Spiritual Formation // What is it?

Week 1 – Spiritual Formation: The Invitation

Main Scripture:

Romans 12:1–2 – “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice… be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

Big Idea:

This new series—and long-term direction for the church—introduces spiritual formation as a Spirit-led process that helps us grow into the likeness of Jesus through intentional practices and healing. This is not about earning God’s love or favor, but about becoming more aware of His love and living more like Jesus as a result.

What Spiritual Formation Is

“The Spirit-led process of maturing as a disciple of Jesus by integrating spiritual practices modeled by Him.”

• It’s about healing, growth, and transformation.

• It’s about allowing your identity in Christ to become your lived experience.

• It's the pathway to live out love, peace, and joy in a broken world.

What Spiritual Formation Is Not

• Not a way to earn salvation (Ephesians 2:8–9).

• Not a way to get God to love you more.

• Not a Christian ranking system (“Level 5 Christian” doesn’t exist).

• Not a path to power, but a path to deeper love and service.

Why Now?

• This series is the fruit of over two years of preparation.

• It begins the week after Easter to emphasize new life and resurrection living.

• The church is shifting from only teaching habits to creating space for heart-level transformation.

Spiritual Maturity: It’s Not About Age

• You can be older in years and still immature in faith—or young and spiritually deep.

• Maturity means your responses begin to reflect the love of Christ (Galatians 5:22–23).

• It’s not about how much Scripture you know—it’s about how much you’ve surrendered to the Holy Spirit.

Key Concept: Transformation Over Conformity

• Romans 12:2 distinguishes between conformity (change by culture) and transformation (change by the Spirit).

• Spiritual maturity isn't acting more “Christian.” It's being inwardly transformed so that your natural reactions mirror Christ.

Stages of Faith (Overview)

Referencing the Stages of Faith model (inspired by authors Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks, among others), the journey includes:

1. Awareness of God
2. Learning/Discipleship
3. Serving/Active Life
4. The Wall – a crisis or realization where growth plateaus
5. Journey Inward – healing, emotional honesty, deep formation
6. Journey Outward – serving again, but from identity, not obligation
7. Transformed Life of Love

The church is now intentionally creating pathways to help people through the “inward journey”, which is often overlooked in traditional church models.

Personal Example: Practicing Emotional Honesty

Pastor shared a personal moment where fear and anxiety surfaced in response to difficult news. Instead of avoiding the emotion, he paused, named the feeling, and invited Jesus into it. In that moment, he experienced peace—not by ignoring the pain, but by bringing it into God’s presence.

Practice tip: Pause in your day. Identify what you're feeling. Invite God into it. Let His joy meet your emotion.

Core Takeaways

• You are loved and accepted fully right now. Nothing you do can add to that.

• Spiritual formation is a response to God’s love, not a way to earn it.

• Habits (like prayer, reading, fasting) are only helpful if they lead you into God’s presence.

• The invitation is not into religion, but into relationship and transformation.

Next Steps for the Church

• A new resource tab on the website is available with books, sermon links, and guides.

• More tools, classes, and opportunities will be offered for practicing spiritual formation.

• Everyone is invited—no matter your age, church experience, or past.

Good morning, church. Good morning. Oh, man, it is so good to see you guys this morning. My name is Jonathan. I'm the lead pastor here at Destiny Church. Boy, I am excited to be with you. Will you do this for me? Will you stand with me to your feet?

 We're going to read some scripture this morning,

 and we're going to just take a moment to get our hearts and our minds prepared for today's message. We're going to be reading in Romans chapter 12, a familiar passage in verses 1 and 2.

 Just allow these words to kind of wash over you this morning.

 Verse 1 says this, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.

 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

 Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

 Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. Lord, we thank you for this moment in this time that we get to come together to be in the presence of such a great cloud of witnesses that we see ourselves surrounded by, to fellowship with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

 Lord, I thank you that in this moment and this time as we press into your word, Lord, that your spirit is here filling this place, Lord, illuminating your truths and filling our minds and hearts with your goodness.

 Lord, we thank you for this moment in this day. It's in Jesus' holy name we pray. Amen and amen. You may be seated. You may be seated.

