{"id":89,"date":"2009-11-01T02:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T02:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lrtministry.org\/my-sojourn-where-it-began\/"},"modified":"2009-11-01T02:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T02:34:00","slug":"my-sojourn-where-it-began","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/my-sojourn-where-it-began\/","title":{"rendered":"My Sojourn &#8211; Where It Began"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment-->  <\/p>\n<p>I have been a Christian for some 25+ years. My spiritual transformation during this time was one of crisis or experiential transformation. As situations presented themselves I was shaped and molded by them. I could choose to embrace the transformation or ignore it and escape the process. I was dumped into what has been called the \u201cTransformational Crucible.\u201d This was a place where I was refined to become more like Christ. It was during this time that I preached my first sermon, struggled with infertility issues, struggled with depression, spent years moving from place to place, going to school, and trusting God. My crucible experiences grounded me in a lot of ways. I didn\u2019t see them then, but as I reflect back ten, fifteen or twenty years removed from the experience I can see God\u2019s hand in my life, the potter shaping and molding the clay which became me, the person I am today.<\/p>\n<p>After graduating seminary in 2001 I felt a little lost, tired, and complacent.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">  <\/span>I was working, taking leadership roles in my church, teaching, and simply doing life. There was little \u201ctransformation\u201d going on. I had hit some sort of spiritual plateau. It was here where God chose another type of formation process to again begin to shape and mold me. For lack of a better word I call it process formation. By process formation I mean that you are guided through a series of exercises, questions, or processes to produce in the end a transformation in my life. <\/p>\n<p>  <!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been a Christian for some 25+ years. My spiritual transformation during this time was one of crisis or experiential transformation. As situations presented themselves I was shaped and molded by them. I could choose to embrace the transformation or ignore it and escape the process. I was dumped into what has been called &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/my-sojourn-where-it-began\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My Sojourn &#8211; Where It Began&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","category-the-barbarian-way"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xZq6-1r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}