A Methodist Loves Others

•Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

On Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper

Mark #5 of 5, A Methodist Loves Others

With Matthew 22:34-40 and Ephesians 4:32 – 5:2

Ephesians 4:32 – 5:2       (NRSV)       

32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

• Current series on Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper, based on the teachings of John Wesley. Really, Five Marks of a Disciple.

“When the lights are on, the king is in the castle.”
Five indications that God is king of your castle.

A Methodist Loves God (receives God’s love);
A Methodist Rejoices in God.
A Methodist Gives Thanks.
A Methodist Prays Continually.
The lights are on in the castle. 

Did you put yourself in a position to receive from God this week?

•Christian = “little Christ” or “Christ-like”
Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Ephesians 5:1-2

Really, a person could spend their life by this rule.

It doesn’t happen often but sometimes I don’t like someone.
Those people and I usually clash somehow difference of opinion or maybe I feel they’re judgmental or sarcastic.
But Jesus doesn’t say like but love, and that’s interesting to wrap head around.

I might be self-serving, which is pretty un-Christ-like. Yet somehow God loves me perfectly anyway, and I sometimes glimpse the truth that if I aim to be Christ like, if I aim to love others as Christ loves me, I become closer to God’s design for me! And how does Christ love me?

Frank Burns said “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.”
Ephesians says “Love others as Christ loves us.”

•Be imitators of Christ, this is our aim, our goal, our target,
and what did Christ do but live for others, selflessness
and what is the first sin but selfishness

Therefore the Greatest Commandment is to love God with all heart soul mind and strength AND neighbor as self. Three recipients of love: God, neighbor, and self.

•“The second commandment becomes the conduit for God’s love to flow through us after it has flowed into us. It is a love, Wesley says, ‘full of love to all humankind, to every child of the Father of the spirits of all flesh.’ And lest we think he was only thinking of fellow Christians, Wesley hastens to say it extends to people we don’t know, and to people whose lives we don’t approve of.
It extends even to our enemies…”
 - p. 50 Five Marks of a Methodist, emphasis mine.

Sound radical? Yup. Regardless.

How might this apply to your political world, your view of “the other side”?

• “As with the first commandment, to love God with our whole heart, mind, and being, we are brought back to the necessity of grace if we are to love in this way. Apart from grace, we will love other people conditionally, and worse still, we will set the conditions for giving our love!”
 – p. 51 Five Marks of a Methodist, emphasis mine.

•By no means is it “love those who think like you”… you love them anyway. How about love your opponent, think charitable thoughts about them, pray for their welfare…

Loving others is the aim, the goal, the target.
We have been loved, therefore we are to let love flow through us, not to gather it and store it, for it will stagnate, but let it flow through and give life to others!

•Story of a man named Frank, whose funeral I did a few years ago: Every weekend Frank and his wife of 50 years would assemble two dozen bag lunches – sandwiches and fruit and drinks and hardboiled eggs – and go into the city and hand ’em out to hungry people, with words of Christian witness as well. What a great way to simply show thanks to the Lord and keep active and make a difference in people’s lives.

•When Jesus called the disciples, to fish for people, he was taking what they knew and understood, their ordinary lives, and saying take what you normally do, and do it for me.

& that’s discipleship, that’s receiving God’s love and letting it flow through.

• Into hymn 560 Help Us Accept Each Other

A Methodist Prays Continually

•Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

On Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper

Mark #4 of 5, A Methodist Prays Continually

with John 15:4-8 and 1 Peter 2:1-6

You cannot produce fruit unless you remain in me…

My Father is glorified when you produce much fruit and in this way prove that you are my disciples.

– Jesus, in John 15:4, 8

• Current series on Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper, based on the teachings of John Wesley. Really, Five Marks of a Disciple.

“When the lights are on, the king is in the castle.”
Five indications that God is king of your castle.

A Methodist Loves God (receives God’s love)

A Methodist Rejoices in God.

A Methodist Gives Thanks.

A Methodist Prays Continually

• Story of rising waters, jeep, boat, helicopter.
Prayer is putting ourselves in position to receive.
Like old television rabbit ears.

•I’m always amazed at Jesus’ prayer life. 
John 15, Jesus knows the will of God,
is in the will of God because of Jesus’ times of prayer,
Jesus’ positioning himself to receive from God.