 Well, church, I'm super excited about today. I'm super excited about today. And if I'm being honest, a little, I'm a little, I don't know if the right word is overwhelmed. Like I always, always, every Sunday morning, and this is just because of God's goodness and his faithfulness and how great he is, I always come to service feeling like I have an overwhelming overflow of information to share with you. Like just like too much. I usually have too much. Most of the time, some of you I've mentioned, some of you guys know this on Sunday mornings, I get up extra early and I spend some time in my office at home. And what I'm doing is, is usually I'm cutting out massive amounts of things that I studied throughout the weeks to be able to pare down what I'm going to get the opportunity to share with our church this Sunday. And so it's always just like this pairing down. But today we're starting something. We're starting a new series today. And it's and I have an overwhelming amount of content and things that God's put in our heart as a staff and as a church community and where I believe that God's taking us in this next season. Because this is not just a series. This is a series we're going to be talking about an idea and the concept, but it's more than just a series. It's really something that we're going to begin to continue to integrate in our church and our church life and that that our community is going to be able to be formed and rally around. And so it's more than just something that we talked about on Sundays. It's something that we all are going to get the invitation to participate in different ways as we go forward. And so I'm so excited. I'm brimming with anticipation and incitement. We've been working on this idea and I've been praying through and talking with other staff and talking with the board, talking with a team of people. We came together to help us come up with some of the plans of how to integrate some of the church. It's been a little over two years now that this has been in process. Two years of studying and reading and preparing and thinking and how do we implement this? And I'm really, really just thrilled to begin this process and to walk forward. And I'm excited to begin this process, especially this week. We specifically chose the week after Easter because we feel like the idea of resurrection is the idea of new beginnings and new life. Right. And the week after Resurrection Sunday, this week, that we get to look at and say, okay, now in light of the work of the cross, what is the life that we get to live as recipients of God's grace and mercies? And so what we are going to start this week, and this will be a, like I said, this will be a series, but there'll be more and we'll be unpacking and talk to you more and more, is we're going to be talking about and looking at an idea, a concept. Maybe you're familiar with it. Maybe you've heard it said, or maybe you've never heard of said, but the idea of spiritual formation, spiritual formation.

 I'm going to give you a quick, just a really quick short definition of spiritual formation.

 Then I'm going to tell you what spiritual formation is not. And then we are going to take weeks and weeks and weeks to unpack what spiritual formation looks like in our, in our lives, but a really, really just surface level, very broad definition of what spiritual formation is. It's spiritual formation is the spirit led process of growing in maturity as a disciple or as a follower of Jesus and integrating different spiritual practices that we've seen modeled in the life of Jesus, so that we can become more like Him.

 This is what spiritual formation is. Now let me tell you real quick, right off the bat, because you may have different church traditions, different church backgrounds, everything's, let me make sure that I'm very clear what spiritual formation is. What spiritual formation is not. And you'll probably hear me say this time and time and time again, spiritual formations are any of the processes or the practices or the activities or the things that we do together, or that we do individually or invited you individually. This is not a way for us to earn our salvation with God. That is impossible. You cannot earn your salvation with God. That is the gift that was bought on the cross of Jesus Christ. This is not a way for you to earn more love from God. You are loved exactly as much as you will ever be loved when you're in Christ because the love that God has for you is the love that has He has for His Son, and that is infinite and you will never even be able to fully grasp what that love means. You are not being formed or you're not walking in this process to be loved more by God because you can't be loved more than God you are right now. Even if you're like, no, I don't even think God's happy with me right now. I'm making some really horrible decisions in my life and I know it. He still loves you as much as He can love you. That is how big his heart is. This is also not a process by which we somehow earn more favor or blessing from God. It's not like, well, if I'm a better Christian, he'll bless me more or I'll get more favor from him. No, that's not what is happening in this process. You are blessed and highly favored because of the work of Jesus at the cross. This is your identity of who you are. It is none of those things.

 It is also not some kind of leveling up, I want to be a better Christian than other people around me hierarchy.

 There is not a grading system. You will not become level six Christian and therefore be able to command level two Christians, how they should behave. We are not some like ranking. It is not the military, no matter what you've heard about the army of the Lord, you will not become a general and commander. It's not happening.

 That's not what we're talking about. This is not something to compare yourselves among each other. This is a process. This is a process by which you can fully grasp the height and the depth and the breadth of God's love for you.

 And to fully understand that just like you are already fully loved through Jesus, you're already fully blessed through Jesus, that you can have joy even in the midst of sorrow, that all those things, this identity of what you have in Christ, the spiritual formation process is the way in which we allow the Holy Spirit to actually illuminate and to conform and to transform and to make us truly believe that who the Bible says we are.

 And how God sees us is who we actually are here in this world. You see, here's the thing. A lot of people, and this is even taught in some churches, and I understand why.

 They look at something like Easter and they say, look, Jesus died, and we really highlight two things. Jesus died so your sins could be forgiven and your sins were forgiven so that when you die, you can go to heaven.

