Started a new series last night:
We think it’s good to slow down on occasion and look back at the basics to get a handle on our here and now. Sometimes we get so caught up in the drama of today that we can loose sight of those things our faith is built upon – so in this series, we’ll stop, rewind and remember.
Our “religion” has claimed some phenomenal ideas as foundational truth – we call that THEOLOGY (the study of the nature of God and of religious truth). John Wesley, in particular, had some awesome and inspired ideas that are why I think the United Methodist Church is so cool. So, it’s talking about these ideas and unpacking them that create for each of us a spiritual life that is much deeper than religion.
This first night we spent on GRACE - the only real place to start when we’re talking about our connection with God. We believe that our relationship with God is more than a moment in time, but a journey through a lifetime. And his grace travels with us at every stage. So we did some journeying with our congregation.
We opened the night with a couple songs (“Happy Day” by Tim Hughes and “Desire” by Phil Wickham). In an attempt to set the retro mood, I shared my retro experience – including some horrible hair pictures and documentation of my love affair with MacGyver!! Just to give you a taste, this is one of my prize possessions – an autographed head shot, “To Tina…just for you…LOVE, Ricky Anderson” 
There are three kinds of grace and so we had three points to our journey. At each point they heard from a different speaker who shared their understanding of the kind of grace they spoke of and their experience of it in their own life. Each group spent about 10 minutes with each person.
So those three graces are:
1) Prevenient Grace (the grace that comes before) – you could call this preparing grace. This is when the Spirit is preparing us for a relationship with God. It’s all the times God is working that we don’t see till we look back through that 20/20 hindsight that makes everything so clear.
2) Justifying Grace (the grace that saves us) – this is our Salvation experience. It is the Spirit accepting us as broken as we are, and allowing Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross to make us new, and therefor justified. For some this is a moment in time of saying “yes” to God, for others this Salvation happens in process and is harder to pinpoint.
3) Sanctifying Grace (is the grace that changes us) – this is what happens after our “yes” to God – if courtship is the preparing grace, and your wedding day is the justification, then the years of growing together in a marriage relationship is the Sanctification. It is the Spirit sustaining us on all the ups and downs of our journey with God.
We read Romans 5:1-11 which speaks to all three graces…
By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise. <<That’s grace!>>
There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! <<That’s Sanctifying grace>>
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. <<That’s Prevenient grace>>
Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah! <<That’s Justifying grace>>
When this learning journey was over, we went into communion – one of our “Means of Grace” – or a way in which we can experience God’s grace physically and spiritually. During communion we sang ”I Will Rise” by Chris Tomlin and then wrapped up the night with “Oh Praise Him” by David Crowder.
My prayer for all of us as we journey with God is much like the one I shared as we opened the night…
God – thank you so much for our tradition and history. Thank you for speaking to your people through the years, for creating a system of beliefs that will guide us down the road with you. May we take this time to think about what we believe – to really get down to it – so that we can stand firmly on it. A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” So open our minds, God and let’s talk. We love you – AMEN
Here is our current prayer request list. (Anyone can ask for prayer, just let me know! You can talk to me or drop one of our prayer request cards in the worship space Drop Boxes.)
:: Praise - Connie & Jerry Noland had a great missions experience with the Choctaw Reservation
:: Jackie Anderson is still traveling a VERY rough road. Pray for the details to come together. For hope and healing and willingness to hang on tight!
:: Sonya Cooper’s Aunt – Mary – is not doing well. Pray for her and her family as they wrestle with grief and illness.
:: Pray for Katie Thompson’s grandparents – the grandmother’s hip replacement surgery went well, but the grandfather has some dementia issues and the situation is difficult.
:: Pray for Christa and her sons
:: Pray for Lacy Thompson – she’s serving as a missionary in Ecuador until Thanksgiving.
:: Toni Ruppert is looking for a new job (while working a paper route!) pray God will open up the right opportunity and that she and Zach will pull through this tough time.
:: Praise – Jen’s test results all came back clean – she’s good!
