spiritual formation…how to develop Godly character! We are resources for you. If you will let us. If you will reach out to us.

b.Consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, “homeostasis,” i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. – from Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frank