 And that's really good. That's really good news if you didn't know that your sins are forgiven and that when you die, you can go to heaven and you can spend eternity with God. That's really good news. And the side bonus is that means that if you're with God in eternity, it means that you also avoid the other place, which is hell and separation from God. That's really good news. That's good stuff. But here's what's amazing. That is not where the work of the cross ends in your life. That is not where we end this journey of what it means. This is not some kind of life insurance policy like, whoo, I was 20 years old, I accepted Jesus. And now I'm good. I'm not going to die forever. Right? Like, I'm not going to spend eternity in hell. I'm not going to spend eternity separated from God. And then now I'm just going to kind of figure it out and there's not much other things going on in my life. No, no, no, no. You are saved with a purpose.

 Because you see, God didn't save you just so you didn't spend eternity in hell. He didn't even save you just so you could be forgiven. He saved you because he deeply and desperately desires to have a relationship with you. A personal, intimate, individual relationship with you and with me.

 And just like we say in that last song, he loves you wherever you are in your journey. He loves you right where you are at fully. And in the same breath, in the same moment, in the same side of the token, he says, and now you are invited to grow and to become more like Jesus.

 To become more like Jesus. To find healing from your past. To find healing from brokenness. To find healing from hurts. From things that you did or things that others did to you. He creates an opportunity for you to find something new. He wants to walk in this process.

 And this idea of discipleship. So although when we accept Jesus, our eternity is secure, our sins are forgiven, our bodies are purified so that the Holy Spirit and Jesus can make their home in you. You are now the dwelling place. We just finished an eight-week series on the Holy Spirit and what we landed on it and we came back to you time and time again.

 As the Holy Spirit is in you, his home is with you. You carry his presence everywhere you go. Those things all happen when we accept Jesus and the work of the cross that we celebrated last week.

 And then there's this invitation. There's this invitation of will you have a daily relationship with God? Will you daily seek Him? Will you have an opportunity? Will you allow God to remove things in your heart that are of your human nature?

 And allow them to be replaced and to be transformed into Christ's nature? Will you choose to believe that because of Christ in you and the work of what He's doing through you, that you are a royal representative of the Creator of heaven and earth? That you are His emissary, not just in theory but in reality, in this world. You are carrying the vision and the culture and the identity of God with you. And you walk out in a world that has fallen and broken as an ambassador of the Creator of the universe. That spirit of God is inside of you.

 And you get to share it with others. That you get to partner with His vision of new creation and new earth. That you get to partner in that. That you are part of who that is.

 And you know, the ultimate goal, the end result of what happens when we ourselves to be formed and to be spiritually formed by the Holy Spirit, it is not that you become Master Yoda, Jedi Master.

 You will not start shooting laser beams out of your, like lightning bolts out of your hands. You will not be walking into a room and all the demons flee because Jonathan Rivers just showed up. Demons don't care about Jonathan Rivers. What will happen is you will be transformed into a person that is characterized by the love of Jesus. You will look like Jesus. You will live like Jesus. You will act like Jesus. You will respond like Jesus.

 You will not look like the greatest, the highest because that's not what Jesus lived like. Jesus lived like a servant who came to show. But here's the very truth. Though no one cares when Jonathan Rivers walks in the rooms and no demons flee in the name of Jonathan Rivers and nothing bows to my name. When I realize that Christ is in me, every knee bows to the name of Christ and everything runs from the power of Jesus because He is the one who overcame death itself. But when I allow myself to be formed, I look and sound and smell and feel more and more like Christ and I am transformed into the image of love, which we get to see love come down in the person of Jesus. I begin to act like Him, not just through my willpower and not just through social interactions. My very core responses and identity begin to all be filtered through the God given love that He has for me.

 And I get to extend that to others all around me.

 Maybe you've met someone, they're an older believer. They've been in the faith for a while and you realize like, I don't know what it is about being around them, but I just feel loved every time I'm around them. It's not what they do, it's not even what they say. Just their presence overwhelms me with love.

 I've been around people like that. There's people in this room that are like that. And it's not because they've prayed harder than you or they know more scripture than you. It is because over the time and opportunity to have the Holy Spirit work in their lives and spending time in the presence of God, they have become so overwhelmed by who He is. He has transformed them to now they are a people of love. And when you are with them, you're like, they are a people of love, which may just sound like, oh yeah, I'd hope peace show in love like it's some kind of beauty pageant. That's not what we're talking about. The world is a broken, hateful, deadly, dangerous place. That is what you experience in society. And when you come around a person who truly is a representative of God, who truly has had their life transformed, you're like, this is the most refreshing expression of love that I've ever experienced.

 Because it's not from them, it's from God.

