The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from...Circumcision of the heart.

And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the human mind. God set it up like that for a reason, which is this: God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.

The assumption of Jesus' program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers.

That's the secret of Jesus. You watch Jesus and you see he never did "withdraw" and then "attack." All of the time people wanted him to do it and in many ways, but he would not. Then to the body of believers he said, "This will show everyone that you are my disciples, if you love one another," but he had already said, "Love one another as I have loved you." So that's the model.

"Spirituality" wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.

What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.

You really can't justify anything else but giving your whole attention to spiritual formation in Christ.