The idea of loving my enemies captivates me. What a life! What a way to be in the world. I read about it in the gospels and am entranced. I sit in a pew and listen to it, grinning and nodding. But all of this enthusiasm comes from a distance. When I get near an enemy—someone I’m in a contentious moment with—it doesn’t look so attractive anymore. I’m not captivated. I’m not amazed. I’m annoyed. And I want to retreat. I don’t want to love them.

And here’s the temptation: it’s easy to love the idea of love.

So many spiritual things work like this. They shine from a distance. They stay safe in the abstract. But the moment I get near them and put them into practice, they become hard, irritating, and costly.

I think what I’m learning now is not to nod too quickly at Jesus' words. Some teachings need to first expose how deeply I resist them. Perhaps acknowledging that resistance is not disobedience, but the first honest step toward obedience.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

In this excerpt, C.S. Lewis imagines a senior devil coaching a junior one on how best to tempt a human soul:

“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary...

You must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy...”

—The Screwtape Letters

A Question to Carry

How might you take one small step toward an enemy this week?

Thanks for reading,

—Jon

I used to think conversion was a single moment. I prayed a prayer, walked an aisle, marked a date in my Bible. That was it—I was converted. But the longer I apprentice myself to Jesus, the more I see that all of my life is just one giant conversion. Every moment is an opportunity to turn, more and more to God, to be made a little bit more into his loving likeness.

These conversions are hidden, like roots inching along in the dark. Sometimes it looks like:

• An irritation that exposes my impatience

• A loss that teaches me to let go … in a good way

• A joy that reminds me life is a gift

I can’t manage or control any of this. It’s what God does. Conversion is his work, his grace, his way of slowly and steadily showing me how to love like Christ. My part is both hard and simple: pay attention, participate, say yes, keep turning. See every day as part of one long conversion, every moment as a chance to be remade into love.

Because that’s really what time is for: learning to love like God loves.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“...I no longer conceive of God’s grace as a bolt of lightning which strikes our lives in a clearly miraculous fashion. To those who have experienced conversion, it may seem rather like a miracle. But the miracle has taken place not through any one inexplicable event, but rather through a succession of events, all leading in a single direction. It is the collective experience of those events which assumes a miraculous character for the convert.

—Emilie Griffin, Turning

A Question to Carry

What small conversion might be unfolding in your daily life?

Keep turning,

—Jon

There are still parts of my life I have not fully surrendered. Some remain hidden from me. Others I recognize clearly, yet I still struggle to let them go.

I tell myself I’ll change later, but when has later ever been easier. So why do I keep putting it off? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m scared. Maybe I’m lazy.

What I do know is that I can’t seem to let go on my own.

When I’m stuck in illusion or stubbornness, God is left with no choice but to allow consequences to break over me. Because God’s kind of love is not sentimental. His love loves us unto purity. He will not allow me—or any of us—to stay stuck. He intends for us to grow into who he designed us to be: like Christ.

That truth scares and steadies me. God will love me into freedom. It might come as clarity. It might come as fire. But however it comes, he won’t leave me where I am—caged in on myself. He has a great good for me … and for all of us.

Because that’s what love does. It wills the good of the other.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“Many a man’s work must be burned, that by that very burning he may be saved... If still he cling to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaves him—possibly by looking like the truth.

The man who loves God, and is not yet pure, courts the burning of God...

For Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire.”

—George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons I

A Question to Carry

Where have consequences in your life become God’s invitation to grow?

Until next week,

—Jon

I’ve been training for two decades. And I am happy to report that I’ve changed.

I don’t rage as much as I used to. I’ve learned to listen better, even when I don’t agree. I’ve become gentler with my kids. I’ve become less narrow and more open minded. Some bad habits have fallen away, and some healthy ones have taken root. And underneath it all, there’s a deep current of trust in God’s ultimate goodness. That’s real. That’s transformation.

