The Journey is the Destination

The Journey is the Destination:Abraham and Spiritual Formation

John Fehlen

Fehlen 2Throughout history spiritual formation has adopted a number of images in order to makesense and bring clarity to the progression of growth in Christ. Various images that have found a place in Christian tradition are:

the struggle, the desert, the ascent, and the way

. Each image brings with it a level of understanding to the initial entrance into Christian fellowship and to thesubsequent pathways of discipleship. The focus of this research, however, will be upon one of the most powerful images in the Christian life:

the journey

.This research will serve to broaden the understanding that the journey

is

the destination – that all of life in Christ is a process of spiritual formation and discipleship. There is no onesingular event that constitutes faith, but rather an ongoing pilgrimage towards the likeness of Christ. Through this research the reader will better understand how the spiritual experience is to be rooted in a deeper journey rather than a singular event. Particular emphasis will be given tothe implications a “journey mentality” can and ought to come to bear upon Pentecostalexpressions of spirituality.Along with historical and contemporary voices regarding the journey, focus will be givento the Old Testament patriarch, Abraham, and five specific stops as referenced in Genesis. Thesestops were made on his journey from Haran to an unknown land. At each of these five stopsAbraham erected an altar to the Lord. Those altars will serve as signposts for future generationsthat are, like Abraham, on a spiritual journey. Abraham, much like the focus of our faith JesusChrist, has gone before us, and in doing so, has blazed a path of obedience and surrender toFather God – the One that invites as well as leads His children on this wonderful journey.

What is the Journey?

“The spiritual journey is deceptively simple and at the same time highly complex. Describingthis paradox of spirituality is difficult, and can really only be ‘lived into’. This is why the journey

Fehlen 3is so profound. And that is why it is critical. It is life itself.”

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The journey is our life. The wholeof our existence becomes the pathway for the journey to unfold. Nothing is exempt. All isintegrated into the fiber of who we are and are becoming in Christ, and the longer a person livesthe more nuance, progress and broadening of experience one will discover. The journey is life-long and can be very difficult to define and condense into a clear, definitive statement.Our spiritual mothers and fathers have much to say regarding the journey. Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254) believes the “spiritual journey was conceived as a recovery of thelikeness of God in the soul in a movement upwards from the material realm towards greater light.”

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In contrast to Origen, Gregory of Nyssa believes the journey is one towards darknessrather than light. John of the Cross, in his classic work,

Ascent of Mount Carmel,

employs theimagery of the spiritual journey as a climb up a mountain. His

Dark Night of the Soul

narrates a journey of the soul from her bodily home to her union with God. This journey, from the writingsof John of the Cross, is centered in a detachment from the world and a reaching for the light of perfect union with the Creator.Many of the early church Fathers understood Christian life to be a pilgrimage. Such is thecase with St. Clement (Bishop of Rome c. 90-99 AD) in

Letter from St. Clement:

Greetings from ‘the Church of God which dwells as a pilgrim in Rome to the Church of God in pilgrimage at Corinth’, and the second-century

Letter to Diognetus

whichdeclared: ‘[Christians] live each in his native land but as though they were not really athome there [lit. as sojourners]. They share in all duties as citizens and suffer all hardshipsas strangers…they dwell on earth but they are citizens of heaven.’

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St. Benedict refers to the journey “in terms of a ladder…a ladder of our ascending actions.”

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Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) in her classic,

The Interior Castle,

“vividly describes the spiritual