The Life You’ve Always Wanted.
Week #1: Morphing Time.
Spiritual disciplines for ordinary people.
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.
…until Christ is formed in you
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Romans 12:1-2
Galatians 4:19
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
The word morph comes from the Greek word morphoo, which means “the inward and real formation of the essential nature of a person.” The term was used to describe the formation and growth of an embryo in a mother’s body. In Galatians 4:19, the Greek word summorphizo, means “to have the same form as another, to shape a thing into a durable likeness.” The kind of spiritual transformation God wants us to experience is a complete ‘remaking’ of our nature. We don’t simply learn to do things in a new way, we become the kind of people who are that way.
How do you feel about the idea of change, of personal and spiritual transformation? Does it excite you, motivate you, give you hope? Does it scare you, confuse you, intimidate you?
In life, we are always being transformed; we are always changing, for better or for worse. This happens physically and, although it can be less obvious, spiritually. How do some of our daily practices or habits cause us to ‘be formed’ spiritually in one direction or another?
Richard Foster says, “ …the disciplines, rather than being opposed to grace, work in co-operation with the grace of God in an overall life of training in the Spirit.”
Dallas Willard wrote, “A discipline of the spiritual life is nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective co-operation with Christ and his Kingdom.”
John Ortberg defines spiritual disciplines as “any activity that can help me gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modelled it.”
If we can’t transform ourselves and only God transforms us, how do you think spiritual disciplines - formational practices - facilitate God’s work of transformation in us?
Share your personal experiences of spiritual disciplines and the effect they’ve had upon your life and transformation.
In this season, is God calling you to be more disciplined and intentional with your spiritual life, to set some goals and train wisely? Is God speaking to you about investing in a particular spiritual discipline? Share with each other.
Pray for one another.
Take time to pray together (in pairs or small groups) for each other, in response to the above.
