“My dear children, I feel the pains of birth upon me again,
and I will continue in labor for you until Christ is formed completely in you.”
Galatians 4:19
It's one thing to tell someone they need to grow spiritually, it's another thing to show them how.
FORMA is Jacob Well's spiritual formation initiative designed to equip one another to develop a rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal practices that build, strengthen and nourish the soul.
All our programing in being filtered through this lens. We are purposefully and practically working to cultivate healthy and maturing disciples that will love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength.
St. Augustine wrote:
“Human beings are conceived and given shape by their mothers, and once they have taken shape, their mothers go into labor and give them birth; so we may wonder what is meant by I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you. We can take the birth-pangs as meaning the anxiety he felt over them, that they should be born in Christ; or again, that he is suffering because he sees them surrounded by dangers that could lead them astray. The care and worry he feels, which he compares to the pangs of giving birth, may last until they are fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself, not tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine. Hence it is not about the beginnings of faith that St Paul is speaking, the faith by which they were born, but about the strengthening and perfecting of that faith: I must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you.”