 So when we look at what spiritual formation is, we understand that it is an invitation to be transformed.

 An author named John Mike Homer from a book called "Pricing the Way," he says it like this. There's like these three stages. He says that we had this opportunity to be with Jesus so we become like Jesus so we can do what He did.

 And we say it a little differently here. We say that we want you to know Jesus so that your life can begin to show Jesus.

 This is the process and the opportunity and the invitation that we get to make. Now, you may say, listen, this is all really well and good. This is awesome. But what is this? What does this have to do? This just sounds like what we talk about church every day and every week. And in some ways, it's true.

 It is true. But we are willing to look and depress into this idea of how do we continue as a community to be a community that is constantly and regularly growing in our relationship with God and how Paul would say in our maturity as a believer.

 Now, sometimes when you hear the idea of maturity of believer, again, I just want to speak to all these different things in the room that we're talking about. Sometimes maybe you've heard that idea like, oh, I'm a mature believer. You're an immature believer. So therefore my opinion is more important than your opinion.

 Listen, maturity is not that. And if someone says that, that's a really good indicator that they're not mature.

 Now, in the natural, let me tell you what's the natural. This is the reality. We don't tell someone, at least for a point, to a point in the journey, when we look at the growth cycle, let's say, from a child to an adult. Right? I do not expect my six-year-old to act and behave in the same maturity level as my 17-year-old. In any way, I don't expect my six-year-old to be as big as him. I don't expect him to be as tall as him. I don't expect his vocabulary to be the same. I don't expect his maturity to be the same. I don't expect him to have the same type of conversations, to be able to read the same type of books. Why? Because he's six. And my other son is 17. You see, that's a difference. And he's not less than because he's six. He is six. And he's doing great. Wherever he's at, he's doing great.

 Now, where I would be at fault is if I expected my six-year-old to act like a 17-year-old.

 I would also be at fault if I allowed my 17-year-old to act like a six-year-old. Because both are not okay.

 Now, I don't have time to comment on society and maturity and all that kind of stuff. You can fill in the blanks. But this is like no--and what really gets crazy is, and maybe if you experience this, this is usually okay because we see a kid and we treat a person where we feel like they're at on the spectrum based on what we look like. But every once in a while, there's those just genetic freaks. Have you ever met that seven-year-old that's like six-two and already has a mustache? And you're sure he's 17?

 And then you're like, "What's wrong with this kid? Why is he acting like he's seven years old?

 Well, he is seven, but we didn't know. So we treated him like he was 17."

 That's happened here at church. That's happened--like, you're just like, "Why is this kid acting like this? He's not acting anything. He just looks older than he actually is."

 The body of Christ is actually like that. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings here. But sometimes we believe, "Oh, they're 60. They must be a mature believer." And they're not.

 Or sometimes we look at someone and say, "Oh, they're only 25. They're just a little adolescent." Dumb, dumb. They don't know anything.

 And here's what's wild about spiritual maturity. It has nothing to do with what you look like physically. It has nothing to do with how old you are.

 It actually doesn't even have to do with how long you've been a Christian.

 What it has to do with is what have you allowed the Holy Spirit to work in your life to mature you.

 And you know what? We are very capable of keeping the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus at an arm's length so we can stay in control of our own stuff and do it our own way, and therefore not growing and not maturing.

 Which is why the church is full of people who are not spiritually mature. Not spiritually mature. And I don't mean, "Oh, they don't know scripture." Just because you know a lot of scriptures doesn't mean you're mature.

 Quoting scripture is not the thing. If you want to know the litmus test, the litmus test is, "When pressure happens, do you respond like Jesus?"

 I don't care if you won the Bible bowl challenge. If when someone cuts out in traffic, all that comes out of your mouth, Instagram, can't post, you're not living like Jesus. That's the reality of it. If you experience someone who is your enemy and the first thing that comes into your heart is not love towards them, then you're not living like Jesus.

 And I'm telling you these things that I fail at. Why? Because I still am in the process of being to grow in maturity of Christ, despite the fact that I'm 40 years old and I got saved at four.

 And I still have places in my life that I desperately need an encounter of the Holy Spirit to grow me up and to change me and to renew me and to restore me. I have to.

 But what's amazing is that we have the ability, by our own choice, to say, "Yeah, God, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to do this, but I'm going to kind of keep you at a distance. I don't want to give you that part of my heart. I don't want to walk through that."

