"PASTOR'S CORNER"

A MONTHLY MESSAGE FROM THE PASTOR'S HEART

July, 2008; From a Pastor’s Heart

            In our time together during the last few  months, I shared with you about a book I read entitled, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living (Abingdon Press, 2007) written by Bishop Rueben Job of the United Methodist Church.  I have covered the first two simple rules our last two times in this article, Do no harm and do good.  Today, I want to share the third of the three simple rules, Staying in Love with God.  I sharing about this rule, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, used a term we do not hear much in church life today, Ordinance.  Most of the time when we hear this word today, we think of a city passing a law.  For Wesley, it was the word he used for the practices that helps keep the relationship between God and us vital, alive, and growing.  Recently, I asked my churches, are we following these practices enough to keep our relationships vital, alive, and growing.

            So how do we practice staying in love with God?  Paul writes in Colossians 2:6-7, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (NRSV)  We need to be rooted and built up in Christ as we were taught.  As I looked at ways we have been taught, I looked at the practices John Wesley suggested we us to stay established in the faith.  They are Public Worship, Holy Communion (Lord’s Supper, Eucharist), Private and Family Prayer, Reading and Studying the Scriptures, and Fasting.  As we live these practices/ordinances in our lives, as Bishop Job says, “They become a life-giving source of guidance and strength for us and are central to a life of faithfulness to God.”  We have to incorporate these practices/ordinances in our lives.

            To stay in love with God means we have to grow from the inside-out.  To live in the presence of the living God, known in Jesus, and who accompanies us in the Holy Spirit, is to live life from the inside out.  Author Joan Chittister in her book, Illuminated Life wrote, “All we have in this life is life.  Things – the cars, the houses, the educations, the jobs, the money – come and go; turn to dust between our fingers, change and disappear…the secret of life…is that it must be developed from the inside out.” (Orbis Books, 2000; pg.14).  By living from the inside-out, we seek to find our moral direction, our wisdom, our strength to live faithfully from Him who called us, sustains us each day, and sends us into our mission fields as witnesses each day.  By following the practices mentioned earlier, we are able to better hear and be more responsive to God’s slightest whisper and to receive His presence and power each day.

            When we look at Staying in Love with God, it is different from the first two rules because each of us are unique and different.  With that said, we all end up hearing Christ ask us the same question in following Him.  As we grow and live in a relationship with Christ, unlike relationships with others, we can never say that He has neglected us in the relationship, only we can neglect Him.  Jesus taught us that there is importance in staying connected with the Father/Abba.  Henri Nouwen once wrote about Jesus, “He whose only concern had been to announce the unconditional love of God had only one question to ask, “Do you love me?”  Jesus asking Peter, Do you love me?  reveals to us the essentials of our relationship with God and how staying in love with God was/is the primary issue for us as Christians.  Each time Jesus asks Peter, He is asking how obedient to God both Peter and we will be.

(All quotes are taken from Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living by Bishop Ruben Job, Abingdon Press, 2007).