But if I’m honest, I haven’t changed as much as I expected. Not as fast as I hoped. In many ways, I’m still the same. I still check to see if people notice my accomplishments. I still accumulate more than I need. I still try to control people and outcomes. I still turn to food for comfort when pressure builds. And I still wonder:

Why is transformation taking so long?

I want to be more like Christ. I want to love like God loves. I’m tired of it feeling like an idea—I want to live it. But the pace is glacial. And that’s one of the marks of the Illuminative Way: waiting. There’s movement, to be sure, but no arrival.

From Chapter 7 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

Friedrich von Hügel, writing to his niece, offered this encouragement about the long road of becoming:

“You want to grow in virtue, to serve God, to love Christ? Well, you will grow in and attain to these things if you will make them a slow and sure, an utterly real, a mountain step-plod and ascent, willing to have to camp for weeks or months in spiritual desolation, darkness and emptiness at different stages in your march and growth.”

—Letters to a Niece

A Question to Carry

Look back ten years and name one small change that has taken root inside you?

Keep walking,

—Jon

P.S. The audiobook of Dwelling in Christ just went up on Audible, narrated by me. If listening is how you take in books, you can pre-order it here ahead of the September 1 release.

But if you think you’ll be reading the book, would you consider adding it to your “Want to Read” list on Goodreads (See screenshot below)?

Go To Goodreads

When people add a book to their “Want to Read” list, Goodreads surfaces it to more readers, making it easier for others to discover it.

Thanks for the help. And thank you for walking with me on this book project. I’m grateful for everyone who’s helping it find its way into the hands of others.

Keep Walking,
Jon

P.S. I’m also in the middle of writing an epilogue to Dwelling in Christ. It won’t be in the printed book, but I’ll be sharing it for free on my website in the coming months. I’m excited to send it your way when it’s ready—I think it will make a fitting final chapter to the journey.

I didn’t grow up hearing about the Desert Fathers and Mothers. In the Evangelical world where I was raised, their names were mostly absent. It was only later, through my friend Chris Hall, that I was introduced to them in any meaningful way. I remember being struck by the strangeness of it all—men and women leaving the cities, going into the desert, and giving themselves to prayer and silence. They weren’t simply running away from the world; they were running toward a deeper life with Christ. In many ways, they preserved the spirit of early Christianity while also pioneering a new way of living faithfully in their time.

Not knowing about them felt a little like growing up in America without ever hearing of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Their wisdom has shaped so much of the Christian tradition, and yet I knew nothing about them.

Truthfully, their lives were deeply attractive to me. But I also knew I wasn’t called to the desert. I’m not monastic. Still, I found myself inspired by them. Their lives reminded me that following Christ always requires intention. It means living in a way that often pushes against the assumptions and rhythms of the culture.

That’s what they were doing in the desert.

And that’s what I am trying to learn to do in my home, my neighborhood, and my community.

Not very successfully, if I’m honest. Most of the time I feel like a phony. But I keep trying anyway. Maybe it’s possible to make a little monasticism among all these malls and minivans.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ... The sought a way to God that was uncharted and freely chosen, not inherited from others who had mapped it out beforehand...

The Desert Fathers later acquired a reputation for fanaticism because of the stories that were told about their ascetic feats by indiscreet admirers. They were indeed ascetics: but when we read their own words and see what they themselves thought about life, we find that they were anything but fanatics. They were humble, quiet, sensible people, with a deep knowledge of human nature and enough understanding of the things of God to realize that they knew very little about Him.”

—Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

A Question to Carry

Have you ever drawn on the Desert Fathers and Mothers for guidance in your spiritual life?

Keep listening to the old voices,

—Jon

P.S. Remember, there were many Desert Mothers too. Their lives were also full of Christ.

My early purgative years were full of fire—conviction, clarity, urgency. The fire burned away illusions, stripping false ideas about God and myself. It was a gift, lighting the path ahead, helping me embrace transformation. There was energy, inspiration...