 Because it's uncomfortable, it's difficult. And here's the thing, church, what we're progressing on is an invitation, is an opportunity as a church, as a community to be spiritually formed together, to grow together. And it doesn't matter where you're at in the journey. It doesn't matter if you're like Paul says, like you're just on mama's milk because we call it at the home. You're just on mama's milk. That's all you can handle right now. That's fine. That's not less than. That's called being where you're supposed to be right now. Or if you're all the way on the other side, although in human terms, it seems like baby food and elder food sometimes ends up in the same place. But let's talk about prime food, like steak or something. We're not going to go too far on another side. That doesn't mean you're better. Just like a 17 year old is not better than a 6 year old.

 I have to tell my kids all the time when they play a game and my 17 year old beats the 6 year old and then he talks trash, I'm like, "What are you doing? See how bad I beat him?" I'm like, "Yeah, I did. He's 6." Like it's not impressive.

 And then they get really mad. It's like, just like when I beat you really bad at stuff, it's not that impressive. It wasn't that big a deal for me. They love that.

 They love that.

 I'm inviting you. We're being invited by the Holy Spirit. Wherever you're at in the spectrum, no matter how long you've been in church, no matter how long we're saying, let's invite the Holy Spirit to form us and to grow and to find healing and to find transformation.

 Because in that word it says don't conform to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the ruining of your mind. There's this really interesting idea. Conformacy comes from this idea of spending time around a certain group of people or a certain culture, a certain idea. And what happens is that's when conformity happens. You've experienced this. You hang out with a group of friends and all of a sudden you guys start to talk the same. You start to like the same things. You start to dress the same. And that's all of a sudden why you like you go and you see people and it's like they look like you know they're a group of friends because they're all wearing the same thing.

 And they're all talking about the same thing. It's like they're they've conformed. And as a general society we have this confirmation because through spending time and proximity that's what happens. Confirmation happens.

 But transformation requires something else. It requires an outside force. Transformation requires something in which the Holy Spirit comes and transforms you, metamorphoses you, changes you from one state to another. And that's the word the Holy Spirit and the cross can do. We're not just asking you to conform. Like hey just come to church and only hang out with Christian friends and then you guys can all wear the same kind of khakis and then you guys everyone will know that you're Christians.

 That's not what we're asking you to do. Although being in community is really important and we're going to talk about that. What we're inviting you to is to not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed into something totally new and totally different into the image of God so that you can understand the plan and the purpose that he has for your life and for the people.

 And for the people who are around you. You see because what happens is the result of spiritual formation and growing and abiding in God is that we become, we get to see fruitfulness. And the fruitfulness is not for you. The fruitfulness is for others. That's the result. You know who benefits from me growing in spiritual maturity and becoming more like Jesus? Do I benefit? Absolutely I do. I absolutely do. But do you know who else benefits? My wife.

 My children. The staff of this church. The strangers the street. The soccer referee that I lose my temper with. They all benefit when I become more like Jesus.

 And I still need to be more like Jesus. Confession I did get a yellow card for getting into a verbal altercation with a rep just a few days ago.

 But it's because I'm still a work in process you see. And I don't pretend like I'm not. And he was wrong. And I made sure in no unclear terms that he his assistants and anyone who was within shot knew he was wrong.

 And then he asked what my name was and I made sure he spelled it right and put in his book.

 See that's not who I am. I just happened to act outside of my character in that moment. So I apologize that halftime.

 Which I would have never done. Anytime up until that time. I'd have gone to touch him at halftime but it would be about something else.

 Now here's the thing. Where are we at. I only have 17 books worth of stuff to talk to you about today. I got a graphic I want to put above the screen. It's the last graphic production teams. They're like you're not even following your notes. I know it's fine.

 They're gonna put this. Listen. This is a theory. Okay. Don't get too hung up if you're here whatever. This is not your thing. This comes from those two authors in the bottom right corner. You really care. But here here's something. This is a theory that's called stages of faith theory. Okay.

 And we'll reference this and we'll talk to this a lot more unpack it more and more and more. But here's here's the thing. This is talking about from when someone goes from a process of not believing in God at all. And goes through this entire journey. This faith journey. They talked about there's six six stages or six six faith processes that happen. Right. The first is the life changing awareness of God. If you're here you've accepted Jesus. You made that decision. Like you've had this life changing awareness that I believe there's God that God exists that he is real and he's going to change my life. And that's like the first stage. And then the second stage they call this discipleship or some people call it learning and is this idea of like I'm going to learn about God in the Bible. I don't know. And it depends on honestly like when you got saved. But especially if you get saved like later whether it's in your teenage years or adulthood. Like when you get saved you have this like ravenous desire to learn all about God. To read the Bible. To consume different things. To learn the stories. And so you go to church and you're so excited. You're so excited. Which is awesome. That's so good. Like because you're learning about the Bible. And the third thing is like you get this active life right. Or we call it serving. And when you think about those first three things the local church what we do here on Sundays is really good about those three things right. We can get free sermons and create opportunities where you can become aware about who God is and that he exists. And then we can tell you and teach you how to God's word about the truth of his character and who he is. It's really powerful. It's awesome. And you can learn all about God. And then we can say this is what we always do here at church is like wow you've been here a long time. You need to start serving somewhere.

