Pastor's Midweek Message

Midweek Message w/o November 10, 2024

Sisters and brothers,

At Oxford University in England in 1729, a small group of students formed a club whose members committed to meeting three or four times a week to pray, study the Bible, and deepen their personal piety through accountability with one another. Their fellow students soon started to mock them, calling their gathering “the Holy Club,” and mocking them for their methodical approach to piety, thinking these “method-ists” would soon disband. These students included the brothers John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all of whom would become instrumental in the soon-to-explode Methodist movement.

So our name, Methodist, started out as a college taunt. It was then embraced as a badge of pride by the “methodical” people who followed the Wesleys and Whitefield. I’ll share that when I was a teenager, and still a Lutheran, I was puzzled what that name, “Methodist,” meant. What “method” were they teaching over there, I wondered? How could God be reduced to some formula or method, or steps?

What I’ve come to appreciate, though, is that there is a reliable soundness to the Methodist “method.” What the Oxford students mocked turns out to be a powerful approach to God, involving many ways for God to reach us. The “method” involves taking advantage of as many means of grace, or ways in which God can reach us, as we can. Today, we might consider the “method” to be about spiritual disciplines.

There’s something about that word, “discipline,” that we don’t like. We bridle at being disciplined. We rebel against it. But a life built around spiritual disciplines means a life opening to God, and a life that allows God to use us in the best way possible. And so it is I ask: How are your spiritual disciplines?

·  Do you pray? If so, how often—and how? Is your prayer a hurried list of things you’re worried about—or do you stop for awhile and let God have a chance to speak in reply?

·  Do you study your Bible every day? Or do you read the “scripture of the day” on your app and that’s it? Do you truly push into the word, trying to understand the context, the nuances of what God is saying?

·  Do you fast? Fasting is a terribly misunderstood discipline (we’ll be talking about it next year) that allows us to focus on God.

·  Do you extend love to those who need it? Serving others is a wonderfully powerful spiritual discipline. Write a handwritten card to someone who’s homebound. Volunteer for the CCHASM food-packing ministry next week. Do something that brings you personally to encounter the image of God in someone hurting, and God will do the rest.

If your spiritual life needs a recharge, may I invite you to try mixing up your spiritual disciplines. Try a new one for Advent. Adjust how you’re doing a current one, to get out of any rut you might be in, and allow it to speak afresh to you. I hope you’ll find, as I do, that when I focus on deepening my spiritual disciplines, I deepen my connection with God, which in turn allows me to be a better Christian.

So let’s go.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Eric