But somewhere along the path, my excitement turned into disorientation. I was running in multiple directions without gaining traction.

Each new practice stole attention from the last, leaving a trail of half-built habits. I was always chasing the next thing—the next practice, the next book, the next spark of insight. And like any project started without a plan, my spiritual life was beginning to resemble a construction site—scattered, unfinished, unstable.

Jesus’ warning about the incomplete tower was playing out in my life.

In the first century, building a tower took years. Every stone had to be hauled, cut, and placed with care. The real cost wasn’t just materials but patience. Without planning, a half-built structure stood as a silent witness to poor preparation.

Jesus warns us not to let our apprenticeship be like that. Don’t set out toward the Unitive Way without planning. Yet that’s exactly what I did—not intentionally. I just didn’t realize planning was part of the process.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard wrote about the need for a Curriculum for Christlikeness but I couldn’t find one right away. It took several years before I did. Oddly enough, it wasn’t something new, it was old. Very old.

A Rule of Life.*

*From Chapter 5 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

That desire to be in a relationship with God is at the core of the rule of life. By making a commitment to prayer, to study, to a spiritual community, to our own needs and those of others, we create a balanced life that revolves around our love of God. We come to that commitment as a result of our own romance with God, out of the knowledge that God loves us and wants–desperately—to be in a relationship with us. And as a result of the love we experience we are emboldened and spread that love outward to others.

—Debra Farrington, Living Faith Day by Day

A Question to Carry

What small rhythm could anchor your days right now?

One stone at a time,

—Jon

When I was younger, the Bible was presented to me as a book to master. I needed to study it like a textbook. I needed to know the context, the language, the cultural details if I was going to unlock the author’s meaning … and God’s meaning too.

If I could explain what an author “meant,” then I was doing it right—I was actually doing discipleship. While all of this has its place, I’ve come to see it differently now.

Biblical languages, context, and culture are valuable—they can open doors and deepen understanding—but they’re best treated like a course you take and then move on from. Or maybe like a season you enter from time to time. They help you get your bearings, but they’re not the way I want to approach the Bible day after day.

Why? Because the Bible is not a subject to conquer; it’s a record of people trying to live their lives with God. It’s Abraham hearing a call and then responding. It’s David stumbling and starting over. It’s Mary saying yes. It’s Peter failing and returning. These aren’t abstract lessons; they are stories of actual people trying to pay attention to God and then respond in a way that makes sense. In other words, when I open my Bible, I see a mirror. Their struggles look like mine. Their questions sound familiar.

That’s why I’ve begun to treat my Bible less like a text book and more like an altar—a place to meet God, to kneel, to listen, to hear, and hopefully to obey. Context and study matter, but I no longer make them my aim. I don’t want to get lost in word studies or background notes and miss the encounter itself.

These days my questions are less “what does this passage mean?” and more “What is God asking of me?” Abraham and David and Mary had their time to live with God; now it’s my time. When I read this way, I’m getting in on the action. I’m getting involved with God.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

The primary task of theology is not to explain the historical meaning of the text but to use the Scriptures as a means of grace in drawing the reader to Jesus Christ. In other words, biblical interpretation is not a historical discipline.

To use a patristic expression, it is mystagogical in character: biblical interpretation leads the reader into the mystery of God in Christ. The theologian’s terminus does not lie in the history behind the text or even in the text itself. The theologian attends to Scripture as a sacramental means of entering into the mystery of God.

Theology (and Scripture as a means) aims at nothing less than the divine life itself.

—Hans Boersma, Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew

A Question to Carry

How might it change your reading to see the Bible as an altar instead of a textbook?

Until next week,

—Jon

I have two pots on either side of my front door and two hanging baskets on the back porch. I walk past them nearly every day, watching the English Ivy inch forward. These plants have become my teachers. Each one needs attention: water in the morning, more light here, less there. If I forget, the leaves get sad. The lesson is always the same: growth requires care.