 That's what churches do. Right. And we can just serving which is good. All this is good. None of this is bad.

 But then all of a sudden. In individuals we begin to hit this what they reference up on that that chart the wall.

 We hit this thing was like man I'm still going to church. I still love God. I'm learning I'm still good. But like I just feel like I'm here.

 And there's this there's this invitation and faith on the other side of the wall that you get to have to go through and we'll talk about this in more detail later but where we begin to invite the Holy Spirit into a journey inward.

 A journey inward in which God says hey you've got some things on the inside of you that I want to heal that I want to reshape.

 Is he going to talk about can you can you take this heart of stone and can you turn it into a heart of flesh.

 Can the potter do what only the potter can do and mold me. He says that there's something on the inside that we need to heal. There's something on the inside that we need to change. There's some things that were that you chose to do in your life or that were done to you in your life or experiences you had that we need to go through and with the work and the love and the healing power of the Holy Spirit we need to walk through those things in your life and in your journey.

 We need to go inward.

 But here's the thing.

 For a multitude of reasons.

 That's really hard to do in the context of a church.

 Because in the content of church there's a lot of reasons one spiritual formation this process. It is not a group effort where we can all just move along at the same pace.

 How many people are in this room. That's how many journeys of spiritual formation are. It is nonlinear is nonprogressive. It is not like everyone gets to follow the same path and we get there. So therefore it's really hard from a leadership or from an organizational perspective to say let's take everyone through this process because it's a very individual is very unique and very inspired by the Holy Spirit. And when we say hey we need to walk through this process, you need to go into this journey inward we need to help create these things and these opportunities for you to experience this journey inward.

 Well churches and leadership in churches, they get nervous because there's really no control on that.

 The processes and the ways that we do this are very individual.

 They can be done individually. They can be done in small groups or small communities. They can be done several different ways and there's several different processes but ultimately it's not easy to maintain. It's not easy to control. It's not easy to measure. And so therefore a lot of churches just say let's just stick with the first three. We're really good at that. Which is fine and we should do the first three.

 But you see if we're not creating the space and teaching people and instructing people on ways in which you can begin that journey inward to experience the Holy Spirit's healing in your life, then we are missing out on this faith, this maturity development.

 And if we continue and we won't go through all of it, the fifth stage is you begin to go the journey outward and the journey outward means we're beginning to do a lot of the same things that we did in stage three but the whole motivation is totally different. Stage three was they said hey you're a believer now you need to serve. It's like God I'm gonna do it because I'm working I'm doing all these things. Whereas stage five becomes like I'm a believer. I need to live this way because this is who I am. I am generous. I am forgiving. I am loving. I am all these things because this is what the Holy Spirit has done inside of me. And it becomes an expression of who I am. And the sixth phase is this idea of I've been transformed into this person of love. This is who I am.

 Like I can't change this. I can't change this.

 And so we're at this place where this process of journeying inward means that as a church, we have to look at a few things and create some space for things that we haven't done before that we haven't done before.

 And we get the opportunity to teach and instruct in ways that we haven't done before.

 And we will get to learn together. And here's the thing. No one should feel guilty because they don't know how to do it. People have walked through that process and experienced that on their own, but usually most of the people who've gone through that journey inward, they had to do it separate from church not because church was evil, but because church didn't have anything for them to walk through that process in a community. So they went and found it somewhere else. And that's okay.

 We as a church have this desire. Can we, but the leading of the Holy Spirit and the grace that God has create a way in which we can facilitate and create opportunities for us to learn.

 Because I could tell you certain things like, yeah, you just need to pray. You need to read your Bible. You need to be in the community. You need to be gracious. Jesus said, just come to Him.

 His joke is easy. Abide in Him. And if you're like me, like most people, we don't like to admit when we don't know how to do something. Maybe it's just a man thing. Maybe it's just a me thing.

 So when Jesus is like, hey, just abide in me, it's like, God, Jesus, I totally know. I totally know what you mean by that. I'm just gonna abide. Just abide in it all day.

 Just like you said it. Am I doing it right now? Am I abiding right now? No. How about now? Because I totally get it, Jesus.

