extraORDINARY, Part 2

Most of us would say that we love God and want to become more like Jesus. What we need, then, is to build structures of behavior for the moments when our love falters, when we are too busy, or when our lives unravel. We are all better followers of Jesus when we are committed to growing together.

World Outside Your Window
Hillsong Young & Free

Firm Foundation
The Belonging Co

I Speak Jesus
Charity Gayle

Christ Be Magnified
Cody Carnes

Discoveries About Spiritual Formation
1. Learning is not synonymous with knowledge because knowledge is not synonymous with life transformation.

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James KA Smith
“If being a disciple is being a learner, then a lot hinges on what you think learning is.”

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James KA Smith
“We treat human learners as if they are safe-deposit boxes for knowledge and ideas, mere intellectual receptacles for beliefs. We then think of action as a kind of “withdrawal” from this bank of knowledge, as if our action and behavior were always the outcome of conscious, deliberate, rational reflection that ends with a choice…”

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1 Corinthians 8:1
“Knowledge puffs you up, but love builds you up!”

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Discoveries About Spiritual Formation
2. Formation is primarily a community project, not an individual one.

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Discoveries About Spiritual Formation
3. Without others, I will usually only grow in areas that come most naturally to me and are most comfortable for me.

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Ephesians 1:10
“His plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in the King–yes, everything in heaven and on earth, in him.”

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Ephesians 3:9-11
“My job is to make clear to everyone just what the secret plan is, the purpose that’s been hidden from the very beginning of the world in God who created all things. This is it: that God’s wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places–through the church! This was God’s eternal purpose, and he’s accomplished it in king Jesus our Lord…”

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Lynn Cohick
“This means that ecclesiology is not a secondary matter, but central to the proclamation of God’s victory over sin and the grave. God’s plan was not merely to save souls…Nor was God’s plan merely to save individuals…Rather God’s plan, as outlined by Paul in Ephesians, is to establish a new body, to make a new people, to build a new temple or dwelling place made up of believers both locally and across the world…This amazing new community presents to the dark world the awesome power of God to break seemingly unassailable boundaries and create a new, holy, people united with bonds incomprehensible through human wisdom…the mystery of Christ is that his people…are all children of the promise, sealed by the Spirit. When the powers and principalities see this, they realize their days are numbered”

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Ephesians 4:1-3
So, then, this is my appeal to you—yes, it’s me, the prisoner in the Lord! You must live up to the calling you received. Bear with one another in love; be humble, meek, and patient in every way with one another. Make every effort to guard the unity that the spirit gives, with your lives bound together in peace.”

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Live up to that calling by taking your lives together very seriously.

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NT Wright
“The church doesn’t exist in order to provide a place where people can pursue their private spiritual agendas and develop their own spiritual potential. Nor does it exist in order to provide a safe haven in which people can hide from the wicked world and ensure that they themselves arrive safely at an otherworldly destination. Private spiritual growth and ultimate salvation come rather as the by-products of the main, central, overarching purpose for which God has called and is calling us…that through the church God will announce to the wider world that he is indeed its wise, loving and just creator; that through Jesus he has defeated the powers that corrupt and enslave it; and that by His spirit he is at work to heal and renew it.“

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Make and Keep a Commitment to Community

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The life we want is always on the other side of the costly commitments we make and keep.

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David Brooks
“A commitment is a promise made from love…[But] A commitment isn’t just love and a promise…It is love and promise put under law. In living out a commitment, each party understands the fickleness of feelings, so they bind their future selves to specific obligations…Thus,” he goes on to say, “the most complete definition of a commitment is this: falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for the moments when love falters.”

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