I’ve killed plenty of ivy over the years. But the gift of these pots and hanging baskets is that I can dig up the death and start fresh. Each time this happens I learn a new lesson about watering, sunlight, temperature, and ultimately, care.

The same is true of our life with God.

Transformation doesn’t happen automatically or by accident. It requires attention and care: Am I watering my soul enough? Am I placing myself in the right kind of light? Am I noticing how the seasons change and working within that rhythm or am I ignoring it? The old phrase in the Christian tradition was the “care of souls.” It still holds, I think.

Grace and care is what makes sustained growth possible—both for English Ivy, and human love.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

The new life you have just entered has often been likened to that of a gardener. The soil he tills he has received from God, as well as the seed and the sun’s warmth and the rain and the power to grow. But the work is entrusted to him.

If the husbandman wishes to have a rich harvest, he must work early and late, weed and aerate, water and spray, for cultivation is beset by many dangers that threaten the harvest. He must work without ceasing, be constantly on the watch, constantly alert, constantly prepared; but even so, the harvest ultimately depends wholly on the elements, that is, on God.

The garden that we have undertaken to tend and watch over is the field of our own heart; the harvest is eternal life.

—Tito Colliander (1904–1989), Way of the Ascetics

A Question to Carry

Do you keep a pot of flowers, vegetables, or even a small tree? I learn how to care for my own soul, by caring for them.

Keep tending,

—Jon

Here was a myriad of Christian pilgrims—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant—not consumed by their theological differences but centered on articulating a universal way of being with Christ in order to become like him.

Each of these saints lived in a unique time and place, and yet buried within their pages were striking similarities:

Many talked of purification, cleansing, shedding of sin, a kind of detachment from the distractions that hindered their relationship with Christ. Others described a process of illumination—a deepening of their awareness, a recognition of the Spirit’s transforming presence, marked by increasing clarity and growth in virtue. And it was impossible to miss their insistence on unity or oneness, as if they were arriving at a deeply intimate friendship with God.

The more I read, the more I realized that these weren’t just rare experiences unique to a few—they were developmental stages everyone encounters on the journey to becoming like Christ.

In other words, I was reading dispatches—firsthand reports from people who had actually been there. I was tracking footprints—these saints were sharing transformational terrain.*

*From Chapter 1 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“When by purgation the self has become detached from the ‘things of sense,’ and acquired those virtues which are the ‘ornaments of the spiritual marriage,’ its joyful consciousness of the transcendent order returns in an enhanced form ... Illumination brings a certain apprehension of the Absolute, a sense of the Divine Presence: but not true union with it. It is a state of happiness ... Union must be looked upon as the true goal of mystical growth; that permanent establishment of life upon transcendent levels of reality, of which ecstasies give a foretaste to the soul. Intense forms of it, described by individual mystics ... In the old, frank language of the mystics, it is the deified life.”

—Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

A Question to Carry

Where have you already seen purgation, illumination, or union at work in your life?

On the journey with you,

—Jon

Almost fifteen years ago I was driving Gary Moon—a psychologist who also founded the Renovaré Institute—to the airport. Just before he shut the car door, he leaned in and suggested I read a book. It was The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware.

That one recommendation sent me down a path I didn’t expect. If you were to flip through it now, you’d see that almost every page is starred and underlined.

Up to that point, much of my Christian understanding had been framed in transactional terms: do this, get that; fail here, pay there. Ware’s writing—a more ancient and Orthodox version of Christianity—offered another vision. One that was older, deeper, and more transformational. One that didn’t reduce sin to a debt ledger but described the Fall as a wound we carry, something we suffer and then pass along to others.

That shift mattered. It made Christianity more viable to me, more honest, more beautiful.

I’ll always be grateful for Gary’s passing word in the car that day, and for how God used it to turn me toward a broader stream of Christian faith. A book can become a doorway. A conversation can redirect a whole life. Maybe you’ve had something like that too—a person, a word, a book—that helped you see differently.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam’s original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis.

