God’s Divinely Appointed Means for Spiritual Formation
What is your gut reaction to the following statements?
Indeed, solitude and silence are powerful means to grace. Bible study, prayer, and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as is obvious to any observer. If all the people doing them were transformed to health and righteousness by them, the world would be vastly changed. Their failure to bring about the change is precisely because the body and soul are so exhausted, fragmented, and conflicted that the prescribed activities cannot be appropriately engaged in and by and large degenerate into legalistic and ineffectual rituals. Lengthy solitude and silence, including rest, can make them very powerful.
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission, © 2006 HarperCollins, pp. 153-154.
Do you sigh, nod your head, and think “Yeah, that has certainly been my experience growing up in Christian churches.” Or do you furrow your eyebrows and exclaim “What do you mean that Bible study, prayer, and attending church don’t bring transformation? Of course they do—those are vital God-ordained means of grace!”
We recently finished an excellent book by professor and pastor Matthew Bingham titled A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation. Bingham presents a very thorough and thoughtful response to the ideas often proliferated in the modern spiritual formation movement, but rather than rejecting the concept of spiritual formation entirely, he looks to the writings of Reformed authors, primarily Puritans, to gain an understanding of it that is distinctively Reformed.
The simplest biblical picture of spiritual formation is “keeping the heart,” as seen in Proverbs 4:23. Bingham expands on that understanding with this definition:
Spiritual formation is the conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our Spirit-given thirst for God (Ps. 42:1-2) through divinely appointed means and with a view toward “work[ing] out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) and becoming “mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).
Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, © 2025 Crossway, p. 35.
A crucial part of this definition is that this process utilizes “divinely appointed means.” By this, Bingham refers to “those means or methods that God plainly reveals to us in his word.” From a Reformed perspective, those divinely appointed means are specifically: Scripture, meditation, and prayer (or the “Reformation triangle” as Bingham calls it).
If Scripture, meditation, and prayer are indeed the divinely appointed means for spiritual formation, how should we make sense of the many other seemingly important and helpful means (or disciplines) emphasized in modern expressions of spiritual formation? And how are we to engage with statements like those of Dallas Willard, which seem to downplay these “commonly prescribed activities” as ineffectual for spiritual transformation?
The Difference Between the “What” and the “How”
I think that what both Bingham and Willard are emphasizing is the interplay of the “what” and the “how” of Christian spiritual formation. I believe their perspectives are actually more similar than they may appear at first glance. Let me explain…
In Dallas Willard’s extensive writing and teaching, he repeatedly points to transformation of the heart through renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:1-2), and though he writes of many spiritual disciplines, he emphasizes the study of Scripture as foundational for the renovation of the heart. Even in the opening quote, Willard is not advocating a departure from “Bible study, prayer, and church attendance,” but showing how we can engage in them in ways that lead to real transformation. The lack of effectiveness in transforming hearts is not in some deficiency of the disciplines themselves (the “what”) but results from the practice of them merely as “legalistic and ineffectual rituals” (the “how”).
By that same token, the disciplines Willard is encouraging—solitude and silence (which would not fall into Bingham’s category of “divinely appointed means”)—are not being presented as a substitute for Scripture, prayer, and church, but as a means by which those primary practices can be effectively engaged in. We might say these disciplines are “secondary,” creating space for a more transformative engagement with the divinely appointed means. If that is so, then we should not look to those secondary disciplines as being transformative in and of themselves, but as assisting our hearts to receive what the divinely appointed means are intended to provide.
If my leg is broken and I need to get to the doctor’s office to have it set and mended, I might use crutches or a wheelchair to help me get where I need to go. In that case, I would not see the crutches or wheelchair as the final solution—they are not healing my leg—but they would make it easier to reach the doctor. Clearly it would not be wise for me to say “Oh look—I’ve got crutches now, so I don’t need to go to the doctor.” But nor would it be prudent to try to hobble on a broken leg to the doctor, simply because I know that crutches aren’t going to heal me. I know where the healing is found (the “what”), but I can use other means to help me get there (the “how”).
How This Shapes OakHaven’s Retreat Ministry
One of the main ministries that OakHaven provides to help ministry leaders endure is that of retreat. But we don’t offer retreats as an end in themselves, as if merely by getting away from the busyness of regular life your heart would be transformed. Rather, if you participate in one of our retreats, you can count on being given Scripture to study and meditate on, and prompts to help you engage with God in prayer. The retreat simply creates space for an unhurried, longer-than-usual time to be in the Word of God, and that—being in the Word of God—is what makes the retreat transformative. In fact, retreats are the perfect “container” for deep and meaningful engagement in all three of those divinely appointed means: Scripture, meditation, and prayer. Could you—should you—engage with Scripture, meditation, and prayer outside of retreat times? Certainly! Can those times outside of retreat be transformative for your heart? Definitely! But does pulling away for retreat help “get you to the doctor’s office” of Scripture, meditation, and prayer so that you can better engage with God’s transforming means? Come and see!
Solitude, retreat, unplugging, journaling (and many other disciplines) are not divinely appointed means by which the Spirit of God directly transforms our hearts into Christ’s likeness. So we should not look to them in place of or on equal footing with the divinely appointed means. But to the extent that they create space for our hearts to engage fruitfully in God’s appointed means of transformation, there is still good reason for us to pursue them. For instance, don’t view unplugging as transformative in itself, but unplug for the sake of more fully engaging with Scripture. Don’t pursue solitude merely as an escape, but so that you can pray and meditate on Gospel truth without distraction. Don’t look at those other disciplines as transformative in and of themselves, but at the same time don’t dismiss them as unimportant in your sanctification process.
Holding Both Together
Bingham writes: “…the Bible repeatedly highlights some things rather than others as the tools that God has given his people for growing in their walk with him. Our job, then, is not to invent new ‘spiritual practices’ that seem attractive or appealing to us but rather to take up with fresh vigor and appropriate creativity those practices already given.” [p. 37] Fresh vigor and appropriate creativity sounds a lot like what Dallas Willard is aiming at in the opening quote: “Lengthy solitude and silence, including rest, can make them very powerful.” What God has ordained to bring transformation to our souls—namely, Scripture, meditation, and prayer—are indeed very powerful and effective. And if the creative use of other disciplines helps us receive those divinely ordained means, it is wise to use them with fresh vigor and joy.