Spiritual Formation Articles

Bonhoeffer’s Road to Freedom

Read anew some well-considered words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the “four great dimensions of a spiritual life that lead to freedom in all its facets.” Richard Foster introduces us to them in this excerpt from Streams of Living Water

Richard J. Foster & Dietrich Bonhoeffer

October 12, 2020

Healing from Race-Based Trauma

Author and counselor Sheila Wise Rowe knows first-hand the effects of racial trauma. She encourages us to “create spaces in person and across social media for one another to experience God’s healing, love, compassion, and grace.”

Sheila Wise Rowe

October 9, 2020

Giving All to Christ

So, is Christianity hard or easy? Is there a part of yourself that you never want to lose in your Christian walk? How do we reconcile becoming fully ourselves while losing our lives in the with-God life? Jon Bailey introduces this classic C.S. Lewis piece about “embracing utter abandonment to God.”

C.S. Lewis

September 25, 2020

Catching a Glimpse of God’s Heart

An excerpt from Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home that helps us “capture a glimpse” of God’s heart as “an open wound of love.”

Richard J. Foster

September 18, 2020

God’s Crash School

“Hitting my own bottom of depression,” writes Juanita Rasmus, “has enabled me to come to an amazing awareness: I had been sourcing my life from an illusion.” That awareness led her to find the source of her being and life is not in self-made rules but in Christ.

Juanita Campbell Rasmus

September 9, 2020

To Be Human Is To Pray

From his book How to Pray, Pete Greig helps us find ways and places to speak the soul’s native language of prayer.

Pete Greig

September 4, 2020

Improving Our Conscious Contact with God

Trevor Hudson, a nonalcoholic, has found great help in AA’s Twelve Steps. Here he unpacks the Eleventh Step: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God… praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Trevor Hudson

August 28, 2020

The Gift of Weakness and The Need for Practice

With inimitable wisdom and grace, Fenélon helps a friend welcome weakness as a gift, and reminds him that spiritual knowledge is only helpful to the extent that it is put into practice.

François Fénelon

August 21, 2020

Listen to the Groans

“Many people see the injustice in the world as a reason to give up on faith,” writes Carolyn Arends, “but the irony is, when we decry injustice, our hearts resonate with the heart of God more than we can possibly imagine.”