 And we sometimes in our faith, we don't like to admit when we don't fully understand our grasp something. And it's not even our fault.

 Like if you haven't been instructed, the Bible tells you about it. If people don't understand, if they haven't been taught, then how can they know? How can they know?

 So there's this journey that we get invited to. And although, like I said, I don't ever want to do it, but often I meet people if I'm learning something new. And they're gonna give me instructions. Sometimes I have to tell them, and most of this is because I think despite the work that Jesus is doing to me, I still sometimes give off these errors of like, I'm a real know-it-all. And like, I already know what's going on and you're just wasting my time. And so sometimes when people start to explain to me that like, they're not giving me very many details. And I need to tell them like, hey, can you actually start over? And can you talk to me like with the assumption that I have no idea what I'm doing?

 Like no clue. And then as they teach me from a place of someone with complete no knowledge, if I had any knowledge, then it's confirmed. If I was believing the wrong thing or I knew the wrong thing, then it's changed. And then I get to grow into that process.

 You see spiritual formation and these things that we're gonna walk through to allow the Holy Spirit to lead inside, they're just instruction. Some of them you may already know about. Some of them you may already practice. Some of them may be completely brand new.

 And all of them, here's the thing, all of them, which can on the surface look like habits. Habits are only beneficial if they lead to the end goal. And the end goal is not a check mark on your daily task. The end goal is creating time and space and the presence of God for Him to transform you. That's it. Habits won't do that.

 You could read your Bible every day from now until Jesus comes back. And it would be great and you would learn and you would grow and you'd read it. But it wouldn't create transformation if the intention or the purpose of the habit wasn't Holy Spirit. What inside of me gets to change? How can I be transformed?

 How can I look different? How can you bring healing to me?

 I'm gonna give just one example, a personal example that's recent that I've been walking through. So I've been having different conversations, like I said, I've been studying a lot in the last couple of months specifically towards this. I've had a lot of different conversations with different people that have been just really encouraging. And one of the things that one of the practices that we've been we've been walking through this class together as a staff and preparation for what we're going to present for our church. And one of the things, one of the activities or one of the things that you get to practice throughout this week that we were supposed to do as a staff when we walked through it was in your time of prayer or really just in your daily life.

 Take a moment and you can choose when, but take a moment and really take a time to acknowledge and to think about what is the emotion or the feeling that you're having in that moment.

 Whatever it is, good, bad, positive, negative.

 And then take some time to understand and to link that back to God and to give Him that time and to be able to acknowledge where you're at. Because a lot of times what will happen is when we become still and we'll become quiet, especially early on, the things that will come up are not the positive emotions and feelings, it will be the negative emotions and feelings. But that God is even there in the middle of sorrow and anxiety and fear and all these different things.

 Well, I say all that because that was going on. I had a conversation with my son. I read this other thing. All this different stuff was going on because when God talks to me, He has to talk to me like six different ways or else I just am oblivious.

 So I got a message and the message was like it was a kind of a negative message and it was kind of hitting on a subject that is kind of hard for me to deal with personally and it has always been hard for me to deal with. And so immediately when I got that message and I read that message, I began to experience in my life a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, like the kind that you feel in your chest. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Like you feel it and I was fearful because of this message that I had gotten and it began to kind of grow. And I thought about doing what I always do, what I've done for years and years to handle something like that, which is ignore it, pretend like it doesn't exist and go find something else to do. Go listen to a book. Go cook something. Go run really hard. Go do something else. Yell at a referee. Like whatever it may be.

 Like I find some other way to distract myself from what that is and move forward. But the problem is when those feelings arise that are there, that are something you feel and then you ignore them, they don't just go away. They just kind of sit there simmering in the background. And then what happens would be as later that evening, I'd be short with Vivi or I'd yell at the kids because I just have this this under stewing of something that I just never dealt with. And I don't this this this way, even specifically around this subject matter over and over and over again. And I was hit with this thing and I was literally about to do the same thing I always do. I was about to turn on a book and just like forget about it and try to think about something else. Whenever the Holy Spirit reminded me, hey, what was your practice that you were going to do this week?

 I don't want to deal with that. You're telling me you want me to embrace it?

 I don't embrace that.

 When we ran in track, I ran the 400. There was a saying we said all the time because the 400 is just the worst thing in the world. And it's terrible. But we used to have this slogan when it was training or as a race or whatever we had this thing and forgive me if this sounds crude, but it was just just embrace the suck.

 Just embrace the suck. There's no way around it. You just got to embrace it. There's no way to run a 400 and not feel horrible afterwards. So embrace it.

