Grafted Life spiritual direction is a Christ-centered ministry that helps people deepen their relationships with God and others through attentive, confidential, and biblically grounded companionship. A trained spiritual director accompanies a person on the spiritual journey, helping them notice God’s presence and activity, as well as their own reactions and responses.
Spiritual direction is a once-a-month meeting with a trained listener who will accompany you on your spiritual journey, helping you to notice God’s presence and activity, as well as how you are reacting and responding. It is hospitable, confidential, and grounded in biblical truth. Spiritual direction is a ministry that helps you grow in prayer and live into your calling as a follower of Christ.
What Grafted Life spiritual direction means
Grafted Life Ministries exists to deepen relationships with God and others through two life-giving branches: Discover a Deeper Life with God through our thoughtful studies. Join a thriving Christ-centered Direction community.
Grafted Life Ministries exists to deepen relationships with God and others through two life-giving branches. Grafted Life supports churches and individuals with resources that help people root their lives in Christ’s transforming love.
At CSDA and Grafted Life, we believe that spiritual direction is an important ministry to deepen our awareness of and engagement with God. Many believers are hungry to have someone come alongside them and help them discern God’s activity for the purpose of their continued spiritual growth.
Grafted Life established CSDA, a Christ-centered Spiritual Direction Association, to support Christian spiritual directors in their work, promote the ministry of spiritual direction in the church and connect believers with skilled spiritual directors.
A safe and attentive space for life with God
The Christian life often entails times of spiritual uncertainty-situations in which we are unsure of God’s will, confused about what God is doing in our circumstances, or generally dry in our relationship with God. Spiritual direction is a safe place to explore your questions and concerns about your life with God.
A Christ-centered spiritual director is a trained listener who will accompany you as you share about your spiritual journey, helping you to notice God’s presence and activity along the way, as well as your personal reactions and responses. Hospitable, confidential, and grounded in biblical truth, spiritual direction is a ministry that helps you grow in prayer and live into your calling as a follower of Christ.
Whether you seek a spiritual director during a specific season of your life or engage with one as part of your regular spiritual practices, spiritual direction is beneficial in many ways.
Four ways spiritual direction supports spiritual formation
1. Spiritual direction grows spiritual attentiveness
It is rare for God to change us without bringing to our attention what needs to be changed. God seeks our cooperation in transformation. However, it is easy for us to miss what God is inviting us to see.
Many of us have an underdeveloped spiritual perception. We don’t naturally, as Ignatius of Loyola suggests, “See God in all things.” We need to grow our propensity to look for God in the circumstances of our lives. Spiritual direction promotes spiritual attentiveness.
The most commonly asked questions from spiritual directors to their directees are versions of the following: “What do you think God is doing in that circumstance?” “Where do you see God at work in your life?” “What do you think God’s invitation is for you in this place?”
Good spiritual direction will always bring you around to these core questions, nurturing your attentiveness to perceive God’s movements in your life. It always amazes me how God roots these simple questions deep into directees’ hearts, bringing them to mind between direction appointments.
Over time, reflecting on these questions grows our awareness of God in our daily life so that we are more attuned to His leading and what He is doing in our formation.
2. Spiritual direction reveals how we get in our own way
God seeks our cooperation in transformation. He doesn’t override our wills. He woos us to respond in love and to welcome His will for our lives. But our hearts and histories can be complicated.
It is not always easy for us to recognize how we are responding or resistant to God’s work in our lives, much less understand why we react in certain ways to what God is doing. It can be helpful to have someone encourage us to reflect on our reactions to God’s movements.
But it can also be scary. Being able to honestly evaluate our response to God in a safe, nonjudgmental relationship is a great gift. It can help us know ourselves in ways that we might not pursue or perceive on our own.
In addition, having an objective, loving spiritual listener who knows our story can help guard against thinking too harshly or too generously about our responses. A good spiritual director will guide a directee into the loving presence of God, where one doesn’t have to hide from the Truth but is freed to see themselves in His light.
Once we begin to understand our responses to God, we can process them with Him and our director and become more open to what God is doing to transform us.
3. Spiritual direction develops discernment
At the core of spiritual formation is the development of a dependent, willing heart to follow Jesus. But we often do not have the ability to discern where Jesus is inviting, directing or calling us to action.
How can we grow to recognize the “voice” of Jesus-to distinguish His desires and promptings from the voices that play in our minds from our own thoughts and histories? How do we interpret our spiritual experiences in lieu of Scripture and God’s revealed nature?
