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One Faithful Promise
“Claim”
Once upon a time, stores like Kmart, Sears, Woolworth’s, Zayre’s, Montgomery Ward, and J.C. Penny offered lay away programs. You would take an item to the back of the store, pay a deposit of 10-20% and return weekly or monthly until the ticket was paid infull. If you failed to return, you forfeited your deposit. It was a revolutionary idea at the time. Paying installments while the store held your item was a uniqueprogram.
Few stores today offer layaway programs and storerooms are a thing of the past. Staging areas for deliveries are for just-in-time shipments.Merchandise rarely sits long enough to gather dust and merchants don’t like holding products any longer than necessary. A hot item today may be old hat tomorrow and nobody wants to be out of fashion.
Why is this concept important to us? We all like the idea that something important will be ready when we are and if I can put it on a shelf and come back to it when I have more time, all the better. There is only one glitch, when do we have more time and will I come back to it?
If you have been around the United Methodist church for any time, hopefully you’ve heard the term “prevenient grace.” There are three kinds of grace: prevenient, justifying and sanctification. Grace is understood as “unmerited favor” we have done nothing to deserve God’s favor. It is offered to us without price as Christ has provided the way.
Prevenient grace, the unmerited favor of God occurs before we know God is or loves us. We are not aware that God knows our name but along the way, we discover a certain compassion or an opportunity suddenly working in our favor and we wonder why or how this could be.
There are so many examples of prevenient grace. One that happened to me goes back to El Paso, Texas. I was selling new and used cars at a Nissan dealer after my time in the Army. As far as I was concerned,it was a job and it paid the bills. A buddy was moving to California to sell German wine in the Bay Area. I didn’t know anything about wine but it sounded like an adventure so I pulled his U-Haul trailer with my Bonneville and he drove his oil burning Corvair to San Mateo, CA.
After a few months of horrible wine sales and a change in occupation, I finally interviewed with TWA. They hired me and sent me to St. Louis. After years of flying around the mid-west, I was told about a singles dance at Chaminade Catholic Church. It was there I met Chris who one year later became my wife and we’ve lived happily ever after.
Did I deserve God’s grace in meeting Chris? No. Would we have raised two terrific kids had we not met in April 1990? I can’t say. Was there a chance I’d eventually serve Christ in the UM Church? Most likely not. Grace worked to maneuver me to the place of saying “Yes” to God.
I believe every one of us has a pivotal step that is central to our knowing God and travelling the path God intends for us. It’s like claiming your layaway item at Montgomery Ward. It sits on a shelf waiting for you, If you never claim God’s covenant, the process of confiding, composing and recognizing Gods promise for you, a void is left in God’s kingdom where you would be and in your heart, a space is unoccupied that only God’s presence can fill. It’s not something we can do on our own.
Claiming God’s covenant is becoming more like Christ and less like us by God’s grace. John Wesley reminds us that claiming God’s covenant means relying on God’s promise“of giving grace and strength, for only through these will you be able to perform your promise.”
Only God can empower us to choose, we must choose to follow Christ.
To follow Christ, we must let go of our self-made security and trust in the faithfulness of God. It’s irrational to let go of our security and self-preservation. But this adventure in Christ is not possible if we don’t learn to trust in God who promises to be there when we surrender.
This is the heart of our covenant with God. We trust God to be faithful and strong enough to carry us into the future. This concept of covenant defines the entire biblical narrative. God calls out to humanity to relinquish control of our lives and to yield to God’s will.
Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the Israelites were all called to yield themselves to God. Finally, God sent Jesus who died our death and was resurrected so that a new convenient based on forgiveness and grace would empower us by God’s Spirit to agree to this convenient.
There are two parts of the covenant: professing our faith and reality. John Wesley understood water baptism to be our outward sign of God’s inward grace that is offered to us without price. We profess our faith in Christ and witness to what God has done and is fulfilling in our life.
Secondly, we regularly affirm this covenant through formal, ongoing recommitments to God, by publically professing our faith in Christ. Sometimes we express ourselves with words (spoken or written), sometimes in works (caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, teaching new beginners.) or by following Christ inmissional opportunities.
John Wesley believed the power of these moments would recommit us to God by outward expressions such asacts of piety and mercy seen by others and performed by our burning desire to serve Christ. It wasn’t because of our benevolence or good work, but God’s prevenient grace.
God initiated a relationship with us. It is visible through Holy Communion and water baptism along with our profession of faith, words that reflect our passion and beliefs. We can talk the walk but it is not until we claim our place in God’s kingdom because of the work of God’s prevenient grace, his unmerited favor fulfilling God’s will in us.
I cannot take credit for what God is doing. It is by God’s grace that I can approach the throne of God. It is God’s unmerited favor any good thing happens in my life. I am a happy recipient and witness of God’s grace.
A few of our outward acts of mercy are the Heritage Back Pack mission, mentoring at Heritage Intermediate School, Mary Martha Thrift Store, Volunteer in Mission and Disaster Relief trips, Monday evening prayer walks, once a month Single Mom Dinners, Adopt a Family Christmas and Back-to-School gifts and volunteers serving the local food pantry.
Physical plant/inward witness: sharing our facility with Benedicite Home Schooling, Crisis Nursery, Tai Chi and Yoga exercise groups, all at free or reduced rate rental agreements. Once or twice a year the Boy Scouts of America use the grounds and fall Little Shots soccer teams.
There are book studies, Sunday school classes, Children’s Church and JOY programing, Youth Group on Sunday evenings and a mission trip this summer. We’ve offered VBS and now MAD Camp in the summer.
Closer to home: “How have we shared God’s grace given to each one of us with a neighbor, friend, associate at work or a passerby in public?”
Letting go of our security and normal routine stretches our spirit and allows God to lead us in paths of righteousness. This is our purpose.