Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation

Introduction

Sometimes it’s not enough just to read a book. There are books whose ideas demand we interact with them and soak our souls in them. Such a book is Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart. It can’t be quickly devoured, as we say. It calls for our interaction.

C. S. Lewis talks about receiving a book instead of using it. A user sees reading as a pastime, but a recipient rests in the ideas. To receive a book is to explore what is being said and to let the author take you on the bicycle ride of your life.[1] You take in all the scenery and let yourself be challenged. You respond to God about what you’ve read. When you receive a book in this way instead of just using it, it adds to your life.

This book you hold is designed to help you interact with the rich material in Renovation of the Heart in a few specific ways. First, you get to see how someone else has interacted with it. Each selection from Renovation of the Heart is followed by my description of how one might process the content and what it might look like to walk it out.

Each of my entries also includes Today’s Experiment, which varies from engaging in simple activities you might use to explore the ideas (often interpersonal or physical activities) to interacting with God’s written Word in a right-brain imaginative way (to help you hear God) to pondering a few reflective questions. These experiments are not hard work; in fact, many are fun. If you don’t resonate with a particular exercise, you can tweak it to fit who you are.

You may want to get a spiral notebook for the purpose of doing the exercises and responding to God. Don’t be intimidated by the idea of journaling. Call it scribbling if you like. If possible, begin by addressing God, but don’t be afraid to be exactly who you are in your scribbling. Engagement in open, honest, back-and-forth conversation with God is what I hope this book will inspire.

This book also invites you to interact with Renovation’s ideas by jotting down notes as you go along. These aren’t notes like the ones you took in school, but notes to yourself—deep yet practical things you don’t want to forget. These notes may actually become part of your interaction with God. So I invite you to underline phrases in this book that speak to you. You may want to consider marking the text in this way:

star = key ideas to remember

your initials = next steps for you

Be open to God speaking to you, even in the smallest phrases. An idea may be a key one for you because you’ve been hearing it from God in several ways during the last year. And if you reread the book two or three years from now, you may mark different things.

You may even want to keep a favorite phrase list of the ideas that spoke most deeply to you. If so, go back to this list often. Pray about those ideas and discuss them with friends.

My goal is that you will truly interact with God—not just read a book.

[1] C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 88–89.

CHAPTER 1

KINGDOM POSSIBILITIES

When we open ourselves to New Testament writings and absorb our minds and hearts in one of the Gospels or in letters such as Ephesians or 1 Peter, we get the impression we are looking into another world and another life. It is a divine world and a divine life. Leaping out from the pages are amazing promises to those who give their life to this new world through their confidence in Jesus. For example, Jesus said that those who give themselves to him will receive living water, the Spirit of God himself. He will keep them from ever again being thirsty—being driven and ruled by unsatisfied desires (see John 4:14). Indeed, they will receive rivers of living water flowing from the center of their life to a thirsty world (John 7:38,

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).

Paul prayed that believers will know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that they may be filled with all the fullness of God . . . by the power at work within us, that is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:19-20,

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). Peter said that those who love and trust Jesus will rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy (1 Peter 1:8,

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), with genuine mutual love pouring from their hearts (1:22,

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), ridding themselves of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander (2:1,

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). As if that weren’t enough, these believers would silence scoffers of the Way of Christ by simply doing what is right (see 2:15) and casting all their anxieties upon God because he cares for us (see 5:7).

Ordinary people have entered this kingdom of God and are entering this divine world and divine life even now. It is a world that seems open to us and beckons us to enter. We feel its call.

We often say, Nobody’s perfect. We don’t say this just when someone fails but also when we run up against the Bible’s description of the kingdom personality of genuine mutual love that is free of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Perhaps we rush to say it because we feel inadequate compared to such love. But what if we don’t make that description about us—focusing on our shortcomings—but instead linger on the beauty of God and God’s kingdom?

Is it possible we rush to say, Nobody’s perfect because we’ve met so few people who show genuine love and move through life without superiority, insensitivity, or gossip? Maybe we have met a few but didn’t notice the beauty of their Christlikeness. Instead, we were impressed by other things—their ability to quote Bible verses or answer questions about world religions. Those who speak articulately about the Bible may draw our attention more than those who live a transformed life.

Try picturing this hypothetical moment of dwelling on the beauty of God and the kingdom life: Let’s say I confessed to you my disgust with someone who annoyed me and how hopeless I felt about ever loving this person. What if instead of trying to make me feel better by saying, Nobody’s perfect, you said you believed in God’s power to transform me into a radical person who pays loving attention to those who annoy me? What if you prayed for me about this? What if later that day you encountered an annoying person and, without thinking, treated that person with kindness and attentiveness—partly because of the transforming effect of our conversation about the kingdom personality?

