A DEVOTIONAL LIFE

Sermon Summary (6/25/17) “A Devotional Life” (Mark 1:35; 2 Cor 5:17)

My faith made a big turn at age 45.  When it did, it was like a new thing.  I could not wait to get down to my table in the morning. To read, to pray, to meet God.  As we mature the newness fades.  John Wesley admonishes to keep a time fixed for our devotions “whether we like it or no; it is your life!” 

Why? (The why is a big deal.  It changes everything!) We need to do so because Christ calls us to be changed so that we can change the world!  “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that changed a wretch like me!” (Written by John Newton, a former slave captain who became an Anglican priest and part of the abolition movement in Great Britain.)

We’re talking about connecting to grace, God’s unmerited, undeserved favor.  Grace is our “Why.”  Grace changes us.  Methodists believe that “Grace pervades our understanding of Christian faith and likfe.  Grace is the loving action of God through the ever-present Holy Spirit.”  While we believe that grace is ever-present and undivided, us “methodical” folks like to break it into three pieces to better understand it: 

Prevenient grace (nudging).  We believe that we are incapable of saving ourselves and need to say “Yes” to God’s nudging grace.  After our son died, my only prayer was “Lord, let me believe.”  I prayed not because of any motivation of my own; it was God’s loving action that nudged me and continued to nudge me until I said “Yes.”

Justifying grace (saving or converting).  Grace that forgives us and brings us into a right relationship with God. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5:17)  John Newton kneeled on his ship deck, repenting of his part in the slave trade and was brought into a right relationship with God.  He was justified by grace.

Sanctifying grace (perfecting, maturing, changing).  The third activity of grace is live-long, taking us from where God finds us to becoming what God calls us to be.  Wesley says that as we become perfected (matured); we become “habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor.”

Our task is to connect to grace.  Wesley believed the Jesus had shown us certain means by which we could do that, practices that he participated in or instituted.  Ove the next six weeks we will be examining them so that we can connect, be changed, be part of Christ’s transforming movement in the world.  Stay tuned.  Amen.