Spiritual Formation:
The Cornerstone of Natural Relational Health
At the Natural Relational Health Institute, spiritual formation is the foundation upon which natural relational health is built. It is the process by which human beings are transformed, restored, and realigned with God’s original design for relationship, maturity, and love.
Transformation
Alignment
Restoration
What is Natural Relational Health?
Natural Relational Health refers to the relational state God originally intended at creation – one marked by intimacy with our Creator God, secure identity, inner peace, and life-giving connection with others.
Human beings were created first and foremost for a relationship with God, and from this primary relationship flowed clarity of identity, emotional regulation, responsibility, and the ability to love freely rather than fearfully.
Scripture teaches that we are born into a fallen state. In this condition, we do not naturally reflect God’s original relational design. Disconnection from God leads to misalignment within the self and dysfunction in relationships. Which often manifests as anxiety, reactivity, control, avoidance, or emotional cutoff.
Through reconciliation with God, we are invited into transformation – not merely a return to innocence, but a restoration into new creation life. Natural Relational Health emerges when this restored alignment with God becomes the foundation for all growth, development, and maturity.
“Natural relational health is not something we achieve through effort or technique. It emerges as we are reconciled to God and restored to our former created design. We become new creations—rightly aligned with Him, grounded within ourselves, and capable of healthy relationships with others.”
Dr. Walters
Spiritual Formation as Transformation, Not Reorganization
Within the framework of Natural Relational Health, spiritual formation is not a process of self-improvement or reorganization of what already exists. It is a divinely initiated transformation – a complete re-creation.
A helpful illustration is the metamorphosis of a butterfly.
The caterpillar represents the fallen human condition – alive and functioning, yet limited in form and purpose. During the chrysalis stage, the caterpillar is not refined or rearranged. It is completely broken down at the cellular level. From that dissolution, an entirely new form emerges.
This mirrors spiritual formation. Scripture describes believers not as improved versions of their former selves, but as new creations. What is old is surrendered, and something entirely new is formed through grace, truth, and reconciliation with God.
The final state of the butterfly’s development – the emergence from the chrysalis – offers another parallel. The butterfly must remain still long enough for its wings to expand, strengthen, and harden. Only then is it capable of flight.
Spiritually, this stage reflects maturation. Formation does not end with transformation; it continues as the new life is strengthened and embodied. This is where stability, endurance, and the capacity to love wll are developed.
Vertical Before Horizontal
The Vertical Relationship:
Alignment With God
Spiritual formation begins vertically, with our relationship with God.
Love must be received before it can be expressed.
God initiates relationship, offers grace, and remains present long before change occurs. When our understanding of God is distorted by fear, performance, or conditional acceptance, our relational patterns reflect that distortion.
When God is known as faithful, patient, and secure, the inner life begins to settle.
Vertical alignment produces Natural Relational Health by replacing striving with identity, fear with belonging, and shame with grace.
Spiritual formation is the process by which we are transformed through relationship with God into who we were always meant to be.
Read More: Relationship With God.
The Internal Relationship:
Alignment With Self
As our relationship with God becomes secure, our relationship with ourselves is reshaped.
Natural Relational Health within the self is marked by self-awareness instead of self-rejection, responsibility instead of blame, and emotional regulation instead of reactivity.
This internal alignment allows individuals to remain present with their emotions, limitations, and growth edges without collapsing into shame or defensiveness. It reflects humility, honesty, and maturity – qualities essential for relational health.
This is not self-focus, but self-stewardship, grounded in the understanding that we are loved unconditionally and unreservedly by God and therefore able to take responsibility for our formation.
Read More: Relationship With Self
The Horizontal Relationship:
Alignment With Others
Healthy relationships with others are the fruit, not the starting point, of Natural Relational Health.
When alignment with God and self is established, relationships begin to reflect love without control, boundaries without emotional cutoff, truth spoken in love, and connection without fusion.
This applies to marriage, parenting, extended family, friendships, and community life. Rather than reacting from unresolved fear or pain, individuals learn to stay connected while remaining differentiated – calm, clear, and compassionate.
Reconciliation, forgiveness, and repair become possible not through pressure but through maturity and inner alignment.
Read More: Relationship With Others
The Natural Relational Health Institute Framework
Dr. Teresa M. Walters
Through the lens of the natural relational health framework, relationship with God is the hinge pin - structurally central, load-bearing, and determinative for all other relational functioning.
“Most Christians and many non-believers will quickly agree that God is loving or at least reportedly loving in nature. We are taught that God is love. We read it in scripture and largely embrace the idea of a loving and benevolent Father who loves His children. But I wonder sometimes how many really grasp or comprehend exactly what the love of God entails?
For many of us, love has been a double-edged sword. Our experiences would lead us to believe that love is conditional, based on duty, performance, or other qualifying attributes. And it is this belief system that we inadvertently project onto God. God, we assume, must be cut from the same cloth, right?
Well, not really. As individual representatives of man’s fallen nature, our birth mirrors that of our forefathers. We arrive separated from our Creator God and in need of a total, ground-floor-up makeover. The love to which we are exposed is human. Prone to frailty and limited in its capacity to provide stability and safety. But it’s the only love we know, and by default, we often think this is all there is to love.
So get ready for some really, really, good news. God’s love is not like human love because God doesn’t just love us, HE IS LOVE! And unlike human love, God’s love is unconditional, period! You can’t earn it, you can’t deserve it. It just is, and nothing, and I do mean nothing, can change, or dissolve, or destroy His love for you.
Until we truly understand that, we will never fully enjoy the type of relational bond God intended for us to share. A bond that is safe, consistent, unbreakable, and forever! See, we often get frustrated in our human relationships because we think other human beings can supply what only God can give. We develop expectations about the way we think our spouses, friends, neighbors, and community members should love us. We become disappointed when they fail under the weight of our expectations and end up feeling alone, abandoned, and lost. People, unfortunatly are imperfect and prone to less than stellar or consistant behavior. Dependency on the horizontal plane will always end in disappointment.
This is why dependency can only work vertically. God will never disappoint. He will always love you, accept you, forgive you, and lavish His love on you…
If you will allow yourself to receive it.
God’s love is a gift. You can’t earn it. You can only receive it. It’s free, and it’s yours for the asking. It really is the, too good to be true, Gospel. It is also the hinge-pin that makes all other relationships work.
Want to learn more? Perfect, give me a call. I would love to tell you more and help you begin your journey to a whole new way of thinking and living into your relationship with God, with yourself, and others.”
In His love and service,
Teresa
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The NRHI Journal
Thoughtful commentary on relational health, personal maturity, and spiritual formation.
The right word, at the right time, on the right topic.
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