The Soil & Roots Blog
Explore articles on deep discipleship, spiritual formation, the hidden life of the heart, and what it means to become more like Jesus from the inside out.
HOME / Blog
How Hidden Ideas About God Shape Your Spiritual Life
We may believe that God is good, loving, and present while living from fear, control, shame, or performance. Exploring our hidden ideas about God can reveal why our spiritual lives often feel divided.
Why Churches Struggle to Make Deep Disciples
Churches teach, gather, serve, and evangelize with great energy, yet many Christians still feel spiritually unchanged. The Great Omission helps explain why: we talk about making disciples but often lack the relational, immersive conditions that form people to increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus.
Why Christians Feel Spiritually Disconnected Even When They Believe
We have more access to biblical teaching than any generation in history, yet many still feel spiritually disconnected from God, others, and themselves.
The Wall in Spiritual Formation: When Faith Falls Apart
Many Christians eventually encounter “the Wall” — a season of doubt, suffering, confusion, or spiritual dryness that disrupts life as usual. Drawing from Dallas Willard and The Critical Journey, this article explores why pressing into the Wall may be essential for deep spiritual formation and authentic discipleship.
Information vs Transformation in Spiritual Formation
We have more access to biblical teaching than any generation in history, yet knowledge alone does not make us more loving, whole, or like Jesus.
How Hidden Ideas Shape Christian Culture and Discipleship
Christian communities are formed by more than their doctrines. Hidden ideas about leadership, teaching, success, conversion, and power shape the people they produce.
8 Signs of Spiritual Health That Reveal Your Inner Life
Spiritual health is not measured only by church attendance, Bible knowledge, or religious activity. Our thoughts, emotions, bodies, behaviors, relationships, words, time, and money reveal the ideas and desires shaping us beneath the surface.
Why Self-Knowledge Is Essential to Christian Discipleship
Many Christians long to become more like Jesus yet avoid the inner exploration required for deep spiritual formation. The Discipleship Dilemma reveals why self-knowledge, emotional honesty, and understanding the hidden ideas beneath our beliefs are essential to genuine discipleship.
Does God Like Me? Why His Delight Is Hard to Experience
Many people believe God loves them while quietly wondering whether He enjoys them. That question reaches deep into spiritual formation, vulnerability, and the hidden life.
The Kind of Christian Community Our Hearts Actually Need
We were made to know and be known, yet many Christian communities remain too large, hurried, guarded, or temporary to form us deeply. Our hearts need relationships marked by safety, intimacy, consistency, and the freedom to become fully known.
Why Christian Discipleship Must Reach the Unconscious Self
Brian explores how unconscious ideas and desires shape our lives, relationships, and discipleship. True spiritual formation leads to inner freedom through deeper awareness of God, ourselves, and the desires hidden beneath the surface.
How to Begin the Inward Journey with God Safely
The inward journey invites us to explore the stories, wounds, ideas, and desires shaping us beneath the surface. But this work should not begin with shame, urgency, or fear. It requires an environment of God’s kindness, patient curiosity, and trusted relationships.
Why So Few Christians Experience the Good Life with God
Many people possess sincere faith, biblical knowledge, and years of church experience yet still live with anxiety, striving, loneliness, shame, or distance from God. The Good Life with God is not a painless life. It is an increasingly secure, peaceful, and loving life with Jesus in the middle of ordinary reality.
The Formation Gap
Modern Christianity often assumes information and formation are the same thing. In this episode, Brian Fisher explores “The Formation Gap,” why the church struggles to form people of genuine spiritual depth, and how intentional communities built around time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction help shape us into people who increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus.
How Spiritual Formation Works From the Inside Out
Spiritual formation is not merely the accumulation of biblical knowledge. It is the slow transformation of the hidden ideas and desires that govern our lives.
How Childhood and Our Relationship With God Are Connected
Our earliest relationships shape how we understand love, trust, safety, authority, and even God. Childhood is one of the most spiritually formative seasons of life.
Why Presence Is Essential to Spiritual Formation
Spiritual formation requires more than information. We are also shaped through stillness, attention, trusted relationships, and the experience of someone truly being with us.
How Narcissism in Christian Community Damages Spiritual Formation
Narcissism in Christian community can distort reality, exploit vulnerability, and damage the very relationships meant to help people become more like Jesus.
Why Time and Spiritual Formation Belong Together
Spiritual formation takes more time than our hurried culture allows. Hearts heal slowly, relationships deepen gradually, and character forms through long-term presence.
Sharing Our Stories: How Storytelling Helps Us Heal
Why does telling and retelling our stories matter so deeply in spiritual formation? In this reflection, Brian explores discipleship, neuroscience, trauma, healing, and the transformative power of sharing our stories in safe and loving community.
How Suffering Can Shape Spiritual Formation
Chronic illness has taught me that suffering can isolate and harden us, or it can draw us toward surrender, authenticity, community, and a more embodied relationship with Jesus.
Courageous Curiosity as a Spiritual Practice
Courageous curiosity is the gentle habit of asking honest questions about God, ourselves, and others so that hidden disconnections can come into the light.
What a Spiritually Formative Community Looks Like
A spiritually formative community is more than a Bible study or small group. It is a long-term, relational ecosystem where people become known and formed.
Why Deep Christian Community Is So Hard to Find
Many people attend church, serve, join groups, and remain deeply lonely. Real Christian community requires more than proximity, programs, and shared beliefs.
When Church Systems and Spiritual Formation Conflict
Christian institutions can accomplish remarkable good, but they can also protect leaders, reward charisma, and prioritize growth over genuine character formation.
Why Christian Vulnerability Is Necessary for Real Community
Vulnerability is not indiscriminate disclosure. It is the courageous and discerning openness that allows trust, intimacy, and genuine spiritual formation to grow.
How to Experience God’s Presence in Everyday Life
Modern discipleship often teaches us to know about God without helping us experience His presence. Advent invites the head and heart back together.
When Our Beliefs About God Conflict With Our Experience
Our stated beliefs about God are not always the ideas from which our hearts actually live. Spiritual formation begins by noticing the difference.
Is God Good When Life Does Not Feel Good?
We may sincerely believe God is good while suffering forms a different conclusion in the heart. Healing requires more than arguments; it requires presence.
Why Grieving Is an Essential Christian Spiritual Practice
Grieving is not reserved for funerals. Mourning broken dreams, lost friendships, betrayal, injustice, and unmet hopes can lead us toward acceptance, peace, and deeper life with Jesus.
Why We Secretly Assume God Is Disappointed in Us
Many of us believe God loves us while living as though He merely tolerates us. The deeper issue may not be whether we think God forgives us, but whether we believe He genuinely enjoys being with us.
Why Personal Transformation Comes Before Cultural Renewal
Cultures do not become healthier merely because systems improve. Lasting renewal begins as people become more honest, loving, secure, and like Jesus from the inside out.
Explore a Greenhouse
A Greenhouse is a two-year guided ecosystem where people explore the hidden parts of themselves with Jesus and trusted friends.
A FREE INTRODUCTION TO DEEP DISCIPLESHIP
What does it mean to become more like Jesus from the inside out? What in the World Is Deep Discipleship? offers a short, accessible introduction to the deeper journey with God, others, and ourselves—and explores why something “more” may be missing from our experience of faith.
