It Is Necessary!

People have asked me many times to write about my life. My story. My why. I think that question keeps coming because so much of what I say and write flows out of the same place. It comes from being formed by God in ways I did not anticipate and, many times, in full disclosure, did not welcome.

What I share here is not something I figured out. It is something I have been walked through.

Formation matters to me because I have learned, over and over again, that I am not forming myself. God has been doing that work, often by slowing me down, interrupting my assumptions, and pressing on places in my life I would have preferred He leave alone.

There have been seasons when I thought I was moving faithfully, only to realize God was about to stop me. Times when Scripture confronted me in ways I could not explain away. Moments when His discipline was unmistakable, not harsh, but firm, and deeply personal. I did not experience those moments as punishment. I experienced them as God refusing to let me keep living on momentum instead of dependence.

That is why I say this the way I do.

Formation is not comfortable. It is necessary.

I used to believe, quietly, that if I was doing well spiritually, life would feel smoother. That belief did not survive real obedience. Hebrews 12 found me again and again. “The Lord disciplines those He loves.” I did not just read that verse. I lived under it. And I learned that God’s discipline was never about control. It was about care. He was not shaping my circumstances as much as He was shaping me.

Some of the clearest moments of formation in my life have come through my family, and even writing this takes care. My wife and I have been blessed with seven children who are living today. Along the way, we know that we lost one child in the womb. That loss is certain. It stopped us in ways nothing else ever had. It slowed everything. Our plans. Our assumptions. Our pace.

It was only after that loss that we were able to look back, all the way to before our first child, Joshua, was born, and recognize something my wife had experienced even then. We did not know at the time. We cannot say with absolute certainty now. But in light of what we later walked through, we are fairly certain that we lost a child very early, before we ever held our first.

Those are not easy words to write. They are not words I offer casually or confidently. They are words shaped by reflection, grief, and time. And they matter, not because of the count, but because of what God was doing in us through those moments.

Looking back now, as painful as those losses were, I do not see a God who was harming us. I see a God who was slowing us down. Forming us. Teaching us to hold life differently. To grieve honestly. To trust deeply. To receive what He gives without assuming control over it. It is here that these words became an anchor for us: “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”

And God was kind. After loss, He gave life again. Our youngest, Josiah, whose name means “God heals,” stands as a quiet testimony to that grace. Not because healing erases loss, but because God does not waste pain. He forms us through it.

With each child, God made me stop and begin again. I remember thinking, more than once, that I had finally figured it out, only to discover that what worked once did not necessarily work again. I fully expected the same approach to work the same way, and it didn’t. God kept slowing me down, reminding me that each child standing in front of me was different and that loving them well would require me to pay attention, to listen, and to learn again.

What God was teaching me, patiently, was that formation is not mechanical. He does not deal with people generically, and He was certainly not dealing with me that way.

The same has been true in marriage. Loving my wife well has required me to be slowed down, corrected, and reshaped more times than I can count. God has shown me that love is not sustained by instinct or good intention, but by surrender. I have had to learn, again and again, to love my wife and to love the ones in front of me, not out of who I think I am, but out of the life God is forming in me.

This is where formation becomes more than personal reflection. This is where it becomes a shared calling.

What has been true in my life is not unique to me. It is essential to the follower of Christ. All of life begins with His breath. That is why awakening matters. But if we are going to become what we were created to be, God uses the circumstances of our lives as part of the formation process. He uses fire. He uses the forge. He allows pressure to cling to us the way iron is shaped, not to destroy us, but to fashion us into what He had in mind from the very beginning.

If we want to be formed, we have to be willing to walk through that fire. We have to be willing to let the breath of God breathe His life into us, His purpose into us, His patience into us. Formation is not about becoming a better version of ourselves. It is about becoming people who can carry His life into the lives of others.

I know this may seem like a shameless plug but, this is the heartbeat behind the series of books I have written, The Life That Matters: The Warrior’s Way. That series was born out of the same formation I am writing about here, not as an idea, but as a lived reality. The first book, The Wind: The Breath That Awakens, begins where all life truly begins, with the breath of God. It is about awakening, about recognizing that nothing in us lives apart from Him.

The second book, The Forge: The Fire That Forms, presses deeper into the truth that awakening is only the beginning. God does not simply give life. He shapes it. He uses the fire of real circumstances, real loss, real responsibility, and real obedience to form us into who He created us to be. That book is set to be released around Easter. The third will follow later in the year, continuing that same journey of formation and faithfulness.

If you would like to begin that journey, The Wind: The Breath That Awakens is available now, and you can find it here:
[The Wind, The Breath that Awakens]

I am still being formed. I am still learning. And I am still convinced that God’s intent for our lives is not comfort, but transformation. A life shaped by His breath and His fire is the only life that truly matters.

DRJBD