Spiritual Formation Isn’t About Filling Yourself Up
By Kyle Strobel and John Coe
What do we do when we feel stuck in our Christian life? How can spiritual formation fix a stagnant faith? Kyle Strobel and John Coe argue that it can’t—because that’s not what it’s all about. Read on for an encouraging reminder of the true goal of spiritual formation.
I remember a moment in my life when I began wondering, Will I ever grow beyond these struggles? Will I ever get beyond this temptation?
Without realizing it, I had been trying to fix my life in my own power, and my spiritual life began to feel heavy. Suddenly the things that were so life-giving started feeling like a burden. Seeing the Bible sitting on my table or hearing sermons did not unearth possibility in me but made me feel like growth was impossible, and guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety became ever-present realities. I often left a church service, chapel, or Bible study with the feeling, I’ve got to get my act together.
Instead of being captivated by God’s goodness and grace, I felt his judgment and my failure. Instead of being excited about the possibility of obedience, I felt the impossibility of my faithfulness.
Rediscovering the Heart of Spiritual Formation
When we feel stuck in the Christian life, the temptation is to try to pump up our will, excite passion, and fuel our faithfulness through our flesh. Or we might focus on getting the right technique or affirming the right doctrinal statement. The assumption is that we simply need to tweak our actions to get the right results.
Like the church at Galatia, we will always be tempted to begin with the Spirit but try to advance ourselves in the flesh (Gal. 3:3). Rather than drawing near to Christ in our neediness, we are tempted to create a path where God becomes an instrument we use for our own advancement. We believe that we have basically figured out life, so we just need to understand more, serve more, and worship more, and things will keep on getting better. This is what Paul calls “self-made religion” that has “no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23). This way appears wise, Paul tells us, but fails because it seeks to make Jesus and his way into a bulleted list of ways to grow. Jesus himself is our salvation, our hope, our righteousness, and our sanctification (see 1 Cor. 1:30).
This leads us to a truth that is incredibly easy to miss: Our spiritual growth and formation are not primarily about our growth or our formation.
God Does the Filling
As we advance in the faith, especially in our spiritual adolescence, we are still tempted to hear biblical commands as a call to fix ourselves. Take, for instance, Ephesians 5:18: “Be filled with the Spirit.” What is being asked of us here? Interestingly, it is not an active command in Greek but is in the passive voice. We should hear this command as “be filled,” and not “get filled.”
The command is not to do something that generates the filling of the Spirit. Rather, the call is to be acted upon by the Spirit.
To hear the command as a call to get filled focuses on our ability to create something rather than our activity of drawing near to God as the only one who can fill us. This is a call to abide so that we can bear much fruit because our growth is the fruit of the Spirit’s filling.
If we reduce being filled with the Spirit to our activity, we seek to tether God to what we can see, like tethering God to a golden calf. We think that if we only have the right technology—doctrinal statements, spiritual practices, or liturgies—then we can harness God’s power to use for our advancement. But our God is free. No temple can contain God.
There will always be a temptation to use spiritual practices, church, and service to tether God to ourselves, thinking that as long as we do these things energetically, he will give us what we want. This misses the fact that he is our good, he is our hope, and he is our life. God is love, and he calls us to himself in love to be known in love. God is both our foundation for a flourishing life and the goal for a flourishing life because we truly flourish only if we embrace him. Our spiritual practices, church ministry, and service should always be ways to embrace him and offer ourselves to him. When God is not our foundation and our goal, we replace him with trying to fix our life in our own strength.
Learning to Walk by Faith
To live by faith is to trust what the Lord has declared to us. If you have put your faith in Jesus, Paul says, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). As a Christian, you have the Spirit. That is the truth of your life by faith. By having the Spirit, you are called to live a spiritual life—a life that seeks, rests upon, and receives the love of God poured into your heart by the Spirit (Rom. 5:5). To seek this life is to walk by faith with God in light of this truth. To be filled with the Spirit is to be caught up in God’s life in the Son and to receive the love the Father has for his Son as your own (John 17:26).
Maybe this all sounds too wonderful to be true right now. Maybe there was a time it seemed true, but you are struggling with too much to be able to say with confidence that you know the love of God. Don’t try to generate faith in these moments. Don’t try to fix yourself. Instead, grasp ahold of your struggle, fears, worries, and needs, and bring all of that to the Lord. Come out of hiding and tell him exactly what you are feeling and thinking and wrestling with. Be open to his forgiveness, mercy, and love.
This article has been adapted from When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near by Kyle Strobel and John Coe, published by Baker Books. They explore the purpose of the wilderness in the story of God’s people and the ways spiritually dry seasons can actually benefit our spiritual lives.
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Kyle Strobel is the director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation and the professor of spiritual theology and formation at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He lives in Fullerton, California, where he serves on the preaching team of Redeemer Church.
John Coe is a professor of spiritual theology and philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Rosemead School of Psychology at Biola University. He lives in La Mirada, California.