A spiritual direction relationship gives us a place to explore these questions in the presence of the Holy Spirit and another Christian who is committed to helping us find God’s way.
The safest place to learn discernment is in community with others who love God and love you. As we talk, listen, and notice together in spiritual direction, we trust that God will make Himself clear.
It may not happen in a single session, but over time, as we seek and wait together, we begin to see the fingerprints of God on our lives. As God reveals Himself, we grow in our ability to recognize the way He invites, the feeling in our hearts when He is communicating, the affirmation of our spirits when we “see” Him.
We also begin to identify the presence of our will when it conflicts with or welcomes His will. There are few opportunities in the church to develop skills of spiritual discernment, which makes spiritual direction a great place to grow in this area.
4. Spiritual direction makes room for life’s deepest questions
While Jesus was on earth, He was a master of asking pertinent questions. He asked the blind man what he wanted Jesus to do for him. He asked the disciples, among other things, who they said He was, why they were afraid, why they doubted, and how many loaves they possessed to feed the crowd.
He asked the Father why He was forsaking Him. Questions seem to be part of being in a relationship with Jesus. Yet, we often shy away from exploring the deeper questions on our hearts.
Church is not always a safe place to vocalize our questions about God or wrestle with the questions that Jesus may be asking us. Spiritual direction, however, is a place where questions are asked, reflected on, processed, refined and brought into God’s presence.
Spiritual directors love good questions and are willing to journey with directees as God reveals and provides answers to the myriad of questions that are on our minds and hearts.
Spiritual direction provides a place and a person with whom we can voice our questions and seek answers together, such as:
- Questions about God’s will regarding an important decision that we need to make
- Questions about God’s love for us
- Struggles to understand why God has allowed suffering to enter our lives
Unanswered questions about God and our relationship to Him can stall us or limit progress in our formation journey. If you have these kinds of questions, spiritual direction can provide a place to honestly explore these thoughts with God which can lead to the freedom to move closer and deepen relationship with God and others.
Spiritual direction, transformation, and relational growth
From a weekend of prayer and discernment in 2009 to impacting thousands of lives-discover how God birthed a vision for deeper relational connections in the Church. Explore why we believe spiritual growth depends on the quality of our relationships and how we create safe spaces for authentic connection with God and others.
Meet the passionate leaders and staff dedicated to nurturing healthy spiritual relationships in communities around the world. Read our Statement of Faith and discover the Trinitarian theology that guides our work and practice in spiritual formation and direction.
In noticing the relational encounters in Scripture, we have opportunities to engage with God. By imagining ourselves in Scripture, by reading slowly and seeing what arises, we can notice our own heart attachments.
By paying attention to our own developmental and relational deficiencies, and allowing the Holy Spirit to restore what's been broken, we can move towards a more secure attachment with God, resulting in healing and wholeness.
Attachment and spiritual formation
We can have either secure or insecure attachment styles:
- Secure base attachment
- Insecure attachment styles - anxious ambivalent attachment, avoidant/dismissive attachment, fearful avoidant/disordered attachment
At the root of all attachment issues is a lack of trust and a lack of safety. To reorient our attachments, we identify our core longing deficits: Significance, Purpose, Belonging, Security, Understanding, and Love, and choose to believe that the only person who can meet those needs fully is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Out of that relationship, all other relationships flow. Creating relational spaces of safe community in God’s covenantal love is the way forward.
When describing growth, nutrients of relational soil include things like joy, gratitude, and group identity. By growing in practices that train our brains, we begin to default toward the good and beautiful places God is at work in our lives.
Joy is integral in attachment formation because our brains are wired to seek it. Joyful experiences are what we lean into. Shame, however, is the opposite of joy.
In shame experiences, there is a perceived sense of disapproval, often attributed to a sense of worth. If God has an enduring love for us that brings us good, the only force in the human brain that can understand such lasting kindness and care is the brain’s attachment system.
God invites us back to joy as we are invited back to being known. Creating relational spaces of safe community in God’s covenantal love is the way forward.
Todd Hall: Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation
Holding the soul in a sacred space
People aren’t always used to someone caring for the soul, so in a way, as we create a holy space, we are holding the soul for someone, so that they can receive and listen.
Sitting with someone and have them feel safe, without pretending, without denying what is going on inside them, watching God at work-all those bring great joy.
In this conversation, we get a glimpse of what community can look like, seeing people come to know God in deeper, real, honest, authentic, relational ways.