But does it also imply an inherited guilt?

Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical “taint” of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being.

And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin.”

—Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

A Question to Carry

Who in your life has pointed you toward a broader stream of Christian faith?

Thanks Gary,

—Jon

Sometimes I look at the flame of a candle and marvel at its energetic stillness. How can something be so full of energy and yet so still? That’s the mystery of the flame.

To live like that—to be a bright and shining light, to burn wildly with love, while at the same time being still—is a mystery worth longing for. I don’t mean being still in body, though that matters, but still in mind, in attention, in desire. A kind of stillness that comes from an inner ordering, where love for what is good steadies my every movement.

That’s how I imagine the experience of contemplation.

I’ve read the old descriptions—of souls stilled in God, of hearts lifted into a quiet fire—and it sounds almost too good to be true. I don’t know if I’ve experienced it. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. But I can dream...

The dream looks something like my attention resting on God with ease as I water my hanging baskets on the porch. I’m not straining to attend, I just am. There’s no tug-of-war. No restless shifting of thoughts. Just a steady interior gaze, as reliable as my breath.

I guess that’s why the mystics spoke of contemplation as gift more than achievement.

I can’t muscle my way into it. I wait, I long, and sometimes—if grace permits—I’m given the gift of contemplation.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“This love divine in its nature and glimpsed only through the gift of divine light, is the greatest of all mysteries. It is the source, means, and end of all life, yet no one can explain or define it ... It is the one sheer gift of contemplation, completely unattainable by autonomous human effort. The realization of this love always remains mysterious. We may fall into it, wake up within it, discover that it pervades us, but no matter how we might try, we can never reduce it to an object for study or definition.”

—Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul

A Question to Carry

What image best captures your dream of being united with God?

Until next week,

—Jon

I look around and see how many good things fill a day: sun on my face, a smooth stone in my palm, a Mary Oliver poem, a Wendell Berry essay, Erroll Garner at the piano, Nat King Cole’s voice, a steak cooked just right, a grilled peach, a frozen margarita.

Life is full of these kinds of gifts—ordinary and extraordinary all at once. But here’s the trouble I keep running into: I can take something good and turn it sour by overdoing it. I can eat too much and feel sick. I can lose myself in a book and ignore the needs around me. I can overwork in the yard while neglecting the people inside my house.

The problem isn’t that the gifts are bad—it’s that I don’t always know how to receive them well.

That seems to be one of the hardest lessons of the Christian life. The real challenge isn’t only resisting what is destructive, it’s learning how to partake of what is good without twisting it. I suspect this is part of God’s training for all of us—learning how to handle joy without harm, so that in the end we can be ready for the one great Good that all these smaller gifts point toward.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“We live in an age in which right discipline and control over one’s life are so little understood that obsession and abstinence are the only categories that make sense for the modern mind. Either we reject a thing out of hand or we accept it without reservation. This is why dogmatism is so popular today–whether in religion, politics, or economics.

It is precisely this that makes it so incumbent upon us to teach children use without abuse in all of life. We show them by example that it is quite possible to watch a single television program and then turn the set off, to eat what is required for good health and then stop, to enjoy good music and then experience silence.

Once children see from us that it is possible to exercise restraint over human passions, then it will be possible to convey the notion of money as servant rather than master.”

—Richard J. Foster, The Challenge of the Disciplined Life

A Question to Carry

What good thing are you tempted to overdo?

Still learning all of this,

—Jon

Gluttony isn’t something from my past—it’s still with me. I haven’t conquered it yet, and God hasn’t taken it away. I’m not sure why. But maybe it has something to do with what we’ve been exploring. Maybe some failures remain—not to condemn us, but to cultivate something deeper within us.

There’s an old piece of Christian wisdom that explains it:

Humility deepens as we learn to patiently tolerate our imperfections.

Patiently tolerating our imperfections doesn’t mean condoning them; it means recognizing that transformation takes a long time. The further I’ve traveled, the clearer this has become: some imperfections don’t have to be obstacles to transformation—they’re invitations to a deeper kind.

