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“Staying in Love With God” Third in Series on Wesley’s Rules Scripture Lesson: Psalm 105:4, Colossians 2:6-7 Sermon Transcript for November 23, 2008 By Pastor Andy Kinsey
Do No Harm Prayer of Preparation O God, teach us by your presence how we may always stay in love with you. Grant to us your grace to love you more fully and to desire you more deeply, that we may offer ourselves as open vessels and invite you to fill and form us as you will, for we are yours, in Christ’s name. Amen. The Message Over the last we two weeks we have been sharing about the General Rules. We have been focusing on the three main Rules of the United Methodist Church: Do No Harm Over the last two weeks, we have been rediscovering how these lost treasures of our United Methodist heritage can have a beneficial role in our lives. As we have noted, these Rules are meant to help us in our walk and guide us in building up Christ’s church. They are meant to show us how we can love and care more faithfully. To be sure, I am glad we are emphasizing the General Rules. It is good that they are back on the church’s radar screen. However, I am also a little sad that we have not kept them in the forefront of our lives. Over the years, the United Methodist Church has drifted from promoting them, let alone practicing them. We have neglected a key aspect of what is vital to the renewing of our souls! In fact, we may wonder if, by neglecting these Rules for so long and by promoting them again and inviting people to practice them, we are not trying to put the Jeannie back in the bottle: How can we begin to practice what has been dormant for so long? How can truly we invite people to see their benefits? The Invitation What I would like to share with you today is that no matter where you are in your walk with Christ, you can begin to practice these Rules now! You can begin to see how by practicing these Rules you can accept more fully God’s grace into your life. And so, as we come to end of our series, what we want to stress here at the very beginning is that, of the three Rules, the last Rule – “Staying in Love with God” – is the most important. In fact, we cannot keep the first two Rules – Do No Harm and Do Good – unless we are practicing the third Rule – unless we are relating to God, unless we are staying connected with God, that is, unless we are interacting with God. These Rules can become another form of legalism if we do not see them as ways of living out God’s purposes, unless we see them as means of grace, or means of sharing in God’s love: John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, used the word ordinances to describe how we stay in love with God. (Show picture of Wesley.) An ordinance is simply a practice that keeps us alive to God, as grow in our relationship with God. Another way he described ordinance was as a ‘means of grace,’ or ‘spiritual disciplines.’ That’s how God communicates to us through the… Means of Grace, or Ordinances of God Thru Worship The Lord’s Supper Practicing these ‘disciplines,’ or these ‘ordinances,’ helps to us to stay alive to God, to stay in touch with the presence and power of God’s Spirit. They are the means by which we communicate with God and receive from God the gift of God’s amazing grace! It is very difficult, if not impossible, to be a Christian, let alone grow in our relationship with God, if we are not practicing the ‘means of grace,’ if we are not placing ourselves in a position to hear or respond to God’s Word, if we are not attending worship, if we are not receiving the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis, if we are not in a small group or class, if we are not practicing family prayer or personal devotion! How can we grow in our relationship with God if we are not attending to those disciplines that help us sustain that relationship?! Examples As Pastor Bob shared last week, he and Joyce, and Peggy and I have, along with other couples in this church, have gone through the Marriage Enriching Seminar. Through the class, we learned (and relearned) what it takes to keep a marriage relationship vital and strong. And what we learned is that it requires practice to keep a marriage thriving; it takes practice to communicate, listen, understand, manage time, setting priorities! All relationships take practice. For example, I have always found it interesting how we describe what happens when we find the person we want to marry. We say we “fall in love”! Right? We fall in love! Why do we fall? Why don’t we rise to love? Why don’t we say “I will get up to love you.”? When I fell in love with Peggy, I can honestly say that I stumbled and tripped! I can honestly say that, as you have undoubtedly noticed, I married up! Actually, as someone shared with me last night, the reason we use the expression ‘fall in love’ is that to fall is to show humility and devotion, as it says in Ephesians: “I will fall on my knees before the Father” (3:14). [Thanks to Vicky Kindervater for this wonderful insight.] Staying in love takes practice! It requires some action on our part. It is not automatic but calls forth faithfulness on our part over time. Staying in love is a process. As I just shared, I have always found it interesting the way we use words. As a pastor, I always seem to get into conversations on a wide-range of topics. For example, I was sharing with a gentleman one day who asked me what I did. And I told him I was a United Methodist pastor. He shared with me that he had not gone to church in a while and that he was a “non-practicing Catholic.” And I thought to myself “non-practicing Catholic” what does that mean? How many people describe themselves as “non-practicing Catholic”? The only “non-practicing” folks I knew were Protestants. Staying in love takes practice! How can basketball team develop if it is not committed to practice? It takes practice and commitment to grow as a team. It also takes discipline because there are many times when we don’t feel like practicing! Do you follow? There are days when I don’t feel like preaching! There are days when I don’t feel like praying! There are days when I don’t feel like ‘doing good!’ And yet, when I practice these disciplines, I realize again how much God is trying to reach me and communicate to me and share with me – if only I would follow through with the practice! How many times have I not felt like going to Bible Study or to worship only to receive a blessing because I went?!! Or, how many times did I not want to visit the person in the nursing home only to receive a gift because I went?!! Now, if I had let my feelings dictate to me what I should I have done, I would have never gone! (That’s why Nike is on to something: Just do it!) Because, you see, what practicing a discipline does is to help me see more clearly what God is doing! It puts me in the position to hear God’s Word and to recognize God’s Spirit. The Christian Life Because, you see, the whole goal of these rules, the whole purpose of practicing the means of grace, is to lead a holy life, a life fully devoted Christ! The Goal – A life fully devoted to Christ! When we talk about these Rules, we can’t forget to keep the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is what God has done in Christ! The main thing is to remember not only what God did for us in Jesus on the cross but also what God does in us through the Spirit! And it’s what God is doing in us through the Spirit that leads us to become more and more like Christ. It’s the message in the Letter to the Colossians: “As you have received Christ continue to live in Christ, rooted and built up in him…” (2:6). It’s the message we read in the Psalms: “Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his presence continually” (105:4). And in Jesus: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Mt. 6:33). It’s in keeping with what Max Lucado has written – that God accepts us where we are but does not leave us there! God expects us to change. Or, as we sometimes say: Once we have accepted Christ we can now ‘go on to perfection,’ or once we have surrendered our lives to Christ we can grow in him, or once we have committed our lives to him we can promise to serve him as Lord, or once we have decided to follow Jesus, we can now walk with him – however we may describe this truth we cannot forget how, from beginning to end, the Christian life is all about God’s grace working in our lives. We cannot forget how it’s all about a changed life, a life becoming more and more like Christ. It’s all about…
Grace upon grace! It’s all about God’s grace moving in our lives from conception at birth to reception in heaven. Do remember what preachers used to say? “I am Justified, Sanctified, Glorified, and Satisfied”! That’s another way of saying “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” From beginning to end, it’s all about God’s grace, God’s love – stirring us, moving us, pulling us, wooing us, accepting us, guiding us, sustaining us, and, in doing so inviting and calling us to live a new life. A new life! That’s what the gospel is all about! A new and changed life! That’s what the Christian life is all about – being a new person. And it’s what the church is about – inviting persons and then helping them into this relationship, into this new way of life! Sound simple? Conclusion: Observation – Questions Some of you here may have heard of Peter Drucker, one of the great organizational gurus’ of the 20th century. Drucker would ask business leaders the following questions. He would ask: 1) what’s business? 2) How’s business? 3) How well are you doing (at business)? Grace Church, what’s our business? Come and go when we feel like it? Being friendly? As I see it, our business is to worship God in spirit and truth and invite folks into a relationship with Christ, growing in our relationship with God and others, serving others and caring for one another. Our business is about changing lives! And so, how’s business? Are lives being changed? Are persons growing in faith? Are we impacting the community, the world? Are we doing all the good we can? Have we caused harm to anyone? How’s business? How well are we doing at business? Are we practicing our faith? Are persons truly meeting Christ here? If so, what else may we need to do to help them grow? If not, why not? Dear friends, the real blessing of the church is that we have been given the means to help persons grow. We have been given resources that can help persons stay in love with God and become the persons God created them to be – through worship, prayer, fellowship, and the Lord’s Supper, through Bible Study, fasting, serving, and giving! Sound simple?! Let me ask you: How are you doing following them, practicing them? Simple? You know, it is very difficult to give what you don’t
have! It’s also very difficult to be what you don’t
practice. Staying in love with God is what it is all about! E-mail Comments to: Pastor Andy Kinsey
Copyright Grace United Methodist Church.
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