Spiritual direction creates space for people to receive and listen, without pretending and without denying what is going on inside them. This kind of attentive companionship supports honest engagement with God and makes room for the Holy Spirit’s work.
Who provides spiritual direction through the CSDA community
Spiritual Directors are full members in CSDA. To qualify as a spiritual director, members must agree to abide by our doctrinal statement and code of ethics, as well as have completed an educational program that meets our training requirements.
CSDA is the largest spiritual director membership organization serving Christ-centered spiritual directors, churches and communities worldwide. CSDA members come from over 120 training programs which promote a rich tapestry of perspectives within the community.
All CSDA spiritual directors affirm belief in these doctrinal tenets. We require all of our member spiritual directors to have successfully completed a formal spiritual direction training program.
CSDA spiritual directors are located across the U.S. and Canada and around the world. But if you don’t see a director listed in your immediate area, then consider that many of our spiritual directors offer their ministries across distance via Zoom or phone.
Finding a spiritual director
You may search the list by gender, availability, and other keywords. Great for finding a director that fits your needs, interests, or availability.
If you have never considered the ministry of spiritual direction for your life, let me share with you four benefits of spiritual direction I have personally experienced and consistently witness in my direction ministry.
If you feel drawn to pursue spiritual direction for your life, we have a searchable database of trained directors who would love to meet with you. Most directors are willing to have an initial meeting at no charge as you consider whether spiritual direction would be a valuable part of your spiritual development.
I encourage you to consider engaging in spiritual direction. May God lead you in your decision.
The wider Grafted Life and CSDA community
The CSDA Community is a social platform designed to bring together Christian spiritual directors and spiritual direction formation centers from around the globe for the purpose of building relationships, growing professionally, and expanding the impact of this ministry in the church and worldwide.
Membership in CSDA provides opportunities for rich colleague connections and quality professional development over the lifetime of a director’s ministry. CSDA is a place to receive from colleagues as well as contribute your giftedness to the larger ministry of spiritual direction.
CSDA holds multiple Community Life Events every year for director-to-director learning and sharing, included with your annual membership. Subscription to The Dialogue, our monthly resource, supports ongoing learning and connection.
A comprehensive database of ministry resources includes a sample directee agreement, a list of available supervisors, articles, book recommendations, and more.
Intercultural awareness and spiritual direction
Without awareness, understanding, and training in intercultural encounters we can easily close the doors that we desire to open. Join us with ESDA’s own Ellen Kuo and Brenda Darby, who will help us grow in developing tools for greater sensitivity.
We recommend Brenda’s book, Can We Have The Conversation?: A Spiritual Multicultural Approach to Racial Reconciliation.
When purchasing this session you receive immediate access, via the “Purchased Events” tab on your account dashboard, to the following:
- The session video recording
- The session handout
- The session resource list
Continuing conversation about transformation
Conversations about Christian spiritual formation, spiritual direction, soul care, and life with God form a central part of the Grafted Life Podcast. A ministry of Grafted Life and CSDA, the podcast explores how people build deeper relationships with God and each other.
Why do we learn more about God, but often we are not experiencing true spiritual transformation? Can people really change? How do people change?
Sharing his personal story of encountering Jesus and his own spiritual journey, Michel relates how he came to a place of confusion and need. This, in turn, led him to Jim Wilder and learning how the brain is designed for change.
Debbie shares one of the vignettes from the gospel of Mark where the disciples’ attachment to Jesus was revealed in their relational dynamics. We also hear stories from the gospels where attachment to Jesus is revealed, and attachment repair takes place.
Sharing her personal story of transformation, Dianna shares God’s invitation to joy through reexamining what it means to be attached to Him.
Sharing his personal story, Danny gives insight into the ministry of Immanuel Prayer and how experiencing God’s love changes us.
Resources for spiritual formation and direction
Resources mentioned in the Grafted Life and CSDA community include The Other Half of Church, The Developing Mind, The Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Desire, Renovated, With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God, The Soul of Shame, Into the Silent Land, Sustainable Faith, The Light Has Come, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, This Here Flesh, and Jesus and the Disinherited.
Other resources include Healing Care Ministries, Life Model Works, Immanuel Prayer, Soul Care, and spiritual direction formation centers and communities.
Grafted Life Ministries and CSDA bring together spiritual direction, soul care, relational theology, spiritual formation, and life with God. Their shared emphasis is on deeper awareness of God’s activity, healthier relationships, safe community, faithful discernment, and transformation rooted in Christ’s love.