 And I just was like that came up to mind. You just got to embrace this. And so took some time and said, God, I got this news.

 And it's creating fear and anxiety in my heart.

 It's creating fear and anxiety in my heart. And I feel it. And it's making me feel ashamed that I haven't done better, that I haven't led in a way that this isn't the reality.

 And I'm feeling like a failure and I'm feeling hurt and I'm anxious.

 And I kind of just feel like running away.

 And I don't want to do this anymore.

 And it hurts and it's heavy.

 But then I remember the second half exercise. But God, thank you that you're my joy.

 Thank you that you can be my joy, even in the middle of fear and anxiety and shame.

 Thank you that you can be the one that I latch onto because you do not see me differently because of this circumstance. And I am not different because of the circumstance. In fact, this circumstance is just something that is trying to distract me from the belief and the truth of who you are and how you're working inside of me. So God, even here while I'm sitting here and I'm fully embracing what my heart is feeling, I know that the heart is deceitful above all things. I know that this is not the reality of who I am. And though it is very true what I'm feeling, I know that there's a greater truth, which is how much you love me. And that my joy is not dictated by what I'm feeling in this present circumstances, it's dictated by who you are inside of me. So I give you praise that I can see your abundance and your goodness and your glory here in this place. And I give you this thing and thank you, Lord, that in this moment that I'm feeling what I'm feeling.

 You're here with me and I'm not alone.

 And do you know what happened, church, for the first time in my life? For the first time in my life, it went away.

 Didn't hide it. Didn't bury it.

 It went away.

 It was processed through.

 Not by my own willpower.

 Not by some kind of, because the Holy Spirit said, I'm with you in this process.

 We can grow through this together.

 You don't have to hold on to that.

 You can abide in me and watch me deal with them.

 Something like that, that changes the way you respond.

 That is what spiritual formation looks like.

 It is a journey and a process by which we allow the Spirit to say there's a better way to deal with some of those things.

 There's a better way to be led.

 And for me, it was fear anxiety, but it could be anger. It could be lust. It could be unforgiveness. It could be covetousness. It could be many other things that we experience as humans that we sometimes just try to deny and repress and shake out. But God says, no, bring it to me. Bring it to me. When Jesus said, come to me, I can carry that burden. Sometimes we think like that burden is like something else. It's not when your favorite football team is losing. It's like literally the very core of your soul that you can bring them and say, God, I'm anxious. Can you carry this for me? He says, yes, I can.

 I can.

 So the invitation that we have as a church

 and what I'm inviting you is, will you go on this journey?

 There's no right or wrong answers.

 There's no pace. There's no race. There's no levels. There's no achievements. There's one God, one Jesus, one Holy Spirit who longs to do for you the same thing that he's done for me and the same thing that he's done for those who've come before us,

 to transform you into the very image of God, to change the way that you deal with life around you and to look more and more like Christ and express his love. Let's bow our heads this morning.

 Father, we thank you so much for today.

 Lord, I thank you for Jesus.

 I thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 Lord, as we begin to embark on this journey, Lord, we have plans, we have ideas, and the Bible says that a wise man makes a plan, but it says that it's your spirit that leads the steps.

 Lord, lead our steps as a church, as a community, but also as individuals.

 Lead our steps.

 Let us find healing.

 Let us find truth. Let us find identity. Let us find culture. Let us find who we are because of Jesus.

 And for the areas in our life that stubbornly don't want to line up with what you say about us, Lord, help us give our hearts to you to be formed into your image.

 Lord, we love you. We praise you. We give you all the praise and glory this morning.

 It's in Jesus' name we pray.

 Church, last thing before we dismiss.

 If you're here and you need prayer for anything, the prayer team is going to be down here, and they would love to pray for you, whether it's for questions about salvation, questions about healing, any of those things, they would love to come down and to pray and just agree with you after service. After service, I'd love to meet you. If you have never gotten the chance to meet you and shake your hand, I'll be in the green room saying hello right after service. And then thirdly, there is a new resource tab that we have on our website. I believe you can scan the QR code and get to it that has resources and will continue to populate more and more resources when it comes down to this spiritual formation process that we're under, including old series books, references. There's actually a whole card in the seat back in front of you that you can grab and get some information and resources there. If you'd like it, it's going to grow. There's going to be more and more. But if you want to get some more resources of some of you, I know there's some nerds out there who are like, "I'd like to write more about this." We've got some stuff for you. And we'll have more and more stuff for you, like more than you could ever imagine.

 And my reading list just grows. It never shrinks. So that's how good God in this subject is. So listen, we love you. You're dismissed. Have a great rest of your Sunday.