Lent 4: Choose Faithfulness

• Fourth Sunday of Lent.
with 2 Corinthians 5

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A video of the worship service was posted on Facebook 3/31/19 https://www.facebook.com/FUMCWV/videos/408702729915750/

Sermon number four of five in a series based on the book One Faithful Promise by Magrey deVega.

• Pretty Woman was on TV last week. 29th anniversary of its 1990 release. Millionaire business mogul Edward Lewis gets directions from a prostitute on Hollywood Blvd, and invites her back to his room. She disappears into the bathroom for a few moments, and Edward suspects she’s doing drugs and confronts her about it. It’s floss. “I stopped doing drugs when I was 14. This is dental floss. I had all those strawberry seeds. And you shouldn’t neglect your gums.”

Good dental health doesn’t just happen; it’s achieved and maintained.
And if you neglect it it suffers.

Just like you wouldn’t go a day without brushing your teeth, don’t go without attention to spiritual health as well. Something every day to nurture your connection with God. Choose to be faithful.

• One Faithful Promise. Wesley earnestly wants us to take covenant seriously.

Step One, Confide in God. Admit the seriousness of sinfulness.

Step Two, Compose Your Spirit.
Staying focused and serious about committing yourself to God.

Step Three: Claim the Covenant. Receive the freedom and power God gives.

Step Four: Choose to be faithful.

• Wesley outlines the path to breaking faithfulness.

Temptation arises. Spirit warns. Prompts to watch and pray.
Might follow through, or… might bend ear to temptation.

Personal commitment weakens. Spirit warns again.
   Now you know you’re on slippery slope. It becomes difficult to turn around now unless prevented – you’re fully listening to temptation now.

Too often we willfully ignore the Spirit’s warnings and alerts.

• Therefore: Choose to be faithful. renew commitment daily.

For Wesley, formally renewing one’s commitment involves a pledge of regularly choosing to be faithful. Why? Because each day is filled with opportunities to break commitment.
So Wesley encourages Christians to resolve in God’s strength never to go back.

• 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. There is a new creation. We are made reconcilers – active.
We are made ambassadors. Representatives. – active.
So that we through Christ we might become righteousness. Not just passively receive but by the grace of God actively receive and achieve. There is no “graduation” from faithful commitment.

• Daily commitment. Practice means of grace. Communion. Acts of piety. Acts of mercy.

• Hymn 338 Where He Leads Me

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NRSV)  

¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ò

Matthew 7:13-14 (NRSV)                          

¹³ “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. ¹⁴ For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. ò