The Path I Found

A note about why I wrote Dwelling in Christ

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:

“Spirituality wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.”

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.

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