Even succumbing to temptation, though never something we should seek, can lead us into a raw honesty about where we are on our journey. It pushes us toward a dependence that dismantles our carefully constructed illusions of self-sufficiency and sets in motion the most powerful force in the world: humility.

This humility has changed how I see myself—not as a hero, but as someone vulnerable, wounded, and still journeying. And from that humble recognition, compassion has emerged within me, softening my heart and opening me to empathy.

*From Chapter 4 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“What is humility? In some important respects it is the master virtue that includes all the others, It is not a matter of deliberately cultivating low self-esteem and a doormat mentality, as we might think. Rather, for the monastic teachers being humble meant knowing that we are all beloved children of God, that the worth of each person comes not from ourselves but from God. Because this is true, the humble man or woman knows that it is not part of any Christian’s job to judge or be scornful of other people.

A humble person is one who is, on the one hand, able to accept responsibility toward others for what he does wrong without feeling humiliated by it, and, on the other, to accept praise or thanks without feeling particularly embarrassed or lording it over others because of his or her accomplishments.”

—Roberta Bondi, To Pray & To Love

A Question to Carry

How might weakness in you grow compassion for others?

More soon,

—Jon

Yesterday my son said something that lit a fuse inside me. The anger rose so fast that before I even knew what I was doing, words flew out that I wish I wouldn’t have said.

In these kinds of moments, the emotions feel stronger than me. Too strong to manage, too strong to love from inside of.

Even after decades of formation, I can’t always react rightly. This is frustrating—I wish I were further along. But there is no shortcut. Christlikeness is reached the way any road is walked: one step at a time.

So in the meantime, when anger flares, I lean on a simple technique—distance: an hour, a night’s sleep, sometimes more. Once the fire cools, I can reflect, I can respond better. I can see myself, the other person, and the situation more clearly. Then I can return steadier, able to respond with more love—hopefully more like Christ.

It doesn’t erase the internal eruption I feel in the moment, but it does give me a chance to not to erupt on the person!

And maybe this is part of a developing holiness—not perfection in every reaction, but patience with ourselves while God keeps shaping us to react well. The saints remind us that even small irritations are teachers if we stay with them long enough. Perhaps one day my internal reactions will change.

But for now, distance feels like a grace.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“Teach me, O God, to use all the circumstances of my life today to nurture the fruits of the Spirit rather than the fruits of sin.

Let me use disappointment as material for patience;

Let me use success as material for thankfulness;

Let me use anxiety as material for perseverance;

Let me use danger as material for courage;

Let me use criticism as material for learning;

Let me use praise as material for humility;

Let me use pleasures as material for self-control;

Let me use pain as material for endurance.”

—John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer

A Question to Carry

What strong emotion from this week would you like to revisit with someone today?

Grace and patience conquer all,

—Jon

When I first started trying spiritual practices, I treated them like lifting weights. Do the reps, see the results. That’s how I understood practice—through basketball drills, through jogging, through the repetition of push-ups. You repeat the action enough and eventually you grow.

I thought prayer, fasting, and silence worked the same way. Put in the effort, get the outcome.

• Fast, and gluttony will fade.

• Repeat the Jesus Prayer, and attention will sharpen.

• Practice silence and my words will grow wiser.

To be fair, sometimes those things happened. But over time I began to see a danger in expecting them to. When the expectation grew too strong, I felt I was the one in control. I became more like an engineer instead of a farmer.

In other words, I began to think of grace as a guaranteed return—a simple matter of managing inputs and outputs.

But spiritual practices are not exercises for acquiring virtue; they are ways of opening myself to God, to be filled with his life. God gives virtue in measure to my capacity to receive it, so that it does not harm me or others. The timing is never predictable. My effort has a place, but it is never decisive.