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT

Read slowly these phrases describing the kingdom life and personality:

to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge

to be filled with all the fullness of God

power at work within us

able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine

rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy

genuine mutual love pouring from their hearts

without malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander

Thank God for the beauty of the kingdom life and for the possi-bility of the transformation of your soul. Spend a minute or two longing for the kingdom of God in your life: Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done!

CHAPTER 2

NO UNSOLVABLE PUZZLE

In many historical periods, as well as today, Christians have generally found their way into the divine life slowly and with great difficulty, if at all. Yet formation in Christ is not a mysterious, irrational process, something that strikes like lightning whenever and wherever it will, if at all. It is not something that is magically conferred upon us in the midst of curious rituals and antique practices. Spiritual experiences (such as Paul’s on the Damascus road) do not constitute spiritual formation, though sometimes they can be a meaningful part of it.

One reason so many people fail to immerse themselves in the words of the New Testament (see quotations in previous devotion) is that the life they see there is so unlike what they know from their experience. This is true even though they may be quite faithful to their church and really do have Jesus Christ as their hope. The New Testament presentation of the life in Christ only discourages them or makes them feel hopeless.

Why should this be so? Surely the life God holds out to us in Jesus was not meant to be an unsolvable puzzle! But this is my observation: For all our good intentions and strenuous methods, we do not approach and receive that divine life in the right way. We do not comprehend and convey the wisdom that Jesus and the Bible give us about the nature of human beings and our redemption from the destructive powers that occupy us. Consider these other ideas:

It isn’t true that where there is a will there is automatically a way (though, of course, will is crucial). We also need an understanding of exactly what needs to be done and how it can be accomplished.

Spiritual formation in Christ is an orderly process. Although God can triumph in disorder, that is not his choice. And instead of focusing on what God can do, we must humble ourselves to accept the ways he has chosen to work with us. Those are clearly laid out in the Bible.

As I visited a missionary friend who was working hard to revive dying churches, I asked him about his plans for discipleship. Just get people in the church door, he told me. Then they’ll catch on. This reminded me of the old saying that going into a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going into a garage makes you a car. I thought of all the hostile board meetings, church splits, and personal insults I’d witnessed among people who had been in the church door a long time. I stood there and prayed, O God, give us all a vision and a plan for the transformation of souls.

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT

As you venture into a journey of spiritual formation through this book, consider your vision and plan for the formation of your soul. What do you already know about how God is forming your soul? Make some notes about this as you begin the journey through this book.

What do you think of the following ideas about soul transformation?

Immerse yourself in the words of the New Testament. What would it look like to experience Scripture passages and taste and see that God is good? What ways of being in the Word (with certain people, using certain methods) help you hear God speaking to you?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way is not true. When have you strained to become a better person, relying on your will alone? What techniques (such as berating yourself) have you used to force yourself to try to act like Jesus?

Spiritual formation in Christ is an orderly process. Confess to any beliefs you might have that spiritual growth will somehow just happen without your paying any attention to it. Consider what God has done (what has happened) that has facilitated the most growth in you. How did you cooperate in this?

Pray as you are led. Ask God to show you today the small steps in your life that would quietly and certainly lead to inner transformation.

CHAPTER 3

CHANGE ME ON THE INSIDE

Our lives are a result of what we have become in the depths of our being—what we call our spirit, will, or heart. From there we see our world and interpret reality. From there we make choices, break forth into action, and try to change our world. That is why the greatest need of collective humanity is the renovation of our heart.

Accordingly, the revolution of Jesus involves the objective of eventually bringing all of human life under the direction of his wisdom, goodness, and power as part of God’s eternal plan for the universe. The revolution of Jesus is one of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through an ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, habits of choice, bodily tendencies, and social relations. From these persons, social structures will naturally be transformed so that justice roll[s] down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24,

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). Such streams cannot flow through corrupted souls.

Spiritual formation for the Christian refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self so that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself. To the degree in which spiritual formation in Christ is successful, the outer life of the individual becomes a natural outflow of the character and teachings of Jesus. Christian spiritual formation is focused entirely on Jesus. Its goal is conformity to Christ that arises out of an inner transformation accomplished through purposeful interaction with the grace of God in Christ. Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation (see John 13:34-35; 14:21).

If Christ’s people genuinely enter Christ’s way of the heart, they will find a sure path toward becoming the persons they were meant to