• “Prayer is the way we create and sustain our relationship with God.”
– p.38, 5MoaM

• Prayer is intentional, & may be rote, may be scripted.
John Wesley was priest in Church of England,
and the Book of Common Prayer was daily bread.
He had a habit that maintains health
like brushing teeth and showering.
Rich in scriptures.
Structured for both individual and corporate prayer.
BCP created an establish pattern,
and could get you through the dry times.

• “John Wesley prayed with words and in silence. He prayed alone and with others. He prayed when he felt like it and when he felt as if his prayers were making no difference. He prayed with the inspiration and guidance of the Bible and with the instruction of tradition. He prayed with the full range of emotions.” – p. 40

• Brother Lawrence, 17^th century French monk. BL was noted for his continual prayer (practicing the presence of God), notably in his assigned duties in the kitchen, which he didn’t particularly care for.
Commit moment by moment.

At the beginning of my duties, I said to God with a son-like trust, “My God, since You are with me, and since it is Your will that I should apply my mind to these outward things, I pray that You will give me the grace to remain with You and keep company with You. But so that my work may be better, Lord, work with me; receive my work and possess all my affections.”

Finally, during my work, I continued to speak to Him in a familiar way, offering Him my little services, and asking for His grace. At the end of my work, I examined how I had done it, and if I found any good in it, I thanked God. If I noticed errors, I asked His forgiveness for them, and without being discouraged, I resolved to change and began anew to remain with God as if I had never strayed…-- Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God. p. 37

• My favorite / recommended prayer:
The Jesus Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
It's a breath prayer, to be repeated again & again.
Yet another way of positioning.

• However you do it, do it. With sincerity,
and with intention when you haven’t the feeling.

• Story from p. 42 on Larry’s journey to prayer.

• “This is true prayer, lifting up the heart to God.
This is the essence of prayer, and this alone.”
– John Wesley, qtd on p. 41

• What can you do this week to position yourself
for intimacy with God?

• Into hymn 496 Sweet Hour of Prayer

A Methodist Gives Thanks

•Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

On Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper

Mark #3 of 5, A Methodist Gives Thanks

with 1 Thessalonians 5:18

“Give thanks in every situation
because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

•Current series on Five Marks of a Methodist by Steve Harper, based on the teachings of John Wesley.
Really, Five Marks of a Disciple.

“When the lights are on, the king is in the castle.”
Five indications that God is king of your castle.

A Methodist Loves God (receives God’s love)
A Methodist Rejoices in God.

•A Methodist Gives Thanks.
Consider this little verse that says so much: 1 Thess 5:18
“Give thanks in every situation
because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Give thanks… 

...in every situation… 

...because this is God’s will for you.

EVERY SITUATION.

Author Steve Harper points out John Wesley’s words:
“Good is the will of the Lord.”
But Harper asks “How are we to give thanks in every situation when some situations seem to come not from the will of God but from the pit of hell?”

•For one, Harper suggests Gratitude is the response to grace.
There are two times to give thanks:
when you feel like it, and when you don’t.
Therefore make a plan to give thanks,
because if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

•John Wesley made it a part of his weekly prayer plan to reflect on gratitude every Saturday:

1- Have I allotted some time for thanking God for the blessings of the past week?

2- Have I, I order to be the more sensible of them, seriously and deliberately considered the several circumstances that attended them?

3- Have I considered each of them as an obligation to greater love, and consequently, to stricter holiness?  (qtd on pp 27-28)

He did this for 60 years.

Can you imagine, weekly for 60 years?

Would you try this for August?

•Gratitude reflects God, not circumstances.
(Check out Philippians 4, where Paul has learned
to be content in all circumstances).

God is love, and God is not the author of evil.
God is good to sinners!

Consider Adam & Eve, who did what when they sinned?
They hid. 

What did God do? God called to them.
God provided clothing for them to cover their sin and their shame. God acted in love.

And so we pray Deliver us from evil, and we confess that there is nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:38).

God does not tire of us,
neither does God ever need a break from us.

•So take a moment to write thanksgivings.

•And those situations when you can’t imagine giving thanks?

I’m not exactly going to re-frame those griefs, but hold them in prayer, and trust God.
Pray to see God, to submit to God
(recall God’s will is good, there is no bad in God’s will…
Any bad that happens is not God’s will.
God does not abandon nor is God author of evil.)
Pray to “fully rely on God” regardless of circumstances

•Pray Immanuel God-Is-With-Us…

• Into communion liturgy (eucharist = give thanks)