For the past few months I have been studying spiritual formation. That is the process of the Spirit of God working in our lives to transform us into His likeness so that what He sees as evil, we see as evil, and what He sees as glorious and good, we see as glorious and good. Yielding ourselves to God unlocks power to completely change the focus of our thoughts, the feelings of our hearts, and the decisions we make.
Kenneth Boa, in his book Conformed to His Image, considers our spiritual walk with God from various angles, or facets. Like a precious stone that is cut by a master jeweler, Boa shares the multiple perspectives of spirituality from a multitude of facets that allow us to observe God’s relationship with our spirit from a variety of views. While each view provides a unique appearance, it is the same precious jewel that we observe. This helps us overcome our personal biases and preferences as we accept the gift of spirituality from God.
Kenneth identified one of the facets as Devotional Spirituality. Realization of God’s character through the revelation of His creation and His word demands a devotional response by the created to the Creator. The psalmist wrote, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” (Psalm 19:1, NASB) Likewise, Luke recorded the events surrounding Jesus’ return to Jerusalem during His final week before His crucifixion. As Jesus rode into the city, crowds cried with joy, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Luke 19: 38) The religious leaders told Jesus to silence the crowd, but Jesus answered them, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” (Luke 19: 40) You see, nature itself must declare God’s glory.
A few days later, in Jesus’ final hours of mortality, the crowds were silent. His disciples were gone. There were no human voices to praise God the Son and, as Jesus had said, nature itself cried out. The sky turned dark. Tombs were opened and death lost its control over the saints as they were raised. The veil of the temple split open from top to bottom. Even the battle hardened Roman soldiers recognized what had happened.
When God’s majesty is revealed through His creation, His word, or His works and recognized by believers, the spiritual response is devotion. Realizing that this same God first loved us with a will to provide for our good, our response is to love Him in return.
In Him,
Dan