When it comes to spiritual practice, the question is not so much am I becoming stronger, but whether God’s love is taking deeper root within me? Am I growing in compassion, gentleness, self-control? Am I feeling less self-concerned? Self-focused? Am I growing more at ease with irritation?

That’s why I think it is always wise to pair the athlete metaphor with that of the farmer. The athlete builds skill. The farmer tends soil and waits. Both matter. But only one reminds us that growth is ultimately God’s work, not ours.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“A discipline for the spiritual life is, when the dust of history is blown away, nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom. When we understand that grace (charis) is gift (charisma), we then see that to grow in grace is to grow in what is given to us of God and by God. The disciplines are then, in the clearest sense, a means to that grace and also to those gifts. Spiritual disciplines, “exercises unto godliness,” are only activities undertaken to make us capable of receiving more of his life and power without harm to ourselves or others.”

—Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

A Question to Carry

Where have you mistaken discipline for control?

Keep tending,

—Jon

Hi Everyone,

This fall, I’ll be giving a series of talks on my book Dwelling in Christ. In preparing them, I keep returning to a morning twenty years ago that changed everything.

I walked down the stairs into the living room where my dad was preparing a sermon. Books were scattered across the floor, instrumental music was playing, and a candle was lit.

I filled my cup with coffee, walked back in, and picked up one of the books—The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. I wasn’t really reading. Just flipping. Until I stopped at the second chapter and read the quote at the top of the page. It changed the entire trajectory of my life:

When I read that, it was as if someone had touched an old wound, it was as if they had put their finger directly on my pain. Growing up, I didn’t understand how Christian spirituality worked. And that misunderstanding made me miserable.

I looked down to see who had written it. The name was unusual: Dallas Willard. I had never heard it before. So, I got online and ordered my first book … I devoured it.

Dallas showed me a new kind of spirituality (which was actually ancient), a transformational way of life with Christ. He offered me a process: taking up the spiritual practices and actually becoming Jesus’ apprentice. My life has never been the same.

But as I lived that life over the last twenty years, I kept running into experiences I didn’t fully understand. Seasons of dryness where God felt distant. Periods of temptation and affliction that seemed to expose my illusions. Moments of radical clarity and freedom. Times of growth followed by regression. And occasionally, fleeting experiences of union with God that felt almost impossible to describe.

At first, these moments felt disconnected, almost random. But over time, I realized they weren’t.

As I read my way back into the Christian tradition, I began noticing these same patterns everywhere: Thomas Merton. Evelyn Underhill. George MacDonald. Francis de Sales. François Fénelon. The Desert Fathers and Mothers. These writers, and others like them, weren’t merely theologizing abstractly. They were describing what tends to happen to a human being over a lifetime of apprenticeship to Christ.

It was as if they had mapped the inner terrain of transformation. And over centuries, their observations crystalized into a path.

It’s known today as the Threefold Way: the path of purgation, illumination, and union.

And the more I learned about that path, the more I realized something surprising: I was already walking it.

I didn’t need to understand the path in order to experience it. But once I could name it, I could participate in the transformational process more thoughtfully. It was like being given fresh eyes for the life I was already living … and for the journey still unfolding before me.

That’s why I wrote the book: to capture some of what I found, and pass it along.

If any of this resonates with where you are, I’d love to share more of the story with you. You can pre-order Dwelling in Christ on Amazon right now.

Pre-order Now

And as a thank you, if you forward your receipt to book@jonathanrbailey.com, I’ll send you Chapter One—along with the foreword by Richard J. Foster, another pivotal figure in my journey—one I look forward to telling you more about soon.

With you on the journey,
Jon

Behind my chair sits a ficus tree I bought four years ago. I imagined by now it would be taller, stretching its branches wide. Instead, it stayed small. I know why—too little water, too small a pot.

Six months ago I started giving it more water, more soil, and a bigger container. Now I see new lime-green leaves pushing out. It’s growing!

During that four year period, I often thought about just buying a taller tree, one that would fill the room. But I know now what would have been lost.

