Are you being formed or just busy?

Lynette Cain  |  Slower Deeper Wiser

Here's something worth sitting with: you are being spiritually formed, right now, whether you are paying attention to it or not.

Formation isn't a programme you sign up for or a course you complete. It's the slow, relentless process of becoming and it started long before you were old enough to choose. Your family, your wounds, your school, the place you grew up in, the relationships that shaped you (and the ones that broke you), all of it is part of what's forming you. The question has never been whether we are being formed. The question is always: into what, and by whom?

We live in what one of my favourite thinkers, M. Robert Mulholland, calls an 'informational-functional' culture. In other words, we see the world as a thing to be grasped, managed, and made to work for us. We are obsessed with what we do, what we produce, and how efficiently we can get somewhere including, if we're honest, in our faith. We want a checklist. We want to tick off patience and move on to the next virtue. We want our spiritual life to be tidy, measurable, and ours to control.

But Christian spiritual formation doesn't work like that.

My working definition is this: spiritual formation is the process of growing up in all ways in Jesus, for His glory and for the sake of others. Not just growing in knowledge, or attending more, or being busier for God. Growing up. That means intellectually, emotionally, physically, psychologically - all of it!

And all of it under the authority and care of Jesus.

What stopped me in my tracks the first time I encountered this definition was that last phrase: for the sake of others. So much of the personal development world - even the Christian versions of it - is quietly self-oriented. Better me. Healthier me. More peaceful me. And while there's nothing wrong with wanting to grow, when 'me' is the end point, something has gone wrong. We weren't made for ourselves. We were made for God and for each other. The Great Commandment says it plainly: love God, love neighbour. Formation that doesn't eventually spill outward isn't formation, it's just self-improvement with a Bible verse attached.

This matters urgently today because we are all being formed by something. The scroll. The algorithm. The relentless pace of life that keeps us productive, distracted, and a little numb. Our culture has a formation agenda, and it's not neutral. It tells us our worth is in what we achieve. It tells us to keep moving. It tells us that comfort is the goal and busyness is a virtue.

But the Holy Spirit is a still, small voice. Easy to miss if we're not paying attention. And here's what I've found - hurry is one of the most effective ways to go deaf to Him.

So the invitation is not to add one more thing to your plate. It's to begin paying attention, it’s an invitation to slow down enough to notice what's forming you, and to open your hands to what God wants to do in you. Not because your life will get easier (it might get harder). But because when we keep growing up in all ways in Jesus, others are loved more well. And the world, quietly and surely, changes.

Now that's worth slowing down for.