Dennis R. Wiles 

First Baptist Arlington 

June 22, 2025 

Flourishing Together 

First Baptist Arlington 

2025 – 2030 

2025: Flourishing Together: Rooted in Christ 

1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (Gospel Guide: Matthew) 

SUMMER 2025: You Are Here! 

June 1 – August 2, 2025 

Psalm 1 

Flourishing Formation: Seek God’s Kingdom! 

Matthew 6:25-34 

Psalm 1 Tree – A Flourishing Person 

FOUNDATION: Who am I? Why am I here? 

FORMATION: What is happening TO me? 

METAMORPHOSIS – Derived from the Greek word, metamorphóō – which means “to change or to transform.” This word is used in Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2 to express the “transfiguration” of Christ. 

MORPH – The Greek word morphé (shape or form) is combined with prefixes in the New Testament, resulting in words like conformed or transformed. These words are often connected to the process of spiritual formation. 

Spiritual Formation is a universal human phenomenon. 

Spiritual formation, without regard to any specifically religious context or tradition, is the process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite “form” or character. It is a process that happens to everyone. The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. 

-Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart 

Spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself. 

-Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart 

The ways Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal . . . The ways employed in our North American culture are conspicuously impersonal: programs, organizations, techniques, general guidelines, information detached from place. In matters of ways and means, the vocabulary of numbers is preferred over names, ideologies crowd out ideas, the gray fog of abstraction absorbs the sharp particularities of the recognizable face and the familiar street . . . My concern is provoked by the observation that so many understand themselves to be followers of Jesus, without hesitation, and apparently without thinking, embrace the ways and means of the culture as they go about their daily living “in Jesus’ name” . . . They seem to suppose that “getting on in the world” means getting on in the world on the world’s terms, and that the ways of Jesus are useful only in a compartmentalized area of the life labeled “religious” . . . This is wrong thinking, and wrong living. Jesus is an alternative to the dominant ways of the world, not a supplement to them. 

-Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way 

Jesus’ model of apprenticeship was a far cry from our Western educational system . . . To follow Jesus, then, meant to walk alongside him in a posture of listening, learning, observation. Obedience, and imitation. For Jesus’ first apprentices, the goal wasn’t to pass a test, get a degree, or receive a certificate to frame on your office wall; it was to master the art of living in God’s good world by learning from Jesus how to make steady progress into the kingdom of God. It was less like learning chemistry and more like learning jujitsu. 

-John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way 

THE SACRAMENTAL JOURNEY – The Christian life is a holy, sacred, mysterious journey as we learn to glorify God by following The Jesus Way in the fulfillment of His mission. 

thesacramentaljourney.org 

A Disciple: A person being formed by Jesus as they follow Him in accomplishing His mission.  

How can we be formed, conformed, transformed – as followers of Jesus? 

PROHIBITION: Stop worrying! Quit the practice of total self-reliance! 

Herein lies a deep irony of human existence. According to Jesus’s teachings, when people seek to keep everything together and provide for themselves apart from God, the result is not the sought-after peace, but rather, anxiety. 

-Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing 

PRACTICE: Seek God’s Kingdom . . . first! 

PROMISE: God will provide! 

2 Corinthians 3:7-18