I would have had a bigger tree, but I wouldn't be any bigger.

I wouldn't have grown. I wouldn’t have learned. Through my blunder I’ve become a little stronger gardener. And that, I think, is the mercy of it. Growth can still happen through blunders—maybe especially through them.

I think love grows like this too...it grows through our blunders—the times we forget to water, the seasons when we’re distracted.

I don’t know, maybe our failings slow growth down, maybe they don’t. Maybe our failings are mysteriously a part of a deeper kind of growth happening below the surface of our life. Who knows?

But here’s what we do know, none of it can stop God. He will grow us into his loving likeness.

And in the end, our joy will not just be realized in what we’ve grown into, but in having been given the privilege of growing itself.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“We must not rush onward to great measures before the time, lest God’s gift be debased by our hasty reception of it. For anything that is quickly obtained is also easily lost, whereas everything found with toil is also kept with careful watching.”

—Saint Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies

A Question to Carry

How could tending one thing slowly change your view of love?

Thanks for reading,

—Jon

I often imagine that one day life will slow down.

I picture myself older, maybe in my sixties, with fewer responsibilities and more room to follow Christ without hurry. Those quiet days sound glorious. But here’s the irony: when quiet moments come now, I often resist them. I look for ways to fill the stillness, to push life back into motion, to speed up.

That’s when I realize how strong my illusions are.

I think I want slowness, but when it comes, I’m not so sure. At first that feels disappointing, almost paralyzing. But the longer I walk with Jesus, the more I appreciate seeing the illusion. That sight is a seed of freedom. It reminds me that I’m not living fully in reality yet—and that awareness can be the start of change.

Maybe the kind of slowness I long for isn’t something that just arrives later in life, when circumstances shift. Maybe it’s learned, like the way I had to grow into the taste of black coffee or red wine. It took time and patience to finally enjoy it.

Perhaps slowness works the same way. I need to let a little of it into my life now, not later, and learn to sit with it as it shapes me.

Deep down, I do believe I want slowness. I just need a little time to grow into it.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“When I took a closer look at this I realized that I was caught in a web of strange paradoxes. While complaining about too many demands, I felt uneasy when none were made. While speaking about the burden of letter writing, an empty mailbox made me sad. While fretting about tiring lecture tours, I felt disappointed when there were no invitations. While speaking nostalgically about an empty desk, I feared the day on which that would come true.

In short: while desiring to be alone, I was frightened of being left alone.

The more I became aware of these paradoxes, the more I started to see how much I had indeed fallen in love with my own compulsions and illusions, and how much I needed to step back and wonder, ‘Is there a quiet stream underneath the fluctuating affirmations and rejections of my little world? Is there a still point where my life is anchored and from which I can reach out with hope and courage and confidence?’”

—Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

A Question to Carry

Can you name one of your illusions? How might naming it lead to fruit?

Keep watch,

—Jon

As I’ve learned to sit with my own affliction, I’ve come to realize that it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. It wears many masks. It has many degrees of intensity, each revealing something different. Just as a bruise differs from a break, affliction presents itself in different depths, each one asking something unique of me.

There are those small, almost laughable irritations, and then the kind of hardship that settles in for a season, and sometimes tragedy strikes. This realization led me to create a more nuanced way of thinking about affliction, eventually dividing it into three layers or degrees—maybe naming them could help me hold them:

• Irritation, for me, represents the everyday annoyances that disturb me…

• Hardship refers to the challenges that persist for a season…

• Tragedy is the kind of affliction that alters life in a way that cannot be undone…

Recognizing these degrees of affliction has given me a framework to better understand my experience of purgation and how to respond to it. Because affliction, in and of itself, doesn’t transform us.

It’s not the tragedy, hardship, or irritation that shapes us; it’s the opportunities they present and the grace that meets us right in the middle of it.

*From Chapter 3 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

—C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

A Question to Carry

What irritations in your week might be small invitations to grace?

Until next week,

—Jon