Spiritual Fitness Training

BECOMING THE PERSON & PEOPLE YOU WERE CREATED TO BE

Change is the stuff of life.  We all are continually changing.  The relevant question is, "What are we changing into?"  Spiritual Fitness Training emphasizes our gradual and continual change into better image bearers of Jesus.  All change has four core components.  Each unfolds out of and becomes intertwined with the other.  These four components are: 

     A Story we are to know
     An Identity we are to grow
     Practices we are to sow
     Signs we are to show

Every person develops a Master Story (Worldview) that serves as the lens through which they interpret and engage life.  This Master Story explains the way things were, became, are, can and will be.  Spiritual Fitness Training works to make God's Master Story our Master Story without being perverted or minimized by counter-God stories. This Master Story in turns shapes a person or people's identity.  Knowing who we are and who God is will provide clarity to our purpose and the practices to engage which are consistent with that identity.  Finally, the way we engage life will lead to consequences (cause and effect) or signs by which it is determined if the Master Story is truthful or not. Because all formation follows this basic pattern:  Story - Identity - Practices - Signs (SIPS), it holds true for the formation of any person or people group, from an individual to an entire country.  SIPS is the way spiritual formation functions. 

It is story then, which primarily shapes change in life.  Change the dominant (believed)story and you change everything else (Identity, Practices and Signs).  That is why reading, understanding and applying God's Original Story to ours is so crucial.  God's Original Story instructs us in regards to our original identity and the appropriate practices and the right signs of life to strive and look for. 

But not all stories, identities, practices or signs are true.  Indeed, most stories, identities, practices and signs are false stories, false identities, false practices and false signs.  When the Serpent said to Eve, "Did God really say?" he effectively introduced the seeds for every counter-God story since.  Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:7,

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.   

Silly and irreverent myths are counter-God stories of reality.  They don't lead to godliness.  A counter-God story of reality leads to a counter-God identity. A counter-God identity leads to counter-God practices and counter-God practices leads to counter-God signs - ungodliness.  A baseball player who wrongly thinks of themselves as a soccer player (counter story and identity) will not be able to effectively engage baseball (practices and signs) because a soccer story and identity will produce soccer practice and signs - not baseball.  Spiritual Fitness Training emphasizes the true story of God as normative for developing a God picture of reality including our true identity and the corresponding practices for that identity.  Spiritual Fitness Training seeks to develop a person and peoples ability to discern and normalize God's Story into theirs so that they might engage life as productive image bearers of Jesus.

Spiritual Fitness Training utilizes a formation matrix built on the twin axis of Story. The horizontal axis opens up the formative side of story (SIPS) and the vertical axis opens up the structural side of story (R5). SIPS is the way that formation is worked out.  R5 is the way that formation is lived out. SIPS is the way Story functions.  R5 is the way Story is shaped.  Thus, the formation matrix reveals Story's inner system (SIPS) and its outward, living form (R5). 

This is important because if we attempt spiritual formation by just focusing on one system component (practices for example) without equally focusing on how those practices are lived out in the various storylines or how they are connected with the other components of formation (Identity and Signs) we will be taking a minimalist approach that fails to encompass the larger design of our being.  It would be like operating on the cardiovascular system without paying attention to the respiratory or nervous systems. Spiritual Fitness Training takes a comprehensive approach to spiritual growth by emphasizing both story (Spiritual) and growth (Formation) as complementary and interdependent components of training in godliness.