Spiritual formation is somehow both simple and yet really really hard.  

On the one hand, being made like Jesus is God's work, something he promised to do and form and bring alive in us. It is the divine work of the Holy Spirit that God IS doing and will continue doing in us. Spiritual disciplines can feel less laborious when we understand them less as duties or requirements, and more like putting ourselves in a posture of receiving from God what he is always ready and waiting to give:  comfort, wisdom for living, his peace that passes understanding, and his abiding presence.

And at the same time, we are often most poignantly formed by fire. It is in the crucible of suffering that we finally come to the end ourselves, and learn what it truly means to "lay our deadly doing down, down at Jesus feet" and trust him alone (for real). The testing of our faith--the moments of wrestling in the dark with honest questions about God's compassion and goodness and power and provision--is what brings about perseverance, and character, and hope, etc.

Join Chris and Wendy for the first in a 2 part series on transformation:  how does it happen, what does it often require, and what are the fruits or benefits that (we hope and pray) make it all worthwhile?